19 Feb 25 - Arnhem: A Bridge Too Far

After successfully seeing the Dutch Spectacled Eider and a bonus Pygmy Cormorant in Lelystad, I dropped Pete Moore at the town's station to catch the train into Amsterdam to meet up with his wife, Claire and younger son, Rowan. I still had some time before I needed to head back to the UK. I was keen to look for Grey-headed Woodpecker. This was a Western Palearctic Tick and very different looking to the ones I've seen in Nepal, India, Thailand & Tibet. There are rare in Holland, so I needed to look further afield. The best looking option was to head for Luxembourg, which also gave me a reason to visit this new country.

A modern Dutch windmill farm: There were lots of wind turbines throughout the West of the country and these ones, like many I saw, are built on surrounding farmland. Thus proving that farmland and wind turbines can co-exist, albeit there is some loss of land around each turbine

Better still the road from Lelystad would take me through Arnhem, which is the site of one of the famous World War Two battles and I do like my military history. So, heading for Arnhem was an easy decision. I had read about the Allied paratrooper drop into Arnhem while I was at school. But I vividly watching the film A Bridge Too Far at university, on the evening that the Marines recaptured South Georgia after the Argentinian invasion. The reality of an extended battle as shown in the film, was magnified by the breaking news from the South Atlantic, as I got home that evening.

A statue in Garderen to the Canadian troops who permanently liberated the Arnhem area in Apr 1944: I bumped into this statue as I was drive from Lelystad to Arnhem

Following the Normandy landings and the subsequent breakout from Normandy in August 1944, there were competing pressures from the two main army groups, the British commanded by Field Marshall Montgomery and the Americans commanded by Lieutenant-General Bradley, on who should be allowed to lead the next major Allied offensive. In the end, Montgomery was tasked with this next offensive, known collectively as Operation Market Garden. His ambition plan was an landing of airborne troops to capture major bridges, around the cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen, with the final bridge being at Arnhem over the River Rhine. The intention was crossing the Rhine, would allow the Allies to push rapidly into Germany in a bid to end the war. The airborne troops were to hold these bridgeheads until an armoured column could punch its way through the German lines to link up with the troops holding each bridge. This was to be the largest airborne operation in history, involving nearly thirty-five thousand men being dropped by parachute or gliders.

This is how cycle lanes should be created in towns: Note, the different colour of the road surface and the road surface appears to be the high grip tarmac that we use near some road junctions. This is a much better idea of designating cycle lanes, rather than just painting lines on the road, which is what I've seen locally at Lytchett Minster

There is a well-known maxim that, any plan will immediately start to fail as soon as the fighting begins. This was the case with Operation Market Garden. Firstly, one of the key bridges around Eindhoven at the town of Son was destroyed by the Germans. The river was eventually crossed using a Bailey bridge, but only after significant delays. Secondly, the bridge at Nijmegen was not captured at the earliest opportunity, due to conflicting priorities. This allowed the Germans to reinforce their positions around the bridge. The bridge at Nijmegen was finally captured on the fourth day of the campaign after troops crossed the river in small boats. That evening, the first Allied tanks crossed the bridge. However, there were insufficient tanks and troops at that point to push on the final few miles to the bridge at Arnhem. This was about the same time that the paratroopers who had captured and held the North end of the Arnhem bridge for four days, finally ran out of bullets and were forced to surrender. Had the Nijmegen bridge been captured soon after the airborne landings, it might have been possible for the armoured column to cross the bridge in strength and get to Arnhem while the paratroopers still held it.

Getting close to the Arnhem bridge: This is what I was expecting some of the building by the bridge to look like. I was disappointed to find there weren't any old buildings left near the bridge

Although the bridge at Arnhem had fallen, there were still Allied paratroopers who were holding a bridgehead at Oosterbeek, about three miles West of the Arnhem bridge. While there wasn't a bridge there, holding both sides of the Rhine would have allowed the Allies the chance to cross the river at this point. The paratroopers managed to hold this bridgehead for another five days, before they were finally forced to cross and pull back to the South side of the Rhine. At the end of the battle, this left the Allied front line to the South of the Rhine. To prevent German reinforcements threatening the Allies, the decision was made for the Arnhem bridge to be bombed and destroyed by the US Air Force on 7 Oct 1944. This took pressure off this part of the front line. It wasn't until Apr 1945, that Allied troops, including Canadian soldiers, pushed through and liberated the Arnhem area.

My first view of the Arnhem bridge: What I hadn't appreciated until I read about the aftermath of Operation Market Garden, was that the original bridge had been destroyed in Oct 1944 and was rebuilt to look the same as the original bridge in 1948

Canadian 25 pounder artillery gun in Jacob Groenewoud Park: Jacob Groenewoud was a Dutch officer who had training with the British SOE and American OSS. He was dropped into the Arnhem area with the paratroopers to liaise with the local Dutch resistance and gather intelligence. Sadly, he was killed by a sniper within a couple of days of his arrival. I had assumed this artillery gun must have been used in Market Garden. However, I don't remember seeing any in the Bridge Too Far film and they were too large to be dropped during the Market Garden operation. But it is still a memorial to the paratroopers who were dropped into Arnhem

The plague on the artillery gun commemorates the 18th Para Field Ambulance: It says "A stone with a badge, a name, a date buried here, brothers, friend and mate they fought their battles to free us all till the bugle sounded their last call"

This signboard shows an overhead view of the Arnhem bridge in 1936

It took me a few minutes to cross the bridge: It took Germans four days before the bridge fell. The paras had been asked to hold it for no more than forty-eight hours before they expected to be relieved

There was a museum to the paratroopers who landed in Arnhem. But time was getting on and I had a long journey ahead of me. So, I decided to give the museum a miss and continue on my route. The next landmark was the bridge at Nijmegen.

The similar-looking bridge at Nijmegen: This is about ten miles South of the Arnhem bridge

I still had a two hundred and fifty mile drive ahead of me. I finally arrived about 23:30 at my destination of Haff Reimich, Luxembourg: my seventy-nineth country. More about that in the next Blog Post. I didn't have any accommodation booked, so the sleeping bag was pulled out for a night in the Focus Hotel.

19 Feb 25 - Shagging Dutch-style

On the Dutch Spectacled Eider twitch with Pete Moore, we quickly established that the Spectacled Eider hadn't been located early on our second morning. So, we decided to depart on the 10:00 ferry from Texel and head to a channel near the village of Anna Paulowna to look for a flock of Smew. After watching the male Smew displaying to the females, we needed to push onto our main target for the day at the Nature Park on the edge of Lelystad. Amsterdam has had a bad reputation for many years due to its red-light area, but we had a more interesting shag planned: with a nationally rare Pygmy Shag, or to be more accurate, a Pygmy Cormorant.

Bison carving

The Lelystad Nature Park has been tastefully designed to make it a popular visitor attraction with lots of lakes, as well as, things to keep younger visitors entertained.

Jay: This is the glandarius subspecies which occurs in North & central Europe

First we popped into the visitors centre to pay for the parking and for a call of nature. The Lelystad visitor centre had some unexpected stuffed Mammals.

Moose and Red Deer: Moose were extirpated from Holland about a millennium ago, while Red Deer still occur in a few National Parks

European Bison: Another species that hasn't occurred in Holland for many centuries

Thanks to Paul Rhodes for the following feedback on European Bison, which have been introduced into Zuid Kennemerland National Park, near Haarlem, to assist in vegetation control. They have come from the Polish Bialowieza Forest.

The gents toilets: I never expected I would be photographing gents toilets for the Blog. Not only were these three cubicles well decorated, but they were playing bird song inside the toilets as well

Presumably, this is a White Stork nest platform: Thanks to Paul Rhodes for the confirmation that it is

A large bat box

There was no news on the Pygmy Cormorant when we arrived, so we started to look around the lakes. This Scarlet Elfcap was the highlight: one of the few species of Fungi that I know.

Scarlet Elfcap: The Sycamore seed pod gives an idea how small this distinctive species of Fungi is

We had just reached the far side of the lakes, when Pete said, that there was some news that the Pygmy Cormorant had just seen. Unfortunately, we were heading in the wrong direction and it was quicker to backtrack to the car park and take the other path to the other side of the lakes. Eventually, we reached the right area, only to find it was perched at the far end of the lake. We started to watch it through the scopes & to grab some distant photos.

Pygmy Cormorant: there are only a handful of Dutch records of this species which occurs on inland lakes & rivers from South East Europe to central Asia

Tufted Duck: Males. Given the distance of the Pygmy Cormorant, these individuals were more distracting

While I was photographing the Tufted Ducks, Pete said that the Pygmy Cormorant had just taken off, before we could try walking closer. It did a distant pass, before disappearing from view.

Pygmy Cormorant

Pygmy Cormorant: With the Pygmy Cormorant disappearing, it was time to head to the railway station

We ran into a couple of Whooper Swans, as we were walking back to the car park. They looked suspiciously tame. Eventually, one walked onto the grass, where it was possible to see a ring on its leg and there was clearly a lot of damage to one of its wings when it briefly flapped them. Perhaps it was a wild individual, that had damaged its wing and has been forced to stick around at Lelystad.

Whooper Swan

Whooper Swan: The same individual, which had a damaged wing

The next part of the plan was for me to drop Pete at the railway station in Lelystad, so he could get a train into Amsterdam and met up with his wife, Claire and younger son, Rowan, who had arrived that lunchtime for a half term mini-break. My plan was for some Birding, a visit to some World War two battlefields and to visit Luxembourg: my seventy-nineth country. More about that in the next Blog Posts.