Overnight on 22–23 October 1944, Allied military forces, Britain's MI9 intelligence organisation, and the Dutch Resistance evacuated 138 men, mostly soldiers trapped in German-occupied territory who had been in hiding since the Battle of Arnhem a month earlier.

The fighting north of the Rhine in September had forced the 1st British Airborne division to withdraw, leaving several thousand men behind.

In September 1944, the Western Allies launched Operation Market Garden, an attempt by the British 2nd Army to bypass the Siegfried Line and advance into the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland.

The operation required the First Allied Airborne Army to seize several bridges over rivers and canals in the Netherlands, allowing ground forces to advance and cross the Lower Rhine at Arnhem.

XXX Corps ground advance became delayed and without reinforcement this small force under Lt Colonel John Frost was overwhelmed.

[2] MI9, the British intelligence agency formed to help soldiers and airmen stranded behind enemy lines evade German capture, parachuted agent Dick Kragt into the Netherlands in June 1943.

Thus, by the time of the Battle of Arnhem, MI9 had experienced agents in the Netherlands to help stranded allied military personnel.

[3] Airey Neave of MI9 arrived in Nijmegen in early October 1944 to assist in the rescue of the British soldiers located near Arnhem and hiding from the Germans.

Nijmegen (captured by the allies in Operation Market Garden) was 16 kilometres (10 mi) south of Arnhem with two large river crossings, the Waal and the Lower Rhine separating the two cities.

Neave and Fraser found a way to communicate by telephone from Nijmegen to the Dutch Resistance in Ede where many of the British soldiers were hiding and received nightly reports about casualties and evaders which greatly assisted in the planning of Pegasus.

Lt Colonel David Dobie (commander of 1st Battalion) was rowed across the Rhine by a young Dutchman on the night of 16 October and reached Allied lines.

The Dutch Resistance was asked to collect the stranded soldiers from their hiding places and take them to a location near the village of Renkum, 5 kilometres (3 mi) west of Arnhem on the German-controlled north side of the lower Rhine River.

Neave and Fraser of MI9 set up a command centre in a farmhouse near Randwijk to greet the evaders on the southern bank of the Rhine after they had successfully crossed.

[8] In fact, on the south bank, Dobie, the engineers, and a patrol of E Company, 506 PIR observed the signal and immediately launched their boats, but the British were some 500 to 800 metres (1,600 to 2,600 ft) upriver of the crossing point.

Upon reaching the north bank E Company established a small perimeter while men headed east to locate the evaders.

[20][21] A party of between 130 and 160 men would attempt to cross the river on this occasion, although this number included a much higher proportion of civilians, aircrew, and other non-infantry who were unused to this sort of operation.

[24] Colonel Graeme Warrack and Captain Alexander Lipmann Kessel had been on the abortive Pegasus II, but were able to escape capture.

They eventually escaped across the Waal at Groot-Ammers, 40 kilometres (25 mi) west of Arnhem, on a route later used by another 37 men, including Gilbert Kirschen.