Military Museums - Holland

JoeArthur

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I wrote an article for Pete and his View From the Trenches. It was on military mueums that I had visited in 2018.

He edited it slightly (no big deal) and I would like to throw it out to the wisdom of crowds. Did I miss anything? Here is the section on Holland:

Holland:

The Dutch cavalry museum was entertaining:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Cavalry_Museum

This is on a military base and you have to go through the checkpoint to get to it. Make sure that you have your passport for that. It was the cleanest museum I have ever seen – I’m guessing that might be the result of being on a military base.

It was entertaining not so much because of the exhibits but due to the guide, Erwin. He was a retired Lieutenant Colonel. At their retirement dinners apparently what happens is someone from the museum comes up to you and asks if you would be interested in being a guide. He had said yes.

He had some good stories. One was trying to get ammo to the Dutch Special Forces in Afghanistan. The Dutch helicopters could only carry 1.5 kg of ammo as this was a “police action”. According to him us Brits did them a favour and loaded up one of our helicopters.

He also stated that at that moment the Dutch had no tanks. Their 18 Leopards had been sent back to Germany to be upgraded. They are leased from the Germans – you have to hope that they got a good deal.

Another piece of information was that to avoid the politicians cutting their numbers / budget the Dutch army had effectively become part of the German army. Everyone down to NCO’s had to speak German. If the politicians wanted to cut back and spend the money on something else they were told by the Dutch generals “sorry, you’ll have to go and talk to the Germans”. That takes so long the generals hope that the politicians go and find an easier target.

He had visited England recently and thought we were a poor country – too many bad teeth and charity shops. I had to explain that charity shops paid no rates (property tax) and were therefore used by landlords to fill empty shops. I had no explanation for the bad teeth.

The collection is housed in two buildings. The first houses the following:
  • First Floor, uniforms, paintings, silverware and an overview of the 400 year history of the Dutch cavalry.​
  • Second Floor, the period of horses in the cavalry.​
  • Third Floor, the period of wheeled and tracked vehicles in the cavalry. There is also a display devoted to the expedition to the Dutch East Indies (for Order and Peace) 1946 till 1950. Well, that is what the Dutch called it. I suspect that the people of Indonesia have another name for it. It represents the biggest military operation ever performed by Dutch forces (about 150,000 men).​
This is Holland so by wheeled vehicles think bicycles. Some of the hussars at the time of the First World War were on motorcycles. They all still wore their spurs as part of their uniform.

Prior to WWII apart from these hussars on motorcycles there were two squadrons of armoured cars. These are the armoured cars that appear in the scenario SP 253 “De Zwarte Duivels”. The M36 or M38 “Landsverk” Swedish armoured car that had a forward and reverse driving position.

The second building (which was built to house the two squadrons Landsverk) displays the AFV’s. The most rare being one Landsverk armoured car. This was purchased from the Irish armed forces and was never used in Holland. There are other AFV’s in the grounds around the building which Erwin described as “ornaments”. Nothing of any note.

The National Military Museum:

A new building constructed on an old airfield in Soesterberg. Talking to a local it had been a US air base that was now not used. A lot of the local girls had married US personnel and the area now contained a lot of Americans married to Dutch women.

https://www.nmm.nl/en/

The museum would not take credit cards and I was low on cash euros so I decided to look before I bought. I could look because the building was one big glass cube. I was glad I did. Most of the stuff was modern. There was one of those motorcycles with sidecar plus machine gun but that was all I could see of interest. I decided to save my money and walk around the base instead.

I was glad I did. In one area they had constructed a big sand pit and they provided rides on a US WWII half-track around it. I spent 5 euros on that. It was slow (the engine red lined at 2,200 rpm), appeared hard to steer, but the torque. You felt it could pull down a tree with ease.

Worth going just for that ride.

The Airborne Museum “Hartenstein”:

Located in Oosterbeek and dealing solely with the battle of Arnhem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_Museum_%27Hartenstein%27

A bit of a disappointment. It had films / uniforms / weapons / medals / standards and really crappy dioramas. The one thing I learnt from the displays was that the British officers, in revenge for his criticism of the operation, tried to blame the Polish general Stanisław Sosabowski for the failure of the Arnhem operation.

From Wikipedia:


“After the battle, on 5 October 1944, Sosabowski received a letter from Field Marshal Montgomery describing the Polish soldiers as having fought bravely and offering awards to ten of his soldiers. However, on 14 October 1944, Montgomery wrote another letter, this time to the British commanders, in which he scapegoated Sosabowski for the failure of Market Garden. Sosabowski was accused of criticizing Montgomery, and the Polish General Staff was forced to remove him as the commanding officer of his brigade on 27 December 1944. “

Playing politics in the army – who knew?

A German paratrooper was having a look around. He was on NATO manoeuvres at the nearby Dutch paratrooper base in Schaarsbergen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Airmobile_Brigade_(Netherlands)

It did have a nice cafe.

The Overloon War Museum:

It was on the way back to the UK, it’s a fantastic museum, so I went again.


What I love about the place is that because it is has nothing to do with any Government you get the truth, not Government propaganda. If you think there is no propaganda try walking round the Imperial War Museum in London.

For instance one of the displays highlighted the fact that the German soldiers were banned from the red light district in Amsterdam – that small area could not cope with an invasion by the German Army. Brothels were set up in outlying areas and chits issued to the men. The display had one such chit. Upon visiting the brothel the woman signed the chit to cancel it. Those women were slaves:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_military_brothels_in_World_War_II

I have never seen that in any other military museum.

It had recently added interactive displays on how the Netherlands was effected by the war. It showed one Dutch bloke being interviewed who had served in the SS for six weeks in Russia. He was sentenced to death after the war, which was then reduced to 20 years in jail as he had committed no war crimes. Then he was pardoned. He was an unrepentant Nazi till his death. I have not seen anything like that anywhere else either.

The museum was started by a schoolteacher and is now a charity. It has had a big bequest from a collector which is why the current collection is so good. It is not just combat stuff but the whole paraphernalia that an army drags round - mobile workshops, tank recovery equipment, generators, mobile showers, details of the “red ball express” system that the US used to supply its troops:


It also has an extensive collection of ammunition and mines. Whilst I was there the owner of the ammunition collection was carrying an 88 round to a Sherman that had its turret almost blown off by such a round.

Being nosy I asked what was going on and he was showing a mine clearance man round. He was there to take copies of the stuff for demonstration purposes. A lot of this stuff is still in the ground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest


so people need to be trained in how to defuse it.

A gem of a museum.
 
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