Operation Berlin (Arnhem)

Operation Berlin (25–26 September 1944) was a night-time evacuation of the remnants of the beleaguered British 1st Airborne Division, trapped in German-occupied territory north of the Lower Rhine in the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden in the Second World War. The aim of the operation was to withdraw safely the remnants of the division while covered by the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade and surrounded on three sides by superior German forces and in danger of being encircled and destroyed.

The operation evacuated approximately 2,400 men of the British 1st Airborne Division, thus ending Market Garden, the Allied plan to cross the Rhine and finish the war in Europe by the end of 1944. The surviving glider pilots laid white tape through the woods, leading from the Perimeter, the grounds of the Hartenstein Hotel, to the north bank of the Neder-Rijn (Lower Rhine) where the Royal Canadian Engineers and British Royal Engineers were waiting with small boats to ferry them across the Rhine to a landing point north of Driel.