Back in July I went on my sixth Leger Battlefield Tour... Operation Market Garden, the September 1944 military operation aimed at securing a number of bridges in The Netherlands. I was accompanied by my good friend and fellow history enthusiast John Chisholm and in this article I look back at the tour, highlighting the various sites we visited along with a brief overview of what happened during those few days in September. I am also including some of the many photos I took during the tour.
Operation Market Garden, which lasted nine days from 17th to the 25th September, was General Bernard Montgomery’s attempt to end the war before Christmas, by launching a ground offensive through The Netherlands into Germany with the route secured by Airborne forces.
Market was the Airborne side of the operation by the 101st and 82nd US Airborne Division and 1st British Airborne Division who would land by glider and parachute at various drop and landing zones, with the intention to secure the bridges along the route.
Garden was the ground offensive by the British XXX Corps who would advance across the bridges and over the Rhine. The main bridges were at Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem with smaller bridges at Veghel and Grave.
Although most of the bridges were captured the plan eventually failed. The British 1st Airborne Division found itself embattled at Arnhem waiting for XXX Corps, a battle in which only 2,000 Airborne troops would escape out of 10,000.
An early start on Monday saw us travel to Stop 24 in Folkestone where we boarded our tour coach for the rest of the week. A pleasant crossing on the DFDS Ferry to Dunkirk was followed by the drive through the French and Belgian countryside to our hotel for the first night... The Crowne Plaza in Brussels. A lovely hotel and a chance to enjoy a couple of beers outside overlooking a lake before retiring for the night.
Leaving the hotel the next morning we headed out for the journey to our first stop, Joe's Bridge, located near the towns of Neerpelt and Lommel and a few miles from the Belgium-Netherlands border. On 17th September the British XXX Corps advanced from here and it marked the start of Operation Market Garden. However, the bridge did not fall without a fight. Bridge No. 9, as it was originally named, was a wooden structure that crossed the Bocholt-Herentals Canal and played an important role in the operation.
On 10th September it was captured by the Irish Guards in a surprise attack led by Lieutenant Colonel J. O. E. Vandeleur and forever after would be known as Joe's Bridge.
Despite several attempts by the Germans to retake the bridge it held, although there were many casualties, military and civilian. The Germans had mined most of the bridges in the area to prevent any chance of the opposing armies advancing into The Netherlands and then Germany. Fortunately they did not have the chance to blow up the bridge and engineers managed to remove all the explosives. A Bailey bridge was later put in place to allow more traffic to cross the canal.
During our visit we had the opportunity to view the bridge, which was rebuilt after the war, and the memorial to The Irish Guards which was located on the northern bank of the canal.
Operation Market Garden's planned corridor was a 62-mile route through Belgium and The Netherlands to Arnhem where an Allied bridgehead over the Rhine would lead into Northern Germany. It would pass through Valkenswaard in Holland which was our next stop.
Just south of the town, in a pine forest, lies the Valkenswaard War Cemetery, a British cemetery established in 1945. There are 222 graves, many of whom were killed during the military operation. Like all Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries it is peaceful and immaculately maintained.
We had time to walk around and read many of the inscriptions. I have been to many CWGC cemeteries over the years and never leave without feeling so grateful to all those who gave their lives for our freedom.
Heading north our journey continued towards Overloon but we had another cemetery visit on the way.
At Ysselsteyn, a village near Venray in the province of Limburg, is the only German War Cemetery in The Netherlands. Constructed in 1946 and covering almost 60 acres, the cemetery contains 87 First World War graves and almost 32,000 from the Second World War. Although the majority are German soldiers there are also graves of the SS, war criminals, Dutch collaborators and a number of civilians.
As you walk past the visitor centre and the vast number of graves come into view it becomes overwhelmingly sad. A powerful reminder of the human cost of war and the fact that so many young German soldiers also gave their lives in both wars.
We only had a short time there and managed to view a small selection of graves, many unmarked with the wording... 'Ein Deutscher Soldat (A German Soldier). One of the saddest visits of the whole tour.
At Overloon we visited the first of three museums on the tour. Opened in May 1946 the Overloon War Museum, also known as the Dutch National War and Resistance Museum, is the biggest in The Netherlands and contains an amazing collection of exhibits. It focuses on World War Two history and in particular The War in The Netherlands.
Among the many vehicles on display are a Panther Tank, a Soviet Union T-34, Sherman Tank, and two British tanks, the Churchill and Cromwell. There are also a number of aircraft, including an Airspeed Horsa Mk I glider, which played an important role in Operation Market Garden with over 900 deployed, a C-47 Dakota and a Spitfire. One of the highlights is the wreckage of a crashed Lancaster from 1945 whose more than 2000 pieces of wreckage, large and small, has been laid out in its correct position and makes for an impressive display. There are many more military vehicles to view, although there is so much more to the museum than the vehicles.
There are display cabinets full of weapons, shell cases, military uniforms, utensils, radar and radio equipment and other militaria.
A number of reconstructions featuring troops, military vehicles, firearms and scenery give an idea of the fighting that took place during the war.
I have been to many military museums, not only during my Leger Battlefield Tours but also throughout England, and this was by far the most impressive.
Lunch was also provided at the museum where we were all shown into a room and served soup, rolls and drinks. A well deserved rest before we were back to the coach and our next stop.
Graves Bridge, which crossed the Maas-Waal Canal, was a crucial strategic point in Operation Market Garden as it provided a major crossing point for the British armoured vehicles moving north.
It was captured, intact, on 17th September by a small force led by Lieutenant John Thompson, assigned to the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 82nd Airborne Division. In 2004 the bridge was renamed the John S. Thompson Bridge in his honour. The action at the bridge was considered to be one of the most successful of the operation.
There are also two pillboxes in the area. One painted black and white to help disguise its position in the woods and the second now houses a small museum, but unfortunately this was closed on the day we visited.
Our final stop of the day was in Nijmegen where the bridges, crucial objectives during the operation, were captured by the American 82nd Airborne Division to secure the 'Airborne Corridor' for the British XXX Corps who were advancing towards Arnhem. Both the road bridge (Waalbrug) and Nijmegen railway bridge were captured.
A daylight crossing of the Waal River on 20 September was a pivotal moment in the ground forces advance. Unfortunately, as mentioned later in this article, the operation ended in failure to capture the final bridge in Arnhem.
German reinforcements at Nijmegen resulted in delays to the allied plans and it took longer than planned to secure the route to Arnhem.
Before the tour I had been told about the Unibar and advised to go there for a drink. John and I decided to stop for a couple of pints before finding a local restaurant for dinner.
Serving behind the bar was the lovely Hannah who served us drinks and even said she could order in pizza from a local restaurant for us to eat at the bar to save us moving on. We ended up spending an enjoyable evening there and thanks must go to Hannah for her hospitality. It was a lovely end to a busy but enjoyable day.
Following the long day, and evening, a good nights sleep was needed before an early start the next day.
Our third day started with the short drive to Heelsum where we stopped to view the Airborne Memorial. The first in the area to be erected by the locals to commemorate the Battle of Arnhem. Unveiled just one year after troops from the British 1st Airborne Division landed on the heath nearby.
The monument features a parachutist hanging from an arch crowned with helmets and guns. A canon sits underneath and is mounted on a foundation of containers and other material that was left behind after the landings. Originally located on one of the routes from the landing zone it was later moved to its current location.
Moving on to the story of the various landing and drop zones we headed to Wolfheze, north of Arnhem. There were three landing zones in the area and the locations were chosen due to the landscape, which was mainly meadow and ideal for gliders to land. The zones were labelled 'S', 'X' and 'Z' with another 'L' to the east of Wolfheze. It was Landing Zone 'S' that was our next stop.
Landing Zone 'S' was the landing site of the British 1st Airlanding Brigade, under the command of Brigadier R. H. W. Hicks, and involved the following units... 1st Border Regiment, 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers, 2nd South Staffords, 9th Field Company RE and 181st Airlanding Field Ambulance.
To commemorate the glider landings, which took place on 17 September, a memorial was erected next to the road depicting a Horsa glider making its final approach to the ground.
In 2022 a second memorial was placed in the field with a brief history of the events of 17th-26th September 1944 while the reverse features statements by the last remaining survivors of the glider regiment.
The actual field where the gliders landed is now known as Peter Colthup field, who was a veteran of the Glider Pilot Regiment.
Following the story of the landing zones we moved onto the Freedom Museum in Groesbeek, close to the German border. The building is 12-metres high and shaped like a parachute and houses many artifacts that tell the fascinating story of War and Freedom Without Borders in the Netherlands and Germany.
The highlight of the museum was the 'Resurrection' exhibit which was designed by Fransje Povel-Speleers. This terra cotta display is of the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery and depicts the resurrection of the war victims who are buried there. Each statue is a unique human being with their own dreams and their own face.
Due to a planned event, and major road closures and diversions in the area, there was a change to our planned itinerary. At first it seemed like we would not be able to visit the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery but thanks to the perseverance of our guide and drivers we still managed to visit all the sites that were scheduled on the tour, including the cemetery.
There are 2610 members of the Commonwealth armed forces killed during World War Two buried in the Canadian Cemetery, which is the largest Commonwealth War Cemetery in the Netherlands. With just one exception, all Canadians who lost their lives during Operation Veritable in February 1945, also known as the Battle of the Reichswald, are buried here.
Many of the dead were taken here from Germany following the orders of General Crerar, commander of the Canadian forces in Europe, who said that no Canadian dead would be buried in German soil.
One of my favourite memorials of all those I have visited during my many battlefield tours is the Airborne Memorial at Ginkel Heath (Ginkelse Heide). It was here, on 17th September, that more than 2,000 allied paratroopers landed.
Known as the 'Windows of the Past, the memorial was unveiled at a ceremony in September 2019, 75 years after the 4th Parachute Brigade had landed there. The memorial depicts an airborne landing and around the base are a number of plaques telling the story of the Battle of Arnhem.
Close by is the Airborne Monument, a concrete pillar with a copper eagle at the top with its wings spread. There are three copper symbols on the pillar, a winged parachute wearing a crown, the emblem of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers and an image of a purple Pegasus .
Our final two stops of the day were both memorials located in wooded areas on Sportlaan. The first was the memorial to the 10th Battalion Parachute Regiment and marks the spot they reached on 19 September 1944 before having to retreat. The inscription on the memorial reads, 'Where once there was war, peace now reigns supreme.'
On our journey back to the hotel we made our final stop at Hackett's Hollow. This was where, on 20 September 1944, Brigadier J. W. Hackett, commander of the 4th Parachute Infantry Brigade, took command of 150 men from the 156th Battalion Parachute Regiment and ordered them into a charge into the woods.
They were pinned down in a hollow by the road for over eight hours and fought off heavy German attacks. In the thick of the fighting, Hackett led a bayonet charge and the survivors escaped from the hollow and took their positions on the eastern flank of the Oosterbeek Perimeter. The perimeter was the defensive line formed by the British and Polish airborne troops where they retreated when surrounded by German troops.
A refreshing pint on the rooftop bar at the hotel, with its impressive views over Arnhem, bought a long day to a close.
Day four of our tour took us first to the Old Church in Oosterbeek. The church, a 10th-century structure, played a vital role in the battle and was one of the last bastions for the British and Polish airborne troops before their retreat across the Rhine. The church was left in ruins after the war, but has since been restored, although there are still signs of the past with bullet holes visible on the church walls.
The church also became the starting point of the evacuation and troops gathered there before moving south across the floodplains towards the southern edge of Oosterbeek and The Rhine. There they were transported by boat across the river. The evacuation was codenamed 'Operation Berlin' and took place during the night of 25th-26th September. The route across the floodplains was marked as the 'White Ribbon Mile' and a memorial is located at the point where the troops boarded the boats. We had a chance to walk a small section of the path and to see the view across to the river.
The former St Elizabeth's Hospital, now an apartment block, was the next place we visited. During Operation Market Garden, Dutch, British and German doctors helped the wounded of not only British and Dutch casualties but also German. This was despite the hospital being right in the front line and while war raged outside, inside they continued to save lives.
It was a medical unit of the 1st Airborne Division, the 16th Parachute Field Ambulance, who went to the building on 17 September to care for the wounded of the 1st Parachute Brigade. When they arrived they found a German medical unit caring for wounded of both sides and although the British took over the hospital they allowed the Germans to remain and in the days that followed they all worked together.
It is an impressive building and as it was now housing we couldn't go inside but looking at the building it was not hard to imagine what it looked like inside and also during the war.
Just around the corner we learnt the story of Major-General Roy Urquhart. Having had no information on the progress of his battalion he decide to go and take a look himself. Along with Lieutenant Jimmy Cleminson, Captain Willie Taylor and Brigadier Lathbury, they found themselves surrounded by German troops. Lathbury was shot in the back and they left him in a house and all three went down an alley behind the houses and on to Zwarteweg Road where they ended up hiding in another house.
The house was owned by the Derksen family and Anton Derksen hid them in their attic where they stayed for 24-hours before being rescued by British troops. The property is now called 'Urquhart House.'
They were told there were German's everywhere and Urquhart would later say, "At the moment we still expected the Germans to storm in at any moment. But everything remained quiet." Getting out of the house seemed impossible as right outside was a German gun and a group of soldiers.
Frustrated he could no longer influence the course of the battle the time went really slow. Eventually they managed to escape and Urquhart chartered a jeep and headed back to Hartenstein Hotel, where he had set up his headquarters, to take command again of his airborne division.
We had the chance to see the house where they left Lathbury, the passage way and the Urquhart House, all of which were within a few yards of each other.
It was then back to Arnhem city centre and the story of the John Frost Bridge... which came to be known as 'A Bridge Too Far' in military history and on film.
The Rijnbrug (Rhine Bridge) was the last bridge that needed to be captured during Operation Market Garden. Once captured the route into Germany would lay open.
It was the task of the British 1st Airborne Division to capture and hold the bridge until the ground troops, the British XXX Corps, could relieve them. With the drop zones a considerable distance away from their ultimate target and German resistance much stronger than anticipated it was only the 2nd Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Frost that reached the bridge.
To make matters worse, XXX Corps were making slow progress and unable to reach the British forces in and around Arnhem.
Frost's men managed to capture the northern end of the bridge but soon found themselves surrounded. With only just over 700 men and facing two Panzer Divisions, they did manage to secure the bridge for three days and four nights before surrendering.
They had attempted to take the southern end by using a flamethrower to destroy the German positions but accidently ignited an ammunition store, which resulted in the fresh paint on the bridge catching fire. With the whole area illuminated they had to abandon their attempt.
During the fighting Frost was wounded and captured. In 1978 the bridge was renamed the John Frost Bridge in honour of his bravery and leadership.
The bridge was bombed in October 1944 and rebuilt in 1978 to its original design. The majority of the surrounding area has been rebuilt although there are still parts of the original area around the bridge still standing. The concrete steps leading up to the road and the metal railings are still intact. There is also a plaque on the bridge, bullet holes and damage to the metalwork and brickwork that can still be seen.
I have already mentioned the story of Major-General Roy Urquhart and his return to his headquarters at the Hartenstein Hotel which was the next stop on our tour.
Our final museum, The Airborne Museum, was housed in what was the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek, and during Operation Market Garden it was the headquarters of the British 1st Airborne Division's Major General Roy Urquhart.
After the failure of the operation the property was left in ruin. However, shortly after the end of the war plans were made to open a museum to commemorate the battle. Originally Doorwerth Castle, near the Rhine, was chosen to be the site and it soon became clear it could not house the vast collection and so Hartenstein, functioning as a hotel again after the war ended, was chosen as an ideal location for a museum. It was opened in May 1978 by Urquhart.
It is an impressive structure in beautiful grounds which was also home to many deer and after visiting the museum we walked over to see them.
The museum houses an extensive and diverse collection of weaponry, uniforms and other military equipment.
The highlight of the visit was the 'Airborne Experience' which took over the new basement which was added to the property in 2008. The experience started with you seated in a mock-up of the inside of a glider, with the feelings of taking off and landing after which you entered the main part of the display, a number of dioramas of the battle. These were well laid out and very effective with the flashing lights and sounds of battle as you walked around.
The display was awarded the Gouden Reiger (The Golden Heron), a Dutch award in the category 'three-dimensional media interaction.'
Every year Hartenstein is involved in various commemorations of the Battle of Arnhem.
Our final cemetery visit was to the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery. Established in 1945 and the resting place of 1,764 men, most of whom lost their lives during the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 or the liberation of the city the following year.
Earlier I wrote about the 'Angel of Arnhem', Kate ter Host and during our visit to the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery we took the opportunity to cross the road and visit the Algemene Begraafplaats Zuid Cemetery. After a long search we came across her grave. In 1980 the British Ambassador to the Netherlands decorated both Kate and her husband as Honorary Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Kate died in February 1992 after being struck by a car outside her home.
The British & Canadian Sappers Memorial in Driel was the final location we visited during our tour. The memorial commemorates the evacuation of the survivors of the British 1st Airborne Division from Oosterbeek. Taking place on the evening and night of 25th and 26th September, boats were used to make dozens of trips to evacuate troops from the north side of the river. Across the river we could see the church where we had been earlier in the day.
A black marble panel on the memorial has the wording, '...they were just whispers and shadows in the night...'
As we arrived back at our hotel we were told that we had to be on the coach by 5am for our journey home! Although an early night was necessary John and I decided that we couldn't say goodbye to Arnhem without another visit to the Unibar.
Once again we were met by the lovely Hannah and enjoyed a couple of drinks and pleasant conversation with the other patrons before saying our farewells and finally calling it a day.
Operation Market Garden was another informative and enjoyable tour that I am pleased I went on.
This article only gives a brief overview of Operation Market Garden and there are plenty of resources available, printed and on-line, for those who would like a more detailed look at this important Second World War operation.
Thanks to John Chisholm for his company and Sue and Paul who we met on the trip and enjoyed a few laughs together along the way.
Last, but by no means least, thanks go to our knowledgeable tour guide Scott Brady and our excellent drivers Steve and Glenn who all did an amazing job.
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I have already booked my next tour which will see me returning, with John, to The Western Front and various World War One sites on the All Quiet On The Western Front tour.
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