Arnhem Quotes

“Many historians, with an ‘if only’ approach to the British defeat, have focused so much on different aspects of Operation Market Garden which went wrong that they have tended to overlook the central element. It was quite simply a very bad plan right from the start and right from the top. Every other problem stemmed from that.”
― Antony Beevor, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944

“A Dutchman stepped out of his house and asked two British Soldiers if they would like a cup of tea. A little further back along the route they had come, the bodies of British paratroopers lay 'everywhere, many of them behind trees or poles', Albert Horstman of the Arnhem underground recorded. He then saw 'a man about middle-aged, who wore a hat. This man went to every dead soldier, lifted his hat and stood in silence for a few seconds.”
― Antony Beevor

“It is only when one faces death, observed one of the men there, that one realises the great value of life.”
― Antony Beevor, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944