Dude gets around.

A hero honoring heros.

Do Generals have "people" who arrange all those ribbons and medals?

The Lowlands took it on the chin in both world wars.

Wow, close call.

I love this.

re: #6 Sharmuta

Well you should, LGF is a big part of what those words mean.

And I like this one from the reenactment. I think it's wonderful young europeans are involved in maintaining a sense of history- especially in these days of growing sentiments from the past that are best left in the past.

Here is a Frenchman who does not forget.

Les Chemins de la Liberty

A Dutch woman explained how the Nazis had taken everything they could find, even their bicycles. But Maggie said after his soldiers parachuted in, the Dutch had stuff hidden everywhere, including weapons, vehicles, motorbikes and the works. They started hauling it out to help with the fight. He said the well-organized Dutch underground was delivering the most important weapon of all: intelligence. The Dutch had been keeping close tabs on the Germans and began unloading the info, which was the key to the kingdom.

I saved it to send to my father...
His father (Grandad) lost two cousins after the liberation!
They ran out the Germans to be killed by un exploded ordinance
in the farm field...
Yon Rocks!!

Yon is inspiring and brave.

re: #11 reloadingisnotahobby

The Germans as they retreated would leave behind time bombs with delays of weeks, sometimes.

Yoo hoo, peaceniks, it is not a perfect world.

*insert inevitable finger in a dyke joke here*
But in all seriousness awesome photo set and story. It's a shame this is probably the last time the people who were a part of it will be around to tell their story.

Hooray!

Thank you, Michael.

This is a great story. Thanks to Michael Yon from an Airborne vet.

I remember the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, where the old vets insisted on parachuting into Normandy even though the US Army didn't support them. I was furious that they didn't let these great men jump out of active-duty planes, but they chartered a C-47 that was painted up as they were that day and jumped anyway. Their eyes were distant, looking 50 years in the past and remembering buddies that could not be there.

Also, thanks to the people of the Netherlands, who have continually kept this memory alive.

Petraeus/Yon 2012

Very nice. Excellent coverage and photographs.

A thanks to all involved in this yearly event and especially to the veterans of Operation Market Garden.

Michael Yon is the absolute greatest.

I can't beleive this has only 19 views. A real shame

re: #13 Ojoe

The Germans as they retreated would leave behind time bombs with delays of weeks, sometimes.

Yoo hoo, peaceniks, it is not a perfect world.

Yon:

" The Dutch, who have been fighting well in Afghanistan, had adopted a stance of neutrality and pacifism in face of the Nazis and were gulped down."

Take a look at page four of Yon's report.

The Dutch are sure doing it right.

Rhetorical question: why don't we see this in the U.S.?

Wow, I just finished reading through the last thread.
What a disappointment.

I saw a great documentary on public tv a while back named Thank You Eddie Hart. It's the story of a Dutch woman who adopted and cared for the grave of an American soldier who was killed while freeing Holland from Nazi occupation. She devoted herself to the task for 55 years. At the end, the soldier's sister from Tennessee was finally able to afford to travel and visit the grave of her fallen brother, as well as meet the woman who ca. It's a very moving story.

[Link: www.thankyoueddiehart.com...]

The political threads are full, and the history that we ought to remember gets 25 comments in 3.5 hours.

I hope we don't have to go through some things parallel to the story of this thread because we forget.

Charles thanks for posting this.

re: #26 Ojoe

Same. This is one of Mr. Yon's best pieces of late. Very moving.

If you have some free time, please go back and read some of the Michael Yon's blog archives. There are many excellent milblogs, but Yon's is one of the best. His last few dispatches really give a sense of the precariousness of the situation in Afghanistan.

re: #25 Ojoe

The political threads are full, and the history that we ought to remember gets 25 comments in 3.5 hours.

I hope we don't have to go through some things parallel to the story of this thread because we forget.

I just read through the Fox News Thread. This one is such a breath of fresh air comparatively.

re: #22 ryannon

Take a look at page four of Yon's report.

The Dutch are sure doing it right.

Rhetorical question: why don't we see this in the U.S.?

Maybe because of lack of guilt?

We did have the highest amount of SS volunteers after the Flemish and our resistance took a long time to organize

Over 90% of Dutch Jews where killed, the highest in percentage in the world. In my home town the local synagogue is now used as a museum simply because there aren't any Jews left to use it.

re: #30 jantjepietje

Maybe because of lack of guilt?

We did have the highest amount of SS volunteers after the Flemish and our resistance took a long time to organize

Over 90% of Dutch Jews where killed, the highest in percentage in the world. In my home town the local synagogue is now used as a museum simply because there aren't any Jews left to use it.

I had no idea.

Looking at your nic, I presume that you're Dutch yourself and know what you're talking about.

Brother, that's a hard one to digest: I always thought the Dutch had more sense - even back then.

re: #20 Earth56

Michael Yon is the absolute greatest.

I can't beleive this has only 19 views. A real shame

Wow ! 31 comments in what...7 hours ?

Are people that uninterested or do they not know anout Michael Yon ?

Maybe a picture of blood and guts would of drawn attention on the front page.

re: #32 Earth56

A subsequent entry was posted less than 15 minutes after this one. People tend to migrate to the most current thread.

re: #31 ryannon

I had no idea.

Looking at your nic, I presume that you're Dutch yourself and know what you're talking about.

Brother, that's a hard one to digest: I always thought the Dutch had more sense - even back then.

The Germans loved how efficiently the Dutch trains ran to the camps... Let's see...

"(Adolf Eichmann reported that the efficiently run Dutch transports were “a pleasure to behold.”)" - from [Link: www.nytimes.com...] Book Review - 'Anne Frank - The Book, the Life, the Afterlife,' by Francine Prose - Review - NYTimes.com

William

re: #31 ryannon

I had no idea.

Looking at your nic, I presume that you're Dutch yourself and know what you're talking about.

Brother, that's a hard one to digest: I always thought the Dutch had more sense - even back then.

Well it's not so much a lack of sense as a lack of courage te majority of Dutch people were neither traitors nor heroes they just didn't want to get in trouble.

Of course we did suffer from a couple of major disadvantages like

-proximity to germany
-a very high density of Jews (over 15% of the Amsterdam poplation, making them difficult to hide)
-very good infrastructure ( very easy to transport prisoners to camps)

and yes I'm Dutch 3 if my family members went to the camps

This is a shame.

No one wants to remember this tragic operation which was magnificent in its scope and execution and tragic that it was so avoidable. Dropping 35,000 men behind enemy lines with 10 days planning was simply an amazing logistical miracle.

It was also that rarest of military operations where the commanders had the right intelligence and the right interpretation of that intelligence --and it was ignored.

They dropped 10,000 men (one light infantry division) into Arnhem--on top of a SS Panzer Corps (that's two armored divisions and its artilliery)--and pulled out less than 2 thousand ten days later. In the words of Connie Ryan in "A Bridge Too Far" the Allies gained a 63-mile salient---to nowhere.

The pity is the Market-Garden was not an isolated instance. There were scores of battles in the campaign fought in Northwest Europe which, if they had received today's media scrutiny, would have resulted in --no doubt-- the opnion that either the local commanders were inept or the Germans were simply too much. I speak of the Hurtgen Forest, the Voseges Mountains, the attack on Metz, the failure to seal the Falaise pocket before 50K Germans escaped --and formed the backbone of resistance in Holland a month later) and the intelligence failures which led to the Battle of the Bulge.

The lesson; we here at home know less than nothing about the realities of strategic and tactical planning. We are forced to trust the judgment of the commanders on scene to make decisions based on the best intelligence they posses and to acknowledge mistakes will be made, lives will be lost, tragedy will unfold. It is inevitable. But, never lose sight of the final victory and the cost our service personnel will pay for that victory.

re: #21 ryannon

Yon:

" The Dutch, who have been fighting well in Afghanistan, had adopted a stance of neutrality and pacifism in face of the Nazis and were gulped down."

Not quite true-- the Dutch fought for hours. Seriously, they did not expect an attack, thinking the Germans would leave them in peace as was done in 1914. The Dutch government did the math and realized there was no way in hell they would slow the Germans let alone stop them, and capitulated.

re: #37 calcajun

Not quite true-- the Dutch fought for hours.

TWO days! :p

Seriously, they did not expect an attack, thinking the Germans would leave them in peace as was done in 1914.

We did expect an attack but only when it was too late so we didn't have any weapons the second day of combat Dutch soldiers fought with arms from the war museum because they where getting out of ammo

capitulation only took place after the bombardment of Rotterdam that same day when the Dutch Government indeed realized resistance was futile

re: #38 jantjepietje

I had thought that Rotterdam was bombed after the decision to capitulate had been announced and the Luftwaffe did it anyway--as some form of punitive measure.

re: #39 calcajun

I had thought that Rotterdam was bombed after the decision to capitulate had been announced and the Luftwaffe did it anyway--as some form of punitive measure.

Nope. Hitler expected to conquer both the Netherlands and Denmark together in only a couple of hours. The second day he grew impatient and ordered the bombardment of Rotterdam, after that it was over.

re: #33 Danny

A subsequent entry was posted less than 15 minutes after this one. People tend to migrate to the most current thread.

I'm sure your right but I'm tired of hearing about Glenn Beck already just like Keith Olbermann and Bozo the Clown.

This thread still awake? Michael Yon has my respect as a fine combat photog. He has a sense of contrast and composition that I frankly envy. I really wish I could contribute more. Anyone remember Kevin Sites?

Thank you, 82nd and 101st.

I am Dutch and I grew up in Oosterbeek, one of the villages heavily affected by 'A bridge too far' and operation Market Garden.

This report gives me goose bumps again, my parents used to host an old (British) veteran couple, and it was one of the highlights of the year when they would come and visit.
What was incredibly special was laying flowers at the war cemetery - in Oosterbeek there's a cemetery with ~1700 graves of British, American, Polish and Canadian soldiers. Every year there is a memorial, with about 1000 schoolchildren laying flowers on the graves. Me and my three siblings have all done this 'duty', and it was always amazing, and it would happen more often than not that a veteran would come to to tell you a story about the man you just laid flowers for.
An odd moment is always when the priests asks the children to have a close look at the stone, and calculate how old the person was that died for our freedom in the war... that would hit very deep, especially for the ones close to that age.
Here are some pictures on flickr from this years memorial:

[Link: www.flickr.com...]

I have very fond memories of meeting the soldiers, the whole village would have 'men in airborne purple' over it, and it was nearly an honour when you were asked for help by one of them.
As the mission failed, did the soldiers who went back home not get many honours, so the people of Oosterbeek and Arnhem collected money and gold to make medals for the fallen veterans.

I am now living in foreign countries for about 4 years now, so I've missed all of this, and looking at the pictures I have really 'missed' it. It has been a vast part of my childhood, and this report gave me goose bumps.

Thank you, veterans.

My Father-in-Law was assigned to the 8th Air Corps on a B-17. Their unit was "The Gentlemen from Hell". His bomber was shot down and he parachuted out over Belgium where he was rescued by the underground forces there. A Belgium doctor had to repair an ear had been damaged by the flak. Later he was spirited back to England.
Our family has always been grateful, and "Bud" never regretted being part of the effort to free Europe.

My grandfather went to the 50th anniversary and then died shorty thereafter...I couldn't make it through the whole article. Tears were streaming down my face by page 3. Probably the first time I've cried in 10 years, odd thing to get me going.