Infant to 12 in under three minutes

I have some posts stacked up in the back of my brain for when I have the time to sit down and actually write something. In the meanwhile, I ran across this video featured on Huffington Post. A Dutch filmmaker, Frans Hofmeester,  has been shooting clips of his daughter since she was an infant and produced this time lapse. Very cool!

Advertisement

Two museums and the search for the lost arch

Our day started cool and cloudy, but later warmed up to a nice sunny day. What a difference a day makes.

Our first stop was the Wings of Liberation Museum in Oosterbeek. This was the site of the British First Airborne Division’s drop and most of its fighting during the Market Garden operation. The museum is outstanding. It is located in the Harkenstein Hotel, which was the site of German General Model’s headquarters before the air drop, and then the HQ for the 1^st Airborne Div.

Ron, Poolman, Dan and Birdie

In the front is the apparently obligatory US M4 Sherman tank, although there were none of these weapons involved in this part of the battle. (The British paratroopers had no tanks.) The museum had the usual artifacts, with a focus on the Dutch population.       Its crowning touch was an “Airborne Experience”in the basement.

A mock up of a British mortor crew in the Airborne Experience

This was almost like a Disneyworld walk-though experience with projected images and sound effects, as if you were a part of the battle. Very impressive.

The museum left me with two questions.

The first – why are the Dutch so willing to remember and commemorate this battle? The battle was a debacle for the Allies, especially the British airborne troops who dropped in Oosterbeek to seize the Arnhem bridge. They didn’t keep the bridge, and only roughly 2,500 of the 12,000 troopers escaped death or capture.  For the Dutch, this short-lived liberation went very poorly in the long run. After the battle, the Germans expelled all the residents from the city. The coming winter of 1944-45 was extremely difficult on the Dutch. Food was extremely scarce. More than 22,000 died of starvation or malnutrition.

Yet they commemorate this battle all over Arnhem and elsewhere in the area.

The second questions echoes historian/biographer William Manchester who observed that historians tend to glorify battles that result in heavy casualties.

For example, everyone knows about the Alamo, where all the defenders were killed. But how many people outside of Texas can describe the subsequent Battle of San Jacinto, that was a decisive and overwhelming victory for the Texans with relatively low casualties.

For history, it seems “the bloodier, the better.” And if it is a defeat (like Arnhem) even better still. Market Garden was a tremendous battle, but the other guys won.

From there, we went to central Nijmegan for lunch, only to find we were at the wrong place.

Oops! Wrong address.

Back on the bus and drive to a suburban resort hotel for an outstanding lunch of curry soup, steak with a Bordeaux sauce, fries, vegetables and ice cream sundae. It was not a rushed meal. We must have been there for two hours.

We had one more museum near where the 82^nd Airborne Div drooped at Groesbeek.

We then went off in search of “the arch.” In the book Band of Brothers, there is a photo of Dick Winters standing in front of an arch.

Dick Winters in 1944.l

We ended up driving around for the better part of an hour looking for this thing. We finally found it, and the owners of the house were most gracious to allow us to tramp up their driveway for everyone to pose at the arch.

Poolman, Dan, Birdie and Ron at the arch

The arch is part of a 100 year-old farm house on a still-working farm.

We are on our way to Maastricht. Tomorrow we are on to Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge.

Revisiting Operation Market-Garden in the Netherlands

It was a cold, blustery day here in the Netherlands. Overall, the weather had been pretty good. Several of our days in Paris were great, and the day at Omaha Beach was actually quite warm. Since then it has cooled off, but we have had no real rain to speak of.

When we arrived at the hotel last night, it was after dark, so we didn’t have any perspective of the surroundings.

The Lower Rhine from our window

It turns out we are right on the Lower Rhine. This is the view from Dan’s and my room window. It’s not that impressive a stream.

The hotel is quite nice – just about a mile out from the central downtown area of Arnhem.

We piled back on the bus and drove south to the Wings of Liberation Museum near Son, Netherlands.

Arriving at the Wings of Liberation Museum

This is a small museum, but they did a nice job, especially using mannequins in historical settings.

That's Dan on the left.

It also contained a bunch of guns, planes, etc.

From there, we went to the farm where the 506^th PIR (Band of Brothers regiment) was dropped on September 17, 1944, and we took a group picture in front of the house.

That's our guide, Steve, in front. Poolman behind him. Ron and Birdie, front row left, and Dan in the back left-center.

The only person missing is Laura, the travel agent, who was manning the camera.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in central Arnhem for some of us to exchange money at the train station.

Near the Arnhem train station

Here we saw very visual evidence of the Dutch’s love of bicycles. People ride them everywhere. Just look at this. This the main parking lot at the train station – no cars, but about a thousand bikes!

Need a bike?

For some reason, the John Frost Bridge, actual “bridge too far” that was the point to the whole battle, was not on our itinerary.

John Frost Bridge -- A replacement for the one destroyed in Oct 1944.

We had time when we got back from our bus excursion, so Ron, Dan, Birdie and I took a hike down to the bridge and (most of us) walked to the other side.

Birdie and Ron at a memorial near the bridge.

Me on the bridge

A view of Arnhem from the south end of the bridge.

We definitely got our exercise for the day, and we can use it.

Tomorrow, we visit two more museums in this area and then finish the day back down south in Maastrich.

It’s been a good trip, but I think everyone is feeling the fatigue. We have four more days of touring then a day of travel back to the US.