Author: Hans Onderwater This book by Hans Onderwater is the standard work about the food drop missions over Occupied Holland with a bundle of information, photos and first hand accounts of the hunger winter and the food drop missions.COMMEMORATIONS
On 28th April 1990 more than hundred British 'Manna-veterans' arrive in Holland for the forty-fifth anniversary of the mercy missions. This time they are accompanied for the first time by 84 American colleagues from the mighty eight of the USAAF. Veterans from the other countries who had been incorporated in the RAF and had taken part in the food drops, were again present like they were in 1985. These men were Canadians, Australians New Zealanders and Poles. Their visit would be a chain of commemorations and festivity as it had been in 1985.
Prior to the commemoration of 1990 the chairman of the Food and Freedom Foundation had expressed his expectation that it would be the last big commemoration of the food drops. The commemoration in 1995, which was bigger than ever before, proved him wrong. This year another commemoration will be held. This will definitely be the last commemoration on such a big scale.
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands concluded in an open letter to the Manna veterans in 1990:
"It is now known that thousands of lives were saved thanks to operation Manna. The people of the Netherlands will therefore be most grateful for their manna delivered in their darkest hour by the men of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command and the American Eighth Air Force. And they will never forget!"
