Personal Log: Ben Versteegt

Yesterday was blogless -- I'm sorry for that. But this log entry for today will cover what happened yesterday. Yesterday was quite interesting, actually. Hardly boring at all. Yesterday, september 18th, it was 60 years to the day that allied troops jumped out of their planes and landed on the 'Ginkelse Hei' in operation "Market Garden".

It was an impressive sight to say the least. Nine Hercules cargo/troop carrying planes flew over the heather and out of the massive flying machines jumped a total of nearly 300 people with parachutes to commemorate the event that happened sixty years ago. Of course those sixty years ago, there were a lot more than 300 people and nine planes. When you look at the camera footage taken at that time, you can clearly see that the sky is literally filled with 2000 soldiers and dozens of planes. To stand on the same place where those soldiers landed sixty years ago and to watch soldiers land there again, was, well, impressive. It was a lot easier to imagine what it must have looked like to stand on the heather and watch all those soldiers coming down. Add a number of Germans with machine guns who were bound on shooting down the helpless British soldiers who came soaring down, and the horror story is complete. Only it wasn't just a story. It really happened.

While watching the planes and the people on parachutes, Rob said something that I found to be characteristic of the situation: "This isn't just a movie, this is real," he said. Sure, we have all seen movies about the second world war (eg. "A Bridge Too Far"), but seeing something like that happen in real time and with your own eyes, and standing at the exact same place where British troops had landed sixty years ago... It just feels a lot different than just watching a movie. You simply *know* that people died at that roughly the same place where you're standing. Seeing all these people jump out of their planes gave me, at least, a better picture of what it must have been like those sixty years ago.

Also impressive was a show with four fighter planes (at least one spitfire and I don't remember the names of the other three). They are nice looking aircraft, and it was fun to see the loops, rolls and other tricks that the aircrafts performed.

Another telling quote, made by a young child when people started to jump out of the airplanes: something along the lines of: "oh, mum, I have that too, in Red Alert, that tiny people are jumping out of a plane!", referring of course to a popular computer game.

The rest of the day, I went to chat on IRC, for a while, watched an episode of "Columbo", and of course watched the two episodes of Voyager that were aired here: "Fair Haven" and "Blink of an Eye". The latter is such a great episode, in my opinion. Really original, too. If only I could write stories of mission ideas like that. ;-)

In the evening, I continued to chat of course, and I wrote a post with Velden. That's about it for yesterday. Today I read a text for language philosophy -- I only have to write something about it and then I'm finished. maybe I'll post then, or work out two mission ideas I have.

Regs,
Ben.