Hundreds of paratroopers parachuted from a near-cloudless sky over a moorland in the central Netherlands on Saturday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of one of the most daring – but ultimately unsuccessful – missions of World War II, Operation Market Garden.
Paratroopers from the Dutch Airmobile Brigade and 12 other NATO nations took part in a series of jumps over Ginkel Heath, watched by a small group of World War II veterans and some 60,000 spectators.
The local mayor, René Verhulst, said the moor near Arnhem was a place “where, 80 years ago, courage, sacrifice and hope came together during the airborne landings in Operation Market Garden. Today we commemorate the brave young soldiers who risked and sometimes gave their lives for our freedom.”
One of the soldiers involved, 99-year-old Geoff Roberts, was among 12 World War II veterans present on a warm autumn day.
For Operation Market Garden, he arrived in the nearby village of Wolfheze a day before the mass drop at Ginkel Heath.
“I landed in Wolfheze in a glider and our next task was to capture that area so people could arrive the next day.” He said the arrivals were delayed by bad weather and that by the time the paratroopers arrived “the situation was getting a bit tense” in the drop zone as German forces had begun to return fire.
Fierce German resistance and strained supply lines
After days of fierce fighting, he was taken prisoner and sent to work in a coal mine in Czechoslovakia. He was 20 years old when he returned home at the end of the war.
Operation Market Garden was a daring plan to retake key bridges and roads from the Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands so that Allied forces in Belgium could advance into Germany’s industrial heartland and bring a swift end to the war.
It involved dropping nearly 35,000 paratroopers behind enemy lines using an aerial armada of gliders and other military aircraft. But fierce German resistance and stretched supply lines scuppered the plan, as the Allies failed to hold a key bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem in a battle immortalized in the 1977 book and film, “A bridge too far.“
Some 11,500 Allied soldiers died during the nine days of Operation Market Garden, more than died in the D-Day landings in France two months earlier.
The British 1st Airborne Division led the airborne assault. Paratroopers from the US Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade also parachuted into the Netherlands.
The top commander of U.S. Forces Europe, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, told The Associated Press that the way the countries fought together laid the foundation for the NATO alliance.
“That’s the spirit we rely on, isn’t it? That’s the spirit of cohesion that permeates the alliance today,” Cavoli said.
“The terrible events of the last few years have brought the Alliance together, which is exactly what an alliance is for. It comes together in difficult times,” he added. “It comes together and builds on the bonds of the past. And you can feel that at a commemoration like this today, you feel the spirit of that alliance alive.”
