Serendipity

Sometimes unexpected things do happen. Last year I published a post about a Canadian War Cemetery near Groesbeek the Netherlands overlooking the German border region near the Rhine. A Canadian newspaper, who are working on a special coverage on the 65th commemoration of the liberation of the Netherlands, contacted me for one of these photographs.

A 78-year-old woman from London, Ontario, read the newspaper yesterday. When she saw the photograph and read the inscription on the grave of the soldier, she realised that it was her brother’s grave who died in Germany less than two months before the war in Europe ended.

65 years have passed, we take our freedom for granted, and while the numbers of lives lost in the war were earth-shattering, it makes me realize that all of them should not be forgotten. Not of Corporal L.A. McIntosh, private L.F. Pringlemeir, rifleman R.J. Mc Donald, and many of their brothers.

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

65th commemoration Operation Market Garden

Just like last year, I went to the commemoration of Operation Market Garden near my hometown Ede in central Netherlands. For those interested in the story of Operation Market Garden read my last year’s post. This time I went there with Björn Utpott, fellow contributor for seriouscompacts.com with whom I had photographed recently in Amsterdam.

This was the largest commemoration to date in Ede with 1,000 paratroopers and more than 10,000 spectators. We had a great time and I was able to put the Ricoh GR Digital III really to test.

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

Respectful and peaceful

Today’s post is certainly different from all previous posts. Yesterday, a package arrived from Paris with a camera I can use for some time. Not a Ricoh camera, but a Sigma DP1 with the VF-11 optical viewfinder and a spare battery. Last year I tried this camera for just one day, but now I will be able to get a much better understanding of this camera.

The camera arrived just five minutes before I had to leave for an appointment in the city of Nijmegen. After the meeting I went to the small town of Groesbeek near the German border.

This area was an important strategic location during the end campaign of the Allied forces in 1944 and 1945 of World War II. It was a drop and landing zone in September 1944 for the eventually failed Operation Market Garden. And from here the Allied started the Battle on the Rhineland on February 8, 1945, the so-called  and took nearly a month before victory was declared.

Just outside the town is a Canadian War Cemetery located on a hill top with a view over the valley to the North and East into Germany. This cemetery was established in February 1945 and officially unveilled in November 1946.

In total 2,617 soldiers are burried here including 2,338 Canadians. These soldiers didn’t die in the Netherlands, but died in nearby Germany during battles in the Rhineland. It is said that all fallen Canadian soldiers were burried outside Germany.

Most of these soldiers were young men in their twenties. Still boys when they left home and became men in just a few day’s. They never saw their loved ones again.

Young men like private soldier R.F. Pringlemeir, age 21, from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada who died on the 15th of March 1945. A photograph of him and a soldier friend in front of his grave keeps the lost memories alive.

There are more Commonwealth cemeteries in the Netherlands, but no other contains so many Canadian war dead. The location is peaceful and all graves are treated very well.

Beautiful oak trees with with lovely red colored maple leaves as a remembrance of their homeland.

“Their name liveth for evermore“, a phrase by English writer Rudyard Kipling whose son died in 1915 in World War I. Partly in response to this tragedry he joined Sir Fabian Ware’s Imperial War Graves Commission that we know now as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. This group is responsible for the war graves were Commonwealth troops lie burried.

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

For those interested in my impressions of the Sigma DP1 I will continuously make notes and write about my learning process with this camera. Yesterday was a very interesting experience photographing with this camera and using the optical viewfinder. Unlike with my Ricoh camera I didn’t use the LCD screen for framing or judging the exposure. I only used it to set the exposure and that was it. I would suggest Sigma to update the firmware and give the camera a screen view just like with a dSLR, since it is a joy using the viewfinder. I am not going to judge the speed of the camera and the writing times. It felt all very appropriate yesterday for the scene and type of photographing.

And some quick notes with regard to the post processing. I used both Sigma Photo Pro by Sigma and Adobe Lightroom for editing the RAW photographs. And Lightroom just doesn’t handle the photographs in the same way as SPP.  The highlight and shadow recovery is impressive in SPP, and the fill light option can be very intriguing. For the photograph of the maple leaves I could get so many different and beautiful looking photographs with just changing the fill light amount. I think I will use this photograph in a later post to give some examples of this option in SPP.

And many have mentioned the sharpness of the photographs from the DP1. but man, these photographs are so incredibly sharp and I am glad that they added negative sharpness in SPP. I often went as far as minus 1 to desharpen the photographs and they still looked good.

I leave my first thoughts of the DP1 here. Last year I was very much in doubt about this camera and I now really want to dig into this. From last day it felt like a very organic photographing experiece.

Market Garden

Sunday, 17 September 1944
The 4th Parachute Regiment of the 1st British Airborne Division landed without major incident on the Ginkel Heath just east of Ede with C-47 Dakota’s, CG-4A Waco gliders, Airspeed Horsas, and General Aircraft Hamilcars, as part of the largest airborne assault ever attempted.

Color version here

The drop zone on the Ginkel Heath was part of a larger plan of actions consisting of two operations. Airborne forces of General Brereton’s the First Allied Airborne Army were to seize bridges and other terrain, under tactical command of Lieutenant-General Browning, Market. And ground forces of the Second Army quickly had to move north spearheaded by XXX Corps under Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, Garden. There tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands to allow rapid advance by armored units. The strategic purpose was to allow an Allied crossing of the Rhine river, the last major natural barrier to an advance into Germany. The planned rapid advance from the Dutch-Belgian border into northern Germany, across the Maas and two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine), would have outflanked the Siegfried Line and made possible an encirclement of the Ruhr Area, Germany’s industrial heartland.

Color version here

Due to poor intelligence, bad planning, poor supplies, and personal ambitions the operation became a horrible failure. German remnants fought harder than expected. The allied forces were unable to seize the bridge over the river Rhine at Arnhem. On Monday, 25 September the 1st Airborne Division received orders to withdraw across the Rhine. By early next morning they had withdrawn 2,398 survivors. They left 300 men to surrender on the north bank, when German fire prevented their rescue. They paid a heavy toll. Of the 10,600 men of the 1st Airborne Division and other units who fought north of the Rhine, 1,485 had died and 6,414 were taken prisoner, of whom one third were wounded. It was a A Bridge Too Far. (source Wikipedia).

Saturday, 20 September 2008
Today, it was the 64th commemoration of Operation Market Garden. Large crowd and Dutch TV crews came to the Ginkel Heath, together with great amounts of old World War II army vehicles. British and Dutch forces would be dropped above the drop zone. Best of all is that some of the veterans were still able to come to the commemoration, despite their age and health.

Color version here

The young and the elder enjoyed the celebrations and the warm coffee. The veteran in the middle kept talking about the operation. On 17 September 1944, he was a young soldier who landed with a glider near Wolfheze 5 kilometers further to the east.

Color version here

Although the dropping is a spectacular part of the commemoration, the old World War II army vehicles and their owners in old army uniforms draw most of the attention.

Color version here

The photograph below seems evidence of a new way of ‘love and conquer‘, or ‘make love, not war‘, or ‘create your own army‘.

Color version here

After I made this photograph of the pin up art on her jacket, the man to the right told me a story about the name ‘Little Patches’. It is a name Americans gave to a B-17G-25-BO Flying Fortress (42-31678). She received heavy flak damage two weeks after delivery on a mission to Frankfurt, Germany. She was repaired with a lot of metal patches to the nose area, and then was named “Little Patches” by Lt. William Major. Eventually, she served three tour of duties during World War II.

Color version here

A lot of the owners of the old World War II army vehicles are members of Keep them Rolling. Their aim is to maintain military vehicles used during World War II. Some of this is really serious stuff.

Color version here

Most of these guys with their “willys” (Jeep) are wonderful characters. These leds were posted behind us. The Aussie with the hat was making gorgeously smelling ham and eggs too.

Color version here

In the end, we still commemorate the bravery and courage of the more than 10,000 soldiers who risked their lives for our freedom in Operation Market Garden. Freedom we preciously enjoy and cherish in a united Europe.

Color version here

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

Update
I originally posted the photographs in color, but changed them to black and white versions later at night. At reviewing some of the photographs, the black and white versions just had so much more impact to me. For those interested in the color versions of the published photographs, there is a link below each posted photograph.