Netherlands relives largest airborne operation in history

EDE, The Netherlands (AFP) - When British veteran Charles Grocett first saw the Ginkelse Heide, a piece of heathland near Arnhem, he was a 18-year-old paratrooper dodging enemy fire...sixty years on he was back to commemorate the failed operation Market Garden, the largest airborne and glider operation in history.

"I was dropped here in this same place. It was not good, there were fireballs coming at you because the Germans were waiting for us," he recalled Saturday.

More than 50,000 spectators gathered on the heather-covered land to see several hundred parachutists commemorate the day when almost 10,000 British, American and Polish paratroopers were dropped near Arnhem in the largest airborne and glider operation in history in a bid to occupy bridges and waterways from Belgium to Arnhem to open the way into Germany for the allied tanks.

"When we saw all the parachutes and planes it was like an endless flock of birds covering the sky," said 70-year-old Jaap, who saw the Allied landing when he was just a boy.

On Saturday eight British veterans, all well into their seventies and eighties, recreated the jump they made 60 years ago from a Dakota plan, the same type used during World War II.

Grocett, dressed in a blue navy uniform and red beret, was in in Ede for the 7th time to commemorate the battle on the Ginkelse Heide he had never seen so many spectators.

Thousands of people were still arriving during the jumps on bicycle or on foot from the surrounding villages. Spectators from outside the region were brought in by dozens of buses.

The crowds looked on Saturday as some 600 Dutch, Czech and British paratroopers were dropped from vintage aircraft.

Joanka Huitema, a 28-year-old mother of two, said she had always come to the commemoration as a child and now took her own children.

"It is nice for the kids to see but it is also important to commemorate World War II," she said.

"It puts things into perspective that so many people lost their lives for our freedom," Joanka's 56-year-old father Johan Dekens, added.

Operation Market Garden was a daring strategy conceived by British General Bernard Montgomery designed to let Allied troops sweep through The Netherlands in a surprise push towards Germany.

The aim was to defeat the Nazi military machine and end the war before the close of 1944.

The bold operation failed partly due to bad planning and partly due to an unexpectedly strong resistance from German SS Panzer divisions.

Of the 10,000 paratroopers dropped over Arnhem, more than 1,700 were killed, 3,000 were wounded and 2,000 were able to return to allied ranks. The remaining troops were captured by the German forces.

This week over 500 British, American and Polish veterans of operation Market Garden have come to the Arnhem region for the commemoration services.

On Sunday there will be an official commemoration ceremony to honour the Market Garden combattants in the presence of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Prince Charles of Great Britain.

THE HEROES OF ARNHEM Sep 18 2004

60 YEARS ON, VETERANS RELIVE THE DROP TO DISASTER

By Anton Antonowicz

IT IS 60 years since the Battle of Arnhem - a terrible defeat, but a name synonymous with British courage.

The plan: to secure key bridges in Holland, cross the Rhine and open a back-door corridor into Germany.

The attack on September 17, 1944, was spearheaded by parachute and glider in the biggest airborne operation in history.

And the reality: a bridge too far. Fierce German resistance, combined with over-ambition, poor planning and simple bad luck, brought a heavy defeat in which we suffered more casualties than during the D-Day landings.

Of 10,300 troops, nearly 7,600 were killed or captured in nine days of fighting. German morale was strengthened. The Dutch people, who risked and lost many lives helping the Allies, suffered catastrophically.

And yet the stand of the 1st British Airborne is hailed as one of the greatest feat of arms in our history.

Here we talk to three men who were there then... and will be there again today to remember.

GLIDER PILOT Staff Sgt Hugh Sprott, 86

EXHAUSTED, soaked but miraculously uninjured, Hugh Sprott was pictured trudging back to Allied lines after the disaster that was Arnhem.

At the time, he had no idea he was being photographed.

"I didn't take a camera myself because, to be honest, I didn't think I'd be coming back," he says.

But there he was, safe and sound.

Hugh, a sergeant in the Glider Pilot Regiment, had flown his Horsa aircraft at Normandy, dropping near Pegasus Bridge. Then, three months later, he, his co-pilot and 28 men landed on the fields outside Arnhem, seven miles from their target.

"It was about 3pm, mortar bombs exploding all around us," he recalls. "Our mission was to aim for the adjoining town, Oosterbeek, where we were detailed to protect Divisional HQ.

"It was a lovely place - immaculate gardens with their asters, late roses, fruit trees. And we utterly destroyed it.

"The Germans had huge superiority in firepower. We had virtually no protection from the sheer drenching effect of their mortar fire.

"We took up positions in slit trenches and then inside houses, knocking out the windows and building barricades of sideboards and chests of drawers stuffed with books and bedding.

"But we couldn't do much about those German mortars coming down through the ceilings, still less with the 88mm flak.

"Our anti-tank guns were only defensive weapons, but I managed to use my six-pounder to some effect. The men who had been manning it were killed by a mortar.

"I'd been in the Royal Artillery, so I said I'd take over the gun, shooting at the tanks and infantry. There was only one near-miss when a German shell aiming for me blew away the pine tree about six feet away. We were eight days there.

"Water - I found a bathful in the hotel. The ceiling had fallen in, but I filtered the muck with towels.

"Then one pal got hit. It took all the flesh off his arm. No surgeons. So I helped him over to the German field hospital. The officer there agreed to treat my mate, but then he said I was now a prisoner.

"Well, I wandered to the far end of the hospital and nipped back to my trench when no one was looking." He laughs now, proudly reeling off the names of his daughter and three sons. He is a retired surveyor living in Podsmead, Glos. This weekend is the first time he has returned to Arnhem in 60 years.

"My wife was a few months pregnant with our first child, Marion, when I landed in that hell-hole," he says, glancing across at Brenda, his partner for 63 years. "That was something to fight for. But what a mess. We had no supplies, no radio that worked, very little ammo. And when the RAF dropped more it landed on the German side.

"There were woods round the back of HQ. Tree-to-tree fighting there. You had to be a bit of a sharpshooter. As a boy, growing up in Norfolk, I'd had a shotgun. Used to bag a few rabbits for Mum's pot.

"That stood me in good stead. They kept trying to creep round us and we had to keep them out with what ammunition we had left.

"It wasn't pretty. We'd hit one of their Tiger panzers with our PIAT mortars and watch the tank glow red-hot, not thinking of the men inside it. And they had a nasty habit of running their tracks along the trenches - no matter if there were wounded lying there. You name it, flame-throwers, the lot. They used everything.

"Finally, thank God, our superiors decided we'd lost enough men and gave the order to withdraw across the Rhine. It was pouring with rain, which helped muffle our movement.

"We tied blankets round our boots. Our flying jackets had a crotch-tail. The man behind would hold on to that, and so we set off like blind mice in the pitch black through the woods and the enemy lines.

"We got to the Rhine and then I had to swim a bit, about a mile, with my boots round my neck. At last we found our boys. A cup of coffee with

rum. I don't like rum, but drank every drop that day.

"I enlisted because I was dead keen to have a go at the Germans. I'd been working as an engineer in Herne Bay, Kent, and saw this German fighter flying low over the pier there. This was before the war. They were training for when it happened.

"And now I shall be in Arnhem. I shall go to the graves and pay my respects to my comrades.

"They were a wonderful lot of chaps. Many saved my life. The British Legion is calling this anniversary 'The Heroes' Return'. But most of the heroes never left those fields."

It was a catastrophe.. we were quagmired

DRIVER Cpl Paul Goldsworthy, 82

HE went to the school in Aberfan that was to turn a small Welsh mining village into a name conjuring tragedy.

Paul Goldsworthy has been back to pay his respects to the 144 children and teachers who died when a slag-heap buried the school in 1966. And he returns to Arnhem regularly to mark the memory of fallen comrades.

He was called up on his 21st birthday in 1943. He had served an engineering apprenticeship with the Dennis fire engine company and took his training to the Royal Army Service Corps. "You couldn't be heroic in transport," he says. But he was mentioned in dispatches.

"The whole thing was a catastrophe. We were supposed to drive straight in after the airborne assault. But we were quagmired. The Germans were forewarned. All we could do was sit there, about 10 miles away, and imagine what our poor blokes were suffering." Like all the veterans, he remembers the kindness of the Dutch people and the lifelong friends he made there. He shows me his wife Phyllis's wedding ring, a present made for him by a Dutch jeweller.

After the war he returned to his old firm and worked there a total of 50 years.

We are sitting in the garden of his home in Guildford, Surrey, but his mind is on those awful September days in Holland 60 years ago... and those words of Field Marshal Montgomery: "In years to come it will be a great thing for a man to say: 'I fought at Arnhem.'"

GLIDER PILOT Capt Chris Dodwell, 85

CHRIS Dodwell shakes his head. "All this 'bridge too far' stuff. We knew that beforehand. We'd had so many ops cancelled and predicted that Montgomery and his people would overdo it.

"The weaknesses of his plan were appreciated by a lot of us. The idea that we'd be landing eight miles from our objective... how would we ever reach it? They really did forget the German-fighting bit.

"They thought it'd be a pushover, just like they did with the Battle of the Somme.

"Anyway, I'd been at Oxford University for a year studying history when I decided to enlist and eventually found myself to be a glider pilot. My orders for Arnhem - "Operation Market" - were to land just north of Oosterbeek station.

"Each soldier's weight was calculated at 210lbs. But no one has worked out a way of stopping soldiers stocking up on extra ammo, grenades, what have you, and we were seriously overweight.

"On take-off my glider went through a hedge at the end of the runway and nearly hit the local church steeple.

"Once in the sky, there was a lot of turbulence caused by so many aircraft and we ended up landing in the opposite direction to everyone else.

"The patients at the local lunatic asylum rushed out and started singing God Save The King. And then the trouble started. Mortar fire. We were in the woods and the shells hit the treetops, scattering shrapnel all over us.

"We were pinned down for two days, and then a piece of shrapnel hit me in the shoulder, knocking me flying. I was in a bad state when they took me to a field hospital. And it got worse. The place changed hands three times. One minute I was lying on the floor being bombarded by Germans, then by the British.

"I remember a German sergeant bouncing in, asking why we were fighting each other when it was all the fault of the Jews. He got short shrift.

"The Nazis put us on a train to a transit camp. It had a gallows just inside the gate and the biggest bed bugs imaginable.

"Finally they shifted us to another camp, where I fell foul of a nasty little German sergeant major. Seven months and I never received a letter.

"Then they tried marching us eastwards. Everything around us was disintegrating. Stragglers trying to get home. Houses with white bed sheets flying 'Surrender' from windows.

"'Right,' we decided, 'our captors aren't the bosses any more. There's 800 of us.' And we arrested them. We found a working phone and told the advancing Americans what we'd done. They couldn't believe it. We were in the front line.

"A few days later we were put on a plane. The pilot said he had orders to take us to England but we made him stop off in Paris for a night. Most enjoyable."

After the war Chris spent much of his life in Africa, working in market research, before settling in the village of Claverdon, Warks. He has revisited Arnhem before, but thinks this is the last time.

"I am tremendously proud of the men who fought there," he says. "You cannot pay them enough respect. But age, I'm afraid... this will be my last hurrah for them."

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