Parachutists re-create Market Garden operation

GINKEL HEAT H , NE T HERLAND S» Hundreds of paratroopers floated to the ground in the eastern Netherlands on Saturday to mark the 75th anniversary of a daring but ultimately unsuccessful mission that Allied commanders hoped would bring a swift end to World War II.

Operation Market Garden dropped nearly 35,000 paratroopers deep behind enemy lines in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. After landing, the troops were to capture and secure key roads and bridges so Allied forces massed in Belgium could pour into Germany’s industrial heartland.

Re-creating the mass drops of September 1944, military aircraft flew low over Ginkel Heath on Saturday, and current military parachutists leaped out. Thousands of spectators watched and applauded the soldiers.

The British 1st Airborne Division led the huge assault 75 years ago that was part of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s ill-fated plan for Operation Market Garden. Paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and Poland’s 1st Independent Parachute Brigade also were dropped into the Netherlands.

British veteran Les Fuller was 23 when he leapt behind enemy lines close to Arnhem with orders to capture the city’s bridge over the Rhine.

“It was a day like today. Weather was just like this; lovely sunny day,” he said, adding that there was no opposition on the Sunday when he landed close to two German soldiers lying in the heath with their girlfriends.

But Allied troops met stubborn German resistance in and around Arnhem. Their advance stalled on a bridge spanning the River Rhine, a battle immortalized in the book and Hollywood film titled “A Bridge Too Far.”