The Battlefield Explorer

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The Battlefield Explorer Join me on my trips, visit the known and unknown battlefields, uncover hidden artifacts that are still out there, and experience amazing events.

Sixteen columns, one for each Allied aircraft that came down in Neder-Betuwe during the Second World War. Between them t...
12/10/2026

Sixteen columns, one for each Allied aircraft that came down in Neder-Betuwe during the Second World War. Between them they carried 132 men. Sixty-six were killed.

The main column carries a C-47, because one came down here. On 18 September 1944 it was taking paratroopers of the British 10th Parachute Battalion to Ginkel Heath. Flak set it on fire and left the pilot, Lieutenant James Spurrier, unconscious. His co-pilot, Second Lieutenant Edward Fulmer of the 43rd Troop Carrier Squadron, held it steady until the paratroopers had jumped. Then he crash-landed near Dodewaard and got out through a side window. In 1946 the Netherlands made him a Knight of the Military William Order.

Ginkel Heath, where the 10th Battalion was going, is a stop on our Arnhem and Oosterbeek tours.

In the Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek, the sling beside his whistle and C**t was tied on Major Bruce Dawson by a medic ar...
11/10/2026

In the Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek, the sling beside his whistle and C**t was tied on Major Bruce Dawson by a medic around midday on 20 September 1944. He went on fighting in it.

Dawson was Brigade Major of 4th Parachute Brigade, Brigadier Hackett's chief of staff, and already held the Military Cross from France in 1940. That day the brigade was trying to fight its way through the woods west of Oosterbeek to reach the rest of 1st Airborne Division. Dawson led several small attacks to keep it moving and was hit in the right shoulder. Soon afterwards German tanks broke into the column and set the transport alight. He was shot through the head trying to rally Brigade HQ. He was 27.

Hackett, writing his diary in a German-held hospital in Arnhem, called his conduct beyond praise.

We stopped at his display today with a couple from the United States, on a wet day out on the Arnhem battlefields.

Original wartime vehicles of the Screaming Ducks, a Kübelwagen and two Willys jeeps, parked at the Waal crossing memoria...
10/10/2026

Original wartime vehicles of the Screaming Ducks, a Kübelwagen and two Willys jeeps, parked at the Waal crossing memorial in Lent.

Beyond them, members of the Ducks gather at the memorial stone. It lists the Americans killed crossing the river here on 20 September 1944. Behind it runs De Oversteek, the road bridge opened in 2013 and named after the crossing. Its 48 pairs of lamps light one pair at a time at sunset, one for each man killed.

The boats came across in the distance, under the power lines. Twenty-six canvas boats carried the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne, under Major Julian Cook, into fire from this bank. Only about half came back for the next wave. Cook went in the first wave and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. By evening both Nijmegen bridges were in Allied hands.

The 79 soldiers named on this stone fought the Battle of Arnhem from the open door of a transport aircraft.They were air...
09/10/2026

The 79 soldiers named on this stone fought the Battle of Arnhem from the open door of a transport aircraft.

They were air despatchers of the Royal Army Service Corps. Between 18 and 25 September 1944 they flew in the Stirlings and Dakotas resupplying the 1st Airborne Division, pushing panniers out over the drop zones while the pilots held the aircraft straight and level through the flak. Of about 1,500 tons dropped, only 7.4 per cent reached British hands.

The aircrew were remembered after the war. The despatchers largely were not. This memorial beside the Airborne Cemetery was unveiled on 18 September 1994, fifty years to the day after their first resupply drop.

Oosterbeek is a stop on our Arnhem and Oosterbeek tours.

09/10/2026

The Bastongne Barracks, home of the NUTS reply!

I spent almost five years on the waiting list before I could adopt this grave at Margraten.Staff Sergeant Richard L. Wal...
08/10/2026

I spent almost five years on the waiting list before I could adopt this grave at Margraten.

Staff Sergeant Richard L. Walsh served in K Company, 330th Infantry Regiment, 83rd Infantry Division. He enlisted straight out of high school in Indiana in 1943. He landed in Normandy on 18 June 1944 and was wounded by a mortar round on 22 July, which earned him the Purple Heart. By the autumn he was back with his company. On 4 January 1945, attacking near Manhay in the Belgian Ardennes, he was killed by a German shell as his squad went down a wooded slope in the snow. He was 20. His family chose to leave him at Margraten.

Visited today with the National WWII Museum, the last stop of our Market Garden pre-tour.

Eighty-two years ago today, American bombers dropped the road bridge at Arnhem into the Lower Rhine.The bridge that stan...
07/10/2026

Eighty-two years ago today, American bombers dropped the road bridge at Arnhem into the Lower Rhine.

The bridge that stands here now opened on 9 May 1950, rebuilt in the style of the original.

On the evening of 17 September 1944, about 740 British airborne troops under Lieutenant Colonel John Frost, built around his 2nd Parachute Battalion, reached and occupied the northern end of the bridge. They held it until the early hours of 21 September, waiting for ### Corps.

With the bridge back in German hands and being used to move troops and equipment south into the Betuwe, B-26 Marauders of the USAAF’s 344th Bomb Group attacked it on 7 October. Direct hits brought the main span down into the Lower Rhine.

We were at the bridge today with The National WWII Museum, on day three of the Market Garden pre-tour.

Sixteen paratroopers took this bridge over the Maas at Grave, because the rest of their company had jumped too early. Si...
06/10/2026

Sixteen paratroopers took this bridge over the Maas at Grave, because the rest of their company had jumped too early. Since 2004 it has carried the name of the lieutenant who led them.

On 17 September 1944 Company E, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, was to land south of the river and seize the southern end. Only Lieutenant John Thompson's stick came down close to it. He attacked at once rather than lose surprise waiting for the others. His men worked forward through drainage ditches, at times up to their necks in water, under fire from a 20mm flak gun in a tower on the southern approach. Private Robert McGraw fired three bazooka rounds at it. Two hit the top of the tower and the gun stopped firing. By mid-afternoon the southern end was secure and the bridge was in American hands, intact.

Today we visited the bridge with a group from The National WWII Museum.

The bridge over the Maas-Scheldt canal at Lommel in Belgium was Market Garden's start line, taken a week before the oper...
05/10/2026

The bridge over the Maas-Scheldt canal at Lommel in Belgium was Market Garden's start line, taken a week before the operation began. It has been rebuilt since the war, but it still carries the name it earned on 10 September 1944: Joe's Bridge.

That evening, tanks and infantry of the Irish Guards, Guards Armoured Division, rushed the crossing before the Germans could blow it. Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks was so impressed that he named the bridge after their commander, Lt Col J.O.E. Vandeleur.

On 17 September, Horrocks's ### Corps launched its advance towards Arnhem from this bridgehead, with the Irish Guards in the lead.

We visited the bridge today with a group from the National WWII Museum.

The front of this gun barrel came from another tank. According to the December 44 museum, it is a length of Panther barr...
04/10/2026

The front of this gun barrel came from another tank. According to the December 44 museum, it is a length of Panther barrel with its muzzle brake, taken from one of the tanks Skorzeny's men disguised as American vehicles and left near Malmedy.

The original was shot away in December 1944. This is Tiger II 213 of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501, fighting with Kampfgruppe Peiper of the 1st SS Panzer Division. Under SS-Obersturmführer Dollinger it held the high ground at the Wérimont farm outside La Gleize, alongside Tiger 221. Around midday on 21 or 22 December, accounts differ, fifteen tanks of the 3rd Armored Division's Task Force McGeorge came up from Roanne. Neither Tiger scored a hit. American fire blew off the front third of 213's gun, both crews bailed out, and Dollinger, wounded in the head, sheltered in the farm cellar. When Peiper's men left La Gleize on foot on the night of 23 December, the tank stayed behind. In July 1945 Jenny Geenen-Dewez bought it from the American salvage crews for a bottle of cognac.

We stopped here today on the second day of a Battle of the Bulge tour with four friends from the UK.

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