That confirms a spokeswoman for the Best Defense Foundation, from Washington. “We have indeed decided not to let them travel,” she reports to De Telegraaf. “We do not want to inflict the chaos at the airport in Amsterdam on these people. It’s too much for them.”
The organization also does not want to take the risk that the remaining veterans who participated in Market Garden, an allied offensive against the Germans in September 1944, contract a corona infection. “We think their health is much more important, and we don’t want to take this risk.”
The veterans served, among other things, with the 8th Airborne Division that tried to cross the bridge over the Waal near Nijmegen at the end of the Second World War. The foundation hopes that the conditions will be better in the next edition. “We hope to be there again next year,” she says optimistically.