Annual Airborne Walk

This past weekend was the annual Airborne March, the world's largest one day march. These remembrance marches are held every year on the first Saturday in September at the village of Oosterbeek (near Arnhem) in The Netherlands.

With distances of 10, 15, 25 and 40 kilometres, it is an "all-age"-march.

There are British and Polish military veterans and participants from 15 different countries.
The routes are laid out through the several villages of the municipality of Renkum in the Netherlands, along the battlefields and drop zones of the operation Market Garden of September 1944.

With so many thousands of people of all ages participating, it is hardly a march except for the military groups who come in all their gear, from young boy-scout aged to some that are quite old. For the majority of us it is more of a shuffle at first and then a stroll and finally the strings of walkers spreads out and it becomes a good walk.

In years past, many veterans of this campaign would come and participate but there aren't very many of them left now and they watch from the sidelines.



The whole event is quite a site. This year there were 32,000 people who participated. It is amazing to see endless lines of people - even very young children walking the 10K. There are also longer walks but I think the majority of the people just do the 10K.


We are blessed to have some wonderful ward members who help make this a great event each year. The Stekkinger family has participated in the walk for many, many years. About a week before the walk, the father, Glen, usually gives a fireside that teaches about the war here . (We weren't able to attend this year because we were in Paris.) Then their daughter, Lydia, is the Walk coordinator for our ward. She makes sure we are all registered and then researches names of people who are buried at the cemetery. Just before we start the walk, she gives each of us a name and a rose to put at the headstone.

This year, there were 10 ward members who participated: Lydia Stekkinger, Joey Stekkinger, Doug and Mickey Vermillion, Tico and Mei Martes, Elder Maurer, Elder Ertelt and Dennis and me. It was a nice size group.
At the meeting point. They moved the tank this year so "meeting" was a little more of a challenge. Thank heavens for cell phones. Tico and Mei aren't here yet.

Off we go. You can tell it is the beginning of the walk - everyone still has big smiles on their faces.

Bagpipers playing at the tomb of the unknown soldiers. There are stands along the walk that sell flowers so you can lay them here or other graves throughout the cemetery.


This church has bullet pit marks all over it. It kept some of the troops safe and miraculously was not destroyed by bombs as most of the churches in the area were.


There were 32 bands that were either along the side of the route or marching along with the walkers so that kept things fun.



People from the town sit out in their yards and watch the "people parade".

It had predicted rain all week but we had a perfect walk with only rain right at the very end.

It was a nice day and we were all stiff and sore when we got done but were glad that we had been able to participate. We even got medals!