A bridge too far
Earlier this year in April on Good Friday, I found myself on a tourist bus that was gridlocked in traffic on the “De Oversteek” (The Crossing) bridge which connects the ancient Dutch town of Nijmegen that is separated by the Waal River.
Our delightful octogenarian guide stood and calmly announced that we would be stuck there for a while. The Dutch were taking advantage of the four-day holiday weekend to get out of town. Then she invited us to look out at the streetlights lining each side of the fairly modern (2013) bridge. I found that comment hardly a valid point of interest, especially having just visited the Kröller-Müller Museum to see ninety striking Van Gogh paintings.
I opted out of the Battle of Arnhem tour earlier that day about that bloody WWII campaign known as “Operation Market Garden.” That desperate attempt by Allied Forces in 1944 to seize and cross the bridges to break the Siegfried Line was basically unsuccessful. Richard Attenborough’s 1977 movie, “A Bridge Too Far,” dramatized that military campaign which was the largest airborne operations in history. I falsely believed there was no more for me to learn about that situation.
And so there I was stuck on this bridge being directed to look at the streetlights on either side of the bridge. “When they built the new bridge,” our Dutch guide continued, “everyone in Nijmegen agreed that it would be a memorial to the forty-eight American soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division who were killed during the Waal River crossing. So you see there are twenty-four pairs of lights over this bridge. It is an honor that each evening two Dutch military members are chosen to walk in synchronized fashion over this bridge. Each pair of lights turns on as they pass until the entire bridge is lit. This happens in rain, snow, ice—no matter the weather, every day of the year. No one must forget that sacrifice.”
“And,” she continued, “our grade school children are bused to the cemetery every September on the anniversary when the Nijmegen Bridge was saved and the town liberated by those troops. Each child stands before a grave and reads the details from the tombstone. We want our progeny to remember what happened here. Our town was saved by those who came to help just because we were too weak to defend ourselves. This year marks the 80th anniversary of this liberation and guests will come from all over to participate close to September 19,” she concluded to the stunned silence on that bus.
There is something both comforting and powerful in that daily exercise of dignity, remembrance, and thankfulness that the Dutch display every evening on that bridge. Those forty-eight service members were surely representative of what Tom Brokaw coined “The Greatest Generation.” America was truly considered great back then, admired because it defended the weak against aggressive tyrants and exemplified democratic values.
Anita Crocus, Mercer Island