Hero veteran Geoff Roberts has issued an SOS in the hope his chums can return to the scene of their finest hour.
The warrior was just 19 and a private in the 7th Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers as part of a crack team sent to help to liberate Nazi-held Netherlands during the Second World War.
On September 17, 1944, he flew alongside two pilots and 28 troops in a 30-seater Horsa glider towed by an RAF plane.
Geoff was one of 765 men from the battalion dropped on to the Continent but by the end of the Battle of Arnhem 112 were dead, 76 evacuated back to Britain and 577 reported missing.
During the battle some 35,000 Allies fought the Germans for nine long days in one of the bloodiest fighting of the war. It resulted in the award of five Victoria Crosses, four of them posthumous, and is immortalised in the 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far directed by Richard Attenborough.
The film depicts Operation Market Garden, the doomed Allied operation, and features an all-star cast including Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, , Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, and Robert Redford.
The Battle of Arnhem in 1944 was immortalised in the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far (Image: Philip Coburn)
Each year on May 4, the Netherlands observes a Day of Remembrance, followed by a national celebration, where the Dutch express their gratitude to those who helped secure their freedom.
This year will be especially poignant and Geoff wants to share it with a dwindling band of brothers.
He said: “I think it’s very important in these current times that we remember those who gave their lives for our freedom, and peace in Europe. We should never forget.”
Geoff was captured by a German officer and told in perfect English: “For you the war is over”. He was then sent to the POW camp Stalag 12 A and then Stalag IV-C where he was put to work in coal mines.
In 2019, at events to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, King Charles, then Prince of Wales, asked the hero soldier: “Did they take you somewhere ghastly?” He said: “I told him, ‘Yes, down a bloody coal mine’.”
The epic A Bridge Too Far depicts Operation Market Garden, the doomed WWII operation in Holland (Image: File)
In May Geoff, now 99, will return to Holland to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation and take centre stage in events being held to commemorate five-long years of occupation.
Since 2012 The Taxi Charity for Military Veterans has been proudly taking veterans from London to Wageningen, where they pay their respects to fallen comrades, and take part in Liberation Day celebrations as guests of honour in a grand military parade.
This year the charity is offering those who served in the Netherlands during the Second World War the opportunity to join a fully-funded, five-day trip back to the country they helped free and where they are still feted as heroes, despite its ultimate failure.
And Geoff wants as many of his mates alongside him as possible.
He said: “We weren’t sure what sort of reception we would get because we dropped out of the sky and the place was wrecked within a week.
“We failed, and they paid a heavy price for us trying to liberate them, but they’re still greeting us now and thanking us, after all this time.”
* If you are a Second World War veteran who served in the Netherlands and would like a place on this extraordinary trip email