Tours : Arnhem
Five days, four nights
£1065
About this tour
'Operation market Garden' was Monty's daring plan that didn't quite make it! On this tour, we visit the Nijmegen and Groesbeek sector with its memorial cemetery and museum, as well as Arnhem Bridge (the 'Bridge Too Far') and Oosterbeek cemetery and museum. We also see the parachute drop zones of Ginkelsheide.
More about touring Arnhem
Operation 'Market Garden' was devised to take advantage of the speed of the advance by British troops from Normandy. The enormous distances that supplies had to be transported necessitated the capture of a port nearer the ultimate goal - and going round the Siegfried Line to Berlin, rather than going through it, made sound strategic sense. Monty planned to take all the bridges leading to and through Holland and to capture Antwerp. The fact that the operation was only a partial success (or an abject failure - depending on your interpretation of events) - reflects not so much the concept of 'Market Garden', but the realisation of it.
During this tour, we shall trace the route of 30 Corps, from Eindhoven up to Arnhem, crossing the bridges en route. We shall learn of the heroic American contribution to the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges and visit the impressive Liberation Museum and Canadian cemetery in Groesbeek.
Arnhem was the 'Bridge Too Far' and here we will pause to explore in some detail this part of the operation and the reasons for its apparent failure. We shall also measure the enormous distance from the drop and landing zones at Ginkelsheide to the troops' objective - the bridge over the Neder Rijn. The Airbourne Museum in the Hartenstein Hotel at Oosterbeek provides a chilling monument to the ferocity of the fighting and ultimately, the heroic retreat.
Arnhem was perhaps the most urban battle of the war, and saw some of the most hand-to-hand fighting. As such, it commands a special place in our memories. One of the most rewarding aspects of this Reveille tour is the opportunity to gain an insight into what the Dutch went through in the Second World War, to find out why they are such Anglophiles and why their place in the Europe of today is so important.
