The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es

Author:Bart van Es
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

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BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 17 and October 20, 1944, the fate of the village of Bennekom hung in the balance. The landings nearby on the Ginkelse Heide were at the utmost edge of Operation Market Garden and British paratroopers had come down there, more than sixty miles into enemy territory, expecting reinforcement from Allied tanks that were intended to race to their rescue across six bridges connected by a single road. Those bridges all needed to be captured by separate landings of airborne forces. It was the seizure of these bridges and the rapid movement of tanks along the road between them that would create a narrow corridor from the old front line to the German frontier.

Day one had been fairly successful. In spite of heavy resistance, a small detachment had sped westward to Arnhem and had secured the northern end of the sixth and final bridge of the sequence, from which Germany could be reached. But enormous problems were already apparent: their jeeps had failed to land safely, bad weather had delayed Polish reinforcements, and Allied radios did not work. The worst, however, was still to come.

Frederick Browning, the Airborne Corps’ overall commander, could have spotted the two SS Panzer divisions that defended Arnhem, but in the rush to get the operation going, signs of their presence had been ignored. These were full, battle-hardened, armored combat divisions with thousands of soldiers. They had tanks, long-range guns, and far more ammunition than the lightly armed paratroopers. Even so, the small British detachment held out for nine days. In the end, however, on September 25, with no prospect of relief from the Allied ground army (whose crossings were delayed at Son and at Nijmegen) they were forced to concede defeat. By that point, fifteen hundred paratroopers lay dead in and around Arnhem and over six thousand more had been captured, many with very serious wounds. Their struggle would be remembered as “a bridge too far.”

For the bulk of September, Bennekom lay outside the immediate zone of conflict, and as the situation worsened, it took in refugees from neighboring towns. In the wake of the eventual liberation of Nijmegen, however, the front lines shifted and Allied forces were now less than five miles away from the village. Allied artillery strikes were hitting the edges of Bennekom, as were German V-1s when these misfired. By mid-October, SS units were moving through the streets requisitioning houses, and on the twentieth the German authorities ordered the inhabitants to evacuate, at the latest by midday on the twenty-second. Bennekom was becoming a military zone. Lien, who had once lain hidden in a rural backwater, now stood at a pivot for the entire war.

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