Many of the allied forces ended up in various parts of the Veluwe behind enemy lines due to the failure of Operation Market Garden. These soldiers wanted to rejoin their troops on the other side of the Rhine as quickly as possible and were often helped by the local population and members of the resistance in these efforts. ‘Old Putten’ resistance group was active in the area around Elburg.
Rejoining
There was a resistance movement in Elburg called the ‘Olde Putten’, named after the manor house that belonged to the Rambonnet family. The group carried out sabotage and distributed weapons. After the failure of Operation Market Garden in September 1944, members of the ‘Olde Putten’ took British soldiers into hiding and helped them escape to the south of The Netherlands, which had already been liberated. During Operation Pegasus 1, on 22nd October 1944, 149 Brits escaped across the River Rhine to the south of The Netherlands. In November 1944, there was a second attempt: twenty soldiers gathered at the Van Norel farm in Doornspijk to wait for a lorry to take them to Lunteren, but the lorry never arrived. The next evening, they moved to the Olde Putten manor and borrowed a car that belonged to the Organisation Todt (a Third Reich civil and military engineering group). They took it to the Westenrode farm south of the road that went from Ede to Otterlo where they hoped to join the others. But they jumped out of the car too early, and missed their rendezvous. When they heard shooting in the distance, they knew the operation had failed. The group hid and waited to be taken to safety by the resistance. Some of them managed to reach the south of The Netherlands a month later via the Biesbosch National Park.
