Kate ter Horst

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Kate ter Horst (born July 6, 1906, Amsterdam – February 21, 1992, Oosterbeek) was a Dutch nurse – later a doctor – who tended wounded and dying Allied soldiers during the Battle of Arnhem. Her British patients nicknamed her the Angel of Arnhem.

Ter Horst was born Kate Anna Arriëns, daughter of Pieter Albert Arriëns and Catharina Maingay. She married Jan ter Horst, a lawyer from Rotterdam, with whom she had six children.

During the Operation Market Garden, The British 1st Airborne Division parachuted to capture the Arnhem bridge but was outgunned by the German soldiers. Captain Martin asked the Ter Horsts permission to set up a regimental aid post in their house ath the Benedendorpsweg in Oosterbeek, to which they consented.

During the fighting of eight days, Ter Horst tended to about 300 wounded British paratroopers herself, while having four young children and being pregnant with her fifth.

In November 1947 her oldest son, Pieter Albert, would be killed by a WWII landmine in Oosterbeek.

In the 1977 movie A Bridge Too Far her character is played by Liv Ullmann. In 1980, the British ambassador to the Netherlands decorated Kate and her husband as Honorary Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. She died of an accident in 1992, while Jan died at the age of 98 in 2003.