Smiling Bridge Too Far warrior Geoff Roberts toasts his 100th birthday, days after his date at Buckingham Palace. Family and friends threw a birthday bash for the champagne-swigging World War 2 hero who wore his MBE with pride.
In September 1944, Geoff was 19 and a private in the 7th Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers during the ferocious Battle of Arnhem. He saw close pals slain and, as one of the last men from the fabled fight still standing, has kept a promise to return to Holland every year to pay his respects. On Saturday, more than 100 guests gave him a standing ovation as he was feted for a lifetime of service with a glittering birthday bash near his home in Peterborough, Cambs.
Dick Goodwin, Vice President of The Taxi Charity for Military Veterans with whom the veteran returns to Holland each year, said: “Geoff is treated like royalty by the Dutch, and rightly so. He’s a hero to them.”
Born in the Chelsea Barracks in 1925, Geoff joined the Army in 1942.
During the battle, more than 8,000 British soldiers were killed, missing or taken prisoner.
Some 35,000 Allies valiantly fought the Germans for nine days in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. It resulted in the award of five Victoria Crosses, four of them posthumous, and is immortalised in the 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far directed by Richard Attenborough.
The film depicts doomed Operation Market Garden in which the Allies failed to secure a bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem and features an all-star cast including Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, and Robert Redford.
Geoff was captured by a German officer and told in perfect English: “For you the war is over”. He was then held as a prisoner of war and put to work as a slave in coal mines.
Each year, the indefatigable centenarian returns to lead a parade through Wageningen, the city where the German surrender was signed, to mark the May 5 anniversary of Dutch liberation. He also lays a wreath at the Airborne War Cemetery in Oosterbeek on behalf of his old regiment and fallen pals.
Geoff, born in the Chelsea Barracks in 1925 and who joined the Army in 1942, received his gong from Princess Anne for services to the commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem and charity.
He said: “We weren’t sure what sort of reception we would get because we dropped out of the sky and the place was wrecked within a week. We failed, and they paid a heavy price for us trying to liberate them, but they’re still greeting us now and thanking us, after all this time.”
Frans Ammerlaan, of the Market Garden Foundation Arnhem, said: “Geoff’s honour is so very well deserved as recognition of all the years he has travelled to the Netherlands to visit schools and talk with children, attend burials of former comrades, and talk about his experiences during the Battle of Arnhem. He is very much loved in the area, which he calls his second home.”
Geoff’s daughter Claire Welburn said: “He says the heroes are the ones lying in the cemetery and he’s just one of the lucky ones.”
