Ditch digging in Nijmegen

On Sunday 10 September in Nijmegen, all males between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five were ordered to report for digging defences. A warning was proclaimed that those who failed to turn up would have their houses destroyed by fire, their possessions seized and their wives and children arrested.

—Antony Beevor, Arnhem, (London: Penguin, 2019), 57.