After D-Day in june 1944 the allied forces liberated vast sections of France and Belgium before arriving in the most southern part of Limburg on 12 September 1944. Only 2 days later the first city in the Dutch province was liberated.
After the liberation of Maastricht, the whole south of the province was quite quickly liberated as well. In the meantime parts of some other Dutch provinces were liberated and operation market garden took place in the East part of the country. The North-West of the Netherlands, Holland, was still occupied by Nazi-Germany.
The liberation of Limburg was halted in the fall of 1944 with the south and west part of the province already liberated. Nazi Germany dug in and slowed the allied forces down in an attempt to prevent the allies from crossing the border to Germany.
The fact that many allied troops were redirected to the battle of the bulge in the Belgium Ardennes didn’t help but in January 1945 operation Blackcock started, in an attempt to liberate the “roertriangle” which was similar in shape to the bulge in the Ardennes which nicknamed the operation “the small battle of the bulge”.
Battles were fierce, villages and citys destroyed by Nazi German as well as Allied bombing and the allies had to fight for every kilometer.
On March the 3th the last towns of Limburg were liberated. It took the Allied forces until the 11th of july 1945 to liberate the whole of the Netherlands.
The callsign PA75LIMBURG will be on air from 12 september 2019 untill 3 march 2020, exactly 75 years after the liberation took place.
Various bands and modes will be used, with focus on shortwave and SSB.
