Arnhem.

It's a name out of myth and legend for paratroopers and WWII history buffs alike. In a single word one captures both the highest and lowest attributes of soldiering; irrepressible courage and fierce tenacity shackled by ego and rigidity, the folly of underestimating one's enemy, the rank idiocy of ignoring the facts in front of one's face because that just doesn't fit with The Plan. It's a name that evokes a Shakespearean sense of tragedy, of men and women embarked upon a path that, in retrospect, is doomed to failure, death and destruction; but despite the awful circumstances, these people display the most extraordinary character, often beyond what they thought themselves capable of, and thus write themselves into legend.

Driving down from Amsterdam in the rain along the A10 autoway, the chills I felt upon seeing the name Arnhem were definitely from more than just the cold rain off the North Sea that had blasted me when I'd stopped to buy a road map. Being both a former paratrooper and a WWII buff, I've wanted to see this place since I was a boy younger than Ben. (And I wish I could have shared it, and the stories of those men & women, with him.)

Amsterdam lies northwest of Arnhem, and Arnhem is the northernmost part of the battlefield, so it's the place one reaches first; kind of backwards, but I decided I'd roll with the geography and stop at what is regarded as the best museum devoted to the battle, the Airborne Musuem Hartenstein, located in Oosterbeek, a few miles west of Arnhem, and the place where the British paras dropped. (And thus problem #1 for the Brits - they dropped too far from the bridge.) The building was formerly the Hartenstein Hotel, but became the HQ of the British 1st Airborne, the center of their final perimeter, and eventually filled with wounded. Along the way, I drove through the town of Wolfheze, scene of much heavy fighting, with the initial British drop zones in fields to my right as I drove south.

Unfortunately, the museum was closed for renovations, with construction equipment everywhere. This was unfortunate because I'd planned to pick up more detailed local maps and hopefully a copy of "Major & Mrs. Holt's Battlefield Guide Operation Market-Garden", the definitive guidebook.



And you need a guidebook, because WWII battlefields aren't giant parks like our surviving Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields, full of explanatory markers of dubious historic accuracy or Park Service employees (who generally, at the national level, are pretty good where history is concerned). The drop zones are farmer's fields. What was a strongpoint is someone's house, the aid station a church or cafe. The place where a Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross was won is a spot on a dike, a piece of lonely hedgerow-lined Norman road, a small declivity in a bit of Dutch woods; sometimes there's a marker, sometimes there isn't. Monuments are present, but they tend to be smaller, generally put up by the locals or by a group of veterans. These battles were fought in and around where people live and work, school their children and walk their dogs. Often those battles flattened the homes and businesses of their parents or grandparents. (More on that below.)

So I poked around outside and wound up chatting with a Dutch couple who were actually just hikers and didn't realize that this had been one of the major battle sites of WWII. Shifting my car to a spot where it wouldn't be side-swiped by a dump truck and muttering the old saw "It doesn't rain in the Army, it rains on the Army" and set off to visit a monument across the road.


This is one of the largest monuments I saw in Holland. It was built just after the war, designed by noted Dutch sculptor Jac Maris (who designed a number of monuments and sculptures both here and in Nijmegen). There are benches around the monument with the following inscribed upon them:

"September 1944 The British 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron fought to its end here. Sit here and enjoy the peace for which they fought and died."

The major British cemetery lies nearby, so I headed there next.
















The British practice at the time was to bury their war dead not far from where they fell, so rather than one gigantic mega-cemetery like the American one at Coleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, one finds these smaller, more intimate places - if the word applies to the resting place of over 1700 men. Thus, this cemetery holds the remains of British paratroopers, glider pilots, air crew and the few non-Airborne troops who died north of the Rhine. It's also where the Polish paratroopers who crossed the Rhine in an attempt to reinforce the 1st Airborne and died alongside their allies are buried.

The British also allowed the next-of-kin, if any existed, to choose the inscription on the headstone. While one certainly finds more than a few quotes from Henry V and "a place forever England", there are often indescribably personal, searingly emotional passages as well. On the headstone of one paratrooper, a sergeant and father of four: "Goodnight, Daddy". I'm not ashamed to say that reduced me to tears, and it took me a few minutes to compose myself.

I wound up driving into Arnhem proper next. Of the nearly 12,000 men in the 1st Airborne and its attachments, only one battalion - the 2nd Paras under Lt. Colonel John Frost - along with some engineers and a mixed-bag of men from other units - made it to the area around the brdige itself. They seized the north end on the evening of the 17th, and held it against overwhelming German force for four days. In the process, the Germans absolutely flattened this part of Arnhem.


The bridge (as in Nijmegen, the original collapsed later in the war and a faithful replacement built) now named the John Frostbrug.


A marker near the bridge. The brown lines represent the outlines of the buildings and blocks as they were in September 1944; the gray shows the buildings today.

One medieval structure somehow survived the fighting - one of the old city gates.



This pillbox, and another across the roadway on the eastern side, prevented the paras from securing the bridge until after nightfall on the 17th, when they were captured with the aid of a flamethrower.

This memorial and roundabout lie at the north end of the 2nd Battalion's perimeter. The broken pillar in the center is debris from the ruined provincial Palais du Justice.

A fairly modern office building now stands on the site of LTC Frost's HQ next to the bridge; this plaque marks the location.

From the bell tower of this church, the Germans had a view of the entire British bridgehead. It lay just outside the British perimeter, which is why the buildings to the left survived, while the ones between the church and where I stood were obliterated.

A school stood here in 1944, across the road from Frost's headquarters. British engineers under Captain Eric Mackay occupied the building to guard the eastern side of the bridge approaches. On the 19th, a German soldier approached under a white flag and said his officer had sent him to discuss surrender. Captain Mackay cheekily replied that he didn't have the facilities to take all the Germans prisoner; the confused German left, and then began demolishing the school and nearby buildings with tanks and assault guns.

Nearby, Lieutenant John Hollington Grayburn won a (posthumus) Victoria Cross while leading a party to disable the fuses on explosives the Germans had placed under the bridge.

By the evening of the 20th, the British positions at the bridge had been overwhelmed. The remainder of the 1st Airborne hunkered down into an ever-shrinking perimeter in Oosterbeek. The Polish paratroopers, originally scheduled to drop on the 18th, finally were dropped south of the river and suffered heavy casualties. They twice attempted to cross the river to reinforce the 1st Airborne, but only a handful of men made it across. Elements of XXX corps finally reached the Rhine, but they too were unable to cross the river in any significant numbers. Finally, on the night of the 25th, somewhere around 2,000 paratroopers (accounts vary) were evacuated back across to the south bank of the Rhine. A few men, including virtually all of the medics and doctors, remained behind with the walking wounded holding the tattered remains of the perimeter.



"TO THE PEOPLE OF GELDERLAND: 50 years ago British & Polish soldiers fought here against overwhelming odds to open the way into Germany and bring the war to an early end. Instead we brought death and destruction, for which you have never blamed us.

This stone marks our admiration for your great courage, remembering especially the women who tended our wounded. In the long winter that followed your families risked death by hiding Allied soldiers and airmen, while members of the Resistance helped many to safety.

You took us then into your homes as fugitives and friends, we took you forever into our hearts. This strong bond will continue long after we are all gone".

The Germans forcibly evacuated the residents from the area, and cut off shipments of food into the country later in the fall. Most of Holland remained in German hands until the end of the war.