Memorial Builders Emergency Bridge Dieverbrug

A memorial was placed at Dieverbrug on August 2, 2020 for the men who built an emergency bridge in the night of April 11 to 12, 1945, next to the Deeverbrogge blown up by the Germans.

The text on the memorial plaque bee de Deeverbrogge reads as follows.
"In the night of 11 to 12 April 1945, the citizens of Dwingeloo and Diever built an emergency bridge here, to replace the blown up Diever bridge.
This was done to enable the Canadian army's combat cars to cross the Drentsche Hoofdvaart to liberate the stricken Diever.
In the night of 7 to 8 April, French paratroopers had landed at Diever with the aim of disrupting the German cause behind the front and occupying bridges and crossroads in order to accelerate the advance of the Allied army units. On April 10, German troops appeared in Diever and wanted to deal with the paras. They took 11 random people hostage and when the attack on the paras failed completely and the Germans suffered losses, the 11 hostages were executed without mercy. Only one of them managed to survive by lying dead for hours.
It was rumored that the Germans would come back to finish their job. A delegation from Dievernaren asked the Canadian commander to move to Diever, but he said that this was impossible without a proper emergency bridge. It could be several days before the engineers arrived with materials to build a bridge. Citizens of Dwingeloo and Diever decided to do the job themselves and built an emergency bridge that night.
In the early morning of April 12, the first combat wagons crossed this emergency bridge, enabling the west of Drenthe and large parts of Friesland to be liberated earlier than planned. "

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