Welcome one and all to the community as an alternate to a page on the usual social channels. This is just as much about you and your interest and links and dits as it is about the very well documented events that still fires the imagination and continues to inspire people to come and see for themselves. Please do introduce yourselves here, what your interest and connection is to the place. What you want to discover, learn, contribute if anything? It is currently free to join, either by my invitation or by your referral in to the group. Those of you who join as free members will retain your free membership - BUT in return please, this community is not supposed to be just me being 'stuck on send'. As a tongue-in-cheek condition of founding free membership, your contribution to discussion, spinning dits, bringing new information to light is a very valuable resource please. It will add considerable energy to the build and will give more people more reasons to interact. And I get bored of the sound of my own voice. I will at some point flick across to a paid group for new members to join, not least because I will by then have invested a fair bit of time and effort building out the content. I'll continue to develop out the content but to do so will require more trips and more time across there, at Kew National Archives etc. I'm keen to serve the community and keep these stories alive for the enjoyment, entertainment and inspiration and marvel of many generations to follow. I'll go first with the introductions: My own connection to the battle is through my maternal Grandfather, Lt Roderick Pearson and so much of my interest and content begins with him and his unit, the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment Royal Artillery. He and his Regiment, equipped with and firing 75mm Pack Howitzer shells ,were dug in around the Old Church in Lower Oosterbeek, in the South Eastern corner of what became the Airborne defensive Perimeter. This Sector saw a lot of Jerry attention SS Panzer tank and Self Propelled Gun attacks from the direction of Arnhem along the river road, all intending to drive a wedge between the units of 1 Airborne Div and the river, to deny them a possible route of escape.

This is your community. You tell us what you're most interested to see & learn. What you've learned that inspires you, what was a revelation to you to discover? Learning and discovery should be fun. And it's a family show so the younger generations are the ones who'll be travelling to Arnhem & Oosterbeek each year. It's as much about enabling and inspiring their enthusiasm as much as feeding ours. So to that end I'm incentivising. On the right hand side of your page under the Arnhem Banner is a Leaderboard for 30 day engagement. Underneath that is a link to more Leaderboards for 7 day and all-time engagement. How do you get points for engagement? Writing posts which attract likes from other members of the community. Subject matter appropriate please. The 30-day Winner of this Competition will be announced each month, (on the 1st, so that September Winners have a slim chance to make arrangements) and all monthly winners will join me (with their plus 1 upon request) for a dedicated tour around all the major Arnhem and Oosterbeek landmarks* over the course of 2 days of each Airborne Weekend in Arnhem, every September. If the weather is good and the group is happy, we'll do it on hire bikes. It's fun that way, cycles have right of way over cars, cyclepaths are segregated and there's an additional fitness element to it, and the beers at the end of the day are all the more welcome. The experience will be followed by Dinner on the Saturday at Klein Hartenstein OR The Pancake House on Utrechtseweg depending on the preference of the winners at the time. Klein Hartenstein is a well-heeled posh restaurant directly next door to the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek; the Pancake house is considerably more relaxed. Both rated well. Good wine at the former, good beer at the latter. * Reasonable restrictions & conditions apply, but in particular: + Each winner person will only get one spot on the tour (with a plus-1 on request) and one Dinner expense covered. Your plus-1s will have to cover their Dinner expense themselves, or you will.

What the...?! Part of the attraction of this platform is that it's the engagement of the community that makes it more than just my output. For every comment you make that gets you a like, it earns you points which progresses you through a ranking system which I haven't got to re-naming yet. So if you like what I've written, or anybody else, you can promote them through the rankings. It doesn't mean anything other than rewarding interaction. No sh*t dits please ladies and gentlemen, this is a family show.

So first content to be added is in the Classroom tab at the top of the page - a 'course' added which currently is in fairly raw format of some of the aerial photography of the ground around Lower Oosterbeek. More content will be added over time - additional photography, video etc etc.

We met at the Cafe at the rear of the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek the week of the 80th Anniversary commemorations. Quick appreciation of the GROUND surrounding, and identification of the Utrechtseweg that runs West-East in front of the Hotel as Route TIGER, the main axis of advance of 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions. Hartenstein had been the HQ of [x] From there we walked along Utrechtseweg towards the Schoonord Cafe at the infamous crossroads. The present day Cafe adorned with Airborne para-phernalia stands on the site of the Schoonord Hotel, which quickly was designated as a Main Dressing Station for the wounded. The daughter of the hotel proprietor, Hendrika van der Vlist, was but a teenager but offered her time and energy in support of the Medical Officer and orderlies. Medical Officer Graeme Warrack tells a harrowing story of the frequency of the Dressing Station changing hands during the night most nights in his excellent book 'Travel by Dark' followed by his eventual capture after the evacuation on the night of the 25th Sept, subsequent escape from captivity and then a prolonged Escape & Evasion adventure with the help of the Dutch Resistance and locals until well into 1945 when he was eventually repatriated to Blighty. We then walked South 200m perhaps towards the Tafelberg Hotel, which had until 17th Sept been headquarters for [y] and then a series of operating theatres for treatment of the wounded. Medical orderlies would have to stretcher casualties from the Main Dressing Station at the site of the Schonoord cafe to the Tafelberg with no protection other than the red cross armbands. Harrowing. From there we continued south, descending from the high ground of the crossroads to 'Lower Oosterbeek'. We identified some of the 75mm pack howitzer gun positions of Troops C and D, stopping at the present-day Konzerthalle, the initial Regimental HQ of 1st Airlanding Light Regiment RA. Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel 'Sheriff' Thompson had designated this site as close as centre to the Regimental position as possible.