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 1st 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 11th
R.S.F. were formed up as the counter-attack company on 4th 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 16th Parachute Regiment Companies advanced and the direction
that the Fusilier’s took to reach the forward positions of the beleaguered
Companies of the 7th 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).
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