Today our village (Waalre) and some more well known places like Eindhoven have been reliberated! As a tradition, every year some vehicles drive part of the Hell's Highway to remember operation Market Garden. This year, it's been 70 years ago, so they organized something special. Tomorrow they will continue their route over the bailey bridge that has been built in Son today. Then they will drive on in the direction of Veghel, Grave and Nijmegen.
Some of the vehicles took a diverted route and went through Waalre.
I spoke to a few guys and one of them came from Yorkshire. He was in a small group with two trucks towing two 5.5 inch guns. Amazing to hear that they came all the way to take part in this event. A big thank you, to all those people that made this remembrance possible. And of course, a lot of thanks to all the men that liberated Holland in 1944-45.
That is pretty cool Gompel. Its really nice that there's so much restored WWII equipment over there (UK and Europe). I'm sure other parts of the US are different but around here (Idaho, Nevada, Utah of the US) there's an occasional tank or gun sitting out in front of some Veterans of Foreign Wars post or a National Guard base but not much of it still moves. Here in SW idaho we get quite a bit of air power showing up. An F4U corsair, P40 warhawk (locally based in Boise), P-38 lighting and the B-29 'FiFI' were at local regional airshows this summer but we don't get much WWII ground equipment.
Yes, there was a lot of restored equipment, both from war musea and private owners. I haven't seen any planes, but people said there was an airdrop with Dakotas and somebody heard Spitfires up North.
Here are some pictures of today. Vehicles are crossing the Wilhelminakanaal in Son.
Yes they (modern army) did.
You could feel the tension when the first Sherman tank drove over the bridge: will it hold? Haha. Some were surprised that it didn't bend.
The bridge will be broken down soon again, otherwise the ships can't go over the channel.
I do not know how wide is the kanaal, but a DS (double trusses-single storey) Baiey bridge is a class 30 up to 30m and class 40 up to 24m. For a Sherman a class 30 is enough,
It is easy to know the length of the bridge. Each panel (2 squares) is 3 meters long.
