Was Daphne du Maurier responsible for the attempt to cross the ‘bridge too far’?
A few months ago I gave a talk at Boy’s prep school on one of the most glorious debacles in British military history — Operation Market Garden — which marks its 65th anniversary this week.
To bring it home, I told them that many of the boys from 1st Airborne Division who landed by glider and parachute near Arnhem on that deceptively calm, sunny September weekend weren’t much older than they; and I showed them photographs of the heartbreaking inscriptions at Oosterbeek cemetery, where some of the dwindling band of surviving veterans will be holding their annual commemorative service, and where by tradition generations of local children have each been given their own grave to adopt and tend.
‘A smiling face/A heart of gold/One of the best/This world could hold,’ says one. ‘Without you, darling, there is forever shadow where once there was sun,’ says another.
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