Haalderen, Holland 16th May 2015

The idea was that we would have an easier day on the Saturday with less driving planned for Owen. In the evening we were due to attend a part of Eurorock Festival near to Eindhoven. The band that we had travelled to see were the headline act and were not due to take the stage until after midnight that evening. The schedule we drew up was to drive up to Nijmegen and onto the Island before heading further north to Arnhem.

Within Nijmegen I had a specific task to fulfil, retracing the family’s 1973 visit to the town with my Grandfather, but more of that in the pages that follow. For now the plan was to stop off in Haalderen as we progressed towards Arnhem. We deliberately took a route to the brigdes similar to that taken by XXX Corps on ‘Hell’s Highway’ as the Allies struggled to reach the British 1^st Airborne who were pinned down in Oosterbeek. In the early morning spring sunshine it was difficult to relate to that desperate journey seventy-one years earlier for the roads were clear and the fields on either side of the road were nothing but picturesque. Crossing the Maas at Grave, we passed through Nijmegen and crossed Waal to access ‘The Island’.

Passing through Lent before turning off the N325 in the direction of Bemmel where the men of ‘D’ Company 11^th R.S.F. were formed up as the counter-attack company on 4^th December 1944. It was only after driving through a near deserted Bemmel that our navigational problems started. Never mind the proverbial ‘All Roads Lead To Rome’, on this Saturday morning it was more a case of ‘All Roads Lead to Bemmel’ as try as we might to reach the neighbouring village of Haalderen, after several circuits of the area it was nowhere to be found, but we found ourselves driving back through Bemmel from each of the four compass points. Were it not for the assistance of a helpful jogger with a better grasp of the local geography, Haalderen may have never have been reached!

Our approach to Haalderen was from the same direction from which the Fusiliers entered the village that December. Turning right onto the N839, Van der Mondeweg, we headed south east down the road toeards the Church (the original of which is shown at the head of this chapter). The Church, now rebuilt, houses a memorial to the fighing in the village that occurred between September and December 1944.

‘War

Never Forget

Never Repeat

            WWII’

Our time here was limited and with no disrespect to Haalderen, there was not so much to photograph easily with the exception of a view down the main street. The direction from which the German 16^th Parachute Regiment Companies advanced and the direction that the Fusilier’s took to reach the forward positions of the beleaguered Companies of the 7^th Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.

The reconstructed Church in Haalderen.

The main road through Haalderen (Van der Mondeweg) looking in a south easterly direction (facing the German assault).