Operation Market Garden honored 73 years later
LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE — Freedom isn’t free; the price isn’t paid by one country alone.
Allied troops wearing different uniforms and originating from different countries were transported on a C-47. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, they prepared to jump from side doors of the aircraft into the unknown. Confident their mission would be a success, they had no idea the majority of paratroopers were about to fall to their deaths.
Allied troops rallied Sept. 18, 1944, to execute Operation Market Garden. Comprised of approximately 41,700 American, British and Polish service members, it was the largest airborne operations of World War II.
The plan was to secure the bridges over the rivers Maas, Waal and Rhine in the Netherlands from the Axis powers. This would enable the Allies to outmaneuver the Axis’ defenses on the Siegfried line, ensuring a swift advance toward Berlin, Germany.
Operation Market Garden was a two-part airborne operation in which paratroopers were inserted into enemy terrain to seize an object of value; later ground troops would move in and secure the objective.
Allied commanders constructed the operation hopeful it would end World War II by December 1944; however, Axis forces were much stronger than anticipated.
What was supposed to be the turning point of the war became a failed operation, creating approximately 17,000 Allied casualties.
To honor those service members who fought for freedom, the Royal Netherlands Army hosted a memorial parachute jump Sept. 16, 2017, on the Ginkelse Heid Drop Zone, Netherlands, near the city of Ede.
Aircraft and service members from the United States, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, France and Germany participated in the memorial jump.
One aircraft flying in the memorial jump belonged to the 314th Airlift Wing from Little Rock Air Force Base, whose lineage dates back to World War II. Their predecessor, the 314th Troop Carrier Group, took part in both the Normandy Invasion and Operation Market Garden.
“We did this because it is our history,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Benjamin Spain, 314th Operations Group C-130J evaluator pilot. “The 314th and 62nd were units participating during Market Garden in 1944. It’s important for us to come back and remember what the guys in our unit did back then.”
While Little Rock AFB aircrew flew the C-130J over the historical drop zone, paratroopers from the six countries sat in the belly of the aircraft and prepared to conduct the same jump that their predecessors did in 1944.
“Although we all come from different nations with our own languages, we all speak the same tongue when it comes to being a paratrooper,” said the Netherlands Royal Air Force Brigadier H.G.J.A. Smits, 11 Air Assault Brigade commander. “The memorial jump brings together paratroopers from various nations to share knowledge and work on their interoperability.”
United by the ideal of securing freedom for all, Operation Market Garden worked to erase cultural barriers between those who participated in the operation during World War II.
“I saw men who were hungry, exhausted and hopelessly outnumbered — men by who all the rules of war could gladly have surrendered and had it all over with, men who were shelled until they could’ve been hopeless psychopaths and through it all, they laughed, they sang, and they died. They kept fighting because they knew they were told that this battle would shorten the war for others,” an account from an U.S. service member stated.
The memorial jump was followed by a wreath-laying ceremony, where multiple wreaths were laid in honor of the bravery of the men who sacrificed their lives.
“Only in unity can we live in freedom,” said the mayor of Ede, Netherlands. “The memorial jump reminds us freedom cannot be taken for granted. Let us follow the example of every veteran and every soldier of then and now. Let us remember them, honor them and respect them so that we never forget.”