While cycling this route you will be confronted with great deeds, but also with the atrocities of war. You will pass through the area that the Allied pilots used as a refuge for planes that had been damaged by air fire. This area, De Peel, was nicknamed "Death Valley". On this route you can visit a museum farm where an British Field Marshal once stayed. You will also cycle past the castle that came under fire after the liberation. Along the way you will learn all about the defences of both the Dutch and the German armies.

The Netherlands

Visit Brabant Routebureau

schermafbeelding_2024-08-22_om_15.00.25.png

Cycling Liberation Route Asten

Liberation Route Asten

The Klaus and Michiels families and their many children had a common air raid shelter on the Ommels Eindje: a deep ditch between the farmhouses, with straw on the bottom and provisionally covered with branches tied together. The children sometimes used the shelter as a playhouse.There were difficult choices to be made that Thursday evening in Ommel. To flee from the approaching violence of war or not? Pastor Vogels and his housekeeper left for Vlierden, taking with them the Miracle Statue of the Virgin Mary of Ommel, Comforter in Any Emergency. Many families also left, those on the Ommels Eindje stayed where they were.Their air raid shelter now had to prove itself. In the evenings there was some quarrelling about who could sleep next to whom. ’No complaining’, said the parents, ‘purely by age.’ The families did not sleep very much that night but they were still there the following morning. The dawn of a new day in the war saw them go back into their houses. But the violence of war was now so intense that the Michiels and Klaus families had to flee back into the shelter at about quarter to eleven. Twenty of them – not all the children were at home – descended back into the ditch in an orderly way.It happened in a split second. A grenade hit one of the two thick linden trees right behind the shelter. It fell as a projectile silently downwards where the explosion caused death and destruction. The devastation was enormous, and local residents came to assist. Eight of the children were killed instantly; six were also wounded, five of them seriously. Three of them died later, eleven deaths in total… The Michiels family lost Miet (19), Thea (15), Louis (14), Hendrik (12), Nella (11) and Martien (6). After several weeks mother Helena (46) also passed away. She died from a broken heart; everyone in Ommel knew that. The Klaus family had a similar drama. &nbsp;Jan (12), Leo (11), Anna (9) and Dina (8) all lost their lives. Martien (7) and his sister Riet (5) were seriously injured, but survived.Dora Michiels – then 8 years old – remembers ‘smoke, dust, fear, crying and screaming’. Everyone who could get out was trying to. I took hold of my brother Martien’s hand, but he didn’t take hold of mine. He had just a small hole in the top of his head, but I knew he was dead.’ The other Martien, then 7 and the youngest son of the Klaus family: ‘The shelter was full of smoke and it stank. I was lying among all the dead children. I was bleeding so heavily, just like my sister Riet, that our neighbours thought we were also dead.’Help was seriously delayed by the relentless battle. The seriously injured victims were still in Ommel on that hellish night when the village went up in flames. In was only of the following day, Saturday, that they were taken to hospital, even then there were some obstacles. Dora Michiels: ”Mother and I were escorted through the front line in a black car with a white flag. There was a dead horse on the road every ten metres or so. The British soldiers had to pull the horses off the road to let us through. Many German soldiers were also lying there.”For fifty years Dora Michiels could not speak of her ordeal. Fellow sufferer Martin Klaus didn’t have the same problem, and in 1994 he managed to persuade Dora to take part in the annual Remembrance parade. Since then they have often appeared together at events associated with the war. Dora didn’t receive any expert help at the time. Martin found strength from his faith – even though the Virgin Mary of Ommel had not been watching when fate struck. He bears no grudges. ‘All soldiers, including German ones, did what they had to do. As far as I’m concerned the Germans can join in our Remembrance events. We are victims of war, and they are just the same.’&nbsp;This story was part of Brabant Remembers, a campaign for 75 years of Freedom in the province of North Brabant.

The day Mary was not watching

In 1939, the Dutch government ordered the construction of the Peel-Raam Line far outside Vesting Holland, the strategic area for the defence of the Netherlands. The 90-kilometre-long defence line ran from the Raam near Grave up to the Belgian border at Budel.An anti-tank canal, known as the Defence Canal, was dug to the north of the Eindhoven-Venlo railway line on the border of North Brabant and Limburg. Further to the south, the marshy Peel terrain, complemented by asphalt barriers and waterworks, was supposed to complicate a hostile advance. Casemates were also erected in places, such as Vossenberg near Meijel and a little further east along the Deurne Canal and Noordervaart. Measures were taken in the intervening area to flood large tracts of agricultural land.Despite all of the defensive efforts, the fortress remained unused during the German invasion in May 1940. It remained fairly quiet until late October 1944 when strong German armoured troops, supported by thousands of well-trained soldiers, began a counterattack from behind the Peel canals towards Helmond. During this 'Battle of the Canals' Meijel became the scene of fierce fighting. The 7th US Armoured Division, which was here to recuperate after the recent fighting at Overloon, was hit hard and suffered heavy losses again.The tide started turning at the beginning of November, thanks to the deployment of Scottish troops from Tilburg, that had recently been liberated. The German attack came to a halt near Asten and Deurne. They withdrew again behind the Peel canals from where they bombarded the British and Americans with grenades and mortars. They left thousands of mines behind as they retreated.In mid-November, the Allies launched an offensive to clear the entire area on the west bank of the River Meuse in Limburg of Germans. On 16 November, they entered Meijel, a ghost village. Burnt-out wrecks were everywhere, soldiers had been buried in temporary graves, and nearly all houses and farms in Meijel had been damaged or destroyed.

Vossenberg Fortress

Private David McKellar is one of the many allied soldiers who died an unknown and inglorious death for our freedom. Thanks to thorough research we can now follow the route of his battalion, the 2nd Battalion The Gordon Highlanders. The route leads from England via France and Belgium to the Netherlands where David found his final resting place.In 1944, private David McKellar is part of the 2nd Battalion The Gordon Highlanders. Before the battalion moves to the south of England in preparation for D-Day, McKellar sends a postcard depicting Hoddom Castle in Annan, Scotland, to his wife. Many postcards follow, from many countries. Not once does he mention the violence of the war or the losses that are suffered.In the early hours of 6 June 1944, the battalion exercises at Findon, in the south of England. In the clear moonlight, they see a fleet of hundreds of planes fly overhead, on course for the French coast. The invasion has begun. The battalion is still weeks away from reaching Normandy. On 26 June, at the First Battle of the Odon, the battalion experiences the war from up close for the first time. After the fighting ends on 1 July, the numbers are tallied.&nbsp; 49 Gordon Highlanders were killed, 182 were wounded, and another 33 men are missing. In the weeks that follow, the battalion advances further in the northwest of France. Here, too, there is fierce fighting with the Germans. On 25 August 1944 Paris is liberated and when the Gordon Highlanders attempt to cross the Seine west of the city, they are attacked by the Germans. The Allied losses are enormous, but the remaining soldiers do not give up and move towards Belgium where they arrive on 8 September. David McKellar sends his wife a postcard. On the back, he writes ‘A souvenir from Belgium. To my own darling wife. I love you’. Multiple postcard follow from Eindhoven, Deurne, Helmond and Tilburg, among others. In November 1944 he sends his last card from Asten.In this period General Montgomery is determined to chase away all German troops from De Peel. Under the name Operation Nutcracker, several Allied troops depart from Asten via Meijel, Beringe and Achterste Steeg in the direction of Sevenum. The area is riddled with mines and booby traps, and the Allies are attacked multiple times. On 14 November 1944, the battalion's war diary mentions a coordinate about 100 meters north of the Vossenberg in Meijel. McKellar does not survive Operation Nutcracker. On 21 November 1944, he is buried in the monastery garden in Meijel. We will never know what exactly happened to him. Was he hit by German fire or fatally injured while disarming mines? We do not know. McKellar gave his life for our freedom. He lost his life in De Peel, and his sacrifice symbolises the many allied soldiers who gave their lives to free our country.&nbsp; David McKellar's grave was transferred to the war cemetery in Venray in 1946, his final resting place.

Private David McKellar

In WW2, dozens military aircraft crashed in the Peel. The Peel Marsh was an uninhabited area. In January-March 1945, the Allies conducted many bombing raids on the Ruhr Area and Lower Rhine. On the 7th of February 1945, the eve of the Rhineland Offensive, Kleve and Goch were targeted, among others.On the 7th of February 1945, when the Peel was already liberated, two Halifax bombers with French crews crashed close together a few minutes after each other. One plane exploded in the air, the other one crashed.The remains of two crewmembers of the last plane still rest in the Peel at the site of the crash. In 1946, a memorial cross of bogwood from the Peel was erected at the site. Over fifty years, the cross disappeared after land clearance in the area. In 2002, a memorial was erected in De Groote Peel National Park for all the flight crews of WW2 who lost their lives in the Peel. The crashes of both Halifax bombers on the 7th of February 1945 are symbolic of all the plane crashes in the Peel during WW2.

Liberation Route Asten

Photos

Sites and stories along the route

The day Mary was not watching

Vossenberg Fortress

Private David McKellar

A cross in the Peel