1/2 The emblem of the Highland Division along the canal in Drunen (photo: Willem-Jan Joachems).
In more and more places in Brabant, bicycle routes have been built in recent years that follow the route of the liberators. They take all kinds of historical places. From Market Garden at Son and Death Valley in the Peel to the Battle of the Scheldt near Woensdrecht, De Polen in Breda and Kamp Vught. But there were still some important links in that big story from the Second World War. On this Liberation Day, Brabant received six cycling routes in one go. Including one that leads past the place where the largest war crime was committed in our province.
“It has to be descended for me that the dream has been released after ten years,” says military historian Jack Didden from Drunen. He was one of the initiators of this cycle route. Together with Heemkundekring Onsenoort and the municipality of Heusden, he set this up. The route takes cyclists past historic places in the region that had a hard time during the liberation period of autumn 1944.
Mad house
‘The Battle for the Canals’. That is how the British also call this phase in the liberation of Brabant. Such as the spectacular crossing that made Scottish troops. They had been ordered to clean up a tough German Steunpunt that blocked the large Allied outbreak from Den Bosch and Tilburg. The enemy had entrenched itself behind the drainage channel, near Drunen.
Giersbergen in the Loonse and Drunense Duinen was the allied collection point for the big attack. He had as a code name Guy Fawkes and had to be performed by the 51st Scottish Highland Division. Under coverage of the forest area, around 9000 soldiers came together, with many vehicles.
“It was a madhouse. Those farmers looked forward to their eyes,” Jack Didden tells a large group that met in Giersbergen on this 5 May for the festive start of the route. “There were hundreds of guns here in the dunes and fifty tanks more than 80 years ago.”
Images of the crossing of the canals at Boxtel and Drunen passed the world in the cinema news at the beginning of November 1944.
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The Scottish crossing started at the beginning of November 1944 with a rain of allied grenades on the German positions in Drunen and Vlijmen. The Scots used flame throwers to burn everything and everyone in the German trenches alive if necessary. They then crossed the channel with boats.
A plaque was unveiled on one of the crossing places on Monday. It was under the flag with the emblem of the Highland Division. Mayor Willemijn van Hees van Heusden tried to imagine what the soldiers must have felt at the time. “We follow their path so that it doesn’t get lost. This is a tangible tribute,” said Van Hees.
War crime
Cyclists encounter all kinds of stories along the way about the military events at the front and about the hair -raising suffering among the population. The town of Heusden became the target of a German war crime just before the liberation. Recriting German troops blew up the town hall. And that while they knew that hundreds of inhabitants were trying to find a safe place in the cellars.
The basement collapsed due to the powerful explosion. 134 people were killed. The perpetrators have never been punished. ‘An outright mass murder’, it says if you scan the QR code or read the bicycle brochure.
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A cycle route was not only launched on Monday in the municipality of Heusden. Waalwijk also has one. And Monday was also the launch of two other cycling routes, with accompanying ceremonies in Liempde and Wijbosch. There the Scottish troops came from and from there they advanced to the Maas.
Timberwolves
Due to 80 years of liberation, new cycling routes have also been worked on in the west of Brabant. Two ‘American’ cycling routes were also presented there on Monday. It was the American 104th division that freed villages as eight times, Zundert, Oudenbosch, Standdaarbuiten and Zevenbergen. The liberators were nicknamed Timberwolves.
At least nine large Brabant bicycle routes around the liberation already existed. They can be obtained on paper in folder form or in a real book but also digitally.
‘History tangible’
Heritage organization Brabant reminds the network of that network of cycling routes. Director Caroline Belt is happy with the floor and coherence that is more and more. It believes it is important that this history is now ‘tangible, recognizable and meaningfully passed on to subsequent generations’
The Brabant cycling routes are part of Liberation Route Europe. That is a network with more than 10,000 kilometers of cycling and walking routes throughout Europe. That has been around since 2008. There are still some ‘white spots’ in Brabant. For example, there is no cycle route from the liberators of Tilburg. Those were also Scots but then of a completely different division. And as far as we know, Den Bosch also has no cycle route on the liberators from Wales.
