It was September 17 1944, a nice sunny Sunday morning. All of a sudden a few dive bombers screached over and dropped bombs on Wageningen, a town on the Rhine about 30 minutes by bicycle from our house in Wageningen Hoog or Bennekom as we used to call it. We saw smoke over Wageningen and the power was out.

As we were the only ones in the neighborhood who used gas for cooking and as it was nearly noon, neighbors soon came by to fix their noon meal. We were chatting and guessing why Wageningen was bombed, when a friend of mine came over to say that my Father was calling and whistling from way out in back.(Our yard was completely natural and their were no fences)

We went out to see what he wanted and saw a sight to behold. As soon as we came out of the trees we saw glider planes in the process of landing. It was fantastic to see them drop the towing cables and go in a landing pattern.You could see the men in the planes with their faces blackened giving us the "V" sign. They landed about 3 km from our house. There were also paratroopers and big supply gliders.

Some of our neighbors called people they knew who lived close to were the planes had landed and even talked to some of the men. They said they were not coming our way, they were going to Arnhem.

Not too long afterwards the German trucks came rolling by, big red crosses on the roof, soldiers and ammunition inside. When the trucks came back the wounded were under the red cross.

The landing was ill fated. The Dutch Resistance had warned that there were German panzer troops nearby, but the Allied high command had ignored the warning. The airbornes were wiped out and the allied troops stayed south of the Rhine for several more months. The winter that followed became known as "the hunger winter".