A Bridge Too Far
I feel fortunate to have had my youth fall into the heyday of WWII film making. Starting in the late 1950’s and extending into the early 1970’s, Hollywood made one blockbuster war movie after another. They were generally star-studded extravaganzas, often with running times well beyond most typical feature-length movies of the time. Many of them were based on actual events from WWII - some epic, some seemingly minor, but not to those involved - and others were pure works of fiction. They made me want to learn further about the events and people depicted, whether or not the movie was based on an actual book, or just on historical events. Which was why my mom had to go to the public library to get them to give me a card to check out books from the adult section of the library while I was still several years to young to browse those stacks. I can rattle those movie titles off, fondly - Von Ryan’s Express, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Longest Day, The Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape, Tobruk, Tora Tora Tora. And then there’s the one that’s relevant here - A Bridge Too Far.
Lately I’ve felt like I did when living in the Washington, D.C. area - what’s so great about some of these “famous” sites? The fact is, when you’re living around it all the time, history kinda looses its mystique. I figure most folks around here aren’t in awe when they see a castle. Now an American seeing a castle . . . . It wasn’t till I got older that I realized what a gem the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the Archives were. And they are free to visit! So, I kinda got that way around here as well - call it going native. Our trip to France revitalized my interest a bit and, in a round about way, so did finding a site (Irish) I could VPN into to watch World Cup matches for free. How, you might ask, did that come about? Well, while setting myself up to be able to watch the World Cup on RTE television, guess what was on RTE 1 when I finally got everything working? A Bridge Too Far.
For those of you who don’t know it, or remember it, the movie is about Operation Market Garden. It was a major military operation in September 1944, that involved the largest airborne operation in history (moving three divisions and a brigade) by air at strategic locations in the Netherlands (the “Market” part of the operation) while allied ground troops drove northward from Belgium (the “Garden” part of the Operation). The goal - capture multiple bridges across major rivers and, ultimately, a bridge across the Rhein River that would allow the Allies to drive into Germany and end the war by . . . December!?! That was the plan at least. To do that, they had to capture every bridges across those rivers in the Netherlands before they could get to the one that crossed the Rhein.
I’ll leave out the details other than to say that they accomplished most of the objectives. The only problem was, to be truly successful, the operation had to achieve all of its objectives, especially the final one. As you can guess from the title of the movie (and the book), it was a Bridge Too Far. Guess where that bridge is located? Arnhem. It’s located just under 9 miles from our house as the crow flies. A 20-minute drive if you do it by car.
After watching a few minutes of the movie on RTE, I went onto Google Maps to figure out where it is and saw, of course, that there are some memorials and related stuff there. I suggested to Ann that one weekend morning we head over there to check it out. A couple of weeks later, with nothing else to watch on tv, we decided to find A Bridge Too Far and watched it. A few more weeks passed.
Then last week we had to head into Arnhem to get something (yeah, villages (Didam) don’t carry everything, and sometimes you can’t even find it in the bigger village (Zevenaar), so you then have to go to the Big City . . . Arnhem). So I’m following my Google Maps instructions, and as I’m driving down the road I look over to my left and see a big berm. Well, let’s call it what it really is, a dike. I thought to myself, “Are we driving along the Rhein River?” As I was about to say something to Ann, we hit a stop light at a T-intersection. I look off to my left and said, “Damn! Ann, that’s the Arnhem bridge. That old woman’s house they were in when they were shooting at the Germans on the bridge was right there where than tan building is!”
That was it. We decided it was time to check it out, so we came back the following Sunday.
We parked near the bridge and headed over to the river. There we found a memorial, adjacent to some reflective cubes that made their way down the dike towards the river. The memorial is dedicated to the Resistance Movement in Arnhem and the words say, “Most people remain silent, a single person takes action.”
A bit farther downriver from the bridge is the Airborne At The Bridge Museum. It’s not very big, but it’s free, so we decided to visit there first.
It was a good stop. There was a short film downstairs that documented the sequence of events (I.e. battles) in the area from between September 17, 1944 when the first air bombings and then parachute and glider drops happened and September 21, 1944, when the ground fighting stopped.
From the upper floor of the museum you can see the bridge itself (rebuilt in 1946), as well as a model. There are other exhibits that give the stories of three persons involved in the action - a British soldier, a German soldier, and a Dutch soldier/resistance contact.
The exhibits are very informative. The image below was taken early in the battle, after an initial German counter-attack across the bridge was defeated, and before the Germans organized their serious counter offensives. The museum is located in what is the upper left of the photograph below. The view that made me realize we were by the bridge looks under the roadway near the center of the image. A few days after this photograph was taken, as other photographs in the museum show, little was left of most of the buildings shown below. The German counter-offensives were that intense.
We eventually headed out to work our way up the Rhein River. You can see it’s exceptionally low this year because of the major draught and heat we’ve been having. Still, it makes for a nice stroll.
Walking under the bridge, it’s hard to imagine the intense fighting here. It’s called the John Frost Bridge, named for the commanding officer of the unit that held the north end for several days. He personally fought off Germans trying to lay dynamite to blow the bridge, and then he crawled out to remove the explosives under gunfire.
I made my way up some stairs to the bridge to photograph these twin structures (visible in the above photograph from 1944). The Germans had built a bunker in front of the structure to the right, which was the scene of much of the fighting. A Bridge Too Far has a scene where a small group of soldiers (perhaps led by John Frost - I’ll have to watch the film again to confirm that, oh darn) climb up those same steps to attack the bunker.
At the time, houses were in this open field (again, visible in the 1944 photograph), giving the British viewpoints to fire against German forces who tried repeatedly to cross the bridge.
It’s kind of strange when you see a “historical” movie, and then once you eventually get to the location, you start to recognize where various scenes were shot - i.e. historically took place.
All around the walk (as throughout the Netherlands), there are memorials to those who fought to free the Netherlands. The Dutch have not forgotten.
By the time we finished our walk-around we were hungry, so Ann and I decided to head over to Oosterbeek where we found an excellent cafe for lunch. Afterwards we had two options. The Airborne Museum Hartenstein is located in Oosterbeek in the house the British took over as their command base. So is the Oorlogsgraven van het Gemenebest - the Airborne War Cemetery. We opted for the cemetery.
As one might expect, it is a beautiful yet somber place.
It is one of the few cemeteries in the Netherlands where the cemetery is organized by units - soldiers from the same unit are buried together.
As you walk into the cemetery, to the right and to the left are the soldiers from the Polish Airborne Brigade that participated in the battle.
For me, the most moving headstones were those of the unnamed soldiers. Unfortunately, there are too many of them.
And the ones where there was sufficient remains to at least identify the soldier’s unit made one feel even more for those who were truly unidentifiable.
Another thing that struck me, was just how beautiful the grounds were, with plantings between the headstones. As one enters, there is a plaque dedicated to the school children who come out every year on field trips to plant these flowers. It’s only when you enter do you understand why the plaque is there.
This is the one photograph that made me reach into my bag to pull out a camera that can make a color image. I figured the efforts the children made for these soldiers who died over 80 years ago deserved it.
Ann and I wandered for quite a while, stopping to read headstones, check out names, units and ages. There are people of all different faiths, and, unsurprisingly given the Commonwealth countries, soldiers from all parts of the world.
Occasionally a headstone will be accompanied by a placard giving the history of the soldier - sometimes formal like the one below, others hand-made and seemingly left by family members.
As with all war cemeteries, it is a solemn place. A place that confronts one with the greatest cost of war.
Ann and I decided to call it a day. We may yet visit the museum in Oosterbeek (a good excuse to visit the café again for flammkuchen) to learn more about the local war history. But we’d had enough to remind us of the horrors of what man can do to man, and the senselessness of war.
Thanks for making it this far.
P.S. The silhouette photograph that was on the e-mail (and is on the main blog page) was taken from the stairs going up to the Arnhem Bridge. It was the one artistic photograph from the day. For some reason, it didn’t feel inappropriate.