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
Not only in the Netherlands is the memory of the mercy missions kept alive with events.
In July 1995 the Nanton Lancaster Society held an operation Manna Commemoration Day. Nanton is located in Alberta Canada. On that day a crowd of over 2000 people attended the commemoration. A large number of these people were Dutch Canadians.
The day was completed with the fly past of a Lancaster and several other planes. One aircraft dropped 180 parachuted miniature loaves of bread and candies, to the awestruck crowd.
Photos of the Lancaster bomber in the Bomber Command museum in Nanton, Alberta, Canada.
Click on the photo for a larger version
The anniversary of the mercy missions does not go by unnoticed in England. The Amsterdam branch of the Royal Air force Association has it's own yearly event. They drop cheese into the gardens of Sussexdown.
The local newspaper the West Sussex County Times recalled the event in June 1998 in the following words:
"Cheeses fell from the sky in Storrington when the annual Dutch Day celebrated 25 years on Tuesday 16, 1998. It was held at Sussexdown, the nursing home of the Royal Air Forces Association (RAFA) to commemorate operation Manna, the food-dropping by the RAF over starving Holland which took place in April 1945. Dutch Day is the way the Amsterdam Branch of the RAFA say thank you for the life saving deed."
