Groesbeek area 17th/18th September 1944

General Gavin writing after the fighting said the following about the night of 17th/18th September that he: 'heard the plaintive wail of a locomotive whistle I first heard it some distance away and very quickly, it came near the command post. I went to the operations centre. I asked a member of the staff to call the 505th in Groesbeek.
They told us that the train came right through the town and went on towards Nijmegen. They had not anticipated it and had not attmepted to stop it. It got through to Germany. When another train tried to run through the divisional area an hour or so later, the locomotive was hit by a bazooka round, which stopped it. Germans came bowling off the train in all directions, and we were rounding them up most of the next day.'

I had always believed the Dutch railways were on strike from the 17th September certainly in the Arnhem area. so was the movements of these two trains 'specials' crewed perhaps by Germans? Any thoughts anyone?

 

read that two, will check my german sources out for info...

 

G'day

There was an ammunition dump in the groesbeek forrest so think thy tried to get out some ammo. It was under military control so would have German crew. The line is still present today but is not in use, has also I thought a different width of the tracks. This is out of the head but will look in to it later on.

Popski

 

The Dutch railroad workers were indeed on strike, but that didnt mean there were no trains going around the country, they just werent manned by the Dutch, except a few collaborators perhaps.
Because of the strike all civilian transport came to an halt, including the transport of food and goods.
Many military transports were also done by the Dutch railroad but this then stopped as well.
This made things much harder for the Germans but they did manage te make some trains run.