It was also a privilege that we were meeting up with Lucinda and Michael Lord, Flt Lt Lord’s niece
and nephew, who were also there to honour his bravery on the 70 th anniversary of his death.
Lucinda Lord said a few words as did we Dambusters before she and we laid a wreath on his grave; a
small token of respect for a very brave man indeed.
If you have never visited a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery before I would urge
you to do so. They keep these memorials and cemeteries for our fallen heroes to the most fantastic
standard all across the globe which is entirely fitting as we owe our freedom today as a direct result
of the supreme sacrifice made by the men and women buried in their care.
So job done at Oosterbeek – now we had to make our way into the city of Arnhem and the ‘John
Frost Bridge’ itself.
For the weeks leading up to our ride I had been in conversation on Facebook with a Dutch biker,
Roelof who had been kind enough to set up a ride out for us all in the company of several of his local
biker friends, setting off from Oosterbeek and finishing at the John Frost Bridge at Arnhem. Even
better, Roelof had organised us secure parking within yards of the bridge itself so we could easily
walk up onto it to enjoy the spectacle of the ‘Slow March of Pipes and Drums’ across the bridge
which would mark the start of the official commemoration by the City of Arnhem. The camaraderie
of bikers never ceases to amaze me!
We followed Roelof initially out to Landing Zone S, the site of Flt Lt Lord’s desperate sacrifice where
we met up with more local bikers before heading in the general direction of Arnhem but with two
fascinating stop offs on the way into the city. The first was at the huge bunker which in 1944 had
been the centre of German Night Fighter operations and control at Deelen. It was huge, forbidding
concrete structure with walls fully ten feet thick which had proved so difficult to destroy after the
war that the Dutch government had given up the task and now used the building as an archive for
their own papers much like our own National Archive at Kew!