Stand at the entrance of Bisbrooke Hall on the edge of Glaston village in Rutland today, between the gateposts by the gatelodge. Look along the driveway and try to imagine how it looked almost sixty five years ago.   Perhaps not so different and little will have changed.   The trees are taller and wider now, but most will be the same trees that stood then.
Look further, towards the top of the driveway to the main entrance of the old Hall and you may see a few tourists caravans beneath the trees to the right, with perhaps children running around on the overlong grass.    Sixty-five years ago it would have been soldiers in their khaki uniforms milling about, probably complaining about their discomfort and overcrowded conditions.

Imagine now it is the morning of Monday 18^th of September 1944.   On the driveway is a small convoy of military vehicles standing nose to tail, the lead vehicle just 50 metres in front of you.  Jeeps and lorries, soldiers making last minute preparations, packing in equipment ready for the short journey to nearby Spanhoe airfield.   Some of them laughing and joking others quiet and solemn.  All of them nervous or excited, not just with a fear of what the next few hours and days may bring but also that this operation might be cancelled at the last minute, just like so many others.   They have been billeted here, in and around Glaston village for the last seven months.  Carrying out exercise after exercise, drill after drill, waiting for the chance to parachute into action in Europe, ready to play their part in the final victory of Germany and catch some of the glory.

They are the men of 4th Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers, almost two hundred of them.  A small part of the ten thousand strong 1st Airborne Division which had made its home in the villages of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.  A mixture of men from all walks of life, all parts of the country and some from further afield.  Many of them have fought together through North Africa and Italy and they are keen to see action again.

They arrived at Glaston from Italy in February 1944.   They have been spread around the village in various billets.  Some of them in Bisbrooke Hall, others at the Three Horse Shoes public house, and others in Glaston House.  They have been waiting in this small rural village in what has seemed an endless routine. All their personal items and spare equipment is now packed in their billets ready for their return from battle.  Some have managed to say their goodbyes to girlfriends and wife's. For some it will be a last goodbye.
Many will never return to this place, they will remain in a place called Oosterbeek in Holland.  They will forever lie in a beautiful cemetery, their graves tended by caring Dutch hands.

The names of those that fall will forever be recorded in Glaston, but few people who see the small plaque in the village church will know of their deeds and their time as part of the village life.  Some of those men who survived the battle, an ever dwindling number, return every year to pay homage to their comrades.  The fallen will have their names listed on the commemorative plaque in scroll, nineteen in all. Many, like 19 year old Sapper Phillip Epps from Kent and 24 year old Sapper Freddie Yates from Salford, will die in Oosterbeek.  Freddie Yates, like others of the Squadron will have no known grave.

The order is given and the vehicles move along the driveway. They pull out on to the main road.  They turn left towards the village then right, slowly down the hill into the green valley  towards Seaton.  Along the narrow twisting road down towards Harringworth, then finally up the hill to Spanhoe airfield.  The Dakota aircraft are already prepared, loaded and ready to take the men into battle.

Glaston village will be suddenly be quieter place without them.  Many of the villagers will already know the secret of where the Squadron is heading.  They will have heard yesterday the hundreds of aircraft roaring overhead and read in their newspapers of the biggest airborne operation of the war.  Operation "Market Garden" the fateful plan that will see 4th Parachute Squadron decimated and as an operational unit virtually destroyed.