I found this from The Daily Telegraph..................
Final leap to honor Arnhem’s fallen
For his family it was the most fitting way to lay him to rest, allowing him “one last jump” in the process.
On Saturday Cpl William Bloys’s ashes were scattered over the Dutch heathland on which he landed 70 years ago, as he took part in what became one of history’s best-known airborne assaults.
His remains were dispersed by one of around 200 British paratroopers jumping onto the fields near Arnhem used by troops taking part in Operation Market Garden in September 1944. Cpl Bloys, who lied about his age to join the Essex Regiment at the age of 16, served with the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment during the operation.
His was the only battalion that succeeded in reaching the road bridge at Arnhem, which they had been ordered to capture to allow Allied troops to cross the Rhine. The battalion was led by Lt Col John Frost, whose character was played by Anthony Hopkins in the Richard Attenborough film A Bridge Too Far, which was based on the battle. However, having been unable to defend the bridge, Cpl Bloys was among many paratroopers captured by the SS and taken to a prisoner of war camp in Germany.
He managed to escape but was captured once again. He then managed to escape for a second time with another soldier and the pair stole a car in which they managed to make it to American lines.
He last visited Arnhem in 2004 with his wife Doreen, who died six years later. Before his own death in February he described how the horrors of the fighting at Arnhem were still “fresh in my mind”. “You can never really get it across to people about the horrors of battle. You are speaking to people one minute and then two minutes afterwards their life is finished. It was a terrible battle and was not well planned.”
On Saturday dozens of veterans of the assault, most of them in their nineties and either wheelchair bound or walking with the aid of sticks, watched as around 500 Allied troops jumped out of planes to commemorate the seven-decade anniversary of the Second World War operation. Cpl Bloys was one of a number of veterans whose ashes were scattered by British paratroopers landing on Ginkel Heath, in a show of respect and camaraderie towards their predecessors.
This weekend his daughter-in-law Rita, who watched the jump with her husband Ian, among a crowd of around 40,000 people said the gesture was first suggested by a paratrooper who attended Cpl Bloys’s funeral in March. Cpl Bloys had died a month earlier aged 90. Mrs Bloys, 65, said: “It is just an unofficial thing that they offered to do for us. My father-in-law was very fond of the area. In his later years he said he felt that the fighting had destroyed the area, but he came back here often.
“We just thought it would be fitting to leave a bit of him here. It seems like the final thing we can do for him. We are very emotional.”
Mr Bloys, 66, a former electrician for Ford from Hornchurch in Essex, said before the jump: “He never expressed a wish for what he wanted done with his ashes. But especially in the early days he used to come back here. The last time was on the sixtieth anniversary in 2004. He appreciated the way the Dutch people treated him. He was there for a few days and all the young children were asking for his autograph. It was like being a movie star.
“He was in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and then Arnhem but Arnhem was the one he mentioned the most. “We want to do the right thing by him. This will be his last jump - I think he would appreciate that.” Operation Market Garden saw more than 40,000 British, US, Canadian and Polish troops dropped behind the German lines at Arnhem in September 1944.
