Detail of the British & Candian Engineers Memorial
This line drawing on black marble, which is part of the Evacuation Memorial on the south bank of the Rhine below Arnhem, captures the moment that men of the 1st AB Division step off the Oosterbeek side of the river into the fragile canvas boats waiting to take them to safety. General Horrocks who commanded XXX Corps, the land force tasked with getting to Arnhem in Operation Market Garden, remembered - that night [25/26 September 1944] under a Corps artillery barrage, 2, 323 exhausted Airborne troops got back across the river into our lines. Some of them were naked, swimming across, some in rafts, some in boats. They had gone in 10, 000 strong 9 days before. I shall never forget that night. It poured and it poured with rain and it seemed to me that even the Gods were weeping at this sorry end to a gallant enterprise
