Historic Replicas

…Ben was a born romantic, though, and wanted to be a sailor.  He was enrolled in school for two years, but Josiah, who had seventeen children, could not afford to keep him there any longer and brought him home to work in the shop at age ten- back when colonial costumes were real they hadn’t heard of child labor laws!  Amazingly, that was the end of Franklin’s formal education; from then on, he educated himself through reading and debates with friends.  At 12, Ben became an apprentice in his brother James’ printing shop, and developed a lifelong passion for the written word.  James had started a newspaper, and while Ben longed to express himself in print, he knew his brother would agree.  So Ben began writing letters in the persona of a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogood.  In time, he’d written a series of witty and widely read essays on colonial american life, ridiculing everything from drunken locals to the elitists at nearby Harvard.  James discovered the truth, though, and he was so angry Ben fled his apprenticeship to seek a new start in Philadelphia.

The colonial replicas on our site got me thinking about one of my favorite historical figures, Boston’s own Benjamin Franklin.  Of all the great thinkers and Patriots who helped bring about the birth of our nation, Benjamin Franklin may have been the most accomplished.  Scientist, inventor, musician, philosopher, and politician, Franklin was the embodiment of a renaissance man, and did much to shape American values.  He was born in Boston on January 17th, 1706 (living under British rule until he was 71!), the son of Josiah Franklin, a maker of candles and soap.  Josiah wanted Franklin to study theology and become a clergyman. 

The last chapter of this unknown battle..

… the lightly armed British 1^st Airborne Division was completely unprepared to fight against tanks. To make matters worse, only half of the German paratroopers were able to land the first day, and only half of those could advance on the bridge, while the rest had to defend the drop zones for the second wave.  When the reinforcements finally arrived, they were heavily delayed by the Panzer.   Finally, their radios failed completely, making it impossible for Allied bombers to attack the tanks from above.  Like the Alamo, the 1st Airborne would be immortalized as a classic underdog of military history.  Of 10,000 troops, only 740 arrived in Arnhem.  For four days, they used their WWII guns against overwhelming opposition, and while they were eventually overwhelmed and taken prisoner, their courage is legendary.

Things were looking good for the Allie Powers when Market Garden began. In Southern Holland, the 101st Airborne Division had captured four of five bridges (the German army blew up the fifth one at Son), and on the ground, the 30th Corps was on its way.  Within hours, however, the tide began to turn. While Nazi forces in Holland were fractured and disorganized, they were unexpectedly reinforced by over 65,000 troops from the retreating 15th Army, and by the arrival of the 2nd Panzer Corps, an elite tank force that proved to be the deciding factor of the battle.  Allied aerial reconnaissance had shown evidence of the tanks, but was dismissed by the high command.  Wilhelm Bittrich, the shrewd leader of the Panzer Corps, had ordered his troops to maintain strong defensive positions on the roads leading to Arnhem, and the lightly armed British 1st Airborne Division was completely unprepared to fight against tanks. 

The Vikings were an infamous force that invaded and pillaged every village and town that they set foot in.  And they are famous for their battle skills as well.  They have an array of weapons that they use to fight with other soldiers or just scare the townspeople. The Viking battle axe is one of the widely used weapons then.

Now, there are some people who enjoy collecting Viking battle axes.  They are just replicas of original pieces but they look just as good as the real thing.  These axe

Operation Market Garden began as scheduled on September 17th, 1944.  The airborne force consisted of the American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions and the British 1st airborne division, and was later supplemented by the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade.  Thousands of troops dropped into the sky over Holland and hurried towards their targets.  The Americans had to secure a series of bridges along highway 69, clearing the way for the British 30th Corps on the ground to proceed to the Dutch city of Arnhem on the Rhine River.  Arnhem was on the border with Germany and considered an ideal staging area for the final Allied advance into Germany.  The British paratroopers had the extremely dangerous task of eliminating the WWII German helmet troops in Arnhem and holding out against a siege, WWII guns blazing, until the ground forces could arrive.   The plan was risky; success depended on the ground forces’ ability to make their way swiftly through Holland and relieve the valiant airborne troops.  American Field Marshall Montgomery claimed he could reach Arnhem by land in two days, and British General Browning famously replied that while his paratroopers could hold out four, he believed they might have gone “a bridge too far.”   As it turned out, he was all too right.  In a classic intelligence blunder, the Allies had drastically underestimated the number of German troops in the area, and Operation Market Garden would ultimately prove impossible. 

After perusing the World War II replicas websites, and watching the epic A Bridge Too Far, I decided to take a closer look at the monumental, yet at times overlooked Operation Market Garden.  In the fall of 1944, the Germans had suffered a string of defeats at Normandy on D-Day and across France that summer, retreating to Eastern France towards the German border.  American General and future President Dwight Eisenhower felt the time was right to launch a full-scale invasion of Northern Germany, laying waste to the region’s industrial centers before pushing on to Berlin.  The most effective way was to go through German-occupied Holland and cross the Rhine, a river on German-Dutch border.  The Allies had a mighty task ahead of them; they had to control Holland’s Highway 69 (tragically nicknamed “Hell’s Highway” in the aftermath), and three major bridges along the route, to move troops and equipment.  The bridges were the tricky part, since the Germans could blow them up if they figured out what was going on, and halt the invasion for weeks.  Speed and surprise were essential, and the Allied generals reasoned that paratroopers were the answer. Market Garden was born, a joint collaboration of American, British, Polish, and Canadian troops that poured into Holland by land and air.  The WWII paratroopers are the really amazing part; over 34,600 men were dropped into enemy territory, the largest airborne offensive in human history.  The stage was set for one of the greatest battles ever fought.