Images Dated 20th August 2019

Private Memorial, Old Lonsdale Church, Oosterbeek

The final fighting north of the River Rhine during the last stages of Operation Market Garden was in and around the small Arnhem suburb of Oosterbeek. On 19th September 1944 Major Lonsdale, Second in Command of 11th Parachute Regiment, gathered together men coming from every direction and addressed them from the pulpit in the church (hence the church's name). There were men from the 1st, 3rd and 11th Battalions, the South Staffords and some glider pilots and they became known as the Lonsdale Force. The church abounds with Memorials, both inside and outside, because it came to mean so much to those who assembled here. When the evacuation began, the route down to the river lay across the fields behind the church where this small symbolic poppy is. It shows the Arnhem bridge on the right, the River Rhine and the locations Driel, Oosterbeek and Arnhem. The legend is From the Sky they Came, On Land They Fought, then Over Water Under Deathly Threat, the Ones We'll Never Forget). It was placed in 2003. Date: 2006

© Holts Battlefield Collection / Mary Evans

The Tafelberg Hotel, HQ of Field-Marshal Model

The Tafelberg was at Oosterbeek centre crossroads, virtually adjacent to the Hartenstein Hotel. In September 1944 it was Model's HQ. He was the C in C of Heeresgruppe B, the German equivalent of Field-Marshal Montgomery. He was at lunch when he was told about the airborne landings at Wolfheze - the beginning of Operation Market Garden. Perhaps thinking of the British Long Range Desert Group's attempt to kidnap the famous German General Rommel in 1941, he thought that the paras were coming for him. He immediately moved his men from the Tafelberg and the Hartenstein to the HQ of General Bittrich at Doetinchem. As Market Garden progressed, the 1st AB Div soldiers were squeezed by the Germans into a smaller and smaller area centred on Oosterbeek - an area that became known as The Cauldron'. The building went in and out of German hands all the while acting as a medical treatment centre. This picture shows the facade essentially as it was during the battle and before it was later developed. Date: 2000

© Holts Battlefield Collection / Mary Evans

508th PIR Memorial, Sions Hof Hotel, Berg en Dal

During Operation Market Garden in September 1944 this area was taken by the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the US 82nd Airborne Division. The figure on the wall is a Memorial to that Division. The hotel had been used for almost four years by the Germans as an HQ and then as a parachute training school. They also used the Klooster Nebo, the large Catholic Seminary across the road, both of which were taken over by the advancing Allies war correspondents and photographers who arrived by glider. Guards Armoured Division Officers moved into the hotel, to be followed by 82nd Airborne staff. Here the Dutch liaison officer, Captain Harry Bestebreurtje, made contact between the Allied Forces and the local forces and sent a patrol into Nijmegen to recce the situation near the Waal bridge whose capture was vital if the Operation was to succeed. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands lunched here during September. Date: 2001

© Holts Battlefield Collection / Mary Evans