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.Operation Faust
At the meeting in Achterveld on April 30 both sides decided that the transport by air alone would not suffice. A second operation, codenamed Faust, would also be launched. Two hundred allied trucks from the 21st Army Group would bring food to Rhenen, starting May 2nd. Rhenen was at that moment a city on the German side of the frontline. In Rhenen the trucks would go over in the hands of Dutch truck drivers, who would take the food further into occupied Holland. According to the plan, 1000 tons of food would be transported daily by the Wageningen - Rhenen road.
Where did all this food come from? Did the Allies have huge supplies directly behind their lines? To answer this question we have to go back to October 1944. The southern part of the Netherlands had recently been liberated and the frontline had stabilized when the airborne operation Market Garden had failed. The liberation of the south of the Netherlands had faced the Allies with some logistic problems. The port of Antwerp was still not used because the Germans still held Walcheren.
Map of Holland. The food came from food dumps in Oss and Den Bosch and was transported to Rhenen through Wageningen.
