82nd Airborne

On the north bank of the Waal at Nijmegen, close to where the road bridge comes down on the Lent side, two grey concrete blocks stand in the open. They are scarred, weathered, and easy to walk past without a second look. They are also among the last surviving pieces of German road defence of their kind anywhere in the Netherlands. The blocks are part of a Panzerkampfwagenmauer, an anti-tank wall the Germans built across the northern approach to the bridge in 1943. Each block stands 3.4 metres high and 2.3 metres wide, with a broad base that originally sat…