We had a event a couple of weeks ago in memory of Operation Amherst, which took place in April 1945. There isn't a lot written on the internet about this last airborne operation in Europe, which resulted in the liberation of the north-eastern part of the Netherlands, so I'll give a brief history lesson about this small but very interesting offensive.

After the failure of Operation Market Garden the frontline in the Netherlands stayed the same for another half year. On 28th March the Canadian command ordered a new offensive to liberate the eastern part of the Netherlands, which is full of small canals. To make the offensive a succes 700 French paras from the 3rd and 4th SAS were dropped behind enemy lines in the night of 7 to 8 April in order to capture bridges in the Dutch province of Drenthe and create confusion in the German rear. The German forces who had to defend this area were mixed units who concentrated around imported objects (key bridges, crossroads, villages etc).

According to plan the 2nd Canadian Division would link up with 3rd and 4th SAS in 72 hours. The night drops didn't go well, lots of clouds and wind caused wide dispersal of the sticks while the jeeps with which SAS normally operated in the enemy rear were not dropped at all (later on 250+ men of the Belgian SAS came with this jeeps by land). The Canadians were able to advance quickly (though not as quickly as promised), were able to link up with the French sticks. Dispite these small failures the operation was a succes and the NE part of the Netherlands was liberated. Only the islands and the Wester part of the Netherlands ("Festung Holland") had to wait untill 5 May.

On to the reenactment part. We made a small trench to defend a crossroads. The first part of the selection shows a small photoshoot we did with the (real French) SAS group. The next part shows the photos that were made during and after a mockbattle with a Canadian armoured recon force.

The black/white photos were taken by me with a Leica copy, most colour photos were made by Teake Hiemstra.

www.libertytour2010.nl