Scouts Holland Trip

We went on 5th to the 7th September. There were 27 of us which included 6 leaders and 21 Scouts.
 
We travelled by coach and ferry and arrived in Arnhem about 9.30 on the Friday night and we stayed at the Stayokay Hostel in Oosterbeek. Saturday we did the 10 km march along with over 32,000 other people.

The march is in memory of the soldiers that died in Operation Market Garden in the 2nd World War (the film "A Bridge too Far" was based on this). We were the only British Scouts taking part in the march. It is the largest European march in aid of the 2nd World War.

People from all over the world came to Oosterbeek just to do this march which included veterans from the war, different bands played through the march. When we finished the march we went to a building called The White House (this is where the allied forces surrendered in the war) where we invested a cub up to Scouts in Dutch and we presented the medals that were given to us for doing the march.

Out of the 32,000 people that took part, Kent Scouts won 1st prize for our spontaneous enthusiasm.
 
On the Sunday we went to the cemetery which is dedicated to the war soldiers where we laid a commemorative reef on behalf of our Scout troops in memory of the dead soldiers. We all held a minutes silence and then looked round the graves. The scouts were really moved by this and the fact that some of them did not have names and how young some of them were.
 
We then made the long journey back and arrived back to Lower Halstow about 7.30 that evening.
 
This whole event was organised by myself (1st Lower Halstow Scouts) and David May from 31st Gravesend Scouts.

We were helped by Liz Adams, Sean Mcdonough, Godfrey Kelsey-Jansen (1st Lower Halstow) and Andrew Honey. 

Dave Giles