OOSTERBEEK: Britain’s Princess Anne and hundreds of children laid flowers on Sunday in memory of those who died 80 years ago during one of World War II’s most audacious airborne operations: a plan to seize Dutch bridges and forge a path into Nazi Germany.

Several thousand spectators, military dignitaries and soldiers attended the solemn service to commemorate Operation Market Garden, the ill-fated effort to enter Germany through the Netherlands in a surprise advance to end the war in 1944.

A handful of WWII veterans also attended, their number rapidly dwindling as the last sentinels of the battle that was fought in and around the eastern Dutch city of Arnhem in mid to late September 1944.

Among those looking on was 99-year-old Geoff Roberts, the only survivor of the Battle of Arnhem able to attend Sunday’s ceremony, proudly wearing his medals and sitting in a wheelchair.

The Allies suffered some 15,000 losses and around 6,600 other soldiers captured during the ill-fated effort to enter the Nazi Germany

John Dennett, 100, a D-Day navy veteran said that Sunday’s remembrance “is unique.”

“I’ve been coming here for the last 10 years to represent friends and family of people who are buried here and it gives them some satisfaction that somebody else is thinking about them (the fallen).”

“This is the most unique ceremony in the world. I don’t think there is anything else in the world like this,” the wheel-chair bound Dennett said.

‘Sacrifice’

Many wore maroon berets, the mark of parachute forces around the world, listening to the service held at the Oosterbeek war cemetery near Arnhem. “We are here to commemorate those who fought against evil and tyranny,” British military chaplain Gavin Smith said.

“We remember with gratitude the sacrifice that went on 80 years ago,” he told onlookers, while Princess Anne conducted a reading from the Bible.

The British royal then laid the first wreath at a stone monument called the “Cross of Sacrifice” at the graveyard, where some 1,700 Allied soldiers who died in Market Garden were buried. Veteran Roberts was the last to lay a wreath to standing applause.

A bugler played the Last Post and shortly afterwards a flight of three aircraft including a WWII Spitfire and Harvards passed overhead.

Sunday’s solemn service marked the final event in a week of commemorations. This included the re-burial on Wednesday of the remains of two Allied soldiers who died during the battle but whose remains were only recently identified.

On Saturday, hundreds of paratroopers conducted jumps over the nearby Ginkelse Heath, the spot where some 2,000 paratroopers were dropped from planes as the operation started on September 17, 1944.

Thousands of British, US and Polish paratroopers were dropped above the Netherlands in the largest airborne and glider operation in history, to occupy bridges and waterways from Belgium to the Dutch city of Arnhem and open the way for Allied tanks.

But the operation instead turned into one of World War II’s greatest Allied debacles.

The mostly British tank advance, driving up a single road towards the final bridge across the lower Rhine at Arnhem, failed to link up with the airborne assault troops attacking the bridge, who were forced to surrender.

In total, the Allies suffered some 15,000 losses and around 6,600 other soldiers were captured.

The Nazis then exacted cruel punishment on Dutch civilians, cutting off food supplies which sparked thousands of deaths by starvation.

The battle was immortalised by the 1977 Hollywood war epic “A Bridge Too Far” directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Sean Connery, James Caan, Gene Hackman and Robert Redford.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2024