Originally Posted by
thieuster
On September 17th 1944, the Allied started Operation Market Garden. Target: the Rhine bridge at Arnhem. We all know how that ended.
Only a few of the soldiers from that era are still alive and it has become a tradition that veterans visit schools nearby to tell about Market Garden. Sadly, these men are getting very old. I live about 25 kms (in a straight line) from the 1944 front line. And most people here have (or had) parents or grandparents telling them about that period in September 1994.
In today's local newspaper and article about one of the veterans visiting a local school here in my town. On the pic: the 97 y/o veteran Mr Hicks sitting in front of a class with 11/12 y/o boys and girls telling his own story about defending their line and waiting for the Allied to arrive - but they didn't come...
One detail Mr Hicks noticed: "Children here now more about that period than British kids!" I can't check that off course...
M.
It's another tradition that you commemorate Op Market Garden: Slag om Arnhem weekend lang herdacht...and that includes (link) local schoolchildren laying flowers at Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery:
The primary schoolchildren laid flowers on each of the more than 1,700 graves at Oosterbeek Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery before a crowd of about 5,000.
The children pay their respects every year in what has become a ritual by the Dutch to keep alive the memory of the men who died trying to liberate them in September 1944 but were overcome by overwhelming German forces.
I think it has a lot to do with the occupation of the Netherlands by Germany. That and the eventual liberation and all they entailed have left their mark and goes some way to explaining why Dutch schoolchildren know more about that period of history.
Reply With Quote
