Kat 🟩⬜️🟪 Women Matter ♀️

On the eve of Remembrance Day, the Woman of the Day is Kate ter Horst (1906-1992), the Angel of Arnhem, who provided refuge to over 250 wounded British paratroopers in her home for eight days non-stop during the Battle of Arnhem in 1944, finding them water while her home was under fire and comforting them as they lay dying. Kate, her husband and five children lived in the rectory house next to the Old Church in Oosterbeek just outside Arnhem. She was overjoyed when she saw British paratroopers landing near her home on 17 September 1944. “Crazy with joy, we walk through the garden and climb on the roof so we can see more and understand what is happening. We can hardly believe it. Will it really be true? Is this the long awaited end of our grief that now falls from the sky? Does this now mean freedom?” German resistance was far greater than expected and the paratroopers were driven back to the Old Church. The casualty rate was high. A captain asked Kate if they could use the rectory house as a first aid post for the wounded soldiers. Her husband was out with the British in the forests, acting as a guide, and Kate had her children to care for, but she agreed. More than 250 soldiers were brought to her home. “Everywhere, the injured - the dining room, the study and garden room, the transverse corridor, even under the stairs and in the toilet they are. There is no corner left. Oh, if only I could be a hostess. If only I could give them a hospitable bed and at least fresh water…At the same time, a hurricane of explosions burst out over us. Shake the walls. I hear crackling, the house across the street is ablaze. Phosphorus, flashes through my head. The injured lie back, without a complaint, helpless. Now leave them alone? But I have to go downstairs: five children are longing for me right now, trusting that I will be unharmed to protect them.” When the water supply was disrupted, Kate used the boiler and the toilet cistern to give the men precious drops of water. Needs must. She kept an English Bible in the house and read Psalm 91 to the soldiers who were dying. Together, they said the Lord's Prayer. A temporary cemetery was set up in the garden, and 57 soldiers were buried during the fighting. General Frank King later wrote: “I noticed that an entire room was reviving when she came in. A seriously wounded soldier summarised it before he died. After Kate ter Horst talked to him for a moment, he said, ‘She is fantastic. She’s just like my mum.’” After the Battle of Arnhem, the Ter Horsts were evacuated along with the other residents of Oosterbeek, but they returned after the liberation. Their eldest son, Pieter, was the last victim of the Battle of Arnhem. He was killed in November 1947 when he stepped on an anti-tank mine on the floodplains behind their house. In 1980, Kate and her husband were appointed Honorary Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for their valour and heroism. Brave, brave woman.