Well what a day we have had!
It all began as per usual…a lovely breakfast at our BnB…Vila de Pol, where we had stayed on our way to the Maas. The staff did warn us that the ferries across the Rhine ran infrequently, but she thought they would go once an hour on the hour from 11am. So we arrived there at 11:30 to catch the noon ferry….hmm, looked like they were working on the landing platform. The workers told us the next sailing was at 1 pm. It was quite cold and windy so we went into a little restaurant to wait. Looking ahead at the weather forecast, the storm they had promised was certainly headed our way! We would be riding into the cold wind to get to Doesberg.
Mark checked his e-mail and there popped up another option! Our friend and former neighbour from Powell River, had seen on my blog that we were very close to his home! He offered to meet us and pick us up to come to his place to stay during the stormy days ahead! What timing…the ferry was at the dock…we gave it a miss and headed another direction…towards Kleve where we quickly had found a BnB for the night!
It was a lovely ride through the country. We didn’t go along the Rhine because of the wind.
And then…now this was very extraordinary…we passed a young bicycle racing fellow, who turned around when he noticed my Canadian flag. We stopped to chat. OMG, what an interesting young man! He proceeded to enlighten us on the area we had been riding through for the past few days and it’s importance in WWII! He had completed his undergraduate thesis on the geography and its importance during the war! We hadn’t realized that we had passed by a huge Canadian War Cemetery.
You don’t have to read the whole thing, but for those of you who might be interested here is an excerpt from the email he sent us later that night! A very focused and passionate young man!
“It was nice to meet you two today and first and foremost I'd wish you many more save and nice kilometers here in the area. In case you ever stumble upon language problems, as people in Germany tend to speak way less English then in the Netherlands, feel free to reach out. I also speak and write fluent German besides Dutch and English (as well as the most useless language Frisian, but I am proud it is my first language).
I am using the screentime I have left for today to make you an information email about your ride today and the area you're in right now. We have the Canadians a lot to be thankfull for, where the American paratroopers went further south the the Ardennes (battle of the Bulge) did a big part of the Canadians go north to free the north of the Netherlands. If it wasn't for them I might have grown up in Germany...
For my undergrad I wrote a 120 page thesis and made an interactive hiking route in the forest. Roughly 5k and mainly focussed towards youth and kids. Society now-a-days is changing a lot and getting very soft, knowing that there where a lot of so called ''Hitler Jugend'' stationed there, that where kids of like 14-17 years old that where given a gun to protect the motherland.
When covid hit it was quite a big success as it was all interactive, outside and covid friendly. Only that I didn't apply for a permit so I had a little run in with the German forest services after 400 people did the hike in like 14 days. During the hike you got notifications and pictures on your phone showing the places in the second world war or how things have been like then.
The thesis was called ''If only trees could talk'' and I made it mainly out of personal interest and importance to not forget.
Now-a-days a few times per year during the summer, when I am home, I do some mountainbike tours through the area where we pass multiple places and we stop and I show on my laptop many pictures on the bigger screen. But this is more a thing for my biking friends.
Important mission names and timelines
Operation Market Garden is the most famous name, referring to the biggest airborne landings in military history. For the Dutch and worldwide this is the most famous name, also a nice movie has been made about this operation which is called: ''a bridge too far'', referring to the failed operation as the one of the objections in the operation (one of the bridges around Arnhem) could not be taken from the Germans.
After Market Garden Operation Veritable started, and that is the name for all that has happened in the area where you've been cycling the last few days. This operation was to fight through the Reichswald and by doing so actually stepping foot inside Germany.
The point where we talked today, not much happened during the war as the Germans had blown up some of the dikes around the Rhine river so the whole area was flooded. This forced the allies to fight through the forest or take the main road. Fighting through a forest would make their heavy equipment useless, and advancing over the mainroad would keep them in the open and make them easy targets for German guns.
I don't know where you're trip is keeping on going, but if you're following the Rhine River (Rhein Radweg) then it is roughly 30-40km towards the next big German place. This one is called Wesel, now-a-days it is known for their ''Conservatorium'' (musical university (so many people who play all kinds of intstruments extremely well)). As a followup for operation Veritable there wasOperation Thunder this was to cross the river again into Wesel and push through to the Ruhr Area to hit the German industry hard.
To not go to much into all these operation details, you can just type in the key words on the internet and drown in information for hours.
To save a lot of reading and actually looking into how things really where during the war you can have a look into the archives of the Imperial War Museum in the UK. They've helped me a lot for my graduation and also gave me free permission to use their imagery etc. The allied forces had a lot of photographers and documented very well. As my main job is riding bikes all day around this area I am very familair with the area, strolling these archives I recognize many photos until their exact spot where they've been taken.
Just type in keywords, like Reichswald, Veritable, Kranenburg Cleve Kleve or Kleef (sometimes different writing styles) or the 2nd and 3th Canadian Infantry divisions or the good old Scottish Highlanders or the dates which you can find easily when reading into the backgrounds.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search
You might even recognize some of the locations on the pictures on the following pages:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?query=kleve&pageSize=30&media-records=records-with-media&style=list
To just have an overview and scroll through what has all happened, this Canadian made interactive map is awesome!
https://clearing-the-reichswald.project44.ca/
Made by an Canadian Army Veteran's project!
Below here Ill make a small summery of many links to get you started into some information, and once you get the hang of it the internet might bring you further.
Nice website around Veritable and for sure the area you've been cycling through and maybe you recognize some!
https://www.battlefieldtours.nu/blog/2023/02/18/operation-veritable-then-and-now/?lang=en
Reichswald specific and battle movements in more detail:
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/into-the-bitter-forest/
The Airborne landings:
This happens every year to remember what has happened.
Here you jump along:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_UfqejHi_0&ab_channel=Krijgshistorie
Here some information about the landing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ce4G_UpdjE&ab_channel=TheBattlefieldExplorer
This gives a nice inside, these are the landings on the other side of the River (Ede is close to Arnhem) as the ones here are a bit smaller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi3R613SHZQ&ab_channel=GemeenteEde
I wouldn't recommend watching this but this remembrance is live on the TV all day every year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4Adi99LVLU&ab_channel=OmroepGelderland
The big Canadian Cementary is here (circa 2300 Canadians):
https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/2063900/groesbeek-canadian-war-cemetery/
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groesbeek_Canadian_War_Cemetery
(On the other side of Cleve is the biggest Allied War cemetery of this area Circa 7500 graves)
https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/2003400/reichswald-forest-war-cemetery/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichswald_Forest_War_Cemetery
Other initiatives: (and we really are thankfull for the Canadians and all other allied soldiers)
As I said, we have our remeberance day on the 4th of May on the liberation day on the 5th of may (official date the war was over for the Netherlands).
Specially here for the liberation and all the fighting we have a lot of initiatives which I always highly support and where I always try to use my athlete status wherever I can to support it.
Cycling route 44km passing many important locations in this area, including the freedom museum in Groesbeek (the one that is shaped like a parachute and has the old tank in front of it).
https://www.liberationroute.com/themed-routes/57/nijmegen-area-cycling-route
But there are also many themed walks and such.
At the John Frost Bridge in Arnhem there is always a nice and impressive evening of remembrance.
https://bridgetoliberation.nl/
Every year there is also a big reenactment of the actually river crossing the soldiers have done here, while under heavy fire of the Germans trying to make it to the other side:
https://waalcrossing.com/
Also in Groesbeek there is a big gathering every year from people who still have all these old military vehicles and they come and meet and camp out. So that is actually at the campingside called ''Little America'' where lots of Americans landed and the American flag is always hanging!
It is not eco friendly for sure, but super cool to see these old machines being maintained super well, and people also all wearing the old outfits with it.
Adopt a grave
https://oorlogsgravenstichting.nl/
I think this website is in Dutch only, but this initiative is super cool and luckily being used a lot. What you basically do is you adopt a grave. It is not that you have to maintain it all the time as the employees of the cemeteries do that but you adopt it to read in, visit and tell the story. Many of these graves of fallen soldiers don't get visitors or people can't trace them back. So they aren't forgotten. And they ask you to lay some flowers on the 4th of May and or share some background information on the website or hang a picture of the soldier on the grave now and then.
Airborne Walk
This is the biggest one day remembrance walk in the World!
https://airbornewandeltocht.nl/nl/
And this year they also had an Airborne run!
In that area around Arnhem / Oosterbeek (roughly 30km from where we met today) they still have the flags waving as well with the division logos from the soldiers who fought there.
Aftermovie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k4x5qpocek&ab_channel=WiebedeJager
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF-7K6J4A6s&ab_channel=JesseTaat-NieuweHollandseWaterlinie
And there are many more events, big or small.
Also my own biking events which started invitation only and I used to invite only other pro riders. They would then give bags full of old cycling kit and that would be distributed then to young cyclists who could use some extra clothes.
And like that there are many more!
I'll wrap it up now as this might be a bit overwhelming, but I saw you had a nice tablet so I made it all tablet friendly and with interactive websites.
I am always quite passionate about keeping the stories alive as we should not forget what has happened here not even 80 years ago... For us here in the Netherlands it seems far but for Canadians these distances are way smaller, so keep in mind that it is ''only'' a 20h drive towards the fighting front in Ukraine and it is like a 2h flight... and the bullets are flying all around again.
Wishing you a lovely tour again here.
And in case anything happens and you need some help from someone who speaks the languages feel free to call me +31614841552 and I can translate for you.
Who knows we see eachother in BC or if I am ever ''your captain speaking'' I got 230h to go for my commercial license and 6months to go for my masters title! Leaving the save German countryside behind to work in wild fire fighting on the other side of the world.”
By the way, he is a Professional Mountain Bike rider, having recently won the TransAlp race and is hoping to compete in the Big BC Bike race this summer! We hope we might see him again!
