Arnhem

In an unplanned move this latest journey took me to the Dutch town of Arnhem. This neat little town, close to the German border,  was the scene of one of the most bitter battles on World War Two in 1944. It was later immortalised by the film, A Bridge Too Far by Richard Attenborough.
The modern day Arnhem bears little resemblance to the war torn town as a small but tidy visitor centre on the north bank of the bridge explains. It explains how 188 civilians and countless members of German and Allied soldiers lost their lives fighting over the bridge. If it had fallen into the hands of the Allies, the belief was that their forces could push forward towards Germany and Berlin in particular to bring the war to an early conclusion.
In the end the Allies could not get their ground forces to support the airbourne divisions as they had planned and so the Germans held the bridge.
In response the Americans bombed and destroyed the bridge creating a stalemate between the two armies.
The following spring the Allies crossed the Rhein further up river and pushed on to Berlin. Many wonder what might have been if they had been successful in September 1944 instead.
After this bombardment Arnhem was completely rebuilt. A Bailey bridge replaced the bombed structure until the present river crossing was completed in the 1950s. It was built to the same design of the original bridge.
The film used the similar bridge at nearby Deventer to serve as Arnhem because the surrounding area was less built up by the time the movie was filmed