Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. Not bizarre if you're across all of the facts: The concern was that II.SS-Panzerkorps was known to be in northeastern Netherlands with two shattered SS-Panzer-Divisions under command - the 9.'Hohenstaufen' and the 10.'Frundsberg' Divisions. The Dutch resistance had only identified elements of the 9.SS-Panzer among the scattered troops billeted in the area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, and they had identified a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo, but not which division it belonged to. The Allied intelligence assessment (the latest before the operation was SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26, dated 16 September 1944) was that these divisions were each reduced to a regimental battlegroup with few if any tanks, and that they were refitting by drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area just across the German border southeast of Nijmegen. There was a fear that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks - hyperbole that started a silly rumour the tanks were actually there, and Gavin was told the excellent Dutch army barracks facillites in Nijmegen may have a regiment of SS troops in them. This in turn created the concern over the Groesbeek heights - an area of woodland ridge line that was a natural defensive position between the drop zones and the city of Nijmegen with its bridges. It was for this reason the 508th PIR had to seize three initial objectives on the ridge at De Hut (2nd Battalion), De Ploeg (1st Battalion), and Berg-en-Dal (3rd Battalion), but as soon as this was achieved the 508th were expected to send 1st Battalion into the city to seize the highway bridge as soon as possible, and this is where things went wrong - the precise details of which are the answer to another question and not the one you're asking here, so that's a discussion for another comment. Browning's dismissal of the tanks photographed by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September in the Deelerwoud north of Arnhem, was based on his view that the tanks were obsolete models and probably not even serviceable. This story rested on Browning's Corps Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (name changed to 'Fuller' in the film A Bridge Too Far), who connected these tanks to the Dutch resistance reports and gave his story to Cornelius Ryan in an interview for his 1974 book, A Bridge Too Far. The 1977 film is based on the book and is highly controversial, not least because Browning's widow and actor Dirk Bogarde both objected to the portrayal of Browning in the film, but Bogarde didn't opt to turn down the part and seems (in my personal opinion watching the film) to have sought to mitigate the script by playing the character as somewhat conflicted. I presume it was all he could do, or pass and have someone else play the role. By the way, Bogarde served in the war as an RAF photo interpreter working on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets during the European campaign, including Operation Market Garden. He knew all the key personalities, including Montgomery and Browning. The problem with Major Brian Urquhart's testimony is that Browning was no longer alive to give his side of the story, and the photo in question was no longer available... until 2015. The photo (Frame 4015 taken 12 Sep 44 by 541 Sqn), along with the RAF's entire library of images, was donated to the Dutch government after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys, and only came to light when the Dutch government digitised their archives and put them online. The key photo frame was identified and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch, and under magnification the tanks can be determined to be Mark III and older Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. The study is available as a free pdf called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story' (2nd Ed, 2019) on the RAF MoD site. So, we now know which unit the tanks belonged to, because the only unit in the Netherlands with those vehicles at the time (before Market Garden started) was the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division currently fighting the Soviets in Poland. The Regiment was based in Utrecht and the Reserve Panzer Kompanie in Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast. During the crisis in the west in September 1944, the 1.Fallschirm-armee was formed to plug the gap in the line in Belgium. the 'HG' Regiment transferred to it from LXXXVIII Korps (Netherlands occupation forces), and the three training Abteilungen (infanterie/panzer/artillerie) were mobilised and sent south to fight British 2nd Army on the Albert canal. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie was mobilised on 7 September and sent to Hechtel in Belgium to join II.Abteilung, but only three tanks completed the journey without breaking down, and were destroyed with much of the battalion at Hechtel by Guards Armoured Division on 12 September, the same day the remainder were photographed near Deelen undergoing maintenance (turrets were turned to allow engine hatches to be opened) at a supply dump in the woods near Fliegerhorst Deelen, the largest German airbase in the Netherlands. On 17 September, the day Market Garden was launched, these tanks were laagered at Wolfswinkel, near Son north of Eindhoven, and they attempted to fire on the drop zone of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) during the landings, but were shot up by escorting fighter bombers. Two Mark III tanks escaped, one ran the gauntlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode but was only hit by unprimed bazooka rounds, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel to bump the E/504th (82nd Airborne) roadblock at Grave. Some casualties were caused to troopers climbing out of their foxholes, in the belief the tanks were the British arriving early, and they then turned tail were not seen again. So, Browning's dismissal of the tanks in the photo appears to have been good judgement on his part, and history proves that he was right to be more concerned about the unknown location of 10.SS-Panzer-Division - it was not known that the Ruurlo headquarters was the 10.SS-Panzer-Division's, the 9.SS-Panzer were headquartered at Beekbergen near Apeldoorn. Your question is all part of the Arnhem mythology created by Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, but I hope I've been able to answer this part of it at least.
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  2. Thank you for an excellent video. I have a special interest in Market Garden and have 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat histories on the 505th (Four Stars Of Valor, 2006) and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) on my shelves as a result, so I'm familiar with their actions during the Bulge at Nordyke's forensic granular level. The conflict between Ridgway and Montgomery was enlightening, as the command problems in the 508th that led to the failure of Market Garden at Nijmegen had their origins in Normandy, and the resolution of those problems seems to have fallen between two stools as command of the 82nd passed from Ridgway (promoted to XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944) to Assistant Divisional Commander Gavin, who failed to appoint a replacement for himself and ran himself ragged doing both jobs. I really wished Ridgway had taken the commander of the 508th (who was a gifted administrator) with him as his S-1 (Admin Officer) to XVIII Corps, as Market Garden may have succeeded with another CO in the 508th. Once again, as a deep study of Market Garden demonstrates, the Americans seem to need Montgomery as a scapegoat for their own failings. I call it Montgomery Derangement Syndrome!
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  3.  @Truthaholokz  - XXX Corps were still on schedule when they reached Nijmegen and found that the Waal bridges were still in German hands and not the 82nd Airborne's. The 36-hour delay to force a crossing of the Waal sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem, who had done their job and were expecting to be relieved. What was foolish was entrusting an unreliable officer to taking a critical objective. Gavin's judgement to assign this mission to Colonel Lindquist's 508th PIR, he had not performed well in Normandy and Ridgway did not trust him. The airborne plan was already compromised by Brereton and Williams, but Gavin failed to provide for a replacement coup de main operation on the Nijmegen bridge after Brereton had deleted Browning's glider assault planned for Operation COMET. Instead, he instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion immediately to the bridge and he failed to do so. That allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reinforce the bridges and the city overnight and force a delay on XXX Corp's advance to Arnhem.
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  4.  @Truthaholokz  - the plan was still working except where it wasn't even being followed at Nijmegen - that was the fatal compromise. Complex operations are broken down into simple parts and not following a simple instruction undid the plan at Nijmegen on the first afternoon. I don't see anything too complex about the 508th's mission, the commander was just not a good field commander and that had been demonstrated earlier in Normandy - most notably the attack on Hill 95 (Sainte Catherine near La Haye) on 4 July 1944, over open ground instead of a recommended covered approach, resulting in unnecessary casualties. Source: Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), chapters 8 - 10.
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  5. He actually said 3rd Infantry Division would only be able to take Caen on D-Day if the Germans did not immediately counter-attack with armour, otherwise they were instructed to hold a line north of the city to defend the beachhead. You need to check 21.Panzer-Division's movements on D-Day for your answer.
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  6. The broad front strategy took another six months, whereas montgomery's single thrust to Berlin strategy aimed to end the German war more quickly.
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  7. 17:20 - "So Gavin is admitting that he didn't follow orders by giving out pre-drop orders, and we know he really didn't give those pre-drop orders." - Actually we do, but you need a couple of books not on TIK's booklist, which dig deeper into the story and contain first hand accounts by people who were in the final divisional briefing confirming Gavin instructed Lindquist to send a battalion directly to the bridge: September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 – As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." - Chet Graham was also witness to what happened when Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge, because as liaison officer he was the messenger: Nordyke, Chapter 10 - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " - Based on the timelines, Gavin's intervention to get Lindquist moving, and Lindquist's orders to Warren Shields to get his 1st Battalion out of the line along the Groesbeek ridge and moving into Nijmegen, occurred at 8 PM, around the same time that Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. The first clashes between the two units occured hours later, between 10 PM (when A Company of 1st Battalion moved off from the IP - Initial Point - at the Krayenhoff barracks) and midnight (when the Kanon-Zug of SS-Pz.AA.9 that Gräbner left behind in Nijmegen was withdrawn). The clash occurred at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle, near the railway station, about 1 km from the highway bridge. The German movements are recorded in Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). Chapter 4 is based on the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and Kampfgruppe Reinhold in charge of the Nijmegen defence). My conclusion is that Lindquist was a poor field commander, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on the 508th in Normandy bear this out, so the fault is squarely on Lindquist. However, Gavin was his supervisor and was responsible for his divisional plan. He told Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far: 'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days[?] to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
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  8. 3,300 was Model's estimate for German casualties in Market Garden, according to Robert Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September (1990), which has a note on German casualties in Appendix C (page 339 in the downloadable pdf version). As a British Army liasion officer to the West German Bundeswehr with access to their records, Kershaw's study of the Arnhem-Oosterbeek casualties alone comes to 2,565 with the note: "(understatement as unit records incomplete)". Most of the units listed in his Arnhem-Oosterbeek tally suffered an estimated 50% casualties quite consistently. The biggest problem with German records is that the Luftwaffe in particular were very efficient at destroying their records at the end of the war, so there are no complete 'official' figures possible and much of the Market Garden corridor was in Student's 1.Fallschirm-Armee (from which no records survived), and only from the Waal defence line northwards involved von Tettau's forces and II.SS-Panzerkorps, from which Kershaw was able to draw his Arnhem-Oosterbeek figures. 6,000-9,000 for the whole of Market Garden may still be a conservative figure. Some historians suggest it may be over 13,000 if you have a brief look on the internet. Swedish historian, Christer Bergström, is probably the most neutral author on the subject in his two volume book Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019, 2020), which researched Cornelius Ryan's documents and interviews and debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film version of his book A Bridge Too Far. In volume 2 chapter VII: Results and Conclusions, he has this to say on German casualties: 'On the German side, there is no reliable compilation of losses. According to the war diary for OB West, the battle of Arnhem cost the Germans a loss of 3,300 men, about one third of whom, that is, about 1,100, were killed. However, counting soldier's graves shows that 1,725 Germans were killed in the Arnhem area between 17 and 26 September 1944. If we take a 1:3 ratio between killed and all casualties (killed, wounded and missing) as our starting point, that means that the real German losses would amount to somewhere in the region of 5,000 men. However, "Market Garden" comprised much more than just the battle of Arnhem. Cornelius Ryan estimated the German losses at Nijmegen and around "Club Route" during the same period at another 7,000 to 10,000 men, perhaps one fourth of whom were killed. This - which is of course based on very deep knowledge of the battle - still seems to hold up. 59.Infanterie-Division alone lost, on 19 September at Best - out of a force of 2,500 men - 300 killed and 1,400 captured as well as a non specified number of wounded.' So to me, a figure of 6,000 to 9,000 "in the heads of the British" would be a very conservative estimate indeed. It strikes me that you don't really understand how fair-minded the British people really are. I recall a scene in the film Battle of Britain (1969) in which Air Chief Marshal Dowding (Laurence Olivier) receives a phone call from the government minister complaining that he's having trouble with their people in Washington, they don't believe Dowding's claims on casualties, are they reliable? Dowding replies that he doesn't care about figures. If the figures are right, they (the Germans) will give up. If they're wrong, they'll be in Whitehall within a week, and he hangs up the phone. People in the UK get fed up with the continual anti-British crap in YouTube comments. If you continue with the crap, you'll continue to get pushback.
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  9.  @thevillaaston7811  - I was reading Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis on the Market Garden Campaign (available online) on the shenanigans going on with Operation Linnet II. Brereton was trying to get Browning fired so he could replace him with Ridgway. I was actually trying to find some information on the falling out between Montgomery and Bradley over Linnet II but never got to the bottom of that (I suppose you could read their memoirs and decide for yourself, but I thought it would be nice to get some objective research on it). So because Browning had already threatened to resign over Linnet II (because the timescale was too short to print and distribute maps for the troops involved) he realised Brereton would gladly accept his resignation and withdrew the threat. Thankfully, the ground troops reached the drop zones around Liege and Maastricht before the operation could be launched, so it was cancelled. Linnet II was a creation by Brereton purely on his own initiative, it was not requested by 21st Army Group (to which 1st AAA was attached and supposed to be supporting), but the Liege-Maastricht area of operations was within the US XIX Corps area of US 1st Army, and according to Roger Cirillo, Bradley didn't request it either (maybe Montgomery thought he had and that's the source of the falling out, I don't know). So within this context, I'm not really surprised that Brereton readily backed Williams' objections to certain aspects of the Comet plan being carried over into Market (glider coup de main on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, and the double airlift on D-Day). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Brereton actually put Williams up to making the objections, because although Comet was ostensibly an all-British operation planned by Browning's British I Airborne Corps staff, it did require one of William's Troop Carrier Groups and it doesn't make any sense to me why Williams would object to the glider coup de main (tugs flown by RAF bombers and release points on the same track as for the main landings zones) for Market when he hadn't objected to it for Comet. The only difference was that Market required all 14 of William's TCGs and not just one, and his argument was that he couldn't afford to lose a single aircraft. Perhaps because the 82nd Division took over the Nijmegen and Grave objectives, they were expected to provide the troops for their own coup de main, I don't know. We only know that Reuben Tucker, the highly experienced 504th PIR commander and a man you don't want to to say 'no' to, insisted on a company landing south of the Grave bridge, so he was given a special drop zone for one company of his 2nd Battalion. Market Garden was a fuster-cluck, but it was American politics and not British planning that was at fault.
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  10. They did provide flanking forces, and if you're under the impression they didn't because of Hollywood, then episode 4 of Band of Brothers 'Replacements' actually shows them doing exactly this, but not explained explicitly. The 11th Armoured Division's advance to Nuenen from Eindhoven on 19/20 September with support from the US 506th PIR was a reconnaissance in force to help open up the advance of the flanking British VIII Corps, which had a dedicated MSR (Main Supply Route) called 'Spade Route'. The XII Corps was also on the left flank, with their own MSR called 'Diamond Route'. The VIII Corps consissted of 11th Armoured and 3rd Infantry Divisions, but their start in Market Garden was delayed by the fact they had no captured bridge over the Meuse-Escaut canal in Belgium, like the central XXX Corps on the 'Club Route'. While the 3rd Infantry Division were constructing a Bailey bridge at Sint Huibrechts-Lille over the canal, 11th Armoured got permission to use the 'Club Route' bridge at Neerpelt and their MSR as far as Eindhoven in order to strike right towards Nuenen, into the rear area of German units holding the Meuse-Escaut line in the Sint Huibrechts-Lille area. They bumped Panzerbrigade 107, which was based at Nuenen for strikes against the Market Garden corridor at the Son bridge on the Wilhelmina canal, and the 11th Armoured/506th PIR patrol helped dislodge them and persuade them to withdraw. This is protrayed in Band of Brothers as a failure or retreat on the main MARKET GARADEN axis, but it's simply nonsense. Stephen Ambrose got many of his facts wrong on this episode in his book. VIII Corps' axis of advance ('Spade Route') was towards Helmond and Gennep on the river Maas. They eventually made contact with 82nd Airborne patrols in the area of Mill and Haps, if I recall, which was an area not strongly occupied by the Germans and the 82nd's Reconnaissance Platoon (using armored Jeeps) made contact with VIII Corps units - probably Inns of Court Reconnaissance Regiment (armoured cars) in this area. XII Corps' axis of advance ('Diamond Route') was from the Meuse-Escaut canal at Lommel, also having to construct a Bailey bridge, with 7th Armoured, 53rd (Welsh) and 15th (Scottish) Infantry Divisions, and was aimed at 's-Hertogenbosch. The flanking Corps' progress was also slower than XXX Corps because Montgomery did not receive the "absolute" priority of supplies promised by Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Bedell Smith, during his 12 September visit - there seems to be a language barrier on the meaning of the word "absolute", so the priority of supplies obviously went to XXX Corps on the centre line. 11th Armoured Division also started a day late due to having to relocate from Antwerp, which it had captured on 4 September while under XXX Corps command and was switched from the 2nd Army's left flank to the right for MARKET GARDEN. Descriptions like "deep thin rapier thrust" is misleading, and it comes from some of the histories - Cornelius Ryan was the most responsible, only mentioning XII and VIII Corps just once in his book when Model struck at Veghel five days into the operation, and said the flanking Corps had only reached Son - not true - they had advanced further than that when the corridor was cut north of Veghel and the 506th were already free to have moved up to Uden at the time and helped the 501st at Veghel reopen the corridor by striking south to meet them. I've never heard the RAF said they couldn't fly twice a day (do you have a source?) - they were doing if for operation COMET, which was only cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft at 0200 hrs on 10 September for the dawn first airlift. Montgomery and Browning's proposed upgrade operation SIXTEEN (approved by Eisenhower) retained the double airlift and dawn glider coup de main raids on the three main bridges from COMET, but because the upgrade added the two US Airborne divisions, the detailed planning was handed over to USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier Command respectively. It was Williams who decided his troop carriers could not fly twice a day, and the glider coup de main raids (RAF tugs and British glider troops) were also cancelled by Williams because he determined the raids would be too risky in broad daylight. The main reasons seem to be a lack of night-trained navigators in the USAAF Troop Carrier units, the available turnaround time between lifts required for aircraft maintenance was deemed insufficient, and concerns over flak near the bridges. The RAF had been bombing Germany at night for years, so they had night-trained navigators on every plane, including the obsolete Stirlings they were using as glider tugs in 1944. I have Dutch researcher Hans Den Brok's Market Flights volumes that cover the Arnhem and Nijmegen airlifts, and the crew rosters show that only a small number of C-47s even had five-man crews including a navigator (the four man crew is a pilot, co-pilot, radio operator and crew chief), and these were leading the serials while the other aircraft followed behind. The USAAF had far greater numbers than the RAF in 1944, but they were less capable in comparison. This was a common theme throughout the war - the US achieved a rapid expansion of its forces in order to bully its way into becoming the 'senior partner' in the alliance, but it had sacrified quality in order to achieve quantity. The US Troop Carriers were often criticised for being insufficiently trained, and Gavin lamented the fact the USAAF glider pilots were a liability once on the ground and advocated for combat training and equipment to match the doctrine of the British Army's Glider Pilot Regiment, which provided two Wings (battalions) of light infantry fighting at Arnhem.
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  11. I've just watched the first part of this video again and TIK's information is out of date, but I know his later videos on Market Garden was clearer on some of these points, particluarly his videos on Browning and Gavin at Nijmegen: 17:15 - the reason the Son and Best bridges were quickly blown by the Germans was because the Wilhelmina canal was a prepared defence line, manned by the Luftwaffe training unit, Flieger-Regiment 53 in this sector, and at the bridges were batteries of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 repositioned from Deelen airfield. The bridges had 'sprengkommando' (demolition teams), which could blow their bridges on short notice or standing orders, so it's hardly surprising both of these bridges at Best and Son were demolished as soon as they were threatened. The bridge at Son was supported by 4 x 8.8cm guns and 3 x 2cm autocannon from 4./s.Flak.Abt 428. There was one 8.8cm each on the north canal bank west and east of the bridge, and the west gun held up 1st Battalion 506th moving through the forest, and two more 8.8cm on the main street north of the bridge that could fire directly down the street, so they turned their barrels around to fire north at the 2nd Battalion 506th troopers (I believe Dog Company was leading and Easy were at the rear of the column on this occasion, which would have made Perconte happy at least). The other two 8.8cm guns, 'E' and 'F' guns from the battery, had been detached to Klooster Dreef and Woenselsche Straat in the northern suburbs of Eindhoven, and were captured the next day by Fox Company 506th in a flanking move using the back streets. 17:45 - XXX Corps being delayed by having to build a replacement for the Son bridge is a very common perception, but John Sliz in his book, Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers During Market Garden (2015, 2016) and part of his excellent and informative Market Garden Engineers series, makes a good point that because the Irish Guards reached the Son bridge site at 1900 hrs, and the advance party of Royal Engineers at 1930 hrs as it was getting dark, the bridging equipment arrived at 2000 hrs to begin work immediately and the Bailey bridge was built in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to operate tanks, so the delay was effectively zero at Son. The tanks would have stopped in the Eindhoven/Son area anyway that night. The first armoured cars of the Household Cavalry moved over the bridge at 0615 hrs on the 19 September before first light and the Grenadier Guards' tanks crossed at Dawn. Horrocks had ordered that tanks were not to advance at night, as was standard procedure. In his book Corps Commander (1977), he said he had twice risked an advance into enemy territory during his career and both times it had paid off. He thought that during Market Garden he would be pushing his luck if he risked it a third time and he was already irked by the fact the operation had started on a Sunday. In his experience, no major operation starting on a Sunday had gone well. 17:52 - the glider crash near General Kurt Student's headquarters did not carry the full operational plans for Market Garden, this was a prop used in the film A Bridge Too Far in the earlier briefing scene, giving a false impression. The glider was a US WACO (not a British Horsa - another prop built for the film for other scenes and reused for this one) carrying the US 101st Airborne's liaison officer and Comms team to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek. It was the main reason Browning had no radio communications with the 101st during the operation. The officer was carrying a number of documents that Student had translated and he realised the significance of a resupply schedule for the 101st Division, as his airborne experience told him he could extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions. Model was unconvinced, so Student used his own Luftwaffe chain of command to alert fighter aircraft to be over the drop zones when the airlifts were due. Fortunately, they were all delayed by weather and the fighters were back at base being refuelled when the transports finally arrived. 18:45 - the real priority was the Nijmegen bridge, but it's not correct that the 1st Battalion 508th were ordered to take the bridge, not until Gavin found out the regiment were dug-in on the heights and not moving. He had specifically ordered the regiment commander, Colonel Roy Lindquist, to "move with speed" on the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing their initial objectives on the heights. When Gavin went to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving, Lindquist then ordered the 1st Battalion to be prepared to move, and this came as a total surprise to battalion commander Shields Warren. This is essentially why Market Garden failed, and only recently published books have exposed the true story and overturned the conventional narrative of Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, published in 1974, who had failed to pick this up in his research. Sources: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  12.  @ErikExeu  - the single road is a myth - to discuss it as such is to perpetuate the mythology. It was a main supply route and had many diversions (designated 'Heart Route') to use alternative bridge crossings. Your comment about the flanking Corps not integrated into the fighting I find odd - it was so integrated into the fighting it actually featured in an episode (4: Replcements) of Band of Brothers (2001), although the flanking Corps' advances were hampered by Bedell Smith not coming through with his 12 September promise of absolute priority on supplies. Guderian had better terrain for armoured operations in Poland and France. The perceived lack of flexibility in MARKET GARDEN is due to it not being discussed in the literature and the Hollywood film shows only four out of twenty four bridges involved in the operation.
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  13.  @ErikExeu  -Best is an interesting example because it was not a bridge Dempsey requested or had a use for, probably because the road it carried was headed toward the XII Corps boundary and would cause more problems than it would solve for both Corps if XXX Corps used it as an alternative crossing. The bridge was selected by Taylor on his own initiative in case the Son bridge was blown, but in the event both were on a prepared defence line along the Wilhelmina canal and both bridges were blown on D-Day, resulting in a wasteful battle at Best for a bridge that was already lost and eventually drew in most of the 502nd Regiment with high casualties. I still don't know what you mean by the flanking Corps "not properly integrated in the fighting" - I think not properly integrated in the public consciousness would be a more accurate statement, despite appearing (although not explained) in an episode of Band of Brothers. A Better 'Heart Route' example that was actually used would be the Heumen lift bridge on the Maas-Waal canal, also on a prepared defence line and the only intact alternative to the damaged Honinghutje road bridge on the main 'Club Route' - the demolition charges failed to detonate, but the bridge was damaged by the successfully demolished rail spans directly next to it, and engineers deemed the structure too weak for the tanks and only suitable for light traffic. On the terrain aspects, it did vary over the length of the corridor - there were areas where armoured operations off the roads were possible and some sections where it was not. One of the problems with public perception is the opening breakout scene in the Hollywood film, which is almost completely wrong in creating the impression the tanks could not leave the road in that (or any) section of the advance - they could, and did. (That scene also completely misrepresented the positioning of the German anti-tank guns and the part they played). I have at least one publication showing Irish Guards Shermans moving across the fields to attack German forces in farms and woodlands on the flanks - the After The Battle magazine publication of Operation Market Garden - Then And Now edited by Karel Margry (2002) definitely has those photographs. That publication also has a sketch map showing the corridor broken down into sections with notes on the terrain - the section between Nijmegen and Arnhem being the worst, and it was planned that the advance would be led by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division for that section and unexpected events at Nijmegen impacted that plan adversely - they were committed to mopping up operations in Nijmegen and the Irish Guards (again) had to continue the advance in terrain they were not expected to have to deal with. As for Guderian advising against using tanks in terrain which was not suitable - I'm sure his advice was not as simple as that. Model was planning his counter-offensive to recapture Antwerp from the Netherlands - the reason he didn't want to authorise demolition of the main bridges. The Germans were not averse to using armour in "unsuitable" terrain, regardless of whether it's in the Netherlands or th Ardennes. It may be difficult, but it's certainly not impossible, and having armoured support for the infantry is advantageous in any terrain. The Germans used tanks on the Nijmegen 'island' (the Betuwe) quite effectively - the blocking line based on the hedgehog positions at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel involved the three StuGs from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, the tanks from Panzer Kompanie Mielke attached to Kampfgruppe Knaust, and at least two Tiger I tanks from Panzer Kompanie Hummel (based on tracks and 8.8cm shell casings found later on the line). They also later fed in at least some of the 20 Panthers Model sent directly from the factory and crewed by the SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 'alarm kompanie' - photographs of several Panther wrecks in the Elst area are testament to their deployment. The rapid advance of XXX Corps from Son to Nijmegen in just a few hours is evidence that the route and the terrain were not a total impediment, and the operation was still broadly on schedule until they reached Nijmegen, where the delay fatal to the operation occurred. The failure of MARKET to secure some bridges was the major impediment, and the cumulative compromises in the airborne planning process were the cause, not the ground advance. Criticising "the plan" is a bit moot when the fatal compromise was the failure to carry out a critical part of the plan - namely the capture of the Waal highway bridge at Nijmegen on D-Day, but the nice thing about that story is that we know the 'what-if' scenario of the 1st Battalion 508th going straight to the bridge as instructed would have worked, because three men from the battalion S-2 Section did in fact do that and captured the southern end of the bridge and seven prisoners without even firing a shot. They graphically demonstrated what the battalion could have done if they had moved "with speed" as Gavin had intended, and would in fact have replicated the position that Frost had established at the highway bridge at Arnhem.
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  14. Obviously, Sir, you're an expert on these matters, with all your medals and successful campaigns... TIK has done an excellent job of research and critical thinking, but he could have gone further and found more evidence against Gavin in his own words to the official US Army historian, his interview with Cornelius Ryan, and from other first hand witness accounts in books by American historians: Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  15.  @thevillaaston7811  - Brereton was travelling up the MARKET GARDEN corridor on 20 September, as was Matthew Ridgway a few miles behind him. George Koskimaki, who was General Taylor's radio operator, tells a story in his book Hell's Highway (1989, 2003) about Ridgway asking him if he could reach Brereton on his SCR-300 radio set and Koskimaki had to climb onto the roof of a chicken shed with the set to get a signal to Brereton's car. He had to help Ridgway onto the roof as well so he could talk to Brereton and Koskimaki also recalled Ridgway seemed annoyed with his caution about security using clear text over the air.
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  16. Nice observation.
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  17. *G-4 for supply and logistics. Eisenhower's broad front strategy was a political one and ran counter to military doctrine of concentration of forces at a point where the enemy is weak, which is what Montgomery was arguing.
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  18.  @Truthaholokz  - G-3 (and S-3 in units below Division) was the Operations staff section, so I think that may be right, G-1 was Admin and Personnel. When I did a search on G-5 I kept getting hits on a United Nations staff position, which is obviously post-war and not what I was looking for. I could only find a wartime position called G-5 in SHAEF as the Civil Affairs Division, which I had never heard of before in the US structures. In the British Army, "Civil Affairs" was a wartime staff position, but British positions are enumerated by rank rather than department, so at Divisional General Staff Officer level you would have a Lieutenant Colonel as GSO 1 Operations, GSO 1 Intelligence, etc., and their deputies would be a GSO 2 - Major, and the third officer a GSO 3 - Captain. I also have a long-time interest in UFOs and learned through the Admiral Thomas Wilson leak/memo case that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have 'J' staff positions, as he was Assistant to the J-2 Intelligence Officer and Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time in 1997 under the Clinton admin. His boss in both positions was J-2 and Director DIA, and Wilson himself was promoted to those positions after being threatened with early retirement and loss of one or two stars and pension rights if he exposed a UFO reverse engineering program. He duly retired in 2002 after getting the promotion and serving in those positions, and then leaked the story of his investigation into the program to a UFO investigator.
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  19. It was Gavin's plan for capturing the Nijmegen bridge that wasn't followed by Lindquist and allowed the Germans to reinforce the city. What has Montgomery got to do with that? Blaming Montgomery is an American deflection from an American failure, which makes your comment total hypocrisy.
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  20. Well done, and thank you for doing this video. I think you covered all the major issues and certainly did a great job of picking up on points that a lot of (professional?) authors miss. I find the same problems of fighting the conventional narrative or orthodoxy whenever the Montgomery haters (it's almost like a religion) vent their spleen over Market Garden. (By the way, it was Lindquist. Gavin was just his boss, and was very angry when he found out his divisional plan was not followed at Nijmegen against zero opposition and knew this had probably compromised the entire operation - Ref: Phil Nordyke - Put Us Down In Hell, 2012). A good reference on the German 15.Armee during this period is Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts' new book - The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022). It's effectively a prequel to their first book, Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) - Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzer-Jäger-Abteilung 559 and the German recovery in the Autumn of 1944 (2013). These books are heavy, expensive, limited print runs, and based on detailed research of primary sources, aimed at people seriously interested in these topics instead of the pulp mass-market Montgomery-hating orthodoxy.
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  21. I think Browning and Gavin both need to be given more credit for the Nijmegen highway bridge being a primary objective and too much emphasis has been given to Browning's warning to Gavin that the Groesbeek heights also needed to be secured. Because the bridge was not seized on the first day, I think people assume this was intended by the bridge not being given high enough priority. There is an argment that the bridge should have been given more consideration with a coup de main operation, but it was not de-prioritised in favour of the high ground until after the first failed attempt to seize the bridge. The fact is that the officer charged with the capture of the bridge failed to carry out Gavin's instruction, and there's plenty of evidence in the literature, some of it going back to the officer's previous performance in Normandy, to support it. First, Gavin wrote in his report to US Army Historical Officer, Captain Westover, on 17 July 1945: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." In his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Ryan notes [with my square brackets]: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats [polder or farm land] to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967) The British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge for a coup de main was a legacy of Browning's original operation COMET plan to use dawn glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges - Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave - to repeat the success of operation DEADSTICK on the Orne canal and river bridges in Normandy. These elements had been removed by Brereton for the planning of operation MARKET, because he thought it too risky for a daylight assault, having already deleted COMET's double airlift for D-Day. Despite Browning having advised Dempsey (British 2nd Army) that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults, he could not protest their removal by Brereton for MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II plan (Liege and Maastricht bridges), scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps. LINNET II was thankfully cancelled and the two men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning was now aware Brereton had intended to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for the operation. Browning was now politically neutralised and it seems his only influence on the planning for MARKET was to bring forward the delivery of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift, where he could at least influence events after the troops had landed, but at the expense of some anti-tank guns going to Urquhart's 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. (The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 - Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University) So everything now rested on Gavin's instruction to Colonel Lindquist and the battalion assigned to secure the Nijmegen bridge, but Lindquist failed to appreciate the urgency and importance of the primary objective and sent only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge. By the time Gavin found out and ordered Lindquist to get the 1st Battalion moving, it was too late, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had won the race to reinforce the city and its bridges. Cornelius Ryan did not explore this aspect of the operation and most historians have also followed Ryan's established narrative. Only more recent books have explored what Gavin had already indicated in 1945 letter and 1967 interview, and if you want to read in detail the drama that followed and is completely absent in A Bridge Too Far, you would have to consult some books written about 12 years ago, although I have posted extracts from these books elsewhere in the comments: September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012). Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012). The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge.
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  22.  @valiskuk  - I'm glad you didn't delete the comment, I think you're on the right track - and too few people are because the conventional narrative has become so widely accepted for so long. Antwerp is a common diversion - a lot of people think it should have been the priority over a Rhine crossing, but mostly they're the people who think Patton should have crossed the Rhine first. The logic was that a Rhine crossing at Arnhem would be easier sooner rather than later, before the Germans had reinforced their river and canal defence lines. Eisenhower saw that logic and that's why he endorsed the operation. Montgomery was already going to Arnhem with COMET, he only needed Eisenhower's endorsement to expand the operation into MARKET to include the American divisions. Antwerp was needed for Eisenhower's broad front advances into Germany, not for getting to the Rhine, so the argument that Antwerp should have come first is completely beside the point. Opening Antwerp doesn't cut the V-2 supply lines, it doesn't even trap the 15.Armee at Antwerp (only one of Montgomery's wider encirclements could do that after a smaller one fails), and it certainly wouldn't make a later Rhine crossing any easier. So Antwerp is a diversion from the real debate. The thing about Browning is that his judgement seems to have been spot on. He was right about holding the Arnhem bridge for four days (and perhaps it being "a bridge too far"). He was right to dismiss the aerial photo of German tanks in the Arnhem area - now that the photo has been found it does indeed show obsolete vehicles and not a 1944 panzer division. And he took his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift at the expense of not more infantry as I had first assumed (38 glider tugs could have taken the second half of the South Staffords battalion) but actually disrupted the original anti-tank gun delivery schedule. I've recently finished reading a new series of books on the Anti-Tank Batteries at Arnhem by Nigel Simpson et al (2019-2023). It's clear from them that heavy armoured counter-attacks were expected and briefed to the AT units, but the fact the German armoured response took several days to build up is a question of judgement, so the guns were not all needed on the first lift, and indeed some that were delivered on the 1st lift barely fired any rounds throughout the whole battle, such was German wariness of British AT guns. His attitude towards the Americans has one of being totally supportive - he won't hear a word against them. I think he took the view of "by their deeds shall they be known" (which is a biblical expression and I've probably butchered it). Maybe he didn't anticipate Cornelius Ryan and Hollywood, I don't know. I think Gavin does bear a great deal of responsibility for the failure of the operation, but not because he didn't try to get the Nijmegen bridge. Clearly he did, but he was let down by a subordinate and when he found out it was a scene that would have been truly worthy of Ryan O'Neal's soap opera scenery chewing acting, but of course America would never accept the true circumstances being filmed. The internal politics within 82nd Airborne were hinted at by Gavin in his interview with Cornelius Ryan, but how much he appreciated the problems at the time is an open question. In 1967 he told Ryan that Ridgway didn't trust Lindquist and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn't promote another colonel from the division over him because Lindquist had seniority. Gavin may have had the same problem because he didn't replace himself as Assistant Division Commander when he inherited the division from Ridgway, so throughout MARKET GARDEN's planning and execution Gavin was running himself ragged doing both jobs (and carrying a jump injury sustained on 17 September). Best book on the overall operation is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020). They use unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection and specifically debunk the myths in the Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far. Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and his factbook on the whole operation, Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), are also recommended. A free download on the aerial photo story is an interesting read and can be found on the RAF's MoD site, called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story', Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019), it's written by Sebastian Ritchie, whose book Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) is a study of the air planning aspects if you want to go further into that side of it. Best wishes and happy reading.
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  23.  @Radiusthethird  - no worries. I've been exploring this rabbit hole since reading Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far in 1977, just before the film opened in the UK, and I'm convinced I still haven't got to the bottom of it! The best overall update on Ryan's research (he had terminal cancer and rushed the book to publication unfinished) is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's two volume book, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, (2019, 2020). He used unpublished documents and interviews from the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and is accessible online, and he also debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film. If you have any specific questions, there are many specialist publictions, such as Canadian author John Sliz and his series of booklets on Market Garden engineers if you have a question on the engineering aspects of the operation for example, so I can point you in the right direction from my own collection of books.
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  24.  @johnburns4017  - technically, they weren't amateur, but I think Martin Brundle has the best turn of phrase when he's commentating on the first F1 race of the season - "it looks like first day at school, doesn't it?"
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  25. I have the same reaction when people ask this question: do you expect an Army Group commander to be in the lead tank? Seriously? The other aspect is that as 21st Army Group commander, Montgomery was responsible for strategic planning, not tactical, so once the target of Arnhem for the Rhine crossing was selected over Wesel by Montgomery with Browning's assistance for Operation Comet, Miles Dempsey (British 2nd Army) was informed of the decision and then his staff would carry the detailed planning for the 2nd Army ground forces and Browning's (British I Airborne Corps) staff for the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Brigade element.. When Comet was cancelled by Montgomery, because he became aware of the increased German build-up in the Netherlands (from 'Ultra' and other sources), he proposed an upgraded operation with three divisions by adding the two American units, and with Eisenhower's approval, it was turned over to Brereton's (1st Allied Airborne Army) staff to adapt the cancelled three division Linnet II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) air plan to the Comet drop zones at Arnhem-Nijmegen), and it was there that some of the compromises were made on the air plan, such as removing the glider coup de main attacks on the big bridges and the double airlifts on D-Day. None of these details are "Monty's plan". They are Brereton's and Dempsey's plans at Army Level. Browning and Horrocks at Corps level, and for the Airborne it was Urquhart, Gavin, and Taylor, responsible for their own divisional plans. Do people really think Monty stayed up late in his caravan every night for a week plotting Johnny Frost's route march to the bridge on a map of Arnhem? Montgomery's comment that Market Garden was "90% successful" can be interpreted in a number of ways. It may refer to the road mileage from Neerpelt to Arnhem, or it may refer to the fact that 24 bridges were involved in the airborne element and because of multiple redundancy a minimum of 10 bridges on the main supply 'Club Route' are required to get XXX Corps across the Rijn at Arnhem. So, the operation did not depend on 100% success at all, there was flexibility in the plan and the numerous alternative crossings were on route diversions coded 'Heart Route'. Operation Market missed a bridge at Nijmegen, allowing the Germans to reinforce both bridges and hold the operation up on the River Waal for 36 vital hours, so Market was 90% successful. After the tanks of Guards Armoured Division arrived, Operation Garden eventually secured the Nijmegen highway bridge, but could not get to the Arnhem bridge before it was retaken by the Germans, so Garden was 90% successful in the final reckoning as well. But to assume that's how Montgomery measured the success of the operation as a simple percentage may be missing the point. The point may have been more subtle, like Churchill's House of Commons speech after Dunkirk, with the famous passage beginning "we shall fight them on beaches..." and ending with "... we shall never surrender." Most people listening to that speech over the radio or even in the House of Commons chamber itself were not aware that every word in that passage was carefully chosen using only words derived from Old English, except for the very last word which is derived from the Old French 'sur rendre' (to give up). It was a subtle dig at the French, who had capitulated to Germany, but only the intended recipients of the message would get it.
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  26. Oh my gosh, are you having a total meltdown? You're coming across as a two year old that's just had his ice cream taken away from them! 1. "90% success" - was probably Montgomery's coded dig at Eisenhower. Operation MARKET involved 24 bridge targets, and a minimum of 10 were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. The 82nd Airborne missing one at Nijmegen on the first day meant that MARKET had 10% failed. That's how I interpret it. 2. This idea the Poles were blamed for the failure of the operation has no basis in fact. If you have a reference that suggests this, please provide it. I've asked many people for a reference and not a single one has come up with anything. It's a disgusting slur. Sosabowski was criticised by Browning for being difficult to work with and insubordinate to Horrocks at the Valburg conference on 24 September, and the Polish troops lacked discipline when they had a chance to fight the Germans - perhaps understandably - and even the SS complained that Polish troops fired on their medics trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield (this is in Rob Kershaw's It Never Snows In September, 1990). Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. He then changed his tune after receiving reports from Browning and Horrocks and wrote to Alan Brooke (the CIGS) to ask that they be removed from Browning's command. Nowhere in any of that is a suggestion they caused the operation to fail - perhaps because they arrived too late to have a negative impact on an operation that was already compromised. Again - any reference that says otherwise, I would like to see it. People need to put up or shut up about this. 3. Eisenhower approved Browning and Montgomery's outline proposal for operation SIXTEEN as an upgrade to COMET by adding the two US Airborne divisions. USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army compromised the key features of COMET/SIXTEEN by removing the double airlifts on the first day and deleting the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. Browning was unable to object to the changes after he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation that was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps, and Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. LINNET II was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, so Browning withdrew his resignation letter, but his position was now neutralised by American politics. 4. Those four tanks had just fought a major battle and were in no condition to go haring off into the night (tanks in WW2 could not fight at night except for an experimental infra-red system used on some German Panthers). One tank was knocked out on the bridge, one had its crew captured, and of the two that reached the rail overpass in Lent the lead tank was stopped by an American anti-tank mine. The rest of Guards Armoured Division was fully committed to assisting 82nd Airborne's battles in and around Nijmegen. 5. The performance of Urquhart's division was remarkable. Only a reinforced battalion battlegroup held the Arnhem bridge for four days, fulfilling Browning's promise to Montgomery. While a British airborne division was supposed to be able function independently for eight days if properly supplied by air - 1st Airborne at Arnhem held out nine days while most of its resupply fell to the Germans. 6. Urquhart's division did their job, but they quite rightfully ask did everybody else? 1st Airborne's job was not to cover 82nd Airborne's failures by holding out until April 1945 (when Arnhem was finally liberated). TIK's research and presentation is impeccable, and he could have gone a lot further if he had dug deeper into the 508th PIR's regimental history - it was not just Gavin that had made mistakes, but he was responsible for his divisional plan and the compromises he made. According to his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, he received "a British request" (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea, he said he eventually dismissed it because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. He then instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and this Lindquist failed to do. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and Gavin told Cornelius Ryan neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight. TIK himself in a video responding to criticism of his Antony Beevor Arnhem book review said history is not a competition. It's about getting to the truth. If you're not on the side of the truth, where does that leave you? Sources (none are British, they are Irish, American, Dutch, American, American, and Swedish authors): Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  27. I find Captain T. Moffatt Burriss to be an unreliable witness. He actually mentions in his own account of 'taking' the Nijmegen highway bridge that he passed an abandoned German anti-tank gun on the riverbank between the two bridges before reaching the highway bridge, just as the 'lead' tanks of the Grenadier Guards crossed over. The anti-tank gun was also mentioned in Grenadier Guards Sergeants Robinson and Pacey's accounts, as it was Pacey's gunner that scored a hit on the gun as he crossed the bridge and forced the crew to abandon it. This was some 45 minutes before Burriss' paratroopers arrived and Carrington's tank crossed over. When Burriss arrived, Robinson and Pacey had gone half a mile up the road into the village of Lent, stopped by an American roadblock (Robinson's tank was hit by an American mine) in the railway embankment underpass. There was also a German StuG III covering the exit of the underpass, preventing any further movement. Neither the tanks or the paratroopers from G Company 504th (who were out of bazooka rounds) were in no position to do anything about the StuG, and it was also well after dark - contrary to the completely false scene of daylight tranquility presented in the Hollywood film that also lacked a burning village, Germans running around everywhere, and mopping up operations. Carrington's role, as commander of the operation to take the bridge, was to stop at the far end and act as a radio relay between Robinson in Lent and his squadron commander back in Nijmegen. He had no orders to move and had a good technical reason for stopping where he did. Burriss was understandably emotional after just losing half his men (from I Company 504th) in the river assault crossing, but his lack of dicipline in either threatening Carrington with his Tommy gun or making the story up (it doesn't really make much difference which) does him no credit. Both the Grenadier Guards and the 504th had their orders, and that was to secure the Nijmegen bridgehead, not go to Arnhem. The whole operation MARKET was already compromised on the first day, when the 508th PIR failed to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge while it was still defended by just 18 German guards, and by the time the bridge reinforced with SS panzer troops was finally taken, the Germans had already retaken the Arnhem bridge back from Frost.
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  28. The Scheldt and the German 15.Armee did occupy much of 21st Army Group's time and effort, but this is a period that hasn't been written about very much. I'm currently reading a book that attempts to fill in the gap and that is The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944, by Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts (2022). It's a prequel to their first book, Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) - Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzer-Jäger-Abteilung 559, and the German recovery in the Autumn of 1944 (2013). These are specialist limited print run books and based on a huge amount of detailed scholarship by the authors. You're right about the prejudice in the American Army, and it seems to have infected most historians as well. I have very little faith in the mass market authors who just seem to recycle the same old mythology just to make a quick buck from their books.
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  29.  @jbjones1957  - the Oxford dictionary definition of "imperative" is "of vital importance; crucial." I still think this all came out of Browning's planning for COMET and not Montgomery. Montgomery did often involve himself in Dempsey's 2nd Army operations planning, but down to divisional level I don't think he was involved at all. My understanding of military command structures - and I'm fully prepared to be corrected by serving or veteran officers - is that commanders concerned themselves no more than two levels below their own command, so for Montgomery as an Army Group commander he would be working with Dempsey's 2nd Army staff to plan the Corps operations of XXX, VIII and XII Corps, and for the I Airborne Corps component he had meetings directly with Browning. There's plenty of documented evidence Browning had the view the Groesbeek heights were critical but not a word from Montgomery on this. I wouldn't expect there to be, but it doesn't really make much difference because Browning and Gavin seem to have been in agreement and there was no apparent discord on this point. The heights were an operational concern for 82nd Airborne (and previously 1st Airborne Division for COMET). With regard to what went wrong at Nijmegen, the issues are the planning compromises - the removal of COMET's dawn glider coup de main assault, the British request (Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin does not state who specifically) to drop a parachute battalion north of the bridge as an alternative, and the assignment of the 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th. The issue on the ground was then the command failure at the top of the 508th in not following Gavin's pre-flight instruction, the instruction is again well-documented, and more recently backed by witnesses to the briefing published in books by John McManus and Phil Nordyke. The bridge was not de-prioritised until after the first belated attempt to secure the bridge in the evening of D-Day, 17 September, had already failed. Browning then overruled Gavin on trying again until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived.
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  30. You might get that impression from A Bridge Too Far - book and film, but both are flawed. The book is incomplete and both versions are heavily biased against the British commanders involved. The "single road" in any literal meaning is a myth. The ground Operation GARDEN involved not a single armoured division but all three Army Corps of British 2nd Army. Their main supply routes were code named after card suites since the Normandy breakout and used all the way to the end of the war terminating in Germany, and were nothing unique to MARKET GARDEN. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were advancing on 'Spade Route' and 'Diamond Route' respectively, while the centre line XXX Corps were on the more famous Guards Armoured Division's traditional 'Club Route', which had many planned diversions named 'Heart Route' if an alternative bridge crossing was needed. The 'Heart Route' was actually used in a couple of instances, one between Grave and Nijmegen via the Heumen lock bridge, because the Honinghutje bridge over the Maas-Waal canal on the main highway 'Club Route' was damaged in a German attempt at demolition and engineers deemed it too weak for the tanks. You'll appreciate that none of this is explained in the Hollywood film, which only features three bridges in any detail, and a fourth (at Grave) shown for just ten seconds. The Airborne Operation MARKET involved the capture of about 24 bridges in total, so the attention is on just a handful and assumed connected by a "single road". Even if a "single road" were true, it doesn't explain the failure of the operation, when the tanks of the Guards Armoured Division reached Nijmegen still on time to get to Arnhem in 2-3 days as intended, but then had to stop there because the River Waal bridges were still in German hands - not part of the MARKET plan at all - and this is where TIK has a point in focusing on Gavin and the 82nd Airborne. The "single road" is simple misdirection - nice try, but people shouldn't fall for it.
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  31. That's Hollywood history, not real history.
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  32. Montgomery and Eisenhower were agreed on the need to prioritise a Rhine crossing before opening up Antwerp, because Antwerp's port capacity was only needed to supply Eisenhower's broad front advance into Germany, not for an advance to the Rhine. Eisenhower stated after the war - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” The Ijssel bridges were indeed targets for Operation GARDEN, but because they were not required to be crossed for operations into Germany until later, they were not needed for the airborne Opertion MARKET. It was intended for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to seize a brigade bridgehead each at Deventer and Zutphen, while 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division did the same at Doesburg and Westervoort. The infantry divisions each had one battalion in two of their brigades fully mobilised in amphibious DUKW trucks for river crossings, and there was an engineering plan with a dedicated bridging column to replace the bridges for further operations if they were blown by the Germans.
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  33. Perhaps you could have read my comment that preceeded yours by just a couple of days, because timing is the missing element in this issue. I'll deal with the "1,000 tanks" first because that figure was just a ridiculous rumour started by an observation that the Reichswald could hide a thousand tanks, but realistically Allied intelligence estimated Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B) front from the North Sea coast to Aachen, and he was facing Montgomery with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen with another 1,500. We now know that he had 84 listed as operational in the September returns, so the Allied estimate was accurate, and by a stunning coincidence 84 is the exact number of anti-tank guns in the combined establishments of 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Parachute Brigade's Anti-Tank Squadron. The main issue I want to address is the timeline and sequencing. Montgomery cancelled the original Arnhem operation called COMET in the early hours of 10 September, because he had just received reports II.SS-Panzerkorps with 9.'Hohenstaufen', and presumably 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' under command, had arrived in the Arnhem target area for refit and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with them. Montgomery and Browning then devised an upgraded replacement operation provisionally called SIXTEEN (COMET had been operation FIFTEEN), by adding the two American divisions, which would allow the 1st Airborne and the Poles to concentrate at Arnhem, or wherever the armoured threat was deemed greatest. The outline proposal was put to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their scheduled meeting at Brussels airport later the same day, and then Browning took the approved outline back to 1st Allied Airborne Army in England, where Brereton and Williams were primarily involved in the detailed planning for the operation now officially named MARKET. My previous comment posted two days ago relates to finding a letter in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, which was a covering letter dated November 18, 1966 from Gavin to Ryan enclosing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree, and how in reviewing these Gavin had just realised the route march of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' had taken it through Nijmegen and Arnhem on its way to the Veluwe region north of Arnhem, where it dispersed to its various billets. This now tied in with Gavin's recollection that on 10 September he was advised 82nd Airborne were now assigned to Nijmegen, so he went to the British 1st Airborne HQ, where they had been studying the Nijmegen area for COMET. Their intel was that there was "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen (sanitised intel of the reduced condition of the SS divisions) and "very heavy German armoured forces" in the Reichswald, and the British had been preparing their plans accordingly to deal with them. Gavin had just now realised in 1966 these armoured forces in the Reichswald were in fact the Hohenstaufen in transit, which explains why nothing was there on 17 September when MARKET was finally launched. So the SS divisions were not missed, they formed the reason COMET was cancelled and MARKET was an upgrade to deal with them, but the Dutch intelligence on the SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel) had only identified the Hohenstaufen from 'H' vehicle insignia and the Frundsberg had not been positively located. It was feared the Frundsberg may still be in the Nijmegen area. Another factor to take into account is that the 'Ultra' code intelligence was only known to exist down to Army HQ level - that would be Eisenhower, Montgomery and Dempsey. No one in the Airborne (Army) was privvy to the existence of Ultra and any intelligence from this source passed down to the divisions had to be 'sanitised' by stripping out the unit identifications and source, so it appeared to be vague reports from resistance or other sources. The anti-tank batteries sent to Arnhem were given briefings to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day, and this may include Panther and Tiger tanks - a steer that a 1944 panzer division and a corps heavy tank battalion may be involved, but no unit IDs. The paratroopers were surprised by the presence of Bittrich's SS troops, because of the santised nature of the Ultra handling. Ultra was only declassified in 1974 with F.W. Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret, published the same year as Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, so Ryan was obviously not aware of Ultra, or that the SS divisions were known to be in the area, and the same still applied to most of the people he interviewed. Final point - the reported armour near the landing zones in the infamous aerial photograph taken by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September, showing tanks in the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield, were 10 km (6.2 miles) from the nearest landing zone. These are the tanks dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles, regarded as a scandal by Cornelius Ryan because he only had Major Brian Urquhart's incredulous account to go on. Browning had passed away in 1965 and unable to defend himself, and the photo could not be located. Until 2014 that is, when it was found in a Dutch government archive, and then studied by the Air Historical Branch of the RAF. It was found to indeed show older tanks, ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, and we now know that not only the owners were the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division - but we also know that on 17 September they were located at Wolfswinkel near Son, where they attempted to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne Division) and were duly shot up by escorting aircraft. The nearest unit of II.SS-Panzerkorps was SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, with an 'alarm kompanie' of 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry and the Werkstatt (Workshop) Kompanie based at the Saksen-Weimar barracks in northern Arnhem, and they had dispersed three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' that survived Normandy and hidden them under trees on Heijenoordseweg in the western suburbs. II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Kranenburg monastery near Vorden, 33 Km (19 miles) northeast of Arnhem, had 16 Mark IV tanks in the 5.Kompanie and 4 StuG IIIG assault guns in the 7.Kompanie. Of more immediate trouble to 1st Airborne Division was the unfortunate fact a known SS training battalion, Sepp Krafft's SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, had been moved out of their barracks in Arnhem before they were bombed and were camped in the woods north of Model's headquarters in Oosterbeek as additional security. Krafft had attended a dinner in which Model was warned by Luftwaffe General Walter Grabmann from Deelen airfield that the fields to the west of his HQ around Wolfheze were ideal landing grounds for airborne troops, but while Model dismissed these concerns, Krafft was the only officer present who took the warning seriously and had his two training companies moved out of their barracks, in an ideal position to counter the first British movements off the drop zones.
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  34.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - I have seen OTD and had quite the argument with him - he's another one with a huge Montgomery-shaped 'bug up his ass' and doesn't believe in evidence unless you rub his nose in it. He was completely unaware that the secondary objective of MARKET GARDEN was to cut off all German forces in the western Netherlands by terminating the advance at the Ijsselmeer (Zuider Zee) coast, so I managed to locate the 21st Army Group orders that outlined this intent and giving the intended deployment locations for Guards and Wessex divisions, etc. It's surprising how much common knowledge that so-called 'historians' don't actually have, presumably because it's not in the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan and regurgitated by hacks like Beevor and Hastings... The pertinent documents can be found online with a bit of digging and read by anyone - even people with blinkers on!
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  35.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - that's very nice of him. Perhaps it's because the Canadians were involved in the fighting around Caen? I wonder if he's similarly forgiving of Montgomery not closing the gap at Falaise because it was the Canadians (and the attached Polish Armoured Division) that were getting a battering from SS panzer units holding open the gap?
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  36.  @ErikExeu  - what a ridiculous thing to say in the face of overwhelming evidence. Just Google maps of the invasion. For example, I'm looking at the Normandy1944 site and the map 'The Invasion and Operations, 6-12 June 1944'. The American beaches only have one armoured unit arriving in their sector, the 17.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Götz von Berlichingen' between the two beaches at Carentan (11-12 June). The division was a motorised infantry unit with 42 Sturmgeschütz IV assault guns in its panzer-abteilung, but no tanks, and two of the six infantry battalions were only on bicycles. In the British and Canadian beach sectors, east of the US 1st Army and British 2nd Army junction, from west to east we have: 2.Panzer-Division (10-11 June) Panzer-Lehr-Division (10 June) 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' (7-8 June) 21.Panzer-Division (in situ at Caen 6 June) Another map showing 'The Capture of Cherbourg and Operations, 13-30 June 1944' shows three additional panzer divisions have joined the sector around the British and Canadian beaches: 2.SS-Panzer-Division 'Das Reich' 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' 1.SS-Panzer-Division 'Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler' These are the seven panzer divisions Montgomery has drawn around Caen, preventing it's capture for many weeks, and not a single panzer division is in the American sector, apart from 2.Panzer-Division which has moved west to try to exploit the US 1st/British 2nd Army junction at Caumont. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' was in a reserve position at Argentan but would also join the battles around Caen. The I and II.SS-Panzerkorps also had their heavy panzer-abteilungen (101 and 102.SS-Panzer-Abteilungen) equipped with Tiger I tanks. There was also an army heavy Tiger abteilung, 503, in the area equipped with Tiger II. This is history. It's the Americans that are taught fairy tales in their schools and in Hollywood films. You need to stop the ridiculous "USA! USA!" chest-beating BS and do a bit of proper homework.
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  37.  @theijaegers8981  - I understand completely. I can only say that the orders and operational instructions from the original documents in 1944 from both Montgomery's 21st Army Group and Browning's 1st Airborne Corps also refer to "Zuider Zee", so this is evidence the name was still in common use, at least in the British Army in 1944, probably because of the maps and possibly just inertia of the new name not catching on yet. There may also be a slight language barrier, since "Zuider Zee" is easier to say in English than guessing the pronunciation for "Ijsselmeer", as we don't get many 'I's followed by 'J's in English - in fact, I can't think of one example at all.
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  38. There's a lot of false mythology surrounding the bridge vs ridge debate and as far as I can see the origin is Browning's warning to Gavin that the heights should also be secured in addition to every effort being made to secure the Grave and Nijmegen bridges. This is further conflated by Browning rejecting Gavin's proposed second attempt to secure the Nijmegen bridge on D+1, as Browning thought it would be better to wait until the armour of XXX Corps arrived to assist. This was not the pre-flight priority, but a decision made only after the first failed attempt to secure the bridge. McManus (2012) has the best analysis on the whole bridge vs ridge issue in the planning process. The opportunity to secure the Nijmegen bridge was missed on the first afternoon, when the 508th failed to carry out Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directy to the bridge after landing. The Colonel commanding the regiment, Roy Lindquist, did send a recon patrol based on a reinforced platoon, which lost contact with its point team and got lost in the back streets of Nijmegen. The three-man point team reached the bridge, surprised seven guards at the southern end of the bridge and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. As they decided to withdraw, they heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9) arriving at the other end of the bridge, but the point was proven that the bridge was theirs for the taking if the battalion had been sent as Gavin had instructed. So Gavin is responsible for selecting the poorly led 508th for the Nijmegen mission after already compromising his divisional plan by dismissing a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main. That request was obviously a backstop after Brereton had removed Browning's original Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave dawn glider coup de main assaults for COMET on the grounds of Flak. Although Gavin told Cornelius Ryan he toyed with the idea, his final decision was based on his experience in Sicily, where the US Troop Carriers were spooked by Flak and scattered his men over a huge area. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the whole division was disorganised for days. For MARKET Gavin decided to drop his three parachute regiments close together in a "power center", and then have the battalions radiate outwards toward their objectives. The only exception was the 504th PIR at Grave, where the experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the bridge to take it from both ends, and he got it. By the way, the flat nature of the Netherlands does have exceptions in the east of the country, with glacial moraine deposits rising to 109.9 m (360 feet) north of Arnhem in a region known as the Veluwe, and also south of Nijmegen near the German border. At the village of Berg-en-Dal (objective of 3rd Battalion 508th PIR) the heights rise to 95.6 m (314 feet), overlooking a polder just 10 m above sea level only a km away. Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, because it was originally a Roman outpost established on the edge of the solid ground that is now mostly Germany, and overlooked the lakes and marshes that is now reclaimed by the Dutch. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Allied Map Service (A.M.S.) M831 (G.S.G.S. 4427) GINKEL 388 and GROESBEEK 12 N.W.
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  39. I think you're right in that Gavin was a very quiet, thoughtful man, and was not flattered by Ryan O'Neal's daytime soap scenery-chewing performance in the Hollywood version of A Bridge Too Far. In fact, the one scene where O'Neal's performance would probably have been spot on was a scene that wasn't filmed: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." (Chapter 3, September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus, 2012) Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012) Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " (Chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012) I think TIK is on the right track, but he hasn't gone as far as reading these books, judging by his published booklist. I highly recommend them. Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also important backstory for Lindquist's performance during the 508th's first combat operation, and the way the command problems in the 508th were (partially) dealt with by Matthew Ridgway at the time. The fact these problems were not fully resolved when Gavin took over the division in August 1944 before MARKET GARDEN was unfortunate, but also now his responsibility.
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  40.  @Truthaholokz  - the G-5 Staff Division at SHAEF was the Civil Affairs Division, which was concerned with civilian government in liberated territories.
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  41. Sorry, but the United States Army Air Corps existed only between 1926 and 1941. At the time of Market Garden in 1944, it was called the United States Army Air Force, and became a separate service from the Army as the United States Air Force in 1947. The RAF was the first independent air force in the world, formed in 1918 at the end of the First World War by combining the Royal Flying Corps of the Army and the Royal Naval Air Service. There is an Army Air Corps in the British military, formed in 1942 to combine the airborne forces, initially the Glider Pilot Regiment, the Parachute Regiment, and the Airlanding Regiments (infantry battalions delivered by glider). In 1944 the SAS Regiment was added. This formation was reformed in 1957 with the advent of rotary winged aircraft - so the GPR was disbanded and the Parachute Regiment removed as a separate formation. American glider pilots in WW2 were part of the USAAF Troop Carrier Squadrons that also flew the C-47 transport aircraft, and were not trained and equipped to be light infantry once on the ground like their British counterparts.
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  42.  @thevillaaston7811  - a bit more from the same folder - page 95, letter Ryan to Gavin agreeing that the 'King Kong' Lindemans betrayal story is nonsense, but Ryan says he was under a lot of presure from (prince) Bernhard (of the Netherlands) to put it all in his book. Ryan says he had a burr under the saddle about the whole thing (nice turn of phrase). Most interesting point is about the documents that fell into Student's lap - Ryan didn't know until Gavin told him it was a 101st officer and it was only a resupply schedule not a list of all the objectives, but Student guessed it was Arnhem. Ryan had interviewed Student and said he was quite sore about not being able to communicate the information for 48 hours, so it was that long before Model heard about the document, by which time Runstedt, Model, Bittrich, Harmel and Harzer already knew what all the objectives were. Gavin also had an artillery officer that took orders into the air because they captured one of their own musette bags from the Germans with the orders still in it, apparently unread, but Gavin had charges proferred over the incident. Letter also contains Ryan's belief Browning did not listen to his own intelligence officer who is now with the UN (Brian Urquhart), so this is decades before the photo emerged in 2014. Ryan thinks both Brereton and Browning were at fault and although won't commit it to print believes Urquhart (Roy) should not have been in command of an airborne division. In second guessing the decisions made at Arnhem, Ryan says he wondered what would Jim Gavin have done? Gavin replies that he was amazed by Urquhart's divisional plan and turned to Jack Norton (his G-3) and said "My God, he can't mean it", and thought he should have dropped a 'regiment' south of the bridge. Gavin wondered why Browning did not question Urquhart's plan and assumed it was Browning's lack of airborne operational experience! Obviously Gavin had not studied the terrain and flak in that area and was not aware Browning had proposed glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges and had them deleted by Brereton and Williams. And this was the same Jim Gavin that rejected the British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge!
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  43.  @johnburns4017  - do you know where you got that account of Horrock's visit from? I have heard references to British reconnaissance (I'm assuming the armoured cars of Household Cavalry) were able to observe "the bridge" and were amazed to see German troops crossing over the bridge unopposed. I had thought it might refer to a point west of the rail bridge (which had one track converted to a roadway with wooden planks between the rails) which was used for light traffic, or it could have been a location east of the highway bridge as you describe. The only other detail I got is that they (the observers) were at an abandoned Flak position where the guns had been removed. That would correspond to a heavy Flak position on the polder east of the highway bridge that had 4 x 8.8cm and a neaby 3 x 2cm light position to protect it. I believe these were the guns that Reinhold had repositioned to protect the bridge - one 88 was on the Keiser Lodwijkplein traffic circle still on its trailer wheels, and two were positioned on the north bank in Lent and were taken out by Sergeant Robinson's tanks on 20 September. This looks like a solid story and not just rumours, so if you have a source reference that would be great. Some people dismiss the idea that three scouts from 1/508th could have seized the southern end of the bridge and take seven guards prisoner without firing a shot on the first evening, as there was a couple of Flak batteries in the area, but since there was no Flak on the bridge itself and the nearest guns were on the river bank down on the polder some distance away - the bridge itself is 640 metres (2,100 feet) long between each embankment - so it's a huge area, soldiers at that distance cannot be distinguished for their uniforms. I also have an even more remarkable story from one of the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem volumes - 'A Lost Opportunity' - Battery Z Troop, by Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk and Marcel Zwarts (2022). The title quote comes from Lieutenent Eustace McNaught, the commander of Z Troop. As part of 1st AT Battery, his troop of 4 x 6-pounders were due to go to Arnhem on the 1st lift to protect Division HQ (Z Troop were originally part of the Light Regiment and used for AT protection of the gun positions, but was transferred to 1st Battery). Due to Browning deciding to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the 1st lift, some last minute changes were made to the chalk numbers which were not recorded in the official records, so Simpson et al found researching the Z Troop story very difficult. It appears Z Troop got bumped to the 2nd lift on D+1, but McNaught's Troop HQ glider - CN 1005 - seems to have gone on the 1st lift from reading this account. The reason I think that is because McNaught said his glider released short of the LZ and came down near Zetten on the 'island' (they certainly failed to arrive as far as the Troop were concerned). He had seven gunners of his Troop with him, plus the two glider pilots, a Jeep with the radio and a trailer full of 6-pounder ammunition. He decided to take the Jeep with his driver, radio operator and one other without the trailer to be able to move faster, and told the others to stay put until he could arrange transport for them. He thought if he went for the Arnhem bridge, the main objective of the Division, he could hopefully meet the Reconnaissance Squadron at the bridge and arrange transport to pick up the rest of his men from the glider. He reached the main Nijmegen-Arnhem highway and turned north, but as he approached the Arnhem bridge he could see a large armoured column coming south towards him, so he turned the Jeep around and headed south to Nijmegen, thinking the Americans were there and he could link up with them. They reached Nijmegen as it was getting dark and carefully drove over the bridge, but McNaught was surprised they were not challenged until they got into the city and were stopped by some civilians. They told him the Germans were on their way into the city and offered to hide them and the Jeep in a nearby monastery. There, they waited out the battle for Nijmegen, keeping track of troops movements in the immediate area. As soon as he deemed it safe to venture out on Thursday 21 September, one of the first people he bumped into was Lieutenant Howe of the 1st Battery seaborne element. Howe had suffered a road traffic accident in his Jeep and was being attended to at the side of the road when McNaught drove up. McNaught told Howe his story and said he wasn't going to wait around and left his three men with Howe, while he went off in the Jeep alone to look for the nearest SAS section to join. That was the last Howe saw of him until he heard after the war McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and after the war was with MI6 as a military attaché. Lieutenant Howe is unfortunately the only source for this story, although it was corroborated by the three gunners from McNaught's Troop that were with him. What happened to the party left with the glider is unknown, but CN 1001 also landed near Zetten and the occupants were hidden by the Dutch until the area was secured - these two stories have been often conflated because the two gliders both landed in the same area, but this is the first I've heard of someone landing on the 'island' and being able to drive over the Nijmegen bridge unchallenged and I think it could not have been possible on D+1, so it must be D-Day if true.
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  44.  @johnburns4017  - there's no timings on McNaught's movements except that he sees Gräbner's column passing over the Arnhem bridge moving towards him and he reaches the Nijmegen bridge as it's getting dark, so that pins that part of the story between 1930 and 2000 hrs aproximately. Seems he spent quite a bit of time unloading the glider and working out what to do, possibly if there were problems unloading the Jeep and trailer, establishing their location on the map, talking to local civilians, etc..
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  45.  @johnburns4017  - nice idea but probably completely impossible. As Troop leader his No.22 set on the Jeep would be on the 1st AT Battery net frequency, although he may have spent some time after the glider landing trying to contact the Battery HQ that would moving from the LZ 'Z' towards the Arnhem bridge with 1st Parachute Brigade HQ. If he was not able to contact them due to the reduced ranges suffered by the 22's on the operation, then it would be hopeless trying to contact any station that would recognise his call sign in the Nijmegen area. Remember the problem that 1st Airborne Royal Artillery had trying to break in on 64th Medium Regiment's frequency without the proper call signs? Only because the two officers knew each other they were able to convince 64th that they were genuine. Nice idea though, it had occurred to me as well, but unless they had procedures established for that scenario I think it would be difficult to impossible to improvise one.
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  46.  @johnburns4017  - would love to hear a first hand account from McNaught, but since he apparently joined the SAS and then MI6, he seems to have disappeared into the shadows. Just done a quick search and found him mentioned in a school photo album where he was in a Rugby XV listed as "Eustace McNaught (New Coll Ox, WW Lt Airborne RA, Diplomat, MI6)" - so there you go. Appears he was born in 1922 and passed away 1992. McNaught is also mentioned a few times in David Truesdale's book Arnhem Bridge Target MIKE ONE - an Illustrated History of the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment (2015), as he joined the 1st Airborne Light Regiment Royal Artillery from 123 OCTU and initially assigned to 2 Battery before taking command of Z Troop (6-pounder AT), and Z Troop were later transferred to 1st Anti-Tank Battery. In Chapter 6: Market Garden, it does mention his adventures briefly, but in the passages relating to the second lift, and I suspect Z Troop was actually split between 1st and 2nd lifts as the only explanation for McNaught's story. (Editor) Karel Margry's Operation Market Garden Then And Now (2002) does suggest in the glider schedules that Z Troop elements were in both lifts. Anyway, Truesdale has this - 'Z Troop did not have a wholly successful flight. Flying the southern route, the Troop lost its commander when Lieutenant Eustace McNaught's glider came down some twenty miles to the west of Nijmegen. Local Dutch people sheltered the officer and his men until they were later able to linkup with elements of the US 82nd Airborne. From here McNaught and his men made their way to the headquarters of I Airborne Corps. McNaught did not rejoin the Division, transferring to the Special Air Service at the end of November.' I think this is an example of the stories of McNaught's glider (CN 1005) getting conflated with another landing in the same area near Zetten (CN 1001) where the passengers were sheltered by the Dutch. According to McNaught, his party was split between the four taking the Jeep and the remainder ordered to stay with the glider. At least it confirms his joining the SAS.
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  47. I can help out with some of your questions. 1. I wholeheartedly agree with you, and that's why it was attempted and not cancelled like all the post-war armchair tacticians suggest. 2. The RAF were happy with the original Operation Comet plan to conduct two airlifts on the first day - one at dawn and the second in the afternoon. They were also happy with the proposed glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave highway bridges, with 6 gliders each, carrying one company from each of the three Airlanding battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade. These were modelled on the highly successful Pegasus Bridge coup de main in Normandy on D-Day and Staff Sergeant Jm Wallwork, who flew the lead glider on that mission, was due to lead the Nijmegen bridge attack. After weather delayed Comet from 8 to 10 September, Montgomery cancelled Comet on the morning of 10 September, because of the worsening intelligence picture, and met with Eisenhower later that afternoon to propose an upgrade called Market Garden with the two American Airborne divisions added, so 1st Airborne could concentrate at Arnhem. The detailed planning, which basically combined the ground plan for Comet with the three-division air plan from the cancelled Linnet II operation, would have to be undertaken by 1st Allied Airborne Army instead of being an all-British Airborne Corps affair. Because the larger air plan depended on every aircraft being available and losses kept to an absolute minimum, General Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to the double airlift and also the glider coup de main attacks for fear of losses due to Flak. General Lewis Brereton of 1st AAA backed him up and so the RAF's approval of the Comet plan was moot, despite it being their aircrews that towed the gliders and the release points were on the ground tracks for the main drop zones and 6 Km from the bridges. The weather requirement was for two days of clear weather, which was enough to get three airlifts in on the Comet plan. When Market was scheduled for 17 September, they had two days forecast as clear and then unpredictable (mixed) thereafter. 3. This is where the conventional narrative on Market Garden has been wrong for decades. Since Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far, it has been believed the Groesbeek heights were prioritised before the Nijmegen highway bridge, or given equal priority and there was a communications breakdown within the 82nd Airborne. Recent research has brought to light that Gavin actually instructed the commander of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to send one battalion straight to the bridge as soon as practical after landing, and if there was little or no resistance on his initial Groesbeek ridge objectives. This he failed to do, believing he had to wait for a divisional order to move on the bridge, and by the time Gavin found out and go him moving, it was too late and they lost the race to elements of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division coming down from Arnhem on the first evening. The regiment had similar command problems in Normandy and I recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - for both the Normandy and Nijmegen stories. After the war, it seems that Gavin was reluctant to throw a subordinate officer under the bus and took much of the responsibility on his own shoulders, even co-opting the help of Browning in correspondence to muddy the waters with regards to the bridge vs high ground priorities. The Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for demolition on the first day, although the explosive charges were stored in rooms inside the bridge piers and a local 'Schutzgruppe' of ethnic German NSDAP militia were drilled every month to wire up the bridge charges under the supervision of an engineer officer from von Tettau's Pionier staff at the WBN (occupation forces Netherlands). On 17 September, the NSDAP Shutzgruppe failed to show up and the officer could do nothing alone until 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 arrived the next day as part of Kampfgruppe Reinhold and started immediately to work. The charges probably failed to go off on 20 September due to artillery fire cutting the lines, but it's not known for certain. The Dutch believe a local resistance hero cut the wires, and this seems quite possible, but engineers usually test firing circuits at regular intervals and any breaks repaired. 4. The original Polish Drop Zone 'K' near the Arnhem highway bridge was not suitable for the first day because it was flanked by two of the four heavy batteries of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 that surrounded Arnhem on four sides. The zone was also crossed by high tension lines (!) from the Arnhem power station just southeast of the bridge. It was assumed in the planning that 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area by D+2 when the Poles were due, and so the Flak would be neutralised and the HT lines cut. The power station was also the RV for all four squadrons and companies of the Royal Engineers after their initial tasks were completed, and they would be in control of the power station. The intended role of the Polish Brigade was to pass over the bridge and take up their allotted eastern sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem. 5. There are no anti-tank guns seen at Arnhem in the Hollywood film, perhaps because they were not available for filming, but more likely because they wouldn't help Richard Attenborough's deliberate intention to portray the 1st Airborne Division as ill-equipped and the planners incompetent in his "anti-war film". Neither was actually true. The Division took 52 x 6-pounder and 16 x 17-pounder anti-tank guns to Arnhem. The Polish Brigade also had their own Anti-Tank Squadron with 4 Troops of 4 x 6-pounder guns, but they elected to reorganise them as 3 Troops of 5 guns taken by air, and the spare gun was probably in the Brigade 'sea tail' arriving by road (9 men are documented on the Squadron sea tail roster). That gives you a total of 83 anti-tank guns taken by air, or 84 if you count the Polish spare gun. By a stunning coincidence, Generalfeldmarshal Model had exactly 84 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front in September, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks in Belgium and Hodges' US 1st Army with I don't know how many tanks at Aachen. The Allies' optimism going in to Market Garden was well founded. 6. There are myths associated with the radios as well. The 'wrong cystals' only affected two VHF radio sets sent to Arnhem and they belonged to the two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron for contacting aircraft. All the British sets were working properly, but at much reduced ranges, and this was not understood at the time. The reason was the high iron content in the glacial moraine of the Veluwe high ground, and I believe this still affects police radios and TV/radio reception today. The worst affected were the battalion communications net as the distances involved were marginal for even the normal working ranges, but although the more powerful Royal Artillery sets were also affected they were still working over the ranges required to contact the gun batteries, so the pack howitzer batteries in Oosterbeek were able to support the 1st Parachute Brigade at the bridge - something also not shown in the film, of course. Both the British and US Airborne forces used the American made hand-held SCR-536 (actually called the "handie-talkie") in platoon communications and found it to be virtually useless unless you were almost in line of sight and were not popular. One of the reasons why Frost used a hunting horn! Probably the best recent work that debunks the many myths in the film is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State university. Hope this has been helpful.
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  48.  @jacobgorman3145  - yes, I agree with your point, but this was imposed on Market Garden By 1st Allied Airborne Army when Comet was expanded to Market. Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to Comet's glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, and he also objected to two lifts on the first day, apparently on the grounds of flak near the bridges and the lack of night navigation skills in the IX TCC aircrews. The first lift for Comet was timed to arrive at dawn and the second late in the afternoon, so both flights required a departure or a return at night. The glider release points for the coup de main attacks were 6 Km from the bridges and on the planned ground tracks for the main landing zones, so the tugs were 6,000 metres from the bridge flak positions and not flying over them - so I find this decision nonsensical. There was also a question of the turnaround time between the two lifts being insufficient for maintenance of the aircraft, which is something else that would nat have impressed the RAF. Brereton (1st AAA) backed Williams up, so the original all-British plan for Comet was already compromised and there was nothing that could be done about it. Browning had already threatened to resign over Linnet II and had to back down when it was clear he didn't intend to carry out the threat. He couldn't very well do it again. I'm afraid it's all tied up in Anglo-American politics, when the real issue should have been winning the war as quickly as possible, because that's what really saves the most lives. There were not enough transport aircraft in the allied fleet to carry three divisions in one lift, but multiple lifts are not a problem unless the reinforcement delivery rate falls behind that of the opposing Germans on the ground, which is what happened from D+2 onwards due to the weather delaying the 3rd lift. When the 2nd lift for Market arrived on D+1, it had a demoralising effect on the Germans because the initiative had gone back to the Airborne again, but once lost on D+2 it had swung back to the Germans for the rest of the operation. Best work on these aspects is Sebastian Ritchie's book Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019). It does what it says on the cover, looking at airborne operations conducted by both sides to incorporate lessons learned from them - none were very successful on their own terms, but were often rescued by quick reinforcement on the ground, such as in Normandy. Ritchie explains why the air plan for Market was done the way it was, and the choice of landing zones, and I've brought some of that out in response to some of the armchair tacticians on YouTube. By the way, big woody (aka Para Dave and several fake accounts using other people's handles) is a troll with a huge Montgomery-sized 'bug up his ass' about Market Garden and has no interest in actually learning anything from the books he claims to have read. He's even quoted from Sebastian Ritchie, but doesn't seem to have understood it. I just ignore him, but I'm happy to engage with anyone interested in digging deeper than most of these videos go and I can see you've attempted to do that in your own responses to him.
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  49. XXX Corps stopped at Valkenswaard because they realised they would not reach Eindhoven before it got dark, and it was doctrine not to advance tanks at night - they could not fight in the dark during WW2. COrps commander Brian Horrocks said in his book Corps Commander (1977) that he had gambled twice in his career by advancing with tanks at night and on both occasions it had paid off, but he felt for MARKET GARDEN it would be pushing his luck to try it a third time. So he gave strict instructions for no movement at night except in friendly held territory. With that in mind, Browning had originally selected drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal at Son and south of Eindhoven near Aalst to assist the capture of the Son bridge - the canal was the main German defence line in the area and the remaining bridges were all prepared for demolition with standing orders to detonate if threatened - the four bridges in the centre of Eindhoven, and a small bridge over the river Dommel at Aalst. The idea was to create an airborne 'carpet' over which XXX Corps could pass, and securing these southern targets would assist the XXX Corps breakout and reduce the distance to the first airborne linkup, hopefully on the first day. Unfortunately, General Paul Williams of the US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to the drop zones because of the flak around Eindhoven and General Lewis Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army removed them from the plan. Browning could not object to any of the changes Brereton made to his his operation SIXTEEN outline to create MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over a previous Brereton plan for LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges), and knew if he did it again his resignation would be accepted and he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. At Aalst there was a pair of 8.8cm heavy flak guns positioned in a concrete revetment in the anti-tank role covering the bridge over the Dommel, and on 18 September after the XXX Corps advance resumed from Valkenswaard they also spotted a Jagdpanther tank destroyer and two StuG assault guns in the area, and dealing with these resulted in a delay for much of the day that could have been avoided if paratroopers had secured the area. Eindhoven itself was evacuated by the Germans and apart from two 8.8cm guns in the northern suburbs detached from the battery at the Son bridge, the city was liberated without incident by the 506th PIR on D+1. The Son bridge was known to be demolished thanks to telephone connections made by Dutch civilian switchboard operators and US Airborne engineers were able to pass information on the bridge site to Royal Engineers in Guards Armoured Division. On his own initiative, the Guards CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) had the necessary bridging equipment brought up to Valkenswaard overnight, so that when the Irish Guards reached the Son bridge site at 1900 hrs on 18 September the bridge column was driven up the road in 30 minutes and work commenced on the Bailey bridge at 2000 hrs, with an estimated 10 hours for construction. It was completed at 0615 hrs (just 15 minutes over the estimate) before dawn, when the first armoured cars of Household Cavalry crossed over, and the Grenadier Guards tanks followed at first light. John Sliz in his book, Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016), makes a good point that the delay at Son was effectively zero hours, because the bridging operation was conducted entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. So the implication is that they would have had to stop somewhere in the 101st Airborne area between Eindhoven and Veghel anyway. There was a gap between the 501st PIR (101st Airborne) at Veghel and the 504th (82nd Airborne) at Grave that was effectively 'Indian country' that could contain a German ambush, so the delay to XXX Corps' linkup to the 82nd at Grave was unavoidable without the bridges at Aalst and Eindhoven in American hands on the first day, otherwise the tanks might have been passed through to Veghel on the first night instead of stopping at Valkenswaard.
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  50.  @johnlucas8479  - 1) You may well be right in saying Williams didn't make the decision to cancel drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal as he seemed happy with his one Troop Carrier Group's involvement in the otherwise all-British/Polish COMET plan, but seemed to change his tune in MARKET - I suspect because Brereton had his hands on the reins, but I said what I did because Taylor told Dempsey it was Williams, so what are we supposed to believe? My source is RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014), page 55 reproduces the relevant part of the cable (so this is a primary source) that Taylor sent to Dempsey - 14 September, Annex 1, Employment of 101st Airborne Division, Operation "Market": "1. The agreed mission of 101st Airborne Division in operation "MARKET" includes the securing of the canal and stream crossings at EINDHOVEN. Since this mission was received, Major General P. L. Williams, Commanding General of Troop Carrier Command, has determined that it is not possible to drop parachute troops south of WILHELMINA CANAL because of the flak about EINDHOVEN. Consequently, the nearest drop zone for the EINDHOVEN mission will be about eight miles from this objective. Allowing two hours to assemble the regiment and three hours for the approach march it is estimated that five hours will elapse before Airborne troops can reach EINDHOVEN. The present tentative drop schedule places the troops on the ground about 1500 on D Day. Hence Airborne troops will not be able to reach the brdges at EINDHOVEN until about 2000." Karel Margry's (Ed) Operation Market Garden Then and Now (2002), may have picked up that Dempsey received notification from Taylor, but Taylor says in the cable it was Williams' decision. Taylor did, I believe, reject a drop zone near Uden, which Browning had selected to close the gap between the two US Airborne divisions, and this was on the grounds his division would be overstretched over such a long sector of the corridor. 2) Because if the US Airborne had the route between the Aalst and Son bridges in their hands there would be nothing to stop XXX Corps moving the tanks up, even at night. It's just 4km between Valkenswaard and Aalst, they could just as easily reached that point as Valkenswaard itself. Page 87 of Poulessen (op cit): 'At 1815 IRISH GUARDS GROUP had reached the Stenen Brug - the bridge over the Dommel River - just before Valkenswaard. At 1910 - whilst not in contact with the enemy and darkness at 2003 - it was decided to harbour in Valkenswaard.' So, they could have reached Aalst before dark if they knew the Americans were due to be there holding the bridge over the Tongel reep - a stream tributary of the Dommel (apologies if I said this was the Dommel itself at Aalst).
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  51. @johnlucas8479 and @thevillaaston7811 - Responsibility for bridging operations up to the River Maas exclusive rested with the Royal Engineers of Guards Armoured Division, which had two Field Squadrons and a Field Park Company with Bridging Column. While the Irish Guards were halted at Aalst by the 88's, the Dutch civilian switchbard operator Joke Lathouwers found the Eindhoven exchange unmanned and established telephone contact with the Americans at Son and the British at Aalst, so the engineers in both formations were able to exchange information on the bridge site requirements. The Guards' CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) took a chance while the column was halted to have the required bridging material for a 110' Triple-Single Bailey bridge brought up to Valkenswaard, so that when the Guards and his RE reconnaissance section reached the bridge site at 1900, the bridge column could be called up in 30 minutes to arrive at 1930, and the work commenced at 2000 hrs. Full details in Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016)
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  52.  @johnlucas8479  - then why did Taylor cable Dempsey that Williams objected to the drop zones? That is a contemporary document (Annex 1 to the 14 September cable) printed in Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014). What is the provenance of Warren's and Bowman's claims? Are there any citations in their books, or document facsimiles printed in them? I'm wary of wartime documents being rewritten by post-war claims. It smacks of arse-covering. This is what we have to be careful of. TIK's video 'History is a Debate - Responding to a Comment from my Operation Market Garden Documentary' I think makes this point well with regard to a document that was written as a report after the battle.
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  53. It's my view that if the bridge at Aalst had been in American hands, as Browning had originally intended, the Irish Guards could have reached them (just 4km beyond Valkenswaard) before it got dark, and they could have laagered (as per procedure) anywhere within the 506th PIR perimeter (procedure was for tanks to laager behind the infantry line at night) between Aalst and Son. It could have saved a day as the bridge at Son might have been replaced on the night of 17/18 instead of 18/19 September.
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  54. Lots of reaction channels on YouTube reacting to "1st Time You Realized America Messed You Up"
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  55. Any particular reason, or just the usual baseless indoctrinated hate, because he's British?
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  56. Gavin instructed Lindquist 48 hours before the jump to send his 1st Battalion to the bridge immediately on landing, but Lindquist was not a good field officer and had not performed well in Normandy. Lindquist failed to interpret the instruction as urgent, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first. By the time Gavin found out and got Lindquist moving, it was too late. The responsibility for assigning Lindquist's 508th PIR to the critical Nijmegen mission instead of Ekman's 505th was Gavin's, so he's still at the centre of this drama.
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  57.  @dicktracy3787  - Patton was bogged down at Metz in the Lorraine region for three and half months and not making any progress - and it wasn't because supplies were diverted to Montgomery - he was still receiving enough to maintain offensive operations despite Bedell Smith's promise to Montgomery, and he was bogged down since the first week of September long before COMET or MARKET GARDEN. It seems that two panzerbrigades were all that was necesary to stop him in his tracks. The MARKET plan was flawed by compromises made by Brereton, Williams, and Gavin, but it still probably would have worked if the Nijmegen bridge was seized on the first day as planned. A three-man point team from the S-2 Section of 1st/508th proved it could be done by taking the southern end of the bridge and seven prisoners without even firing a shot, and then waited an hour for reinforcements that didn't show up. That's pretty damning evidence and not a "what-if" speculative scenario. "False choice" is a nonsensical answer. It was the logical choice, and the failure of the operation does not make it a wrong one. An operation to clear the Scheldt could have been botched - would that make it a false choice as well? Of course not.
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  58.  @ErikExeu  - you obviously haven't really read my reply, so you have misquoted me and haven't taken on board several points. Guderian? Guderian invaded Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. In neither of those invasions was he constrained by the Dutch terrain, so you're not comparing like with like. The actual German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 was east to west. Once they were across the Maas at Gennep and the Ijssel at Westervoort, they were advancing parallel to the major rivers, not across them. Your reference to Beevor made me laugh. He's another tart who shamelessly writes for the American market, so no wonder you reference him. I completely wasted my money buying his Arnhem book because he only recycled the work of other authors and did not present any new primary sources that advanced the research frontier. I learned nothing new except a joke (literally). I donated my copy to a local charity bookstore, along with Anthony Tucker-Jones' The Devil's Bridge for the same reason that he hadn't advanced the research frontier on the German side since Rob Kershaw's outdated It Never Snows In September from 1990. You'll have to remind me if Beevor's commentary on Sosabowski's treatment was just his own opinion or if he actually cited a primary source that claimed Sosabowski was responsible for the failure of the operation? I'm sure I would recall if the latter had been the case, because that would indeed be explosive. If Sosabowski was criticised for being difficult to work with, that is valid criticism, and the evidence is uncontested. What is shameful is conflating that with the failure of the operation. That is a disgusting slur, and you should be ashamed if you are propagating such an idea. "Blame Eisenhover (not Monty) for approval of Market Garden, but don’t blame Browning for his approval of Gavins decisions. Fantastic British two-sided logic" - I did not blame Eisenhower for approving MARKET GARDEN at all - he wanted a Rhine crossing, and after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's misleading book felt he had to make the public statement - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015). And there's no evidence Browning "approved" Gavin's decisions because he was not in a position to overrule his decisions if he didn't approve them. It is a matter of record that Browning warned Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults on the main bridges, so I think we have Browning's view on how important he believed they were. If the American commanders insisted on removing the glider raids and dismissed a request for an alternative option for MARKET, then you can't blame Browning. So you've completely made up my "British two-sided logic". Another completely false slur, this time aimed at me personally. This is probably about the time I should realise you know you have lost the argument and it's getting personal for you. I don't understand why that has to be. History is a debate, its not a competition on who 'wins'. That is missing the point. The 32 Horsa gliders used by Browning to transport his Corps HQ (and 6 WACOs for the US liasion and USAAF fighter control teams) were his gliders, not Urquhart's or anybody else's. They are pre-loaded gliders that are going sooner or later. How many times have I had to make the point that we're dsicussing scheduling changes and glider tugs, not glider loads? If the 38 RAF tugs used on the 1st airlift to Groesbeek were allocated elsewhere, they could have taken the remainder of the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion (41 gliders) or 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery and made no difference at Arnhem, or perhaps tow 32 WACO gliders belonging to Gavin's 325th Glider Infantry Regiment (32 x 12 = 384 troops - less than half a battalion), or perhaps a field artillery battalion instead - again, making no difference at all if the biggest problem at Nijmegen was a command failure that left the bridges in German hands in the first few hours. Criticising the 1st Airborne Division is deflection, because it actually doesn't make any difference how well they performed if XXX Corps cannot advance beyond Nijmegen within the four days Browning said they could hold the Arnhem bridge. As I said, it was not their job to cover 82nd Airborne's failure by holding out until April 1945. "Browning should have interfered, but he didn’t" - how could he do that? The chain of command only has authority within the same army - Browning had no authority to order Gavin to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge, he could only request it, and Gavin was entitled to dismiss the request, as he did. You ignore this point. The thesis is that if the Nijmegen bridge were taken on D-Day, then the Guards Armoured Division would not be needed to commit half of its resources to take the bridges themselves. The actual plan if the bridge was in American hands was for the Guards to halt at Nijmegen and pass 43rd Infantry Division through to lead the next stage of the advance to Arnhem, because the terrain did not suit an armoured advance, and then Guards would take the lead again at Arnhem to the Ijsselmeer. The four Grenadier Guards tanks in Lent were not available to advance to Arnhem - as I said, they had just fought a major battle, so because the division was fully committed in the Nijmegen area, there were zero tanks available to go to Arnhem - certainly not in the dark, and mopping up operations in Nijmegen prevented 43rd Division being moved up quickly, so eventually Horrocks was forced to move on with Irish and Welsh Guards the next day. You ignored this point as well and seem to believe they were fully armed and fit to go to Arnhem, as if four tanks alone would have been enough. "The whole idea was extremely stupid" - then why did Eisenhower, Brereton, Williams, Gavin, and Taylor all go along with it? None of these officers could be forced into anything by a British commander. It seems that Eisenhower insisted on it, so maybe you're blaming Eisenhower and not me? Brereton rejected Montgomery's proposal to drop an American division on Walcheren in early September (operation INFATUATE) on the grounds it would be suicide. Unless Eisenhower overruled him, which I don't think happened, he could have rejected SIXTEEN (the outline proposal for MARKET) on a similar basis. The fact is that they didn't think it was stupid, and if Lindquist had sent his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen bridge on D-Day, and the operation had succeeded, then nobody would have looked stupid at all.
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  59.  @ErikExeu  - I understand that Guderian would have had to adapt his tactics to the Dutch terrain, as Montgomery had to. Also, to make the mistake of conflating "Holland" with "The Netherlands" would invite the inevitable correction from a Dutch subscriber. Correcting other people's mistakes about their country is a Dutch national pastime. Have a nice day!
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  60. ... or, maybe he read some history books...
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  61. ... and ignored your primary source of Hollywood.
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  62. The plan was working except where it was failed to be followed at Nijmegen, there were 'Heart Route' alternative crossings on all the water obstacles, there was air support available when weather and deconfliction from airlifts permitted, intel on the SS troops was not disregarded and informed the planning at Nijmegen and the number of anti-tank guns taken to Arnhem, and the only bad leadership was in the 508th PIR/82nd Airborne at Nijmegen. The claim that the Poles were scapegoated is an appalling smear based on the well documented fact General Sosabowski was difficult to work with and insubordinate at the Valburg conference - how is that scapegoating? You have been seriously misinformed by the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan's unfinished book and I would urge you to read more up to date books, some of which are in TIKs references. I think the best overall work now is Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2, by Swedish historian Christer Bergström (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection and debunking the myths perpetrated by the film A Bridge Too Far.
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  63.  @stewartorr1939  - Brereton and Williams are responsible for deleting the double D-Day airlift and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from Browning's COMET plan for MARKET, and Browning was unable to protest because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation scheduled at too short notice. LINNET II was fortunately cancelled, but Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. Sources: The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Gavin was also responsible for his own divisional plan, including toying with and eventually dismissing a British request (presumably Browning's) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main, because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. He then assigned his weakest regimental commander, Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR - who had not performed well in Normandy, to the critical Nijmegen mission instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. Gavin obviously thought it sufficient to instruct Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge immediately after landing, so Gavin and Browning did prioritise the bridge and see McManus for the best analysis on the whole bridge versus ridge debate. Sources: Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The fact is Lindquist failed to carry out this instruction, despite receiving a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees at the initial objective on the Groesbeek ridge, that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left the highway bridge guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. He instead continued with his own plan to send a recon patrol based on a rifle platoon and the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section. He reported back to Gavin that he was not sending the battalion until the DZ was cleared. On hearing this, Gavin drove to the 508th CP, telling Lindquist "I told you to move with speed", at about the same the SS were arriving in Nijmegen. It then took another two hours to get A and B Companies out of their extended defensive positions along the Groesbeek ridge and moving into the city. Source: Nordyke (op cit, 2012) The patrol got split up in the crowds of Dutch civilians and only the three-man point team from S-2 reached the bridge, took seven surprised prisoners at the south end without firing a shot, and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. They decided to withdraw and as they were leaving heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 with about 30 armoured vehicles) arriving at the other end. Source: The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Essential background on Lindquist's poor performance in Normandy: Nordyke (op cit, 2012), Chapters 3 and 8. Gavin also talked about his and Matthew Ridgway's views on Lindquist in his interview with Cornelius Ryan (op cit, Cornelius Ryan Collection) The German side of the Nijmegen bridge story, both reinforcement and attempted demolition, based on the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) is in Chapter 4 of Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014). The only reason TIK didn't mention these other aspects, I'm sure, is because he hasn't drilled down to Nordyke's regimental histories or read Cirillo's thesis on command aspects or it seems, Cornelius Ryan's notes on Gavin's interview. The Gerritsen and Revell book is a specialist publication I doubt many people have read. I think TIK is on the right track as far as he's gone, but you can go a lot deeper with more references and it only reinforces his video.
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  64.  @ErikExeu  - the take-off time for COMET was in the early hours, and staggered to allow the gliders to get there first before the faster paratroop carriers overtook them - Montgomery's cancellation order came through to the airfields at 0200 hrs on 10 September, just as troops were loading their aircraft, so it was very last minute. The glider coup de main assaults on the three main bridges at Arnhem-Njmegen-Grave was timed for arrival at dawn and the gliders would turn and follow the rivers to navigate to their targets. This allowed plenty of time for the second lift planned to arrive in the early evening before sunset. The reason Brereton deleted the double airlift for MARKET was probably the lack of night navigation experience in IX Troop Carrier Command and decided on each lift flying in broad daylight, and that meant one lift per day, and he cited the insufficient turnaround time for maintenance as the reason a second lift on D-Day was not possible. The glider assaults were then deleted on the pretext daylight landings near the bridges would be vulnerable to the flak defences, but probably has more to do with the lack of assault capability in the USAAF glider force or an unwillingness to allow the British glider units to seize the 82nd's objectives by coup de main for them. Gavin, according to his interview with Cornelius Ryan (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) received a "British request" (I would presume from Browning) to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge. He said he toyed with the idea, but eventually dismissed it because of his experince in Sicily, where the troop carriers were spooked by flak and dropped the 82nd over a huge area of the island. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the whole division was disorganised for days. He chose instead to drop his three parachute regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The only exception was the 504th at Grave, where Colonel Tucker insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the bridge so it could be taken from both ends, and he got it. As far as the 3rd Parachute Battalion's stop in Oosterbeek on the first night is concerned, Lathbury had (fleeting) radio contact with his Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, at the bridge and was advised the 2nd Battalion route near the river was still clear and that he could slip 3rd Battalion south and get through that way. I've read accounts that Lathbury was all for pressing on, but Urquhart, who was with him and 3rd Battalion, ordered the halt and that's why Lathbury advised Hibbert they were stopping. Lathbury and Hibbert had plenty of airborne experience, but Urquhart did not, so I think that along with some of the planning compromises he shouldn't have accepted (on Gale's 6th Airborne advice), I think makes sense that the mistake here was Urquhart's. Start times for the operation were based on sequencing. They wanted the morning for the bombing raids on flak and barracks facilities, although I don't see any problem with the previous evening or overnight raids. Horrocks would not order the ground advance (timed at H-Hour+1:30 or 1430 hrs) to be sure the airborne operation was going ahead and not cancelled like the previous 15 ops. He gave the order at 1435. Horrocks would have been happier with a start on Saturday as he was superstitious about Sunday operations - in his experience they never went well. You can't have the ground advance start before the airborne, because it would put German defences on alert on the axis of advance, and the later start by 1.5 hours was to deconflict 2nd TAF air support from the IX TCC airlift and escort traffic. I'm currently studying the 82nd Airborne G-2 and G-3 documents available from PaperlessArchives. It is the raw material in terms of handwritten messages and typed daily intelligence reports from prisoner interrogations, and it's very clear the airborne landings were a total surprise. The Germans expected a ground advance and thought the bombings were preparation for that. In the Nijmegen area the main line was the Maas-Waal canal, connecting the Waal defence line to the west and the Maas line to the south, with a forward outpost at Grave. So, the 82nd landed with one regiment (504th) effectively between the outpost and main line, and two regiments (505th and 508th) behind the MLR. Nijmegen itself was not occupied by combat troops and contained only rear echelon units, mostly the Ordnungspolizei HQ for the Netherlands (the BdO, equivalent to a division HQ and evacuated from Den Haag in 1943) and some logistics units. The main line's command post was Oberst Hartung's HQ at the NEBO monastery north of Groesbeek near 1st/508th's initial objective at De Ploeg and also became the 508th CP, where Lindquist was met by resistance leader Gert van Hees and given intel the city was evacuated.
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  65.  @bigwoody4704  - it's disingenuous to list all the 82nd's objectives down to each canal bridge and not list all the 1st and 101st's objectives individually. You actually can't count! I'm not surprised really.
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  66.  @gabrielseth5142  - I think you have to distinguish between things that go wrong that are fatal and non-fatal to the success of the operation. Obviously, things go wrong with every military operation, but to just add up all the things that went wrong and then say they all contributed to its failure is too simplistic. You'd never commit to any operation if that were the case. So what happened at Nijmegen? Well, we didn't know this from Cornelius Ryan and I don't think it's really emerged until Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection (2013), and a number of other recent sources that help fill in the gaps and provide context, but here's the key parts that go beyond what TIK investigated when he blames Gavin: Nordyke, Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army [from No.6 (Dutch) Troop, No.11 Inter-Allied Commando] soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand. The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lt. Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Boroughs, Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st [S-2 Section], told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." Nordyke, Chapter 10 of Put Us Down In Hell - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
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  67.  @gabrielseth5142  - the 101st had challenges but were sufficiently successful to pass XXX Corps through on schedule. The 82nd were more experienced as a Division, the 504th and 505th had been involved in Sicily and Italy. The 504th missed Normandy because they stayed in Italy for Anzio, so for D-Day the 505th were joined by two new Regiments, the 507th and 508th. The 508th had command problems in Normandy, which is very interesting in light of Nijmegen later. For Market Garden the 504th were available, so they and the 505th secured all their objectives quickly, but the 508th had command problems again. That's what I got out of Nordyke's book. With 1st Airborne, there were also problems affecting 1st Parachute Brigade's advance into Arnhem. They couldn't land closer, there were no suitable drop zones (the original Polish DZ 'K' south of the bridge relied on 1st Para Bde to clear it of Flak and it had high tension lines crossing it!), and the movement of 3rd Battalion should have been more aggressive. The Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert at the bridge, managed to contact Brigadier Lathbury with 3rd Battalion on the radio and suggest he slip one of the other battalions onto the 2nd Battalion route as he believed it was still clear, but Lathbury refused and said they were staying put overnight and resume the advance in the morning. That was almost certainly a mistake. The 2nd Battalion was under command of a more experienced officer in John Frost and I think his leadership had more to do with his success than anything else. The problems with communications and the faster reaction of German forces than anticipated prevented the divisional perimeter being formed around the town, but that would not have prevented XXX Corps passing through it on their way to deploy north of the Rijn. Crossing the water barriers is the hard part, so Frost's hold on the bridge for four days should have been plenty of time. Once the bridge was lost and probably not recoverable, the objective certainly turned more towards reaching 1st Airborne and looking to bridge the Rijn at their location, and then later evacuation. 1st Airborne did not fail in their mission and resent any such suggestion, just as the 101st resent any suggestion they were rescued at Bastogne by Patton, and I think that's entirely reasonable in both cases.
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  68.  @gabrielseth5142  - the 101st's mission at Bastogne was to deny the German offensive the use of the road network - Bastogne has seven roads leading in and out of the town. It was by-passed by 2.Panzer-Division and 130.Panzer-(Lehr)-Division, which obviously slowed them down by using minor roads and tracks, and left for the following 26.Volksgrenadier-Division to beseige. The 101st were relieved by Patton's 4th Armored Division coming up from the south, but the 101st were not withdrawn, they went on the offensive by January and were part of the general effort to collapse the 'bulge' and push the Germans back to their orginal line. That's why they don't like the suggestion they needed to be 'rescued'.
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  69.  @johnburns4017  - I thought the problem was that the 508th's paperwork had mysteriously disappeared from the US Army records, apart from the Field Order No.1 dated 13 September. That did not contain any order to 1st Battalion (Warren) to take the bridge, only that the regiment was to be prepared to take the bridges on Division order. Gavin's instructions prior to the jump were to the regiment CO to send the 1st Battalion to the bridge, not directly to the battalion. Warren was not expecting the movement order when he first received it at 2000 hrs after Gavin had chewed Lindquist out at the 508th CP, and it took several hours for Warren to get the battalion out and assembled because it was strung out along the ridge in defensive positions ready to repel a counter-attack from Nijmegen. I have frequently posted Nordyke's narrative account based on Chet Graham's testimony, but this is from September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ - At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - My only problem with McManus is that after all the scholarly research, which compliments Nordyke's combat history of the 508th published in the same year, he then goes and blames it all on Montgomery for the whole idea being too difficult. But doesn't offer any rationale for making this claim. As TIK says, what's too difficult about - capture the bridges, pass the tanks over them? The fact is that Roy Lindquist was the 508th Regiment's Herbert Sobel and should have been transferred to an administrative role for which he was ideally gifted. Reading Nordyke's regimental history is the key to understanding this whole thing about the 508th. McManus and Zig Boroughs' collection of veteran's letters and stories (The 508th Connection, 2013) also helps flesh out the details.
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  70. Gavin, as the 82nd Division commander, has to take the overall responsibility, but the failure was that of one of his regimental commanders to follow Gavin's divisional plan. I believe TIK's research is correct as far as it goes, but I don't think he's drilled down to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment's combat history - Put Us Down In Hell by Phil Nordyke, 2012: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Captain Ben Delamater, the [1st] battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " I think that because these senior American officers were still around at the time Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far in 1974, and Browning and Montgomery had both already passed, the latter became convenient scapegoats. It seems that only in the last 10-12 years the details on the events at Nijmegen are starting to become clear. A further complication was that Lindquist had performed badly in Normandy on the 508th's first combat operation and both Matthew Ridgway (CO of the 82nd in Normandy) and Gavin (who had been his Assistant Commander in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist. According to Gavin after the war, Ridgway would not promote Lindquist, despite beieng the senior Colonel in the Division. This may be why Ridgway did not take Lindquist with him as his S-1 (Admin Officer), a role Lindquist has proven to be gifted at earlier in his career before being given a combat command, when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in the month before Market Garden. Gavin took over the 82nd Division and inherited Lindquist, but it's not clear how Gavin regarded him until after the war (perhaps with the benefit of hindsight). Gavin also failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs in the planning and execution of Market Garden, and carried a spinal injury after the jump. Ridgway and US XVIII Airborne Corps did not have a role in Market Garden (it was under Browning's British 1st Airborne Corps), so Ridgway borrowed a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and drove up the Market Garden corridor to visit his two divisions unofficially. When he got to the 82nd CP, he was studying a map on the wall when Gavin returned from dealing with a problem on the front lines and was handed a message about another problem and left the CP to deal with it before either man could acknowledge the other's presence. I find the whole story quite extraordinary.
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  71. Oh gosh, I've just written a long reply to someone else on the same point - if you don't mind a copy and paste job: The concern was that II.SS-Panzerkorps was known to be in northeastern Netherlands with two shattered SS-Panzer-Divisions under command - the 9.'Hohenstaufen' and the 10.'Frundsberg' Divisions. The Dutch resistance had only identified elements of the 9.SS-Panzer among the scattered troops billeted in the area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, and they had identified a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo, but not which division it belonged to. The Allied intelligence assessment (the latest before the operation was SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26, dated 16 September 1944) was that these divisions were each reduced to a regimental battlegroup with few if any tanks, and that they were refitting by drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area just across the German border southeast of Nijmegen. There was a fear that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks - hyperbole that started a silly rumour the tanks were actually there, and Gavin was told the excellent Dutch army barracks facillites in Nijmegen may have a regiment of SS troops in them. This in turn created the concern over the Groesbeek heights - an area of woodland ridge line that was a natural defensive position between the drop zones and the city of Nijmegen with its bridges. It was for this reason the 508th PIR had to seize three initial objectives on the ridge at De Hut (2nd Battalion), De Ploeg (1st Battalion), and Berg-en-Dal (3rd Battalion), but as soon as this was achieved the 508th were expected to send 1st Battalion into the city to seize the highway bridge as soon as possible, and this is where things went wrong - the precise details of which are the answer to another question and not the one you're asking here, so that's a discussion for another comment. Browning's dismissal of the tanks photographed by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September in the Deelerwoud north of Arnhem, was based on his view that the tanks were obsolete models and probably not even serviceable. This story rested on Browning's Corps Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (name changed to 'Fuller' in the film A Bridge Too Far), who connected these tanks to the Dutch resistance reports and gave his story to Cornelius Ryan in an interview for his 1974 book, A Bridge Too Far. The 1977 film is based on the book and is highly controversial, not least because Browning's widow and actor Dirk Bogarde both objected to the portrayal of Browning in the film, but Bogarde didn't opt to turn down the part and seems (in my personal opinion watching the film) to have sought to mitigate the script by playing the character as somewhat conflicted. I presume it was all he could do, or pass and have someone else play the role. By the way, Bogarde served in the war as an RAF photo interpreter working on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets during the European campaign, including Operation Market Garden. He knew all the key personalities, including Montgomery and Browning. The problem with Major Brian Urquhart's testimony is that Browning was no longer alive to give his side of the story, and the photo in question was no longer available... until 2015. The photo (Frame 4015 taken 12 Sep 44 by 541 Sqn), along with the RAF's entire library of images, was donated to the Dutch government after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys, and only came to light when the Dutch government digitised their archives and put them online. The key photo frame was identified and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch, and under magnification the tanks can be determined to be Mark III and older Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. The study is available as a free pdf called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story' (2nd Ed, 2019) on the RAF MoD site. So, we now know which unit the tanks belonged to, because the only unit in the Netherlands with those vehicles at the time (before Market Garden started) was the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division currently fighting the Soviets in Poland. The Regiment was based in Utrecht and the Reserve Panzer Kompanie in Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast. During the crisis in the west in September 1944, the 1.Fallschirm-armee was formed to plug the gap in the line in Belgium. The 'HG' Regiment transferred to it from LXXXVIII Korps (Netherlands occupation forces), and the three training Abteilungen (infanterie/panzer/artillerie) were mobilised and sent south to fight British 2nd Army on the Albert canal. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie was mobilised on 7 September and sent to Hechtel in Belgium to join II.Abteilung, but only three tanks completed the journey without breaking down, and were destroyed with much of the battalion at Hechtel by Guards Armoured Division on 12 September, the same day the remainder were photographed near Deelen undergoing maintenance (turrets were turned to allow engine hatches to be opened) at a supply dump in the woods near Fliegerhorst Deelen, the largest German airbase in the Netherlands. On 17 September, the day Market Garden was launched, these tanks were laagered at Wolfswinkel, near Son north of Eindhoven, and they attempted to fire on the drop zone of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) during the landings, but were shot up by escorting fighter bombers. Two Mark III tanks escaped, one ran the gauntlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode but was only hit by unprimed bazooka rounds, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel to bump the E/504th (82nd Airborne) roadblock at Grave. Some casualties were caused to troopers climbing out of their foxholes, in the belief the tanks were the British arriving early, and they then turned tail were not seen again. So, Browning's dismissal of the tanks in the photo appears to have been good judgement on his part, and history proves that he was right to be more concerned about the unknown location of 10.SS-Panzer-Division - it was not known that the Ruurlo headquarters was the 10.SS-Panzer-Division's, the 9.SS-Panzer were headquartered at Beekbergen near Apeldoorn.
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  72. You need to do more homework. Not only had Montgomery exercised in England the use of airborne troops to secure a route for an armoured advance, he had already tried it on a small scale in Sicily before planning to try it on a larger scale for COMET, which had to be cancelled because of the intelligence situation in the Netherlands and upgraded to an even larger operation as MARKET GARDEN. XXX Corps was absolutely the right formation to take the centre line along the airborne corridor (VIII and XII Corps were advancing on the flanks), as they had led the British 2nd Army's 'great swan' through northern France and Belgium all the way from the Seine. The Guards had established a record daily divisional advance on 3 September to liberate Brussels - better than any headlines Patton ever achieved, and a record I believe was not broken until the First Gulf War in 1991 - and the next day 11th Armoured Division (also under XXX Corps at the time) extended that advance to liberate Antwerp. Far from being "out of their depth" - XXX Corps were schooling everybody else on how it should be done. MARKET GARDEN didn't work because when the tanks got to Nijmegen, on schedule to get to Arnhem in the planned 2-3 days, they found the Waal bridges were still in German hands, which was not part of the plan. Operation GARDEN as stopped by a catastropihic command failure in operation MARKET at the top of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment on D-Day of the operation, and the responsibility rested with their divisional commander in 82nd Airborne. Blaming the ground forces is misdirection.
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  73.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - in fact there were StuGs off the road situated at least on one flank (to the west) and the Shermans were going off-road after them. That bloody film (A Bridge Too Far) has completely brainwashed so many people who just can't be bothered to read books... The other main problem with that scene were the German anti-tank guns - in reality they did not have prime movers to get them away from the road into proper positions and were positioned close to the road in exposed positions, so they were all knocked out by the opening artillery barrage. The Irish Guards tanks that were ambushed were the tail end of the leading squadron and first few tanks of the next squadron (the Germans cleverly let the first tanks pass before opening fire) and were hit by panzerfausts from the roadside ditches. These men were the panzer-zerstörer (tank destroyer) platoon of Kerutt's I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 18, and they were all killed by the Irish Guards infantry, so it was a suicide squad and that narrative did not fit Richard Attenborough's narrative the British were incompetently advancing into a German trap on an unsuitable road... The Then and Now volumes by Karel Margry have hundreds of photographs up and down the corridor showing tanks on both sides (Panzerbrigade 107 at Nuenen for example) in fields and not necessarily confined to the roads. I think it's the best photographic collection on MARKET GARDEN and the information in the text and excellent captions have proved to be very reliable. The only fault I'm aware of in all the 800 pages of the two volumes is the Panzer II Ausf.b wreck in Hunner park, Nijmegen - so often captioned in books as belonging to the 'Hermann Göring' training regiment as it is here as well. Their 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando (NCO School Company) made their last stand at the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park, so it's not an unreasonable guess, but incorrect I'm afraid. The HG regiment never claimed to own such a vehicle, but one unit sent to fight MARKET GARDEN did, and that was Panzer-Kompanie Mielke (from Panzer-Erstaz-Abteilung 11 in Bielefeld), according to a document from Wehrkreis VI (Military District VI based in Münster) listing units and equipment sent to the Netherlands in response to the landings. The relevent page from this document is printed on p.125 of Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). So once again, you have to delve into a specialist book and really get into the weeds to obtain the right information and clear up these details.
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  74. 32 glider tugs (not gliders, which are pre-loaded) for the Horsas carrying I Airborne Corps HQ and signals, and 6 more for the American WACO gliders carrying two USAAF fighter control teams and two liaison officers from the American divisions. Total 38. The last minute change from 2nd lift meant that some 1st Anti-Tank Battery gliders going to Arnhem were bumped from 1st to 2nd lift, mainly Z Troop guns and the second line ammunition trailers and Jeeps for the other 1st Battery Troops. Apart from the fact no HE shells were with the guns at the Arnhem bridge (they were all in the second Jeep trailer coming in on the 2nd lift), there was no adverse consequence of taking the aircraft from the Arnhem lift, so I would refute that suggestion. You have to ask yourself what difference it would have made if, say, the second half of the South Staffords Battalion were taken on the 1st lift? They required another 41 glider tugs, so the numbers would more or less work. The answer is probably none at all, because the South Staffords' Phase 1 task was to protect Landing Zone 'S' for the 2nd lift, then they were due to be Brigade reserve in the perimeter for Phase 2. In the event, because of the problems suffered by 1st Parachute Brigade, Brigadier Hicks (in temporary command of the division) ordered the South Staffords into Arnhem before the 2nd lift arrived to assist efforts to reinforce the bridge, and by the time the leading two companies reached the western outskirts of the town the second half of the battalion had landed in the 2nd lift and caught up with them. Nothing would have been gained by sending them on the 1st lift. The reason for the Corps HQ going to Groesbeek on the 1st lift? It was probably because Brereton had compromised Browning's operation COMET concept by deleting key features such as the double airlifts on D-Day and the glider coup de main assauts on the main bridges for the expanded operation MARKET. Browning could hardly object after he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II plan and Brereton planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway. LINNET II was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning was now politically neutralised and the Americans were in control of the airborne aspect of the planning process. Browning's only hope of influencing events on the ground was to be there from the start and therefore got the Corps HQ lift moved up. As you say he had little contact with the British division at Arnhem, and the 101st liaison officer and his comms team were in the glider that crashed near Student's HQ at Vught, but Browning certainly did had an influecne over events at Nijmegen, which turned out to be the critical area. Unfortunately, the operation was already compromised as soon as it was launched, since Gavin had dismissed a British request (I assume from Browning) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge and instead assigned his weakest regiment, the 508th, to the Nijmegen mission. He instructed its commander, Colonel Lindquist, to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and he failed to do so, believing he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, desite receiving a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the bridge. When Gavin found out the battalion was not moving, he went to the 508th CP and chewed Lindquist out to get the battalion moving, but it was too late. The delay allowed the 10.SS-Panzer-Division to move into the city and reinforce the bridges, imposing a delay on the progress of XXX Corps to Arnhem and sealing the fate of the 1st Airborne Division.
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  75.  @johnpeate4544  - probably exactly right. Comet was cancelled on the morning of 10 September and Montgomery met Eisenhower on his plane at Brussels airport on the same day to have another go at the narrow front argument (and we know that once again he failed to persuade Ike), and then he presented his Market Garden plan - Comet upgraded to three airborne divisions. Ike was not convinced that Market Garden would help free up access to Antwerp (he didn't accept the analysis), however, he endorsed the operation because it fitted in with his broad front policy of advancing to the Rhine, and of course made sure Montgomery only got enough logistics to achieve that much! The Market Garden plan did include the XXX Corps' deployment north of Arnhem to the Zuider Zee, to cut off all German forces west of the corridor (including 15.Armee around Antwerp), but also included the 43rd (Wessex) and 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division bridgeheads on the River Ijssel at Deventer and Zutphen (43rd ID) and Doesburg (50th ID). The planned 1st Airborne Division perimeter also included the Polish Brigade occupying the Ijssel bridges at Westervoort. I think because it didn't work out like that, people forget or don't realise that geographically the Ijssel is a major distributary of the Dutch Rijn, and you're not really over the Rhine delta until you have bridgeheads on the Ijssel, not just the Neder Rijn at Arnhem. I've only really seen Dutch contibutors to YouTube comments really pick up on that, because it's local knowledge. So, Montgomery's plan, fully endorsed by Eisenhower, involves the advance to the Zuider Zee and cut the Netherlands off from Germany whole. TIK was on the money with this video.
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  76. ... cont. Traupel was expecting SS-Obersturmführer Hans Quandel's 16 Panzer IV tanks from 5.Kompanie and SS-Obersturmführer Franz Riedel's 4 StuG IIIG assault guns from 7.Kompanie to arrive from Vorden. Quandel's unit never arrived because they were blocked at Arnhem and the Mark IV was too heavy for the Pannerden ferry, but the assault guns (based on the lighter Mark III) did eventually get ferried across. In the meantime, 18 September saw the arrival of Kampfgruppe Euling - SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl-Heinz Euling's IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21 (ex II./19 from the Hohenstaufen, later became I./22, aka 'the ghost battalion') and engineers from SS-Untersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel's 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10, who began work to instal the prepared demolition charges stored in the bridge piers under the direction of Oberleutnant Gerhard Bretschneider from von Tettau’s pionier staff, who was also in charge of the Nijmegen rail and Grave bridge demolitions, but only had a corporal and three privates with him. The formation of Kampfgruppe Hencke was something that seemed to take place after the activities of the first day and mainly incorporated combat troops from the demolished or captured Maas-Waal canal bridges. These were the survivors from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 deployed along the canal, 4 and 5.Kompanie of Schiffstammabteilung 14 based at Zetten on the 'island' (2 and 3.Kompanie were sent to Elten near the south end of Arnhem bridge), a Pionier-Bau-Kompanie (engineer construction company) from Pionier-Bau-Bataillon 434 that had been digging trenches and anti-tank ditches along the canal line. They were withdrawn from the Honinghutje bridge on 18 September (D+1) when it was finally attacked and taaken by 82nd Airborne and concentrated in Nijmegen around the rail bridge. The 'Hermann Göring' Unter-Lehr-Kommando withdrew to the Villa Belvoir, a hotel overlooking their former camp in Hunner Park to reinforce Euling's perimeter. The area between the two bridges was occupied by Kampfgruppe Melitz under Fallschirmjäger Major Engelbert Melitz, the Staff Major of Oberst Hartung's Fallshirm.AOK Ausbildungsstelle. His troops seem to be some Flak troops, an SS-Polizei Musikkorps (police band) that Traupel noted were guarding the bridge earlier, some "railway guards" I have not positively identifed but the 82nd Airborne had a large number of BdE (German state railway) troops in their POW cage at De Mookerheide that probably came from the train that they intercepted at Groesbeek trying to escape to Germany. In other words, Kampfgruppe Hencke was formed from troops collected from combat units mainly on the defence line on the first day and some Flak units that surrounded the city. It seems that Oberst Hartung formed a similar motley collection of troops on the north bank of the Waal in Lent and it was they who opposed the river assault crossing by the 504th PIR on 20 September. The implication from the sequence of events is that had the whole of Warren's 1st Battalion 508th gone directly to the bridge instead of just Weaver's reinforced platoon, then assuming they didn't all get lost, they should have reached the bridge led by PFC Atkins' S-2 point team at the same time Atkins actually did arrive. They had an hour to themselves with their seven prisoners before the Germans started arriving in force, namely Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 coming down from Beekbergen via Arnhem. That hour could have used to establish the battalion at both ends of the bridge, and Gräbner would have reported back to II.SS-Panzerkorps that the bridge was held in force by the Americans.
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  77.  @johnlucas8479  - we know the sequence, but we don't know the exact timings. According to Traupel, Gräbner himself left at about 9pm with most of his battalion and he was informed the SPW kanon platoon were recalled at midnight. It was at that time Traupel left his HQ in Lent and went back to the bridge and found 30-40 men from the police band were there, and then early in the morning Baumgärtel's SS-Panzer engineers were the next arrivals. We don't know exactly when Weaver tried to approach Hunner Park and were blocked, but Gräbner was there at least an hour, say from 7:30-8pm (as it got dark) and when he left at 9pm, Weaver may have been unlucky - any earlier he may have simply walked to the bridge to join Atkins unmolested, or after Gräbner pulled out there was just five SPWs left behind with these rear echelon people. I do think the police band were probably there and seven of them were possibly the bridge guards captured by Atkins, but not noticed by Traupel until later. They were left behind when the BdO (German Order Police HQ for the whole Netherlands) pulled out and had left by 6:30pm for Deventer and then on to Zwolle. I don't think the various accounts are contradictory, they do fit together. I think the timings can be misleading and the situation was certainly fluid, not fixed. People were not in certain positions, like Kampfgruppe Hencke, because we know most of his combat troops were on the Maas-Waal canal on the first day. These forces withdrew into Nijmegen from the west, while the Americans seemed slow to advance from the south. Warren's battalion made an attempt to approach the bridge from the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle and were blocked by SPWs at around midnight. It seems both Warren and the SPW platoon withdrew from Nijmegen at around the same time. If there were any other combat troops in the city at this time, I would certainly like to know who they were myself, because I've been compiling a list of every unit I can find a reference to and they seem to be mostly rear echelon units trying to get out of town, or already gone that afternoon. Remember, two trains left Nijmegen for Germany that night. One steamed right through the 82nd Divisional area without being stopped and escaped to Kranenburg, prompting Gavin to chew the 505th out and had them set up a bazooka team to stop any more. As far as I can determine, the troops jumping off the second train and rounded up for the POW cage were BdE (German railways) personnel - technically they were deemed by the rules of war to be combatants and had to be treated as POWs, but they were logistics troops not trained for combat, hence put on a train to be evacuated. There was a BdE training unit based at Nijmegen, but finding details has been difficult. The other mysterious unit hard to find details on is the Rüstungsinspektion Niederlande (armaments inspectorate Netherlands). It was the organisation the Nazis used to control industries for the war effort. Instead of nationalising companies, they left the owners in place to run their businesses and embedded military officers fom the Heer, Luftwaffe, or Kriegsmarine as appropriate to need, and the whole organisation was controlled by SS staff reporting to Reichsführer Himmler. Apparently the Netherlands branch was disbanded in September 1944 and evacuated from Den Haag as Allied invasion seemed imminent and it's possible they were indeed in Nijmegen during their transit back to Germany when Market Garden started. I only have a vague source for this, but it would explain why Traupel saw so many senior staff officers in Nijmegen from all branches of the military, all milling about discussing what to do. As I said in my second part, which crossed over your reply, if Atkins and his point team could get to the bridge unmolested, then the implication is that Warren's entire battalion could have done it. Atkins had an hour at the bridge undisturbed, so that time could have been used by the battalion to establish its positions around the bridge with hardly a shot being fired. Captain Adams of A/508th was of that opinion (in Nordyke, 2012), and he was there and I wasn't, so I see no reason to contradict him.
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  78.  @johnlucas8479  - the problem is that Hencke's kampfgruppe were on the canal defence line on the first day. The Waalbrug was in his rear and lightly guarded. I don't see how PFC Atkin's point team could get onto the bridge without being challenged if it was held in any strength, and Adams also later made a close approach to the bridge. If Henck had combat troops in the city centre around the bridges, I would like to know who they were, because the units we know about were in their defensive positions on the canal until forced away from them. In the first few hours, Hencke himself and his staff were evacuating the very building outside the city the 508th took over as their own regimental command post on the Groesbeek heights. I also find McManus to be unreliable. He gets some of his facts wrong and even contradicts himself, particularly on the 20 September events when the bridge was taken. I found his book useful because it contains first hand accounts from three members of Weaver's patrol, so it filled in gaps in Nordyke's better overall narrative that I can't find any real fault with. I think Kershaw has added up the the total strength of Kampfgruppe Hencke and arrived at an estimate of 750, but this force was built up over time until the final showdown on 20 September. I think it's the time dimension that catches people out.
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  79.  @johnlucas8479  - I think the timings are difficult because many of them are estimated and there are two different time zones involved. You can easily lose an hour between some of the timings, so I don't particularly trust them. I think the sequence is more important. Weaver's patrol had just 3 Km to march to the bridge from De Ploeg, that's a brisk walk in 30 minutes or a slower one in 60 minutes. The point is that if Atkins can get to the bridge some time before Gräbner arrived, then so could Weaver with the rest of the patrol, or Warren with the whole battalion, if Lindquist had followed Gavin's instructions. The people who were there, like Able Company CO Jonathan Adams, 1st Battalion XO Ben Delamater, and Division CO Gavin, seemed to think it was entirely possible, but the weak link in the middle was Lindquist. There was clearly a gap in German occupation of the city after the rear echelon elements (like the Ortskommandantur and the BdO) had pulled out and SS-Panzer troops moved in after dark. That gap in the middle was when the Dutch civilians came out into the streets, believing they had been liberated, and Weaver's patrol got split up trying to push through them. The Dutch would not be out in the streets celebrating if there were many Germans around, so that's the picture it paints to me. Yes, for disambiguation: Kampfgruppe 'Heinke' was at the Belgian border, an SS battlegroup from II.SS-Panzerkorps under SS-Sturmbannführer Heinrich Heinke, former commander of SS-Feldersatz-Bataillon 10 and now taken over SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21 of 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' with various combat ready elements transferred from 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' and from 10.SS-Panzer itself. Attached to (Fallschirm) Kampfgruppe Walther based at Valkenswaard, Kampfgruppe Heinke were deployed northeast of the British XXX Corps bridgehead at Neerpelt around the villages of Borkel and Schaft. Kampfgruppe 'Hencke' was Oberst Friedrich (Fritz) Hencke's Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1, staff only, no combat troops, sent by Student's 1.Fallschirm-Armee to Nijmegen in the days before Market Garden to take command of the city and the Maas-Waal defence line in the Nijmegen sector. He was established at the NEBO monastery just south of De Ploeg, sharing accommodations with Fallschirm Oberst Günther Hartung of the Fallschirm.AOK Ausbildungsstelle.
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  80. ​ @johnlucas8479  - Hi John. Let me see if I can construct a narrative using those sources: 01. Gräbner's SS-Pz.Aufkl.Abt.9 crosses Arnhem bridge around 6:00 p.m. (Nordyke p.287) 02. A/508th patrol and Lt Lee Frigo (S-2) report De Ploeg "no enemy" (Adams, Nordyke p.274) 03. 1/508th battalion (Warren) reach De Ploeg "at around 6:30 p.m." (Adams, Nordyke p.274) 04. Regimental CO "soon followed us onto objective" (Adams, Nordyke p.274) 05. Before Weaver sent, patrol sent to investigate Germans to rear (Delamater, Nordyke p.274) 06. At 6:30 p.m., Weaver patrol enters Nijmegen, knocks out MG position (Nordyke p.275) 07. Weaver patrol makes wrong turn and lost bearings (Nordyke p.275) 08. PFC Atkins' point team separated from Weaver, but reach bridge (Boroughs, p.246) 09. Weaver cuts thru back yards for half-hour, lost, asks for help at house (Nordyke p.275) 10. After an hour at the bridge and getting dark, Atkins withdraws, Gräbner arrives (Boroughs p.246) 11. When Gräbner arrived, Hencke organising defensive perimeter around bridges (Nordyke p.288) 12. About 8:00 p.m. Lindquist ordrs Warren to seize Nijmegen highway bridge (Nordyke p.288) 13. Guide arrives, takes Weaver one block, runs into Germans, taken POW or killed (Nordyke p.275) 14. German truck approaches Weaver from behind, firefight, withdraw to shelter (Nordyke (p,275) 15. Weaver receives message on SCR-300 two companies going for bridge, withdraws (Nordyke p.276) 16. About 10:00 p.m. Adams at IP waiting for B Coy told to go ahead anyway (Nordyke p.289) 17. SPWs and trucks with SS troops arrive at Keizer Karelplein (Nordyke p.290) 18. A Coy encounter MGs at Keizer Karelplein "a little after 22:00 hours" (Warren, Nordyke p.289) 19. Warren orders B Coy to push through A Coy to continue attack to right (Nordyke p.292) 20. Adams ordered to contact Dutch Underground, 2nd platoon unable to locate (Nordyke p.294) 21. Adams and 2nd platoon sent to Post Office near midnight for bridge detonator (McManus p.165) 22. Adams hits Post Office switchgear, and then hits Belvedere near bridge (McManus pp.165-166) 23. Unable to withdraw to Keizer Karelplein, Adams shelters in warehouse (McManus p.166) I think the idea that Hencke had a sizeable force at the highway bridge at any time is false, and the accounts suggesting this (not explicit) are misleading, and here's why: Hencke was put in charge of the forces in and around Nijmegen days before the Airborne attack. He was responsible for that sector of the Maas-Waal defence line. The forces under his command are listed in numerous books, Nordyke p.287 for example cites Reynolds (Sons Of The Reich), but (with my corrections on their proper names) they all agree on the same basic structure: a. Staff Fallschirm-Leehr-Regiment 1 under Oberst Fritz Hencke. b. Kompanien 3-5 detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 from Div 406, WK VI. c. 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando, Fs-Pz-Ers-u-Ausb-Rgt. 'Hermann Göring', 245 men under Hptm Max Runge. d. Fallschirm.AOK Ausbildungstelle, 95 staff and 14 candidates under Oberst Günther Hartung. e. SS-Polizei Musikkorps Zug from BdO (Ordnungspolizei HQ evacuated by 6:30 p.m.), 30-40 men. f. 8.8cm and 2cm Flak guns from 4./schwere.Flak-Abt. 572 and gemischte.Flak.Abt.345. I would also add: g. ?.Kompanie/Pionier-Bau-Bataillon 434 was digging ditches near the canal. h. "Railway Guards"? I believe these are personnel from the BdE (German State Railway) training batallion. I have a book on the Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 'Hermann Göring' (Lawrence Paterson, 2021), which has a bit on the training regiment in the Netherlands and this indicates Max Runge was the CO of the staff kompanie, which may be the source for some anti-tank guns deployed along the canal and some ended up in Hunner Park. I cannot find a unit that admits to owning these guns, so this is my current theory. The NCO company (all infantry, no heavy weapons) was probably under command of Oberleutnant Böhme, who was present at the Honinghutje canal bridge and Runge's unit as a whole is referred to as Kampfgruppe Runge, suggesting it was not a discrete unit but a mixed battlegroup. The book, The Battle Of The Bridges - The 504th PIR in Operation Market Garden by Frank van Lunteren (2014), is useful on German units defending the Maas-Waal canal bridges from the 504th attacks on the first two days, and then encountered again as the 504th was used in the Waal assault crossing on the rail and road bridges on 20 September. He believes that 4./Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 (he has the wrong battalion as "Landesschützen-Bataillon II./6" which was at Aachen, but Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 was based at Grave before mobilisation) under Hptm Ernst Sieger at Bridge 9 - Hatert, and Kompanie Rümmele (5./Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6) at Bridge 8 - Malden. Frank, who I have corresponded with to clarify unit IDs, admits his information is sketchy and while he accepts my corrections, I'm disappointed the paperback edition of the book is a 2017 reprint of the hardback and not a revised edition. He doesn't know the identity of the unit defending the lock Bridge 7 - Heumen, or those that may have been defending the bridges at Neerbosch (demolished but not attacked) and the other lock bridge at Weurt. My personal theory is that the three companies of Lds.Ausb.Btl.I./6 (3, 4, 5) were deployed as a screen on all six canal bridges, two bridges per company with aplatoon in reserve. I then think that the 'Hermann Göring' NCO company camped in Hunner Park (per Fullreide's visit in the morning of 17 September) were deployed by the alarm to reinforce the canal bridges. I base that on the presence of anti-tanks guns at the bridges and a group taken POW at Bridge 7 - Heumen consisting of two offciers and 15 NCOs - an odd grouping for Landesschützen home guards, but makes sense if they're from the Unter-Lehr-Kommando. The book follows the account by Ernst Sieger from his diary that after withdrawing from Bridge 9 at Hatert, he reinforced Bridge 10 (road and rail) at Honinghutje, until it too came under attack the next day (18 September). They then all withdrew towards Nijmegen, the Landesschützen, Pionier-Bau-Kompanie 434, some Kriegmarine troops from Schiffsstammabteilung 14 at Zetten (two companies were sent to Nijmegen and two to south end of Arnhem bridge), all now incorporated into Kampfgruppe Runge. MOst of these troops withdrew to the rail bridge in Nijmegen, except the ULK which made its last stand in the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park near the nighway bridge. The point I'm making is that all of these forces were always part of Kampfgruppe Hencke since before the Airborne landings, but the tight perimeter around the two bridges involving the estimated 750 men formed over the course of the battle over four days, 17-20 September. It's my understanding that the only troops Hencke had available to guard the two bridges on the first afternoon may have been the SS-Polizei BdO Musikkorps Zug (music band platoon) left behind by Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus when he evacuated his headquarters in Molenstraat. Gernot Traupel (Adjutant SS-Kampfgruppe Reinhold) estimated this unit to be between 30-40 men (the BdO was equivalent to a division HQ and a divisional band usually had 38 members under an NCO bandmaster). I have a Dutch record of an Oberwachtmeister Otto Paulus from the SS-Polizei listed as MIA 17-21.9.44 in Nijmegen. All of Henck's combat troops were deployed on the canal, so the only 'troops' he immediately had available were his own regimental staff (I have no numbers) and Hartung's staff of 95+14 school candidates as they evacuated the NEBO monastery and evaded the Americans until they could slip into town. It's a guess, but I think those few staff personnel may have arrived at the highway bridge around the time Gräbner got there, and maybe that had something to do with it getting dark (to cover movement) and PFC Atkins also decided to leave the bridge as well.
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  81. ​ @johnnycarroll4496 - very interesting passage. I have no idea what road he is talking about as there are no names or locations given and it should be mostly urban from De Ploeg all the way to the bridge. To be honest, it sounds very much like the terrain from the DZ on the way to De Ploeg! I'm going to have to think about that and maybe study some maps. On the patrol itself, there seems to be differing accounts given by Warren and Delamater (CO and XO 1/508th respectively) as to whether the S-2 Section went separately as a patrol ahead of Weaver's platoon, or led the platoon as a single body. This account seems to suggest Weaver was moving slowly and the S-2 Section had gone ahead. PFC Atkins and his two companions were the point team for Lieutenant Lee Frigo's S-2 Section, and they became separated from the rest in the crowds of Dutch civilians in the city, but pushed through and made it to the bridge on their own with no sign of the others. At this point, Nordyke and McManus seem to agree that the three Lieutenants (Frigo, Weaver, and Weaver's assistant Platoon Leader whose name escapes me for the moment) were in the same place and lost in the back streets of Nijmegen, suggesting they were all one patrol at that point, minus Atkins' team. The fact that it was getting dark during this passage also suggests these events were happening while Atkins was at the bridge, because his testimony is that he got there before dark and then waited an hour for reinforcements until it got dark, before deciding to withdraw. I'm going to have to consider buying the book unless you can give us some more clues, Johnny? Would you say it was a recommended read, in any case?
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  82. @@johnnycarroll4496 - I've had a look at the contemporary maps and I think the description of the route matches very well with the approach march from the Drop Zone to De Ploeg. It does not sound at all like any approach into Nijmegen from De Ploeg. Route from the DZ to De Ploeg: Waldgraaf, Zevenheuvelenweg, Meerwijkselaan. Alongside the Meerwijkselaan just before it crosses the Postweg is a lake on the north side and quite possibly it's a marshy area. Also, parts of this road on Street View appear to have embankments or berms on both sides, so it seems to fit that description of a sunken road. From De Ploeg into town, it's residential and urban. Checking with Nordyke, on page 275 Gene Metcalfe was one of the troopers hit in the firefight that broke out after a truck came up behind them near the Keizer Lodewijkplein and he was left behind assumed dead.
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  83.  @thevillaaston7811  - 10 hrs and 15 mins to construct the Bailey bridge at Son, and as John Sliz points out in his volume Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016), the construction was done entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks, so the effective delay at Son was zero.
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  84.  @ErikExeu  - the Germans forced the Arnhem bridge about half past midday on Wednesday 20 September in broad daylight. The Nijmegen bridge was forced by the Grenadier Guards at 1830 hrs and the bridgehead was not secured by the 504th PIR until 2000 hrs, when it was already fully dark. The 'tea drinking' scene shot for the film A Bridge Too Far was incorrectly shot in daylight with no artillery, burning buildings, or mopping up operations going on, so your "point" is based on something completely made up.
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  85. You have to allow several hours for the Arnhem bridge to be secured before enemy traffic could be interdicted. This happened from about 2100 hrs on D-Day when Frost's unit stopped three fuel trucks from crossing the bridge, which probably belonged to the supply column of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, which had been mobilised at Beekbergen rail station (unloaded from flat cars and had tracks and guns refitted to make them administratively 'operational' again) and attached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reconnoitre reports of airborne landings at Arnhem and Nijmegen. Frost observed most of Gräbner's unit crossing the Arnhem bridge between 1830 and 2000 hrs as he approached the bridge from the west. We also know from the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel that he and SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (adjutant and commander of II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) were probably the last to cross the Arnhem bridge by car before Frost started stopping traffic, and they arrived in Nijmegen to assess the local defences (Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell, 2010). The next unit attempting to cross the bridge was SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl-Heinz Euling's Panzergrenadier-Abteilung (previously II./SS-PGR 19 and transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-PGR 21), which after a short engagement with Frost was redirected to the ferry crossing at Huissen. The Dutch ferryman at Huissen had little choice but to pass Euling's unit over the Neder Rijn, but then scuttled his vessel afterwards. After this, German attention switched to the ferry crossing at Pannerden and elements of SS-Panzer-Flak-Abteilung 10 were used to secure the ferry site to prevent any further sabotage and as a defence against Allied air raids. The next units that were passed across the river to Nijmegen were elements of the engineer battalion - 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Ateilung 10, and the four StuG IIIG assault guns concentrated in Reinhold's 7.Kompanie of SS-Panzer-Regiment 10. The sixteen Panzer IV tanks of 5./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 were too heavy for the ferry, or even a raft made from Rhine barges (the first tank slipped from the raft and fell into the river), so these tanks were held back until the Arnhem bridge was finally cleared on 21 September. Because of the ferries, the process of infiltrating units onto the Nijmegen 'island' was a slow process and mostly had to be done at night to avoid Allied air interdiction. Taking the Nijmegen bridge was considered a priority, but one that was not adhered to due to a command failure in the unit assigned to take it - the 508th PIR. The regiment CO failed to send his 1st battalion directly to the bridge as instructed. The failure to provide for a coup de main mission on the bridge was also a choice made by Gavin - he told Cornelius Ryan he had received a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge and eventually dismissed it, because of his experience of widespread drops in Sicily, preferring to concentrate his landings instead. It was also Gavin's decision to assign the critical Nijmegen mission to the 508th, with its problematic command issues that had manifested during their first combat operation in Normandy, instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. The 505th was assigned the Reichswald sector of the divisional perimeter and it seems that Gavin either did not fully appreciate the issues in the 508th or his rationale was that the Reichswald represented a greater threat of counter-attack than the possibility of mission failure in Nijmegen. I think the best analysis of the bridge versus ridge priority is in chapter 3 of John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and his point is that possession of the high ground is pointless without the bridges, since the bridges are a perishable commodity in enemy hands, but the heights weren't going anywhere and could be regained with support from XXX Corps if temporarily lost. He concludes, I think correctly, that Gavin and Browning expected both the bridge and the heights to be secured by the 508th, and since neither were strongly held by the enemy on D-Day, the opportunity to secure them both and ensure the success of the overall operation was an opportunity lost by the 508th.
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  86. I have just a few notes: 1. Market had failed on the evening of 17 September when the 508th PIR failed to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge before it was reinforced by Gräbner’s SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arriving from Beekbergen, via the Arnhem bridge, when it was only guarded by an NCO and seventeen men. Despite Gavin’s specific instruction to Colonel Lindquist to “move with speed” on it as soon as possible after landing. 2. It was the view of 1st Parachute Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, that they could have received XXX Corps as late as 21 September. As he was an experienced officer and was actually there and I’m not, I don’t feel qualified to say that I know better. 3. The original intention for the XXX Corps advance from Nijmegen to Arnhem was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to lead that sector and they may have deployed into Arnhem-Oosterbeek to assist 1st Airborne to allow Guards Armoured to pass through and attack Deelen, so the way the advance would have developed on 19 September with a clear run through Nijmegen has to be speculative, but Guards were not intended to be leading at this point because of the terrain on the Betuwe. 4. You say you’re reluctant to assign blame and then you assign blame to Browning, the Guards, Urquhart, and the Germans! I think blaming the Germans is a bit unfair as it was actually their job to sabotage Market Garden and not Lindquist’s, but perhaps you just didn’t want your hit list to be all British? I’m only surprised you didn’t blame Frost for not holding on until Arnhem was liberated in April 1945. 5. Browning was awarded the DSO in WW1 as a Lieutenant for an action in which he distinguished himself in taking command of three companies. The DSO was generally given to officers in command above the rank of Captain, and when awarded to a junior officer this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross. I think your assessment of his command career is nothing short of insulting. 6. Montgomery was “hands off” the operation because he was busy planning the next phase of 21st Army Group operations – the opening up of Antwerp by the Canadians and then the next 2nd Army operation, the Ruhr envelopment with US 1st Army. While his Chief of Staff was on sick leave, he was also doing both jobs, so visits were not possible. 7. Much is made of Browning’s Corps HQ taken to Groesbeek, but here’s the thing: Montgomery gets criticised for not visiting the front during the operation and then Browning gets criticised for leading the operation he actually had more of a hand in planning. 8. Browning was not in contact with 101st Airborne during the battle because their liaison officer and his comms team had all been killed in a glider crash near Student’s headquarters at Vught. 9. Browning’s Corps HQ required tugs for 38 Horsa gliders and another 2 to tow WACO gliders for the American liaison officers. Another 4 RAF aircraft towed WACOs to Groesbeek carrying two attached USAAF Fighter Control Teams. Those towing aircraft could not have carried “another battalion” to Arnhem, as that would require aircraft for 60 Horsas, and a Hamilcar glider for their two Universal Carriers. 10. The South Staffordshire Airlanding Battalion was flown to Arnhem in two lifts, the first half in 20 Horsas and the second half in 40 Horsas, and one Hamilcar. The reason why ‘half’ a battalion can be carried by such different numbers of Horsas is because Airlanding Battalions had two Mortar Platoons and Two MMG Platoons in the Support Company, one each using hand carts and the other using Jeeps and trailers. Only the Hand Cart Platoons went with two rifle companies in the first lift, hence only 20 Horsas required, and the Jeep Platoons went with the other two rifle companies in the second lift, hence 40 Horsas. 11. If the aircraft required to tow Browning’s Corps HQ to Groesbeek were reassigned to tow the entire Staffords battalion to Arnhem on the first day, what difference would it have made to the operation? The Staffords’ mission in Phase 1 was to protect Landing Zone ‘S’, more than adequately achieved by the two rifle companies, glider pilots, and the Independent Company (pathfinders), because the zone was not under any significant German pressure during Phase 1. After the second lift arrived, their Phase 2 role was brigade reserve, as the 1st BOrder and 7th KOSB were assigned the role of holding the 1st Airlanding Brigade sector of the divisional perimeter around Arnhem. Their reserve status made them the logical choice to be reassigned in Phase 2 to move into Arnhem to support 1st Parachute Brigade, and the second half of the battalion had arrived to join them during this move. So, it remains that if it wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome of the battle at Arnhem to split the South Staffords over two lifts, then Browning might as well have done what he considered his duty to lead his Corps into the operation from the first day. I maintain point 1, that the operation was compromised at Nijmegen on the first evening, and not at all at Arnhem. 12. The only point on which we might agree, is that a better plan at Arnhem might have been to commit all six and a half battalions landing on the first lift (one of the two Glider Pilot Wings operated as a battalion of light infantry and reinforced the Staffords holding LZ ‘S’) to seizing the town. It might have worked, arguably, and holding the Airlanding Brigade back to hold the zones indeed had the disadvantage of telegraphing intent to the enemy, which is not something that would be done today in modern warfare. That compromise was forced on Urquhart by Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command, because his pilots could not navigate large formations at night, which would be required at both ends of the first day for a double lift. He also made a lame excuse about insufficient turnaround times for maintenance, which I don’t think would have impressed the Battle of Britain veterans in the RAF who had worked around the clock to save their country from a Nazi invasion - something the United States never had to go through.
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  87.  @nickdanger3802  - the 82nd Airborne controlled the area between Grave and Nijmegen, so XXX Corps had a straight run from Son all the way up to Nijmegen on 19th September. At that point, the Waal bridges at Nijmegen should have been in American hands, and the tanks only had 11 miles to go to Arnhem. Market Garden was lost at Nijmegen, Gavin knew that and the Germans knew that.
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  88. It was doing just fine and on schedule until it got to Nijmegen, and then found the bridges were still in German hands. Not part of the plan, and not the fault of the tanks.
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  89. "Criminal stupidity" is just your armchair opinion. The fact was that the Guards Armoured Division reached Nijmegen on schedule, only to find the Waal bridges were still in German hands. The blunder was not taking the Nijmegen bridges on the first afternoon, against virtually zero opposition, in a city evacuated by the Germans. It was not the road advance that was feeble.
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  90.  @johnpeate4544  - interesting points on Patton's resources I was not aware of. Thank you for posting this.
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  91. 18:58 - context on the German tanks - I don't know where the intelligence report on the 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald comes from, except that it was suspected there was a tank depot near Kleve behind the forest, and that the forest could conceal up to 1,000 tanks. The depot was later discovered to be near Münster, the HQ of Wehrkreis VI (military district 6) deeper into Germany. So the 1,000 figure was a rumour, not a serious estimate. Generalfeldmarschal Model was actually assessed to have less than 100 operational panzers in his Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B) front between Aachen and the North Sea coast, and we now know his 5 September returns actually listed 84 as operational, so the Allied intelligence estimate was actually correct. By a bizarre coincidence, the combined anti-tank gun establishments of the British 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Independent Parachute Brigade was exactly 84 AT guns, as if the universe were trying to tell the naysayers something! For additional context, Model was facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks, and the US 1st Army at Aachen with another 1,500. This is why confidence in the Allied camp was so high in September of 1944.
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  92.  @igorscot4971  - that's correct, but the Dutch resistance had only identified the 9.SS-Panzer-Division, both divisions were known to be reduced to a regimental battlegroup each in strength with few if any tanks, and at a very late stage in the planning (SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26, 16 September). It was feared the 10.SS-Panzer were billited in Nijmegen, and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve, and therefore a potential threat to 82nd Airborne, but this turned out not to be the case and the city was evacuated of the rear echelon units based there when the landings began. Most of the combat ready units in II.SS-Panzerkorps were already concentrated in 10.SS-Division and forward deployed with SS-Kampgruppe Heinke on the Belgian border and only 'alarm' units - mostly logistics troops, tank and artillery crews acting as infantry, were in the Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo area. Market Garden was defeated by an unforced blunder at Nijmegen, when the undefended bridges were not seized on the first day and the Germans allowed to reinforce them overnight, and the German rapid mobilisation of the Reserve Army under the 'Valkyrie Plan' to send every available reserve and training unit in Holland and western Germany (Military District 6) to Arnhem. Overall, Model's Heeresgruppe B only had about 100 operational tanks on his entire front, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400. If XXX Corps had been able to put their tanks over the Rijn in two days as planned, there wasn't much the Germans could have done to stop them. Part of the Arnhem mythology is the exaggeration of the importance of II.SS-Panzerkorps - it provided a headquarters on which to hang a myriad of reserve and training units, but had very little strength of its own. The film version of A Bridge Too Far has a lot to answer for in misleading audiences, but it's hardly surprising given that it's an American production making an entertainment for an American audience.
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  93. I don't think Gavin simply shelled the Reichswald for the sake of it, he had only one Parachute Field Artillery Battalion and limited ammunition available on the first day, and the 505th did patrol the forest to ascertain the enemy's disposition there at that time. I have the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intelligence) and G-3 (Operations) documents during their WW2 service downloaded from the PaperlessArchives website for twelve dollars (and change), and is in the form of a single pdf document with 9,333 pages of handwritten notes and messages as well as typed reports in varying degrees of readability due to the fact they are photocopies. My main purpose in studying them is to research the German unit identifications derived from prisoner of war interrogations, but I'm also interested in this question of what exactly went wrong at Nijmegen to compromise the operation. We know from first hand accounts in September Hope - The American Side of A Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012), and Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 by Phil Nordyke (2012) - both published the year after RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen - that Gavin learned from the 505th that the Reichswald was unoccupied and judged too dense for armoured operations (except along the forest 'rides') at around the same time (about 1830 hrs D-Day) the 508th's liaison officer reported in that Colonel Lindquist was not sending a battalion to the bridge until the drop zone was cleared. According to Nordyke's first hand witness, Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ who delivered Lindquist's report, Gavin was as mad as he'd ever seen him and immediately ordered Graham to come with him by Jeep to the 508th CP to "get him moving." From the G-2 documents, which gives map references on patrol routes that were taken, the 505th seem to have penetrated the Reichswald to a depth about halfway between the western edge of the forest (which was also the German border) and the main Kranenburg-Gennep road, which in the forest section between the villages of Frasselt and Grünewald the eastern side of that road is the main line of the Westwall in this sector - no more than trenches and log-reinforced dugouts rather than concrete bunkers, and largely unmanned. By the way, the only radios with an effective range of a few miles were the SCR-300 backpack sets that were issued to Parachute Battalions on a scale of six per battalion on the battalion net. So there was one issued to each rifle company and the other three at battalion HQ, one on the companies frequency and one on the regiment frequency, plus a spare set. Each company had the smaller walkie-talkie SCR-536 (actually called a "handie-talkie" during the war), for communications within the company with the platoons, and a small patrol would reasonably take one of these radios - however, their range was extremely limited and in the Netherlands terrain often reduced to virtually line of sight. As a rule, a patrol would have to report back in person because they would be out of range until they were almost back in the company area. It's worth noting that in the 508th on D-Day, Colonel Lindquist's pre-flight plan was to send a recon patrol based on Lt Robert Weaver's 3rd Platoon of C Company (Weaver was selected because he had performed well in Normandy), reinforced with Lt Lee Frigo's 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section, a section from the LMG Platoon, and an SCR-300 radio and operator from battalion. Their mission was to recon the main highway bridge in Nijmegen and report on its condition. This was at variance to Gavin's instructions from his final divisional briefing two days before take-off, where he instructed Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and stressed that speed was important and "to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" (Chet Graham, who sat in on the briefing, in Nordyke 2012). So what happened to the patrol? It got split up in the crowds of Dutch civilians in Nijmegen and lost contact with the point team from the S-2 Section. By the time they obtained a guide from the Dutch resistance, it was after dark and the bridge was reinforced with SS panzer troops, and in the contacts with the enemy had taken some casualties. Contact with Battalion on the SCR-300 failed until Weaver eventually received a message that two companies (A and B) were on the way to the bridge (this was after Gavin's intervention), and he decided to withdraw to rejoin C Company back on the Groesbeek ridge. The three-man point team under PFC Joe Atkins had meanwhile managed to push their way through crowds of celebrating Dutch civilians and reached the highway bridge, taking the southern end and seven surprised German guards prisoner without firing a shot. They waited an hour until dark for the rest of the patrol that never arrived, and then decided they would have to withdraw. As they were leaving they could heavy "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge (Atkins' account, in Zig Borough's The 508th Connection, 2013). Colonel Lindquist did not interpret his instructions correctly, believing he had to secure the drop zone and his other objectives before sending any large force to the bridge, hence the failure to secure the bridge and Gavin immediately realising the operation was potentially compromised when he received Lindquist's report via Chet Graham. By the time Gavin intervened ("I told you to move with speed" - Nordyke, 2012) and ordered Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion into Nijmegen, it was too late. It took two hours to get A and B Companies out of their extended positions along the Groesbeek ridge line and organised for a move into the city. TIK is on the right line as far as his reading goes, but he doesn't seem to have drilled down to regimental level and read Nordyke, or McManus' book on the American side of the operation. The 82nd Airborne G-2 and G-3 documents are illuminating, but frustrating at the same time - they did not record map references or the 82nd sub-unit responsible for the prisoners taken, so it's difficult to identify the locations of enemy units as well as determine the disambiguated identity of the unit from the anglicised translation - compare with a British unit war diary where at least map refs are usually always recorded. I think you've overestimated the communications systems they had at the time, and Gavin only received the liaison officer's reports the Reichswald was not a threat (yet) at about the same time he found out his divisional plan had just fallen apart at Nijmegen, possibly fatally.
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  94. I have to agree, and attempts to have a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen highway bridge were cancelled or dismissed. In the first instance, Browning had planned dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, for Operation COMET using D Companies of the three battalions of 1st Airlanding Brigade. The lead Glider Pilot for the Nijmegen mission was to be the same man who led Operation DEADSTICK in Normandy on D-Day to secure the Orne canal 'Pegasus Bridge', Sergeant Jim Wallwork. This operation was planned for 8 September, delayed by weather until 10 September, when it was cancelled by Montgomery as troops were boarding the aircraft after he had received intelligence on the II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem area. Montgomery proposed instead an upgraded operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN, then later MARKET GARDEN) involving three divisions instead of just British 1st Airborne and the attached Polish Brigade by adding the two US Airborne Divisions to hold the corridor between Eindhoven and Nijmegen. This would enable the British and Poles to concentrate at Arnhem with their superior anti-tank gun assets, 83 guns in total. This necessitated turning over the planning to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army, and he removed some of the key features of Browning's COMET plan. This was thought necessary because the US air assets had reduced capabilities - fewer trained night navigators that forced a single daylight lift instead of double lifts on the first day, and US glider pilots were not combat trained for direct assaults like their British counterparts. The glider assaults on the bridges were also deemed to be too risky for broad daylight, but Browning had warned during the COMET planning that the operation should not go ahead without the planned dawn raids. He was unable to protest Brereton's changes because he had already been politically neuralised over the Operation LINNET II affair, in which he threatened to resign because Brereton had planned the operation with too little notice to print and distribute maps for the troops. Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Fortunately, the operation was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning could hardly threaten resignation again, knowning what would happen if he did. It may have been this episode that persuaded Browning that if he could not influence the planning then he would try to influence events on the ground by taking his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift - it is known that this decision was a last minute change to the MARKET glider lift schedules. For MARKET the 82nd Airborne were assigned to the Nijmegen and Grave sector and they were briefed by 1st Airborne Division planners who had already spent a week studying the same area for COMET. According to Cornelius Ryan's 1967 interview with General James Gavin for his book, A Bridge Too Far (1974), "the British" requested that a battalion be dropped north of the Nijmegen highway bridge to secure it by coup de main, and after toying with the idea, Gavin eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily. There, the USAAF were panicked by Flak and dropped his 505th Regiment over a huge area, so Gavin landed with just four or five men to command. He said the whole division was disorganised for days. He decided instead to land his troops concentrated on three main drop zones as a power centre and then fan outwards to secure the objectives. At Grave, 504th PIR CO Colonel Reuben Tucker - a veteran of Sicily and Anzio - insisted on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge for one company and he got it, but there were no other coup de main provisions made by the US Airborne for MARKET. Gavin therefore instructed the 508th PIR to secure the vital Groesbeek heights as their initial objective to protect the landing zones from a counter-attack from Nijmegen, and only if this went well to send the 1st Battalion on to the highway bridgeas soon as possible. Unfortunately, the 508th CO was a poor field commander and did not understand the importance of securing the bridge quickly and delayed sending the battalion, only sending a small pre-planned recon patrol instead. This was in spite of being met at De Ploeg (1st Battalion objective on the Groesbeek ridge) by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had evacuated the city and left only an NCO and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. It was for this reason the 508th lost the race to secure the bridge to elements of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division, compromising the entire operation and sealing the fate of 1st Airborne at Arnhem.
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  95.  @pagejackson1207 - history books have largely ignored the stories of VIII and XII Corps on the flanks of MARKET GARDEN, because I suppose they are not as interesting as the airborne and XXX Corps story. At least there is a very good reference for the progress of VIII Corps (11th Armoured and 3rd Infantry Divisions) from both Allied and German points of view in Kampfgruppe Walther and Panzerbrigade 107 - A Thorn in the Side of Market Garden, Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts (2018). Their other two books focus on Kampfgruppe Chill (Autumn Gale, 2013) on the Belgian border and the 15.Armee (The Army That Got Away, 2022) that escaped across the Scheldt on the left flank and effectively a prequel. I'm hoping their next project might be a sequel on the 15.Armee further north and the battles around 's-Hertogenbosch - operation PHEASANT etc.. The 82nd and 101st Airborne were not engaged in keeping the central XXX Corps 'Club Route' open after September as it was securely behind British lines by then. They were both deployed to the Nijmegen island to replace the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division holding the Nijmegen bridgehead, as Montgomery needed the division for his proposed operation GATWICK - an attack through the Reichswald to go for the Wesel bridges. This was cancelled because the Overloon and Peel marshes area (known as the Venlo bridgehead to the Germans) had not been cleared by the US XIX Corps (7th Armored Division) and the mission had to be turned over to VIII Corps again. Priority then turned west with PHEASANT and the operations to open Antwerp. GATWICK wasn't revived until February 1945 as operation VERITABLE.
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  96.  @johnpeate4544  - American school system!
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  97. I think you're right, but with one or two nuances. Two lifts per day were possible and certainly desirable, but the objection from USAAF Generals Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army and Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command was that there was not enough time for aircraft maintenance and rest for the crews if two flights were made in daylight, but they had arbitrarily decided to conduct all flights in daylight instead of the original proposal by Browning to take off at night for a dawn arrival over the target and then an evening second lift that would return to land that night. This also avoids the hazard of fog forming at sunrise, delaying morning take-offs. So Browning's proposed dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges were consequently deleted as being 'too risky' for broad daylight. I suspect the American commanders did not like the idea of the 82nd's two key objectives (the largest single span and the longest multi-span bridges in 1944 Europe) being captured for them by two British Airlanding companies at Nijmegen and Grave - speculation on my part, based on Brereton being suspected of rejecting an operation on Walcheren when only US Airborne troops were available and didn't want them sacrificed for Montgomery's opening of Antwerp. The first attempt on the Nijmegen bridge as actually planned by Gavin would have been a walkover, had Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR sent his 1st Battalion straight into Nijmegen as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing two days before the operation. He failed to do so, despite receiving a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had evacuated Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. Lindquist stuck to his original plan (made earlier in the planning process before Gavin decided to chance a battalion) to send a reinforced platoon to the bridge to report on its condition. Unfortunately the main body of Lt Weaver's patrol got lost in the crowds of celebrating Dutch civilians after losing contact with the three-man point team from the Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section who led the way, and only PFC Joe Atkins and his two companions reached the bridge. They surprised seven guards at the southern end of the bridge and took them prisoner without a shot being fired, then waited an hour until dark for the rest of the patrol to arrive. When they didn't show up, they decided to withdraw and released their prisoners, and as they were leaving heard 'heavy equipment' arriving at the other end of the bridge. When Gavin received a report that Lindquist had not sent the battalion into Nijmegen, he went to the 508th CP to chew out Lindquist and ordered him to send in the battalion. Lt Col Shields Warren was not aware his battalion was expected to take this bridge and his men were strung out in foxholes along the Groesbeek ridge in defensive positions. He received the order at 8pm, about the time Atkins withdrew and the SS armour arrived at the bridge, to move out and assemble on the main road, taking over an hour to get A Company out of their defensive positions, and then they waited at the IP (Initial Point - situated at the Krayenhof barracks) until 10pm for B Company to catch up, when they were ordered to move on without them. Both companies then got involved in a firefight at a traffic circle near the railway station over 1 km from the bridge sometime between 10pm and midnight. In the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan in A Bridge Too Far, the story goes from Gavin instructing Lindquist before the jump to send in the 1st Battalion, and the battalion encountering strong resistance at the traffic circle. The part in between has only emerged in more works like American historian John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). You might also be unaware of Cornelius Ryan's notes from his interview with Gavin in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and available to view online - box 101, folder 10, James Maurice Gavin is the location. In the notes, Gavin said that neither he nor Matthew Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight and Ridgway wouldn't promote him. In fact, he had a problem in that he couldn't very well promote another colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin may have had the same problem as he failed to replace himself as assistant division commander when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August, and was effectively doing both jobs during MARKET. Gavin also told Ryan the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and although he toyed with the idea, he eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily, where the Air Corps dropped them all over the island and the division was disorganised for days. It's interesting that the highly experienced Colonel Tucker of the 504th 'insisted' on a special drop zone for one company south of the Grave bridge so that it could be attacked from both ends, and he got it. Because the Arnhem bridgehead was secured and held for 80 hours - longer than expected to be necessary, the real failure of MARKET and the whole operation was therefore at Nijmegen, and the chain of command responsible was Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist. Williams was also responsible for objecting to Browning's proposed drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal at Son and south of Eindhoven, to help secure the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges as part of his 'airborne carpet' concept to help the Guards' breakout and contact the 101st. His objection was based on some Flak around Eindhoven. Aalst is only 4 km north of Valkenswaard, where the Guards stopped one hour before dark, so if the Guards had continued on just 4 km to contact US Airborne troops at Aalst on D-Day, a whole day of delay at Aalst by two 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG on D+1 could have been avoided, and the Son bridge replaced 24 hours earlier. Browning was unable to object to the changes after unsuccessfully threatening to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II, so he was politically neutralised, and if he appealed to Montgomery then it might have gone to Eisenhower to adjudicate and Brereton might possibly have pulled the plug on the whole operation, as he did with Montgomery's proposed INFATUATE plan to land on Walcheren island to help open Antwerp requested on 11 September - not to be confused with the INFATUATE that went ahead later in November as an amphibious assault.
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  98. Buckingham has form as a well-known advocate of the conventional narrative first established by Cornelius Ryan and followed by so many others with a vested interest in criticising the British commanders. This review on Amazon may be a minority report, but it should not be ignored: "This is undoubtedly the best detailed narrative of Operation MG, and for that he should be commended. He very much comes down on the side of criticising the British generals and Commanders, without a peep of a criticism of American involvement. He also picks fault with any period of a few hours here and there that British 30 Corps wastes, but 82nd Division spent the best part of two full days achieving little and any blame apparently lies at Browning's feet. And then there is the 2nd reason for the failure of the operation that is given as 1st Airborne's failure to control Arnhem bridge. Staggering assessment, again when you consider 82nd are literally absolved from not giving any real priority to Waal bridge. I certainly don't believe the failure was solely due to the American inaction, and also criticism of British 30 Corps caution and slowness at points is possibly justified, though 30 Corps actually arrived on time at Nijmegen, and in my opinion he falls for the same tired old over-emphasis with blaming them. The commencement of the operation at 2.35pm even gets criticised. For anyone to co-ordinate 50,000 troops and 20,000 vehicles, as well as 408 guns and 11 squadrons of Typhoon attack aircraft with all the supplies required over 3-4 days is no easy logistical task. Especially when Brereton only gave the definite go ahead on the 16th at being 1pm the following day. They only started at 10.25am too, wasting any possible opportunity of two drops in a day which many feel were possible, a decision which affected all operations adversely. Again, no inferred criticism of slowness there by the author. But to leave out altogether the importance of the decision-making, hesitation, lack of direction and lack of priority of Brigadier-General James Gavin at Nijmegen is quite incredible - it feels like there is a chapter missing, just like 508 PIRs official records. No criticism of Gavin for his poor handling of Lindquist. To blame this entirely on Browning is also highly questionable, he may hold some responsibility, but Gavin in the US Official history enquiry states clearly to Captain Westover that it was his sole decision to place emphasis on the Reichswald Heights, and that Browning as Corps Commander merely ratified it. This is a critical statement by Gavin and the author seems to overlook or disregard the responsibility of that key decision, and just deflect it to British command. Hence can only give it a 3. BTW, the Grenadier Guards troops and tanks fought supremely well at Nijmegen. So overall, a superb detailed account with some great analysis, but compromised by the above weakness, bias, and lack of subjectivity massively." (nick, verified purchase, reviewed in the UK on 4th January 2023) What's missing seems to be the material covered by: The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010), Chapter 4: Betuwe Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie (2011, revised 2019) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020) Blaming Browning is problematic after Brereton had politically neutralised him during the operation LINNET II affair (Roger Cirillo thesis 2001), so he was unable to object to Brereton and Williams' changes to the plan for MARKET. Browning and Gavin were in agreement that the bridges had priority, but that the Groesbeek ridge also must be secured (there's an excellent analysis by McManus 2012). There is clear evidence Gavin dropped the ball at Nijmegen by selecting the 508th to the mission (Poulussen 2011, McManus and Nordyke 2012), and a recon patrol reached the lightly guarded Nijmegen bridge and took the southern end with just three men until SS armour arrived (Zig Boroughs 2013), proving what could have been achieved if the whole battalion had been sent promptly as Gavin had instructed. The German side of events at Nijmegen corroborate this with a chapter based on the diary of Reinhold's adjutant, Gernot Traupel (Gerritsen and Revell 2010). The best overall history of MARKET GARDEN so far has to be Swedish historian Christer Bergström's volumes (2019, 2020). He uses unpublished documents and interviews from the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and also debunks the many myths established by the film version of A Bridge Too Far. By the way, to answer Nick's question in the review - commencement of operation GARDEN at 1435 hrs, an hour and thirty-five minutes after H-Hour for MARKET, was to deconflict their tactical air support from the troop carrier airlift. The skies would have been just too congested - this point is explained by Sebastian Ritchie (2011, 2019). Horrocks also wanted to be sure the airborne operation was not cancelled before committing his ground troops, so seeing the 101st Airborne flying overhead confirmed the operation was on. I doubt Buckingham also included Ritchie's study of the 'missing' aerial photo showing German armour in the Arnhem area (RAF 2016, 2019) - the tanks belonged to a Luftwaffe training unit and not II.SS-Panzerkorps, and on D-Day they were laagered in an orchard opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone north of Son many miles from Arnhem and were duly neutralised by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft.
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  99. It wasn't his fault it failed, so what would you think of Montgomery if it had succeeded? If you think the person ultimately in charge should be called the fool and that he made a mistake, then surely Eisenhower is the man who should be so hated? Just on logic alone, your argument falls apart and is revealed as simply invective.
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  100.  @Swift-mr5zi  - wow! You certainly got my attention. Reading every book on MARKET GARDEN is certainly ambitious and may not even be possible or desirable, and would probably take a lifetime. Many of the books I have that go into the granular detail I find really interesting are specialist books on German units in particular that had limited print runs and may only be available now secondhand for really silly money. Also, many books on the topic are large 'coffee-table' type books that are expensive to obtain even if you can find a copy these days at a good specialist bookstore willing to sell it at the original cover price. So, it's not an easy task, even over the 46 years I've been reading on this. I first read Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974) when I was 15, borrowed from a schoolfriend shortly before the film version was released (it was a 1977 paperback 'film tie-in' edition), and despite its flaws - it is biased and has many omissions due to it being rushed to publication incomplete because of Ryan's terminal cancer - I would still recommend it as the most accessible starting point. Cornelius Ryan was an Irish newspaperman from Dublin who was working for the Daily Telegraph in London as a war correspondent embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army in Europe, so he received the perfect anti-British indoctrination! After the war he became an American citizen and wrote his three acclaimed books on the war. The next book I would recommend, as the other half of a 'foundation course' to get started, is Robert J Kershaw's It Never Snows In September - The German View of Market Garden and the Battle of Arnhem September 1944 (1990), which was the first real attempt to tell the story from the German point of view. Rob Kershaw was a Parachute Regiment officer in the 1980s British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), which was a Cold War formation based in West Germany, but he was also a liaison officer to the West German army and spoke fluent German, so he was asked by the Royal Military College at Sandhurst to research the German archives on MARKET GARDEN for them. It Never Snows In September is the book that came out of that research. Like A Bridge Too Far, it is flawed and outdated - there are some errors in his German OOB (order of battle) in the appendices that have suffered from being translated into English, rather than my preferred technique of keeping the original German nomenclature and providing readers with a glossary - but it's still essential reading. I have since found many German records online and can see where Rob got his information from and where he went wrong in translation. It is possible to obtain both of these books for free on the internet - I found a copy somewhere of A Bridge Too Far in a .txt format, and It Never Snows In September as a .pdf document. I'm old fashioned and like to have and to read books in hardcopy, but these digital copies are useful as well because you can search the text for cross-referencing information found in other books. If you do want to obtain Kershaw's book, I recommend the large format paperback (or hardback) which has more photos and maps in it than the standard pulp paperback. The large format book (2004 edition on Amazon) is distinguished by a montage of photos on the cover surrounding the title in a centre panel with the 'Nazi Eagle' insignia, rather than the pulp paperback that usually has a single photo image on the cover (the 2008 edition on Amazon has a StuG assault gun pictured). Another two good references that can be downloaded for free are: The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University) - this has really interesting background on planning the airborne operations, including Browning's disgraceful treatment during the Operation LINNET II affair that had a lot of influence on MARKET. Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019) - this is the background to the infamous aerial photo of German armour in the Arnhem area in A Bridge Too Far that did so much damage to Browning's reputation, and this study of the 'lost' photo after it emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2015 provides context to that story, which was based entirely on Cornelius Ryan's interview with Intelligence Officer Major Brian Urquhart (renamed "Major Fuller" in the film), as Browning had already passed away and the photo itself could not be located. I think those two documents, both are .pdf documents that can be downloaded, show that Ryan's book did not tell the whole story and further investigation can change your whole perception of the operation and the key personalities involved, but A Bridge Too Far is probably enough to get you hooked because that's what happened to me! An abridged version of the aerial photo study is in the updated edition of Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) by the same author, Sebastian Ritchie, of the RAF's Air Historical Branch. This is also a recommended book on the air planning and lessons learned from previous operations. Finally, I would recommend Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which are multi-media books - if you like QR codes you can use with a smartphone - which updates A Bridge Too Far and seeks to debunk many of the myths created by the film, using unpublished research in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of documents and interviews held at Ohio State University, and that is a resource you can also review for yourself online. Good luck - you have a lot of work ahead of you if you really want to do this, and I'll be happy to answer any questions and point to any references that I can. I'll consider an alternative means of communication if I feel it is necessary, but I'm not much of social media person. It's up to you how much help you think you need. Best wishes!
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  101. The Son bridge was not so much of a delay as many people think. John Sliz, a Canadian researcher who has written a series of books on Engineers in Market Garden explains in his volume Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016), that the effective delay at Son was zero. The reason being that tanks were not advanced at night and the bridge site was reached by XXX Corps at 1900 hours in the evening, the Royal Engineer Field Company and Guards Divisional Bridge Column was immediately moved up from Valkenswaard in 30 minutes to arrive at 1930 hours, and work began at 2000 hrs when it was already fully dark. The estimate for construction of the Bailey bridge was 10 hours, and it was completed just 15 minutes over the estimate at 0615 hours the following morning, defore dawn. The armoured cars of 2nd Household Cavalry crossed over immediately and the tanks of the Grenadier Guards a little later at first light, reaching the 82nd Airborne at Grave just a few hours later. In his book Corps Commander (1977), Brian Horrocks said he had risked advancing tanks at night twice in his career, and both times it had paid off, but he did not want to push his luck a third time in MARKET GARDEN and was already uneasy about the operation starting on a Sunday, because in his experience no operation starting on a Sunday had ever succeeded. Assuming the Son bridge could have been taken intact, the Guards would still have stopped somewhere in the 101st Airborne area overnight and restarted for Grave and Nijmegen in the morning, so the time saved would have been negligible, if any. The worst delay was 36 hours at Nijmegen, while the Guards had to assist the 82nd Airborne in taking the Waal bridges, and this is the origin of the "36 hours behind schedule" line by Elliot Gould in the Hollywood film of A Bridge Too Far, but incorrectly quoted as tanks crossed the Son Bailey bridge. (Gould's character of Bobby Stout was loosely based on Colonel Robert Sink of the 506th, who was in Eindhoven with his 506th Regiment at this time and had no part in the construction of the Son Bailey bridge). A previous delay on 18 September at a small bridge near Aalst between Valkenswaard and Eindhoven by a couple of 8.8cm Flak guns, and a StuG assault gun could have been avoided if USAAF General Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command had not objected to Browning's proposed drop zones south of Son and Eindhoven to assist in the capture of Son, Eindhoven, and the bridge at Aalst, as part of his "airborne carpet" concept. (Some sources say it was Taylor of 101st Airborne that objected to the drop zones, but Taylor's telegram to Dempsey at British 2nd Army named Williams specifically as objecting on the grounds of Flak around Eindhoven and is shown in RG Poulussen's book Little Sense of Urgency, 2014). Had this been achieved, the Guards may not have had to stop in Valkenswaard on 17/18 September, but could have used the remaining hour of daylight to push on and reach American paratroopers at Aalst, and then laager in the Eindhoven area a night earlier. The Son bridge might have been replaced overnight on 17/18 September instead of 18/19 September. The Son bridge, by the way, was on the Wilhelmina canal, which was the next canal defence line established by the Germans north of the Meuse-Escaut canal bridgehead at Neerpelt, where the British breakout started. Remaining bridges were prepared for demolition with standing orders to blow them if threatened, so despite the best efforts of the 506th, the bridge was always likely to be promptly demolished. The same happened on the Maas-Waal canal defence line, and all the major rail bridges in the Netherlands had been prepared for demolition with a 'sprengkommando' stationed on them since the Normandy landings. The only antidote to American ignorance is scholarship, and for that you need books. For the delays at Nijmegen, I recommend: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) For the best overall update on MARKET GARDEN using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University, and also debunking of the myths in the film, I recommend Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), by Swedish historian Christer Bergström. You can also study the Cornelius Ryan Collection for free. It's not easy to navigate (the boxes and folders are not in number order), but the two folders on James Gavin's contributions are perhaps the most interesting - box 101, folders 9 and 10. Gavin's 1967 interview with Ryan in folder 10 (starting on page 3) in which he talks about Nijmegen and Colonel Lindquist, but most of it did not make it into the book as Ryan omitted criticism of American officers (particularly of Gavin himself) to create the impression it was the British at fault. I find it very interesting that Ryan made the following interview note he did not include in the book: 'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
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  102. @Johnny Carroll - there are significant differences between the German situations in Arnhem and Nijmegen, and that led to significant differences in the Allied experience of getting to their objectives. It also, unfortunately, highlights the difference in quality of the standards of leadership in the Allied units in both locations. At NIjmegen, the city was evacuated by rear echelon troops, primarily the BdO (Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei) which was equivalent to a division HQ that controlled all the German 'Order Police' in the Netherlands under Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus. They were originally in Den Haag and then moved to Nijmegen in 1943 when the Dutch coast became a potential invasion coast. On the afternoon of 17 September when the alarm was raised, they evacuated their headquarters in the old hospital in Molenstraat, first to their trining depot at Schalkhaar (Deventer) and then to Zwolle. The other main headquarters in the area was the NEBO monastery on the Groesbeek road just south of De Ploeg, hosting Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1 under Oberst Friedrich 'Fritz' Hencke, and the 1.Fallschirm Oberkommando Ausbildungsstelle under Oberst Günther Hartung, also evacuated and they slipped into the city, and this was the building occupied by the 508th command post that afternoon. And finally at the Hotel Groot Berg-en-Dal was the headquarters of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler's SS-Division zV, controlling the V-2 operations that evacuated presumably to Germany via Kleve, where they had one of their firing batteries firing on Paris and Antwerp. The city was therefore devoid of any combat units and only had some of these rear echelon troops all trying to escape. I believe one unit left behind was the BdO Musikkorps (the division band!), between 30-40 men left to guard the bridges, according to Gernot Traupel, the adjutant of Kampfgruppe Reinhard (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), they arrived that evening. The actual BdO Infanterie-Stabswache, a protective guard of probably 16 men under Zugwachtmeister Egon Klein, was ordered to leave Nijmegen on 17 September to join the SS-Polizei Lehrkommando (10./SS-Polizei Regiment 3) at Schalkhaar, who were then deployed for security and backup tasks at Arnhem as a reinforcement for Krafft's battalion. The city was effectively open, but only until the SS-Panzer troops started arriving. 1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem had an effective delay in the form of Krafft's SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-un-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 with two companies already in Wolfheze and Oosterbeek when the landings happened. The 2.Kompanie actually attacked Landing zone 'Z' as a delaying tactic while 4.Kompanie was brought up to form the blocking line along the Wolfhezerweg. Frost managed to outflank this position but he had to deal with a patrol from Krafft's unit, MGs and mortars at Doorwerth, an armoured car at Oosterbeek Laag station, more MGs on Den Brink, before he got into the town. This was after landing 30 minutes later than the 508th and having 3 Km further to march. There's really no comparison.
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  103. Wasn't the Argentine Marine battalion at Goose Green effectively a threat to our right flank or even to the beachhead itself at San Carlos?
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  104. Why? A lot of things go wrong during large operations, but not necessarily fatal to the success of the operation. Market Garden failed because a vital bridge at Nijmegen was not secured in the first few hours when it was only guarded by an NCO and seventeen men. Nothing to do with Montgomery!
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  105. I can recommend 82nd historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). From the first hand witness evidence in the book, it's clear that Gavin tried to instil this fundamental understanding in Lindquist's thinking, but Lindquist still failed to move quickly on the bridge. The reason Roy Lindquist is not a household name, and in a very negative context, is because Gavin seems to have taken responsibility for the failure, and according to the correspondence from Browning in TIK's video, Browning seemed willing to help him out. Hence the arguments over Gavin and Browning being at fault ever since. Lindquist was an early officer volunteer to the US Airborne forces and excelled as a gifted administrator and personnel officer (S-1) before being given command of the embryonic 508th battalion and raised it to a full regiment. There were command problems in the 508th on its first combat operation in Normandy (see Nordyke's NOrmandy chapters for this) which were only partly dealt with by division commander Matthew Ridgway. According to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan, Lindquist was not trusted by Ridgway, but could produce documentation like you have never seen. He told Ryan that Ridgway would not promote Lindquist and couldn't promote any other colonel in the division because Lindquist had the seniority. This was the division that Gavin inherited when Ridgway was promoted to command XVIII Airborne Corps in August, before Market Garden. The promotion problems may also explain why Gavin failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs during the planning and execution of Market Garden, and after the jump was doing this while carrying a jump injury to his spine.
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  106. The film was not intended to be historical, despite the best efforts of the British technical crew who did a fine job with authentic uniforms, insignia and equipment, and a decision to film in the Netherlands which had the bridges instead of Yugoslavia which had a surplus of WW2 tanks. Richard Attenborough was an anti-establishment liberal who wanted to make an "anti-war film" to show the British officer class as incompetent, and Cornelius Ryan's American-biased book was ideal source material for adaptation. The screenwriter was William Goldman, who had previously written comedy western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and had recreated the partnership of Newman and Redford with O'Neal and Redford as trying to heroically rescue a magnificent British disaster. When questioned about the historical inaccuracies in the film, Hollywood producer Joseph Levine is on record as saying "I pay to make entertainment, not history."
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  107. Technically you're right, but I have a collection of contemporary maps, most of which are civilian maps that date from the 1930s, because the war interrupted the normal updating and publication of civlian maps, and the military maps made during the war were based on pre-war civilian maps and updated by aerial photography. Most of the maps used at this time still used the name "Zuider Zee", but might have in brackets beneath it "(Ijsselmeer)". The documents from Montgomery's 21st Army Group actually do use "Zuider Zee", specifically the town of Nunspeet on the coast, as the final termination point of the Guards armoured Division's advance. They were to deploy between Apeldoorn and Nunspeet. So I think it's safe to say that people, at least outside of the Netherlands, were still used to the old name and were still frequently using it. The one dimension people often forget when discussing historical matters is time. Custom and use changes over time, and while nobody may be using the name Zuider Zee today in 2024, there's plenty of evidence they were still using it in 1944.
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  108.  @theijaegers8981  - I think the Afluitdijk is far too exposed to be a supply route for the Germans to maintain their forces in th western Netherlands, it could be too easily bombed by the Allied air forces and put out of action as a transport link. I have a copy of the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Operations) Sections documents from WW2, and there's an intelligence report from the Dutch civilians during MARKET GARDEN that the Germans were using the Hoorn ferry across the Ijsselmeer (reported as "Zuider Zee" of course!) to evacuate German troops from the west - although I personnaly think the priority was to possibly reinforce the river Ijssel defence line. The point is, they were using the ferry in preference to the Afluitdijk. I wouldn't want to be dependent on an exposed 30 km causeway as my only escape route. I think realistically an Allied advance to the Ijsselmeer coast would cut off German forces in the west. That certainly seemed to be the view of the MARKET GARDEN planners and they had more military experience than I do. It's not conceivable they weren't aware of the Afluitdijk, it is on the maps and is a very obvious feature.
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  109.  @bigwoody4704  - the plan cannot be deemed a failure if it wasn't even followed. Browning and Montgomery's outline plan for provisional airborne operation SIXTEEN, approved by Eisenhower, was then compromised by changes made by USAAF officers Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier Command for the final MARKET plan. Gavin compromised his own divisional plan for Nijmegen by discarding a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the bridge, and then by assigning his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the Nijmegen mission. Colonel Lindquist then compromised the entire operation on D-Day by failing to follow Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion directly to the undefended bridge immediately after landing, allowing 10.SS-Panzer-Division to move in and occupy the city and reinforce its bridges.
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  110. Read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) chapters 9 and 10, and then think again. Montgomery, Operation Market Garden, and the survival of 1st Airborne Division, were all let down by a Colonel at Nijmegen in the first few hours of the operation. The earlier chapters on Normandy also provide important context.
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  111. The film is only about 50% accurate, because the director was politically motivated in making an "ant-war film" and the producer answered critics of historical inaccuracy by saying "I pay to make entertainment, not history." If you look into Browning's part, he can be exonerated on the popular charges levelled against him: 1. He could have objected to the compromised air plan, which was based on Bereton's three-division air plan for the previously cancelled Operation Linnet II, an operation planned in such haste that no time was available for maps to be printed and distributed, prompting Browning to threaten to resign. When he realised Brereton was going to accept his resignation in order to replace him with American Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Corps HQ, he withdrew the threat. Fortunately for everyone, Linnet II became redundant when the Liege-Maastricht objectives were overrun by ground forces. The Market planning by Brereton's staff removed the all-British Operation Comet plan to use glider coup de main attacks on the Arnrhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges (so successful at Pegasus Bridge in Normandy), and also scrapped the planned double airlift on D-Day. Brereton was not an experienced airborne officer as he came from from the Air Force, and the principle objections came from Williams wanting to protect his US IX Troop Carrier Command aircaft and pilot resources. It would be pointless for Browning to threaten resignation again, and the whole world should be made aware that Market's compromised air plan was not Browning's but that of an American officer intent on continuing the war of independence. 2. His intention to take his Corps HQ carried in 32 Horsa gliders and 6 WACO required 32 Stirling and 6 Albemarle tugs that could have been used to tow the second half of the South Staffords Battalion (that actually required 40 Horsas) to Arnhem on D-Day, instead of D+1. The problem with the argument they were needed at Arnhem is that the South Stafford's Phase 1 task was to protect Landing Zone 'S' until the second lift arrived, and because the zone received little attention from the Germans in the first 24 hours the two companies of Staffords, glider pilots from No.2 Wing (a light infantry battalion once on the ground) and the 21st Independent Parachute Company, all had the landing zone well in hand. Because they were not under pressure, and their Phase 2 task was Brigade reserve, Brigadier Hicks decided to order the Staffords into Arnhem to reinforce 1st Parachute Brigade before their Phase 1 task was complete, but by the time the two companies available on the morning of D+1 got into the western suburbs of Arnhem in the afternoon, the second lift had arrived and the remainder of the battalion caught up with them. In other words, if the Staffords arrived complete on D-Day and the Corps HQ went to Groesbeek on D+1 instead, it wouldn't have made any difference, except that Browning would be open to a charge of not leading his own command into combat. 3. Dismissal of the aerial photo intelligence showing German tanks near Arnhem was fully justified after the photo itself emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2015 and subjected to analysis by the RAF's Air Historical Branch. It's clear that the image (frame 4015 of the Deelerwoud taken on 12 September by a 541 Squadron Spitfire from RAF Benson) shows older model Mark IV (with the short 7.5cm/L24 gun) and Mark III tanks undergoing maintenance at a supply dump near Deelen airfield. This rules out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner and the likelyhood was that they belonged to a training unit. Since we now know the exact dispositions of German training units in the Netherlands, we know the tanks belonged to the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' from Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast, and we know that they were ordered south to Hechtel in Belgium on 7 September to reinforce the regiment's II.Abteilung. Only three tanks made the trip without breaking down and were destroyed by the Irish Guards in Hechtel on the same day, 12 September, that the breakdowns were being repaired at Deelen. When the landings began on 17 September, they had moved to Wolfswinkel near Son, where they attempted to interfere with the 506th PIR's landing on Drop Zone 'B' just across the road, but were in turn shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Browning was right to dismiss the photo and Cornelius Ryan's version of this story rested entirely on his interview with Browning's Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart, who was sent on medical leave, later serving in the Civil Service and instrumental in setting up the useless United Nations organisation after the war. The photo was 'lost' because the RAF had donated all its aerials of the Netherlands to the Dutch government to help with reconstruction, and Browning had already passed away in 1965, two years before Ryan began his research for A Bridge Too Far. Unfortunate that a good man has been much maligned by mediocrity in military service, Ryan's newspaper journalism, and Hollywood. Close air support at Arnhem was to be provided by two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron, landed in four WACO gliders and provided with Jeeps and British drivers, the teams used special VHF radio sets and these were the sets (not the British divisional networks) that were delivered with the wrong crystals. Another two teams went with Browning's HQ to Groesbeek, plus two more WACO gliders (taking Browning's HQ to 38 gliders) carried liaison officers from the 101st and 82nd Divisions. It was the 101st Division LO and his Comms team's glider that crashed near Student's HQ at Vught and documents carried by the officer fell into German hands. It also meant that Browning had no communications with 101st Division during the operation.
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  112. Gavin's divisional plan included an instruction to the 508th's commander to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as possible after landing. This instruction was not interpreted correctly by Colonel Lindquist, who thought he was to secure his other objectives on the Groesbeek ridge and clear the drop zone before sending any large force to the bridge. Gavin's concern about his southern flank may have dictated his decision to assign the Nijmegen mission to the 508th instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, which he had face the Reichswald to the southeast. Gavin must also take responsibility for a decision to dismiss a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge to seize it by coup de main. He told Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far that he toyed with the idea, but eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily, where the Troop Carriers were spooked by Flak and dropped his regiment over a wide area of the island. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the whole division was disorganised for days. I think the best analysis on the bridge versus ridge priority question is in John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of Bridge Too Far (2012), where he concludes that Browning and Gavin expected the 508th to take both. Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) has the most detail on what went wrong in terms of communications between Gavin and Colonel Lindquist, and problems with the regiment in their first combat operation in Normandy. Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020) updates Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974) and includes the first hand account of PFC Joe Atkins from the 1st Battalion 508th S-2 (Intel) Section, who took the southern end of the bridge and seven prisoners with just three scouts without even firing a shot and waited an hour in vain for reinforcements before the SS panzer troops arrived that evening.
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  113. I have no idea what you're talking about. Gavin's divisional plan was for the 508th to "move with speed" on the Nijmegen bridge as soon as possible after landing. The 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ was Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Captain Ben Delamater was the 1st Battalion’s executive officer - "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” When Chet Graham decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge - "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " (Source: Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II, Phil Nordyke, 2012) Browning had little input after the Corps briefing in England and Gavin drew up his divisional plan. On the afternoon of Monday 18 September, after the safe arrival of the 2nd Lift and the failure of panzers to emerge from the Reichswald, Gavin asked Browning for permission to assault the Nijmegen bridges and was refused (Little Sense Of Urgency, RG Poulussen, 2014). Presumably this was because Browning correctly judged them to be too strongly held and required support from the Guards Armoured Division when they arrived the following morning. The right time to move on the bridges was on the first afternoon, especially after it was established from the Dutch resistance that the city had been evacuated by the Germans and the highway bridge guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. Just three Scouts from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section managed to surprise the guards at the southern end of the bridge. "We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." (Source: Trooper Joe Atkins' account in The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs, 2013). The heavy equipment was undoubtedly SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 with about 30 vehicles under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner, arriving from Beekbergen via the Arnhem bridge. They left for Elst once elements of Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) with a company of engineers and Euling's panzergrenadiers started arriving to reinforce the bridge defences.
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  114. Evidence? Where was Montgomery's caution and meandering in Market Garden? The plan was undone by the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment's caution by digging-in on their Groesbeek ridge intitial objective against zero opposition, instead of moving immediately on the Nijmegen bridges as instructed, even after receiving Dutch resistance reports the city was evacuated by the Germans and the highway bridge guarded by just 18 men. Guards Armoured Division arrived at Nijmegen on the morning of D+2, still on schedule to reach Arnhem in two days, only to find the River Waal bridges still in German hands and reinforced by SS-Panzer troops.
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  115. Just came across the reason the allied planners thought the Reichswald had German tanks hiding in it, while going through some of the documents in the Cornelius Ryan Collection I came across a covering letter from Gavin to Ryan in which he says he just figured out where the tanks had come from while enclosing some papers from a Dutch researcher. The location of the document is (James Gavin) box 101, folder 9, and the letter is page 48: November 18, 1966 Dear Connie, Here's a paper which I received quite a long time ago from T. A. Boeree. On page 4a it gives the route of march of the Hohenstaufen Division to positions north of Arnhem. One of its stops was at Nijmegen and, according to the intelligence we had, in the Reichswald. As I believe I told you, when I talked to you about Operation Market at one time, the British originally planned to parachute into Nijmegen and they were working with Bestebreurtje on their planning when I was called to Brereton's headquarters on September 10 and given the mission for the 82nd. Immediately following that meeting, I went over to the British headquarters. Their intelligence was that there were very heavy German armored forces in the Reichswald and they had been preparing to deal with them in their plans. It seems obvious, now, that the intelligence coming from the Dutch underground was based on armoured forces in transit to north of Arnhem. I don't think that Boeree's paper will contribute much to an understanding of the outcome of Market, but I thought that you should have it in your papers. With best regards, (signed) James M. Gavin I have Cornelius Bauer's book The Battle of Arnhem (1966, 2012, first published as De Slag By Arnhem, 1963) with Colonel Theodoor Alexander Boeree, and based on Boeree's research since the war. Chapter Two is on the Mystery of the Hohenstaufen Division (10-17 September 1944) and does indeed describe the withdrawal of the division from Normandy to Arnhem, and a map shows the route march from its entry into the Netherlands across the Maas at Maastricht, then through Sittard, Roermond, Venlo, Mook, Nijmegen, and Arnhem, between 4-7 September. His map does not show where it stopped, but Boeree says the division assembled at Sittard after crossing the Maas on 4 September, and then moved north to the Veluwe region (north of Arnhem) on 7 September. He also states the Frundsberg also moved northwards via Nijmegen and Arnhem to the Achterhoek region (east of the river Ijssel), but with no specifics on stops. It seems to me that the Frundsberg more likely stopped (to assemble?) in the Reichswald, while the Hohenstaufen passed right by in its transit from Sittard to the Veluwe, but Gavin's point I think is basically the answer because the intelligence only reported "armored forces" in the forest and did not identify the unit(s). The 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions had disappeared to Allied intelligence in northern France and did not reappear until the Dutch resistance identified SS troops with 'H' vehicle insignia north of Arnhem and 'Ultra' intercepts had indicated II.SS-Panzerkorps were in the eastern Netherlands.
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  116.  @thevillaaston7811  - I keep forgetting what I've learned and have to look it up again! Checked Tieke, Reynolds and Stenger, and it seems the Frundsberg withdrew west of the Maas via Eindhoven and Grave, then Nijmegen and Arnhem. So, if either division stopped in the Reichswald it seems more likely to be the Hohenstaufen.
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  117.  @thevillaaston7811  - I've been reading through the documents in this folder (box 101 folder 9 - James Gavin) and it appears T.A. Boeree's various papers do not include one with the Hohenstaufen route (it's probably in another box or buried further on in this one - the organisation of documents in this collection is not particularly coherent), but I came across some correspondence I find hilarious: Gavin wrote a letter to Ryan about the irony of ironies - a West Point magazine article in which a number of sallyports or portals will be named after famous battles on a new barracks, and one of the proposed portals would be named 'Arnhem'. Gavin encloses a copy of the letter he wrote to the West Point superintendent to point out this egregious error and point out that Arnhem was a British defeat, no American troops fought there [technically not correct, but it was only a small number so I'll let that slide - DMAC] and the name Nijmegen should perhaps be considered as his own unit there had won their battle and never lost a foot of ground taken. Gavin even claims survivors of the British Airborne were "rescued" when "we pulled them out" of Arnhem. The reply from the superintendent is also enclosed, and he replied thanking General Gavin for his interest, and explained that the battles were chosen because of their historical significance regardless of them being American actions or of those involving other armies - "all of the names are intended to symbolize significant contributions to the military art." The name Arnhem was therefore selected as a symbol of the overall effort in MARKET GARDEN. Gavin wrote back (also enclosed here) to thank the superintendent for his explanation and lament that it is probably too late to change any of the details, lest future historians be "confused" by the proposed inscription with the name 'Arnhem' on the portal, and asked if he may take advantage of this opportunity to donate $200 for the Delafield Fund (for funding a student), which he had been meaning to make but hadn't got around to until now. These correspondences are on pages 84-90 in box 101 folder 9 if you are lacking entertainment this afternoon!
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  118. In regard to what John is saying, this quote from Eisenhower himself refers: 'Eisenhower was similarly unapologetic when he declared after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account, A Bridge Too Far, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” ' (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) So this was Eisenhower's comment after Cornelius Ryan's misleading book was published and he felt he needed to make this response to set the record straight. Nobody would be questioning the strategy if the operation had succeeded, and most of the criticism of MARKET GARDEN is misdirection to cover the failure at Nijmegen on D-Day.
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  119.  @johnburns4017  - Lindquist's first Field Order (No.1) dated 13 September does indeed indicate that no moves were to be made on the Nijmegen bridges until receiving a division order. Lindquist's original plan seems to have been to task Lt Weaver of 3rd Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, to lead a recon patrol to the bridge to determine its condition and report back. Weaver was selected because he had performed well in Normandy. Then Gavin, according to his letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover dated 17 July 1945, stated: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." So 48 hours prior to take-off would be 15 September. Gavin also confirmed this to Cornelius Ryan (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967), who states in his notes on the interview: 'Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.' September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." The bridge was only de-prioritised after the first failed attempt by 1st Battalion 508th to secure it (too) late on 17 September. When Gavin proposed a second attempt the next day, Browning rejected the plan and intended to wait until XXX Corps arrived to provide armoured support. I don't have the reference to hand (it's probably in McManus), but it was definitely Browning that rejected a plan suggested by Gavin. Two attacks on 19 September failed, even with armoured support, so Browning was right to reject Gavin's plan to attempt the attack on 18 September without the armour available. Gavin did at this time propose his own troops from the 504th be sent across the river to take the far side. He first proposed this when the Guards first linked up early on 19 September, but the suggestion was rejected in favour of trying with armour and the 505th alone from the south side. The default XXX Corps engineering plan for this scenario (enemy still held intact bridges at Nijmegen) was an assault river crossing of the Waal to be made by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one (Operation BESSIE) or two brigades (Operation BASIL). The 43rd Division were put on warning order to be ready to move up to Nijmegen, but the call wasn't made because of Gavin's insistence his own troops be used instead. He was clearly very keen to make up for the blunder by the 508th on D-Day and wanted to use his own troops to make amends.
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  120.  @johnburns4017  - it may be just semantics, but with the opportunity to seize the bridge in the first vital hours lost, Browning judged it to be too difficult for it to be seized without armoured support now that the SS panzer troops had arrived to reinforce it, so he did adjust the priorities for 82nd Airborne to consolidate its gains until the tanks arrived and they could go on the offensive again in Nijmegen. The German defence of the city centred on the two main traffic circles, and while the Americans withdrew from the outskirts of the city the Germans did not re-occupy the city outside of their defence perimeter - they didn't have enough troops.
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  121.  @johnburns4017  - got it. I have a digital copy of A Bridge Too Far, so doing searches is easy: 'Immediately after the link-up in the 82nd's sector, Browning called a conference. The Guards' lead armored cars were sent back to pick up the XXX Corps commander, General Horrocks, and the commander of the Guards Armored Division, General Allan Adair. With Browning, the two officers drove to a site northeast of Nijmegen, overlooking the river. From there Corporal William Chennell, whose vehicle had picked up one of the two officers, stood with the little group observing the bridge. "To my amazement," Chennell remembers, "we could see German troops and vehicles moving back and forth across it, apparently completely unconcerned. Not a shot was fired, yet we were hardly more than a few hundred yards away." ' A Bridge Too Far Bibliography: Chennell, William, Cpl. [Guards Armoured]. Carpenter, London, S.e. 4. Ohio State University Digital Archives Collection: Cornelius Ryan WWII papers, box 114, folder 47: William Chennell Page 1 of the Cornelius Ryan papers, box 114, folder 47, has the full type written story, quoting Chennell - "we weren't a hundred yards or so from the bridge. William Chennel was aged 32 in 1944 and held the rank of Corporal [of Horse?] as an armoured car wireless operator-gunner in 4 Troop, C Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment. The car commander and Chennell got out of the car to allow Horrocks and Adair to get in, and they followed in a Jeep back to the observation position near the bridge. The location next to the bridge 100 yards away would correspond with the abandoned heavy Flak battery at 718630 and light Flak platoon at 718628 [defence overprint of AMS map M831 (GSGS 4427) 06-SW-NIJMEGEN]. They may have approached from the east on the roads over the polder as they had to be east of the Het Meer river. Difficult to say why McNaught decided to lie low as long as he did, or maybe he made contact with Allied troops sooner and Howe was the first familiar face he came across. This story is secondhand from Howe, so we don't have all the details. McNaught also said he was pretty angry about not being challenged on the bridge, he said it was a lost opportunity, although with just the four of them they were in the same position as PFC Joe Atkins and his two other scouts who waited until it got dark and decided to withdraw, as they knew they couldn't hold the bridge against any attack. The could hear the armoured vehicles arriving at the other end as they were leaving, so they were probably there and keeping a low profile when McNaught's Jeep crossed the bridge. I suppose you have to be careful and not assume an American Jeep coming from the north was not a captured vehicle and full of SS-Panzergrenadiers in camouflage pattern jackets... it makes some sense. I'm also familiar with several monasteries in Nijmegen, and there's little clue as to which one it was. Some of them were used by the Germans as acommodations themselves, so was a fluid situation.
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  122.  @jacobgorman3145  - actually no, but TIK hasn't gone as deep to drill down to the problems within the 508th PIR. They actually go back to Normandy and the formation of the regiment. TIK obviously reads a collossal number of books, on Stalingrad, Hitler and National Socialism etc., as many books perhaps as I have on Market Garden alone, as I don't have more than a passing interest in some of his other topics. He's correctly identified Nijmegen as the key to understanding what went wrong with Market Garden, but Gavin being responsible is as far as he's got with the books he has used. One of his recommended books is Lost At Nijmegen by Dutch researcher RG Poulussen, which was probably the first to break into this area, and the post war documentaion of corresponsdence between Gavin and Browning, which is inconclusive and obviously written after the fact, is as far as he went. Nordyke's book on the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and also John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) were both published in the same year and do not reference each other, but they independently interviewed witnesses to Gavin's divisional briefing and testified to the clear instructions he gave to the 508th's CO to send a battalion directly to the bridge. Nordyke's witness is Captain Chet Graham, the 508th HQ Company CO and liaison to Division HQ, and McManus has an account from Division G-3 (Operations Officer) Jack Norton, who both sat in on the briefing. The weird thing about McManus is that he appears to be an excellent historian, unearthing the true story and presenting a detailed narrative of events on what went wrong, but where he differs from Nordyke is that he then offers a personal opinion that it was still Montgomery's fault for coming up with the idea in the first place, which is a common American complaint I call the 'too difficult' excuse. In his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan, Gavin did touch on the internal politics within the 82nd Airborne, but did not expand on it and the story did not make it into Ryan's book. The whole Nijmegen story on the first day is inconspicuous by its absence from the book and more publicly in the film, where the implication is that the bridge at Nijmegen was strongly held by the Germans from the get go, but this is not true. In fact the film does show Bittrich (Maximillian Schell) giving Ludwig (Hardy Krüger) orders to get to Nijmegen, which is correct - the SS panzer troops were not already there, but they did win the race against the too slow 508th to reinforce the bridges and the city.
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  123.  @bigwoody4704  - "why did Horrocks,Dempsey,Vandeleur leave the bridging equipment in the rear when the Germans blew the bridge over Wilhelmina Canal the 1st day?" - They didn't. The Royal Engineers brought the bridging equipment up to Valkenswaard overnight 17/18 September, and then it only took them 30 minutes to get it to the Son bridge site after the Irish Guards reached it at 1900 hrs on 18 September. The delay caused by the Son bridge demolition was effectively zero, since XXX Corps reached the blown bridge site as it was already starting to get dark, and the Bailey bridge was constructed in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. First across the new bridge were the Household Cavalry armoured cars at 0615 hrs, and the Grenadier Guards' tanks followed at dawn, 19 September. Source: Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016)
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  124. What were his failures during the Caen fighting? Seems to me the Germans knew how important Caen was to them, because Caen was on the road Paris, and Paris was on the road to Berlin, and Berlin was on the road to total defeat.
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  125. The slow progress of the flanking Corps was due to insufficient supplies - Bedell Smith had promised Montgomery he would get everything he needed after Montgomery warned Eisenhower the operation would be delayed without "absolute priority" on supplies. This priority failed to materialise and as the priority within 2nd Army had to be XXX Corps on the centre line, VIII and XII Corps didn't receive everything they needed. Browning did have input on the battle in the 82nd Airborne sector, which turned out to be the most critical, and the displaced anti-tank unit glider loads going to Arnhem to transport his Corps HQ did not adversely affect the battle there. However, the operation was compromised by the failure of Lindquist's 508th PIR to carry out Gavin's pre-flight instruction to send their 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as practical after landing. By the time Gavin was told the battalion was not moving, it was too late and 10.SS-Panzer-Division reinforced Nijmegen and its bridges. According to his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), Gavin had also already compromised his own divisional plan by dismissing "a British request" (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main, because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. This request was no doubt a fallback proposal after Brereton had deleted Browning's planned double airlift and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, and Browning was unable to object after having already threatened to resign over Brereton's hastily scheduled LINNET II operation. At every point, Browning had tried to ensure the success of operation MARKET and was constantly undermined by American Airborne officers who thought they knew better. 1st Allied Airborne Army and 82nd Airborne were directly responsible for the failure of MARKET GARDEN and indirectly the destruction 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  126.  @samdoss  - I hope you meant insightful rather inciteful - my intent was to inform, not to incite violence, but thank you! My take on Brereton was that he was an air force officer (this was before the USAF became a separate service) and his appointment to lead 1st AAA was made after Browning's nomination was refused by the Americans, using the 'we have more troops committed to this, therefore we should have the leadership position' argument. Browning is often unfairly criticised for not having led an airborne operation on the ground (so to speak), but had raised Britain's airborne forces from the start and his personal combat experience dates back to the First World War. Brereton had allies in Washington that were keen to develop the "air weapon" and for the United States to dominate its use in the post-war era. Britain's airborne forces, although about to be overtaken in terms of size with the US 11th and 17th divisions coming online, were frankly more developed in capability - the ability to use glider forces in assault raids being one aspect that was removed by Brereton for MARKET, possibly to avoid a situation where British raids were securing the 82nd's primary objectives for them at Nijmegen and Grave. I think the main factor that determined the single daylight airlift on D-Day of MARKET was the lack of night navigation skills in the Troop Carrier Command aircrews. This contrasts with the RAF that had fully trained navigators (for day and night) on every multi-engined aircraft. The Americans had gone for scale again in order to create as many transport squadrons as possible, at the expense of capability. I am indebted to Dutch researcher Hans den Brok's series of books, The Market Flights (2016-2020), which have volumes on each Troop Carrier Group involved in MARKET GARDEN (I have all the Arnhem and Nijmegen volumes). It's clear from the roster of aircrews involved in the operation that only the lead aircraft in each serial had a five-man crew including a navigator, instead of the usual four (pilot, co-pilot, radio operator, crew chief). Hans' books also have a lot of detail on the USAAF glider pilots, who were part of the TCC squadrons and not trained for combat (they had Thompson SMGs or folding-stock carbines for self-defence), and because they didn't carry any personal kit for mess or sleeping, they were a total liability once on the ground. Their British counterparts in the army's Glider Pilot Regiment operated as two full battalions of light infantry once on the ground, armed with Bren LMGs and PIATS as well as rifles and Stens very much like the paratroopers. Gavin was indeed let down by Lindquist, and he had also not performed well in Normandy, so I think this should have informed Gavin when he made his regimental assignments for MARKET. I found Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - invaluable to understand Lindquist's behaviour, particularly the Normandy chapters. Nordyke is a specialist historian on the 82nd Airborne - I believe he actually trained as a computer systems analyst like myself - and I appreciate his dispassionate telling of his research findings without adding any personal commentary of his own. I believe he's the "official historian" for the 505th Regiment, if not the whole division. The other work complimentary to Nordyke's I rely on for the narrative on what went wrong at Nijmegen is American historian John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of A Bridge Too Far (2012). He has a lot of detail on the briefings and who said what, and it seems clear to me that Browning did not prioritise the Groesbeek ridge over the bridges. According to McManus, Browning "cautioned" Gavin that “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” After giving a very good analysis to explain why the bridges were more important than the high ground, McManus goes on to say: General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." McManus is not a MAKET GARDEN or 82nd Airborne specialist - he has written books on many aspects of American history, but I found his research on MARKET GARDEN to be very good. My only issues are that he has relied on Moffatt Burriss' flawed account of his capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge (Burriss didn't see Robinson's four tanks force a crossing 45 minutes before Burriss had even reached the bridge), and McManus offered a personal opinion that MARKET GARDEN's failure was all Montgomery and Eisenhower's fault anyway, despite all the evidence he had just provided to the contrary. It's as if he had forgotten he needed to sell his book in the US and added the dig at Montgomery (and Eisenhower for supporting him) as an afterthought. So I do find Gavin to be at the centre of MARKET GARDEN's failure, but not alone. Brereton had done his best to compromise Browning's original COMET concept (Browning had even advised British 2nd Army's Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main raids), and Gavin had rejected Browning's request to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge instead. Gavin was then responsible for selecting Lindquist's 508th for the Nijmegen mission instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, as he seemed to be more concerned with German reaction from the Reichswald than mission failure at Nijmegen, so he assigned the 505th to his southern flank opposite the Reichswald.
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  127. It wasn't one highway anyway - you shouldn't get your history from Hollywood movies.
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  128.  @jbjones1957  - thank you, I appreciate that. Not everyone agrees, of course. There's such a thing as a 'research frontier' and I try to stay as close behind it as possible by reading the latest books, etc.. Tables do get completely overturned when new information becomes available, but many people are wedded to the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan and the historians who followed him.
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  129. Lewis murders the pronunciation of English names as well, so it's just Lewis being an equal opportunities name-butcherer. My favorite has to be the American 504th PIR's horror at their objective being a bridge at 'Grave' and started calling it "the Gravy bridge" instead. If I'm not mistaken, the Dutch pronunciation sounds something like "Grav_rer".
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  130. US 3rd Army was beyond the range of of 1st Allied Airborne Army for airborne operations. That's why it was attached to Montgomery's 21st Army Group to develop operations in the north. I always ask the Patton fans the same question: what would he have done differently if he had reached 82nd Airborne Division on schedule and found their primary bridge objective was still in German hands? Not surprisingly, I've never received an answer, because they've obviously never thought about it. The point of failure in MARKET GARDEN was at Nijmegen, not in Dempsey's 2nd Army ground advance.
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  131. Why? And I mean why with regard to both points. Both can be debunked by education. The more you look into Browning and Montgomery's roles, the more sympathetic you can become to their positions. A lot of people simply don't want to know. On the treatment of Brig.Gen. Sosabowski, he was rightly criticised for being difficult to work with, and for being insubordinate to Lt.Gen. Horrocks at the Valburg conference on 24 September, for which he immediately apologised at the latter incident. Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski to praise him and his Brigade for their actions at Arnhem, and to ask for recommendations for awards. It was only later he got reports from British officers about the difficulties they had with him, and that was why Montgomery then wrote to Alan Brooke (CIGS) that he was unhappy having the Poles under his command and wanted them removed (the relationship was always awkward because they were attached to the British Army but under Polish Government-in-exile control). Somehow, these documented facts got conflated into a suggestion that 'the British' blamed the Poles for the failure of the operation, which is a ridiculous notion to anyone familiar with the timeline. Sosabowski and most of his Brigade arrived late on D+4, too late to influence the outcome of an operation that had already failed, and in fact contributed greatly to saving the remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division by enabling its final evacuation across the Rijn on 25/26 September.
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  132. Gavin's divisional plan was his plan, and he did not follow advice or have to take orders from a British officer. Pegasus Archive dates back to 2001 and does not appear to have been updated with more recent research. It contains some obvious errors (COMET did not plan a landing in the Eindhoven area), and the agreement you quote between Browning and Gavin on the heights before Grave and the canal and Nijmegen bridges is not sourced or (quite importantly) dated. The documentary evidence shows that Gavin's divisional plan evolved over time, as Lindquist's Field Order No.1 for the 508th PIR dated 13 September shows that he was to seize the Goesbeek ridge and be prepared to move on the Nijmegen highway bridge "on division order." This Field Order, reproduced in the Appendix to RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), indicates a copy to Division HQ, so it was presumably approved by Gavin, but it precedes Gavin's instruction to Lindquist in the final divisional briefing on 15 September: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." (Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945, p. 11, Poulussen 2011) Gavin confirmed this instruction to Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far: Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 – box 101, folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) This has since been corroborated by officers present at the briefing: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012) The next day (16 September) was the final Corps briefing: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” (September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012) This was a reminder to Gavin that while the bridges were the primary objectives of the operation, it was essential to control the heights as well. McManus continues with an excellent analysis of the priorities: General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." (McManus op cit) I have no doubt that Browning saw the bridge as a priority right from the start. For COMET he had planned for the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges to be taken by dawn glider coup de main raids, and regarded them as so essential he advised Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without them. The same dawn and late afternoon double airlift for D-Day was carried over into the provisional operation SIXTEEN outline after COMET was cancelled in light of the intelligence situation. The detailed planning was then devolved to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army headquarters, and here Brereton decided on all daylight flights, limiting delivery to one lift per day and ruled out the dawn raids on the bridges. Clearly Browning wanted alternative arrangements to take the bridges quickly. According to Gavin: The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. (Cornelius Ryan op cit) The evidence is overwhelming that Browning's priorities were focused on the bridges, and had been a week before Gavin was even assigned to an operation on Nijmegen during 1st Airborne Division's planning for COMET. That priority was frustrated by Brereton and possibly Williams (it was noticeable that Williams was more co-operative for COMET), and also by Gavin's own decisions not to undertake a coup de main parachute drop at Nijmegen and assigning his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical NIjmegen mission. I would refer to Nordyke's earlier chapters for Lindquist's poor performance in Normandy for context here. Gavin was most emphatically not told where to drop his troops or which assignments to make. Browning had no authority to do that, and Gavin must shoulder the responsibility for his own decisions. Although he did not drill down to regimental history level as I have done by reading Nordyke, TIK is on the money with Gavin, and the blame also rests with Lindquist for the tactical compromise on D-Day, by failing to send in the 1st Battalion directly, and Brereton for the air planning compromises. If you're not prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads in order to simply pin the blame on a Brit, then you're guilty of national prejudice yourself, as well as hypocrisy.
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  133. Nonsense. The 82nd failed to take the rail bridge at Mook and the canal bridges at Malden and Hatert - all demolished by the Germans. I'm not blaming the 82nd for these setbacks - the bridges were all on the German MLR (Main Line of Resistance) in the area, with each bridge defended in company strength and all prepared for demolition, including the river Maas bridge at Grave, which was on the German forward outpost line. But the 82nd also failed to take the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day, which was undefended in a rear area and Gavin had intended it be taken quickly. This was due to a command failure at the top of the 508th PIR, which failed to carry out Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and Gavin had also chosen to dismiss a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, he said because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. I'm not aware of the 82nd rescuing a British battalion - you'll have to enlighten me on that fantasy. To the contrary, it was the 82nd's failure at Nijmegen that compromised the entire operation and led to the destruction of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. More recently, the 82nd begged a British parachute battalion not to go into the centre of Kabul to escort civilians to the airport to evacuate them from Afghanistan, because they had been ordered not to leave the airport and the British unit was making them look bad. The request was politely refused.
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  134.  @thevillaaston7811  - yeah, I thought he might have confused them with the wrong division and the whole "rescue" fantasy. Doesn't anybody in America believe in fact checking themselves before posting a comment???
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  135. I believe the 82nd Airborne Reconnaissance Platoon had up to 16 Jeeps, all armored except for the two carrying the 60mm Mortar Squad. I know they were not all delivered on the first day of MARKET GARDEN, so four Jeeps sounds about right on D-Day and represents two of the four Recon Squads. Not enough for a coup de main mission on such a large objective and I only know they were first to arrive at the eastern end of the Heumen lock bridge ("Bridge 7") on the Maas-Waal canal to assist B Company 504th PIR in taking the bridge intact - German morale usually collapses once you cut their supply line and the recon patrol was effectively in the German rear of their Main Line of Resistance (MLR) along the canal. The 504th at Heumen were due to be assisted by Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th landing on Drop Zone 'N', but due to an air traffic conflict they arrived over the zone at the same time as another 505th serial and Vandervoort instructed his pilot (who was leading their whole serial) to fly on to the 508th's DZ 'T' and drop them there. It meant that the battalion was delayed in clearing the northern half of Groesbeek and taking Hill 81.8 above the town and then send a company on to Bridge 7, but the Recon Platoon's arrival was enough to collapse resistance at the bridge. In terms of a coup de main on the Nijmegen highway bridge, Browning's plan for Operation COMET included glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, with the Nijmegen mission to be flown by Sergeant Jim Wallwark who led the 'Pegasus Bridge' Operation DEADSTICK in Normandy - he wasn't looking forward to it and half-joked that he and his co-pilot were planning to surrender at the first chance they got! Their passengers were to be D Company of the 7th Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the D Companies of the 1st Border Regiment and 2nd South Staffords were earmarked for Grave and Arnhem, with six gliders required for each assault. After Montgomery cancelled COMET at the last minute because of the intel situation (II.SS-Panzerkorps arriving in the Arnhem area), he proposed an upgrade with the American divisions added so that 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade could concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun resources (each Brigade effectively had a battery and totalled 83 guns, including 16 of the heavy 17-pounders). This meant that planning of the airborne operation was turned over to Brereton and his 1st Allied Airborne Army staff, and here the COMET concept was compromised by deleting the double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults because of lack of night navigation skills in the USAAF Troop Carrier Command and the risks of the glider assaults on the bridges in daylight. Browning was unable to object after being politically neutralised over the Operation LINNET II affair. He knew if he threatened resignation again he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. Gavin had been requested by the British (according to Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin) to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, but after toying with the idea eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily - the USAAF crews were panicked by the Flak and scattered his 505th Regiment over a wide area, and Gavin landed with just four or five men to command. Instead he instructed the CO of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing his initital objectives on the Groesbeek ridge. An instruction that Colonel Lindquist failed to carry out.
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  136. Catain The Lord Peter Carrington was second in command of No.1 Squadron, 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Grenadier Guards and in command of the operation to push a Troop of four tanks under Sergeant Peter Robinson across the Nijmegen highway bridge on 20 September. The operation started prematurely after the Grenadiers picked up a radio message from the Irish Guards reporting an American flag observed at the far end of the bridge, unaware it referred to the rail bridge a mile to the west, so they thought they'd better get going. After Robinson's surviving two Shermans sucessfully crossed the bridge at 1830 hrs and drove half a mile up the road through the village of Lent, they eventually stopped when they encountered American paratroopers (from G/504th) at the rail overpass, where a StuG III had the opening covered from further up the Arnhem highway. Carrington crossed over in his tank about 45 minutes later and stopped at the far side, to be greeted by troopers from H and I/504th that had finally overcome German resistance along the riverbank and arrived at the far end of the highway bridge at 1915 hrs. The reason Carrington stopped where he did was because his tank was the radio Rear Link vehicle between Robinson, half a mile away in Lent, and his squadron commander back in Nijmegen - the bridge itself is a mile long - so this arrangement is needed to maintain communications. As he sat there he recalls the next vehicles to cross were a Troop of four Achilles (M10 with 17-pounder gun) tank destroyers from 21st Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery to reinforce the bridgehead. It is here that the Americans allege a confrontation at gunpoint took place, although Carrington says this allegation was "extraordinary." Part of the problem is that the film A Bridge Too Far does not tell the full story, the rail bridge is not shown, in fact the film only covers three of the 24+ bridges involved in Market Garden in any detail, and a fourth bridge at Grave is glimpsed for just 10 seconds as the tanks cross over. Robert Redford's portrayal of Julian Cook after the Waal crossing is complete fiction and annoyed Cook himself. Redford is seen arguing with a British Major, presumably the squadron commander, but not supposed to be Carrington. The other inaccuracy is that this scene occurred in daylight, whereas in reality it starts to get dark between 1930-2000 hrs in September and tanks could not fight at night in WW2, so an advance in the dark would be total insanity. Director Richard Attenborough had his own motives for distorting the narrative. It was 2000 hrs when the 504th had reached their planned stop line between Fort Hof van Holland and Fort Het Laauwik, which defined the Lent bridgehead. The Germans withdrew to a blocking line between the villages of Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel. In his book Corps Commander (1977), Brian Horrocks said that he had risked moving tanks at night on only two occasions and both times it had paid off. In Market Garden he said he felt it would be pushing his luck too far a third time, and he was already unnerved by the operation starting on a Sunday - in his experience no operation starting on a Sunday went well. The various problems with continuing an immediate advance to Arnhem were complex, from the original plan for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to lead this sector and not being in position, to other elements of the Guards Armoured Division being committed to supporting the 82nd in other sectors of their divisional perimeter, all of them were a direct consequence of the failure to secure the Nijmegen bridges on the first afternoon. If the Nijmegen highway bridge had been in Allied hands as planned by the morning of 19 September, then the Guards could have rolled straight through Nijmegen and deployed to allow 43rd Infantry to come up and take over the advance to Arnhem. It was never intended for the Irish Guards to lead the advance on the last road to Arnhem, but due to the turn of events they were the only battlegroup available on 21 September when the advance resumed in the worst possible circumstances with the inevitable problems they ran into. The "slug and a gutless coward" (although I don't care to use that kind of language) was not Captain Carrington, but Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR. He was told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees on the afternoon of 17 September the city of Nijmegen was evacuated by German rear echelon troops based there and the highway bridge guarded by just one NCO and seventeen men. 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke details this story in his combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) in chapters 9 and 10, and it's also instructive to read the previous chapters on their first combat operation in Normandy for context. Lindquist had form as a poor combat leader, his officers lamenting in interviews that he never undertook a personal reconnaissance to view the battlefield, always sending out patrols and waiting for reports. He did the same thing at Nijmegen, despite being instructed by Gavin in the divisional briefing in England to "move with speed" on the highway bridge as soon after landing and securing his initial objectives on the Groesbeek heights. When Gavin found out the regiment was digging-in on the heights, he was as mad as Chet Graham, the regiment liasion officer to Division HQ, had ever seen him. Gavin ordered him into a Jeep - "come with me - let's get him moving." Gavin's first words to Lindquist at the 508th CP - "I told you to move with speed."
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  137. The terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was indeed considered and the plan was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to lead the XXX Corps advance on that sector of the route, before the Guards took up the lead again from Arnhem to Nunspeet. Events at Nijmegen threw this sequencing out of gear, and in fact Gavin's insistence on using his own troops to cross the Waal in a river assault, proposed twice before it was accepted, displaced the default prepared plans for 43rd Wessex to undertake such assaults if required with one or two brigades (operations BESSIE and BASIL respectively). They had a battalion in each of two brigades fully mobilised with DUKW amphibious trucks and assault boats for the follow-up battalions prepared for such operations, and although put on a warning order for operation BASIL, they were not called up because of Gavin's intervention. The betrayal myth was thoroughly debunked in 1963 by Dutch book De Slag By Arnhem (English edition The Battle of Arnhem, 1966) by Cornelius Bauer and Theodoor Alexander Boeree, based on Ede resident Colonel Boeree's extensive research during the years following the battle. I don't know why the betrayal myth still persists, it doesn't make any sense. The 9.SS-Panzer-Division only had a few 'alarm units' left in the Netherlands as it was being withdrawn to Siegen in Germany. The reconnaissance battalion was being loaded onto flat cars at Beekebergen station at the time of the landings and had to be hurriedly unloaded and their tracks and guns refitted to make them operational again. They had been removed to render the vehicles administratively non-operational to avoid handing them over to 10.SS-Panzer. The division's dispositions had been in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions on either side of the river Ijssel (the divisional boundary) in support of a defence line being constructed along the river - the last distributary of the Rhine before the German border. They were in the wrong places if they were expecting airborne landings at Arnhem and Nijmegen. I have copies of the G-2 (Intelligence) and G-3 (Operations) documents from 82nd Airborne available as a download from PaperlessArchives, and from prisoner interrogations it was clear the airborne landings achieved complete surprise. The Germans were expecting the British advance to resume from Belgium and they assumed the morning's preliminary bombing on 17 September was a prelude to the ground advance. They had orders to withdraw towards Arnhem and Germany in this event, so airborne troops landing behind their defence lines came as a shock and a surprise. The only German commanders with any inkling of an airborne attack in the Arnhem area were Luftwaffe Generalmajor Walter Grabmann of 3.Jagd-Division at Deelen airfield, who warned Model his new headquarters at Oosterbeek were next to ideal landing zones around Wolfheze, but Model rubbished the idea, feeling safe behind so many river barriers and too deep behind the lines for an airborne opertion. The only dinner guest to take the warning seriously was SS-Sturmbannführer Sepp Krafft, so he ordered the two training companies of his SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildings-und-Erstaz-Bataillon 16 out of their barracks in Arnhem and had them camped in the woods north of Oosterbeek as additional protection for Model. This placed them in an excellent position to block two of the three battalions of 1st Parachute Brigade advancing into Arnhem on 17 September. The compromises to the original outline plan (provisionally called SIXTEEN and based on the cancelled COMET) made by Browning and Montgomery have to be laid at the feet of the commanders in 1st Allied Airborne Army, once they got their hands on it. USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams deleted the double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main raids on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. Browning was unable to object after being politially neutralised by Brereton during the LINNET II affair. Gavin also compromised his own divisional plan by discarding "a British request" he received (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and by assigning the critical Nijmegen mission to the problematic (in Normandy) 508th PIR commander instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. I agree that the blame has to be shared, complex operations don't fall apart because of a single error, but rule number one on the range is to check your target. Only by persistent digging can you get to the truth. Sources: Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Arnhem, a Few Vital Hours – The SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 at the Battle of Arnhem September 1944, Scott Revell with Niall Cherry and Bob Gerritsen (2013, reprinted 2021) Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020) Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021)
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  138. Wesel was the original target for the airborne Operation 'Comet', but in the planning process it was changed to Arnhem, possibly because of Flak. When intelligence showed more German forces building up in the Netherlands, 'Comet' was cancelled and replaced with 'Market Garden' upgraded with three Airborne Divisions. The Groesbeek heights were an issue because it was not known if there were German combat troops in Nijmegen, and the ridge line might have been occupied as a defensive feature. The exact location of 10.SS-Panzer-Division was unknown, but it was known to be no more than a regimental battlegroup in strength. If it was in Nijmegen, it may cause problems for the 82nd Airborne. The ridge had to be taken as an initial objective, but if unoccupied the 508th PIR was instructed to move with speed on to the highway bridge. The operation was compromised when it failed to do so, and allowed the 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reinforce the bridges overnight. Deelen airfield had been bombed on 3 September, prompting the air units stationed there to evacuate to Germany, and bombed again on the morning of Market Garden, 17 September. The runways were not usable for aircraft but there was an American airfield construction battalion ready to be flown in by glider to repair the runways and allow 52nd (Lowland) Division to be flown in to reinforce Arnhem. Obviously that part of the plan could not be carried out. Some elements were later flown in to Keent airstrip, near Grave, which was a grass strip planned by the Germans as an emergency alternative to Volkel airbase, but the Dutch workers who were used to prepare the airstrip did everything they could to ensure the field was as waterlogged as possible, and the Germans made little use of it! You made some good points and there's so much down the Market Garden rabbit hole to talk about, so it is easy to write about this forever.
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  139.  @berthika1219  - you're welcome. One of the features of 'Comet' were Pegasus Bridge style coup de main glider assaults, but the switch to 'Market Garden' involved every available transport aircraft to carry the three divisions, and it was deemed unacceptable to have any losses to Flak close to the bridges as it would affect the transport capacity for the second lift. So the coup de main attacks were removed. I have John Sliz's excellent series of books on Market Garden Engineers and in his Bridging The Club Route volume for the Guards Armoured's Royal Engineers, he makes a good point that the Zon Bailey bridge was built entirely in the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to operate tanks, so the effective delay there was zero hours. The Zon bridge was on the Wilhelmina canal, which was a German defence line, so the chances of a blown bridge there were quite high. The other main defence line was along the Maas to Heumen, the Maas-Waalkanaal to Weurt, and then along the Waal to the North Sea. These were the only lines where all bridges were prepared for demolition and combat troops located, although the Maasbrug at Grave was also prepared with explosives there was no 'sprengkommando' on station to blow the bridge.
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  140. 1. The main reason the operation failed was because the highway bridge at Nijmegen was not seized on the first day, while it was guarded by just eighteen men, due to a command failure at the top of the 508th Parachute infantry Regiment and contrary to General Gavin's specific instruction to the Regiment commander to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing. This allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to move into the city and fatally delay XXX Corps' advance towards Arnhem for 36 hours, while they fought to take 82nd Airborne's prime objective for them. 2. Second reason was the quick reaction from SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich's II.SS-Panzerkorps HQ as Kasteel Slangenburg near Doetinchem, which had a direct phone line to the Luftwaffe Flugleitstelle (air warning station) in the town and received a warning report within an hour of the landings, and the Korps' 'alarm' units were mobilised within another hour of Bittrich giving them a warning order. 3. Third reason affecting the deployment of British 1st Parachute Brigade to their objectives in Arnhem on D-Day was a warning from Generalmajor Walter Grabmann of the Luftwaffe 3.Jagd-Division at Deelen airfield, at a dinner hosted by Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model at his new headquarters in Oosterbeek, that the fields around Wolfheze to the west of Model's HQ were ideal landing grounds for enemy airborne units. Model dismissed the warning as he felt secure behind so many river barriers and thought the Allies would never try airborne landings so far behind the front lines. The one officer present who took the warning seriously was SS-Sturmbannfürer Sepp Krafft of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 based in Arnhem, so he ordered his two available training companies out of their barracks before they could be bombed, and had them bivouac in the woods north of Oosterbeek as additional protection for Model. They were in an ideal location then to prevent the movement of two of the 1st Parachute Brigade's battalions into Arnhem to secure the high ground (1st Battalion) and the eastern sector of the town (3rd Battalion), only Frost's 2nd Battalion got through to the highway bridge after it turned the flank of Krafft's line. I think the British Army was well aware of the fighting ability of the German soldier by this stage of the war and there's plenty of evidence that 1st Airborne were expecting a hard fight at Arnhem.
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  141.  @thevillaaston7811  - Montgomery Derangement Syndrome. It's not even about history, it's politics - which is the very thing that compromised MARKET GARDEN when you boil it all down.
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  142.  @thevillaaston7811  - "Do think that bigwoody4704 (aka Para Dave) needs professional help?" I don't know - I trained as a systems analyst not a psycho analyst. He's like one of those Japanese soldiers coming out of the jungle 20 years after the war ended, but in his case he still thinks the revolutionary war is still going on...
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  143.  @johnburns4017  - SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 was based at the Saksen-Weimar kazerne (barracks) in northern Arnhem. They had handed most of their armour (I think around 10 Mark IV tanks) to SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Vorden, leaving the 9.SS-Panzer with three Mark V Panther tanks and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen'. 1st Parachute Battalion war diary records a column of 5 tanks and about 15 half-tracks (the latter probably from Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, since no other unit in the area had that many half-tracks), seen patrolling the Amsterdamseweg on 17 September, preventing them from reaching their high ground objective. I came across a Dutch historical article online about an Arnhem resident living in the house on the corner of Callunastraat with Heijenoordseweg who received a knock on the door on the Friday morning, 15 September 1944, to find some SS panzer crewmen at the door asking for any spare milk. They explained that they had moved their tanks out of the barracks and hidden them under the trees on Heijenoordseweg to avoid any bombing of the barracks. Two of the Panthers were knocked out by B Company 3rd Parachute Battalion on 19 September, with a Gammon bomb dropped out of an upper floor window and a PIAT, while the third survived the battle in Arnhem to participate in the seige of the Oosterbeek perimeter. The unit was Kampfgruppe Harder under SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Harder, nominally the commander of 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 and the most senior officer representing the regiment at Arnhem. The two Möbelwagen are well-documented (and photographed) on the Dreijenscheweg supporting Kampfgruppe Spindler's blocking line against 4th Parachute Brigade on 18-19 September. To put it into perspective, Model had fewer than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B in September facing Montgomery with 2,400. 1st Airborne Divisison and the Polish Brigade took 83 anti-tank guns to Arnhem, including 16 of the 17-pounder guns capable of tackling the Panthers and Tigers.
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  144.  @johnburns4017  - just been re-reading part of Christer Bergström's volume 2 chapter VII on Results and Conclusions to look something up and came across this note: 'Heeresgruppe B had not had any more than 84 operational tanks and tank destroyers left in the middle of September 1944.' (Citation: OB West Ia No. 8138/44 g.Kdos. vom 15.9.1944; Jung, Die Ardennen-Offensive 1944/45, p. 33. My figure of "fewer than 100 operational tanks" came from Didden and Swarts' The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022). I had remembered the more recently read reference, but the note from Bergström quoting from Jung is clearly based on official strength returns recorded by the Operations Officer of OB West. It's also interesting because the exact number of anti-tank guns taken by 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Parachute Brigade to Arnhem comes to 83. The breakdown being 24 in the Airlanding Battalions (8 per Support Company), 4 Troops of 17-pounders (total 16 guns), 7 Troops of 6-pounders (total 28 guns, 1 Troop per Parachute Battalion, plus 'Z' Troop for division reserve), and the Poles had 4 Troops (16 guns) they opted to reorganise as 3 Troops of 5 guns for Arnhem, bringing the total sent by air to 83. I'm assuming the spare Polish gun was taken in their sea tail, and their roster does include 9 men listed for the Anti-Tank Squadron's Sea Tail, which would bring the total to match Model's 84 operational tanks! It's quite a stunning coincidence. I have some figures on monthly (total) strength returns for 10.SS-Panzer-Division and the claimed figures of 16 Mark IV and 4 StuG IIIG seems to be borne out by published information, and I'm quite confident about their numbers and locations in the narrative, but wouldn't know how the figures were officially broken down into operational/short-term/long-term repair. My narrative on 9.SS-Panzer-Division is pieced together from many sources which all seem to fit together into a coherent narrative regarding the three Panthers. I've often thought about why they weren't handed over to 10.SS-Panzer with the Mark IV tanks and my conclusion is they are either three Befehlspanthers (command tanks with the extra radios that belong to either the Regiment Nachrichten [signals] platoon or I.Abteilung Panther Nachrichten Platoon - they both should have three such vehicles) and therefore harder to obtain replacements, so were retained by the subterfuge of listing them in short-term repair (not operational), or because SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 did not yet have their own Panther Abteilung (still training in Germany) and likely not have the Werkstatt Kompanie 'Panther' platoon to maintain them. I'm inclined to think probably the first option, because during the battle Model did send 20 new Panthers from the factory and they were crewed by the 100 un-horsed Panther crewmen from I./SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 that were an 'alarm kompanie' acting as infantry and then transferred to the Frundsberg division to re-form 8./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10. I would imagine the Panther Werkstatt platoon would have to go with them. It also fits the narrative that the three survivors from Normandy were moved to the Heijenoordseweg on Friday 15 September (according to the Dutch resident in Callunastraat) from the Saksen-Weimar kazerne, where they were probably in the workshop for just a few days to have tracks and guns removed for the subterfuge of listing them as 'non-operational' to avoid handover. All of this would have to be in the 10-part mini-series remake of A Bridge Too Far that will never get made for political reasons. Drama.
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  145. Nick Danger on his continued use of Pegasus Archive (dated 2001), despite being schooled with extracts from more up to date sources: disingenuous /ˌdɪs(ɪ)nˈdʒɛnjʊəs/ adjective adjective: disingenuous not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
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  146. My own reading indicates that Gavin was covering, to some extent, for Colonel Lindquist (508th PIR). I refer to 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), chapters 9 and 10 on the planning and execution of Market, but also for the earlier chapters on the Regiment's first combat operation in Normandy. Lindquist had form as an over-cautious combat officer, although he was apparently a gifted S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Staff Officer when he was an early officer volunteer for the US Airborne forces in 1942, so I hope you're beginning to get the picture. Nordyke's research is supported by other books such as John McManus' September Hope (also 2012), Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013) containing personal letters and stories from troopers, and Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) - which also contains in its appendices the Q&A with Lindquist by Captain Westover, the official US Army historian, and the Order No.1 written by Lindquist for the operation. There are witnesses at Gavin's divisional briefing in which he instructed Lindquist to send not more than one battalion to "move with speed" on the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing his initial objectives on the Groesbeek heights. I believe the main concern over the heights was the possibility the Germans had combat troops in the excellent Dutch barracks facilities in Nijmegen and that they may occupy defensive positions on the heights when alarmed by an airborne attack. There was some concern that 10.SS-Panzer-Division (reduced to regimental battlegroup strength in Normandy) could not be precisely located, and it was thought the division may be drawing new tanks from a depot in the Kleve area across the border, hence the silly rumour the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks. Gavin was told there may be a regiment of SS troops in Nijmegen, so it all fits the speculative intel picture at the time. In the event, Nijmegen itself contained only rear echelon troops, mainly the HQ of the Ordnungspolizei (equivalent to a division HQ) - for the German police in the whole Netherlands, evacuated from Den Haag in 1943 when the Dutch coast became a possible invasion coast, and I recently discovered the Hotel Groot Berg-en-Dal (Berg-en-Dal on the Groesbeek heights was the initial objective of 3/508th) was Hans Kammler's SS-Division zV, which controlled all V-2 rocket operations in the Netherlands with firing batteries on the Dutch coast near Den Haag firing on London and another battery nearby in the Reichswald by Kleve firing on Paris and Antwerp. Both headquarters were hurriedly evacuated when the airborne landings began, and the only combat troops in the area were on the Maas-Waal canal defence line, mostly a low grade Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon (home guard training battalion) and the Unter-Lehr-Kommando (NCO training unit) of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' (airborne armoured replacement and training regiment for the 'HG' division fighting in Poland), which had responsibilty for the Nijmegen and Grave bridges - I believe most of the ULK were forward deployed at Grave and at the main road canal bridge at Honinghutje, and they withdrew to the Nijmegen highway bridge when the others were attacked for their final stand on 20 September. On the first afternoon, until Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 (attached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division) arrived in the evening, the city of Nijmegen itself was effectively open, and the bridge guarded by an NCO and seventeen men - this was communicated directly to Lindquist at De Ploeg (1/508th initial objective) by resistance leader Geert van Hees, but he continued to follow his own pre-flight plan to send a recon patrol consisting of the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section, reinforced by Lt. Weaver's 3rd Platoon of 'C' Company, plus an LMG Section and a battalion SCR-300 radio which had the range to report back to battalion from the bridge. This was contrary to Gavin's instructions and Gavin was mad as hell when the 508th's liaison officer, Captain 'Chet' Graham, reported in to Division HQ at around 1830 hrs. Most of the regiment was digging-in on the ridge against zero opposition at this time. Gavin ordered Graham into a Jeep with the words "come with me - let's get him moving." His first words to Lindquist at the 508th CP was "I told you to move with speed." A plan was then made to send 'A' and 'B' Companies with HQ Company to the bridge, but this was apparently unexpected news to battalion CO Warren Shields, as his troopers were strung out all along the battalion front and it would take time to assemble them for a move. In the meantime, Zig Boroughs' book contains the account of 1st Battalion S-2 Scout Joe Atkins, who states that he and two other Scouts were on point going into Nijmegen when they got separated in the crowds of jubilant Dutch civilians, but finally made it to the bridge. They surprised seven guards at the southern end with a small artillery piece and took them prisoner, armed with just one Thompson and two Garand rifles, and waited. After an hour it started to get dark and there was no sign of the rest of Weaver's patrol, so they decided to withdraw and release their prisoners. As they did so, they could hear "heavy equipment" approaching the other end of the bridge. According to McManus' September Hope, Atkins and his companions also got lost in the back streets trying to return to battalion, as had Weaver trying to get to the bridge. Weaver eventually received a radio message that two companies were on their way to the bridge and decided to withdraw. Browning doesn't actually feature anywhere in this narrative from American authors, and the bridge was never really "de-prioritised" as such, from a map you can deduce the wooded heights (which appear flat on the actual ground) were the key to advancing into Nijmegen. - As a UK citizen, thanks also for your service.
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  147. He did that in the briefing for the cancelled operation COMET, but was noticeably silent during the MARKET briefing. That's not to suggest he was happier with the new plan, but I think it's important to confine comments to the historical facts on a history channel and the Hollywood film script on an appropriate movie channel.
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  148.  @ErikExeu  - it was generally true, but you would have to explain how the operation would have still failed if the 508th PIR had actually moved immediately on the Nijmegen bridge, as Gavin had specifically instructed their CO in the final divisional briefing.
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  149.  @kadykianus  - absolutely. Which part did you think I was kidding?
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  150.  @ErikExeu  - "I am not very happy" is an emotional response. I'm only referring to historical research. 1. Sosabowski was vociferous in his criticism of COMET and did indeed tell Browning he thought to ask for a letter confirming he was ordered to undertake his part in the operation and Browning asked him if he wanted such a letter, to which Sosabowski responded he didn't, because if it was a massacre it wouldn't make any difference. He was then silent during the MARKET briefing. These scenes are conflated in the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far for dramatic purposes, and the point I was trying to make is that the film should not be used as a basis for a historical discussion - in other words, stick to the facts, and not draw the film's own conclusions from it's fictional narrative. Attenborough, Goldman and Levine all had their own motives in the making of the film, ranging from political to entertainment. 2. Gavin did have the final say over his divisional plan. Browning could not object because he did not have the authority to order Gavin to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, it could only be a request. He could order Urquhart, an officer in his own British Army chain of command, but he had no authority to order Gavin's dispositions without Gavin's agreement. 3. Point 2 came about because Browning was unable to object to Brereton's removal of the key COMET double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from the MARKET outline plan. The reverse would not be possible - Brereton could not order the British glider raids on the bridges if Browning objected, because Brereton could not order British troops to be put in harm's way without the agreement of their British commander. Browning also could not object to the removal of the glider raids by threatening to resign a second time, because he had already done so over Brereton's LINNET II plan a couple of weeks earlier. LINNET II was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps and Browning strongly objected to it by writing a letter threatening resignation. Fortunately, the operation was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, so Browning withdrew the letter, but Brereton had intended to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. American military historian Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis from Cranfield University in the UK is a good source for the LINNET story - The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (2001). Browning now knew what would happen if he tried to object to the MARKET compromises - he would simply be out of the job and Ridgway would lead the airborne operation. This was probably the motivation for Browning to move the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek up to the 1st lift, in a hope to influence events once he was on the ground, not for reasons of ego (why was it on the 2nd lift originally if that were the case?) - we know it was a last minute change because many of the glider chalk numbers were not amended on the official records, and some anti-tank assets were bumped from the 1st lift to Arnhem as a result, much to Urquhart's frustration. 4. Montgomery blamed himself in his memoirs for not intervening in the planning of MARKET to order the troops be dropped closer to the bridges, although again, he could not have ordered Gavin's parachute drop on the Nijmegen bridge, but presumably could have overruled Brereton and reinstated the British glider raids, as only British troops and RAF aircrew would be at risk. Eisenhower supported MARKET GARDEN and had no objection to it at all, although Montgomery indirectly blames him for not getting the full logistical support he asked for - Bedell Smith's assurances on 12 September appear not to have been fulfilled in reality. I think only Americans blame Eisenhower for not objecting to MARKET GARDEN, but he had no reason to. 5. The failure of the operation can most fairly be placed on the one aspect of the plan that was not followed - specifically the failure by Lindquist to carry out Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion 508th PIR directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge after landing, and the post-2011 literature with witness accounts supports this, although Gavin's 1945 letter to Historical Officer Captain Westover and confirmation in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974) have always been there, but not previously substantiated by other sources and disputed by Lindquist himself. You can also blame all the classic mitigating factors, like the Germans, the weather, etc., but these are factors that mitigate against all military operations, so the failure to even follow a plan against zero opposition has to be the prime cause. I personnally resent any suggestion that British subscribers are fundamentally anti-American (although we do have a few communist types in the UK). My own family is probably about three-quarters American, since a major family migration to Illinois during the Industrial Revolution, so I don't make any general remarks about incompetence in one army versus another. The truth, as always, is much more complex. The fact is, supported by the literature, Roy Lindquist was a poor field commander, just like Herbert Sobel of Band of Brothers fame in E/506th PIR. He was actually a gifted administrator. Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) has very enlightening chapters on his performance during the Normandy campaign, the 508th's first combat operation. Gavin had some difficult decisions to make in his divisional plan, but he clearly made some mistakes despite some steers - the "British request" (I assume Browning's) to drop a battalion onto Nijmegen bridge as a coup de main - and perhaps not used to the British doctrine of giving a job requiring two divisions (as his G-3 Jack Norton noted in the Corps briefing) to just one (this is normal in the British Army because we never have enough resources). On the contrary, the conventional narrative for the MARKET GARDEN story does seem to be anti-British. Cornelius Ryan was a newspaperman from Dublin embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - I cannot think of two finer anti-Montgomery schools than Dublin and Patton! Richard Attenborough was an anti-establishment leftist pacifist who wanted to make an "anti-war film" showing the British officer class as incompetent. He found Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far to be the perfect vehicle, but his film only works as an historical docu-drama for exactly 50% of its screen time, based on a scene-by-scene analysis. The rest is clearly a narrative constructed for the American market, and it has shaped public perception on both sides of the Atlantic ever since.
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  151.  @ErikExeu  - it's not a competition and it's not about supporting Montgomery. You told me "your arguments are completely crap", but you didn't say why, or provide any evidence to support it. My arguments are based on current research and I listed a number of my references. They are not my ideas, they are the results of research by historians. If you have better references, then I again invite you to provide them.
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  152.  @ErikExeu  - the reason XXX Corps didn't have a large force available to send to Arnhem directly was because they had been fighting to take the Nijmegen bridges - that was not part of the plan. The 82nd Airborne had failed to take the Nijmegen highway bridge on D-Day, while it was undefended, allowing SS panzer troops to reinforce it overnight. This was an unforced error on the part of the 82nd, specifically the 508th Regiment, but Gavin is responsible because it was his divisional plan that contained compromises, dismissing British advice, and even his compromised plan was not carried out by one of his regiment commanders. The basic premise of the operation was that the airborne troops would secure the bridges and XXX Corps would drive over them to Arnhem and the Ijsselmeer coast in 2-3 days. The British Airborne could not hold the Arnhem bridge beyond four days, so the 36-hour delay at Nijmegen was fatal to both the operation and the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. I don't see how you could not blame the 82nd. The 82nd sending troops to the Nijmegen bridge too late, is the reason the tanks were too late to get to Arnhem in time.
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  153.  @johnlucas8479  - things were far worse at OMAHA Beach...
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  154.  @bigwoody4704  - Gavin had three regiments to secure the same objectives, and he only failed because one Colonel did not follow Gavin's simple instruction to send a battalion to the Nijmegen highway bridge. You need to update your sources: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  155.  @johnlucas8479  - you brought up Normandy! All I'm saying is that the RAF trained to fly at night and the USAAF Troop Carrier Squadrons didn't even have navigators on most of their planes. Only the lead aircraft in each serial had a five-man crew.
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  156.  @bigwoody4704  - and you actually missed a bridge in the 82nd!
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  157.  @bigwoody4704  - I didn't miss them. You incorrectly stated the BEF were kicked out of France, Belgium, and Holland. British troops in the Netherlands in 1940 were not part of the BEF and I picked you up on it.
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  158.  @johnlucas8479  - as usual John, you've gone around in a big circle and ended up making my point. Thank you.
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  159.  @johnlucas8479  - the point was that the USAAF's excuse for deleting the double airlift was a shortage of night-trained navigators in the Troop Carrier units, and it is certainly the case they did not have full crews with a navigator for every C-47, only the lead aircraft in each serial had one. If the USAAF were confident they could form formations at night for the dawn airlift and find their way home again from the evening airlift, then they don't really have an objection to the double airlift. Personally, I think it's an excuse - they just wanted to minimise any losses to flak as much as possible, and the deletion of the glider coup de main was also probably because they didn't like the idea of British glider troops taking the 82nd Airborne's prime bridge targets for them by coup de main. Browning was prepared to take 33% losses going in, if it meant most of the troops landed on the targets.
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  160.  @johnlucas8479  - the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges were to be carried out by British Glider Pilots in British Horsa gliders towed by RAF Stirlings carrying D Companies from the 2nd South Staffords, 7th KOSB and 1st Border Battalions respectively (the three battalions from 1st Airlanding Brigade). The plan was a carry over from COMET (cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft) to the proposed SIXTEEN outline replacement operation, and then dropped for the final MARKET plan after Brereton and Williams got their hands on it. The 33% losses related to the glider coup de main assaults, not the main body that would still go to the main landing zones west of Arnhem and south of Nijmegen. The landing zones near the bridges were not large enough for massed landings, only six gliders assigned to each bridge. RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014) has a map from the COMET plan showing the aircraft tracks and the coup de main glider release points and glide paths for the Arnhem and Nijmegen missions. They release over the rivers as landmarks on the same track as the main body flying on to the British main landing zones west of Oosterbeek, and the coup de main gliders make a right turn and follow the rivers to their targets six kilometers away. The American glider forces were not trained or equipped for these kinds of assaults - they were purely transport assets and the pilots were from the Troop Carrier Squadrons, not trained as light infantry once on the ground like their British counterparts. In fact, they only carried personal weapons, usually a Thompson sub or folding carbine, and no personal sleeping or mess kit. This was a major difference in doctrine and capability, which is why the Americans would never consider doing their own assaults using gliders. After the operation, Gavin complained to the US Army about their glider pilots being a liability, needing looking after until they could be evacuated, but any change in doctrine was superceeded by the introduction post-war of helicopters to replace the combat glider, so it became moot. US glider infantry were not trained in an assault role, they were organised like regular infantry to be delivered by glider, which is why their airborne divisions delivered paratoops first to secure landing zones for glider troops to be delivered as reinforcements. British doctrine was to land glider infantry and anti-tank units first to secure and protect the drop zones for the paratroops. By removing the British glider coup de main assaults from all three main river bridges, the only alternatives for Nijmegen and Grave were special drop zones for 82nd Airborne paratroops near the bridges. Tucker got his for a 504th company at Grave because he insisted on it, but Gavin discarded a British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge. Urquhart's solution at Arnhem was the Reconnaissance Squadron coup de main.
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  161.  @bigwoody4704  - I have read the book, but unlike you I realised that Sebastian Ritchie's conclusions are his own opinions and his research only reinforces the charge that the air force officers involved in planning operation MARKET were making the mistake of ignoring their airborne troop's requirements (this criticism is in many other historian's works on MARKET GARDEN, but obviously not the RAF's historian) and protecting their own assets as a priority. If you only rely on an air force historian's work, you only get an air force point of view. I cite Ritchie for pertinent information - I don't rely rely on his opinions. In fact, I try to avoid opinions altogether, because you can't be objective if you just collect every opinion from Stage 4 Montgomery Derangement Syndrome victims and ignore everyone else and the facts that are inconvenient to your own prejudice.
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  162. I'm not sure what the general thrust of your comment is, but I do agree that context is important. On Market Garden, the operation was compromised at Nijmegen on the first afternoon, as recently published books have revealed, and this challenges the conventional narrative that it was a raft of other failures from planning, intelligence, and the weather, as established by Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and brought to public attention by the 1977 film. After the battle, Montgomery did not specifically blame anyone under his command but made a general comment he was disappointed that it was not given as much support as he had hoped and he remained the operation's unrepentant advocate. I think he was correct, because he was certainly let down by those who subsequently blamed him as the operation's architect. In the Ardennes offensive, the German objective was indeed Antwerp, and to split the Allied Armies apart in the belief that doing so would also split the political alliance. Why the Germans would think this when it didn't happen after Market Garden, I really don't know, but they were impressed by the fact that American units were under British command once again in the Bulge.
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  163. Well, I wouldn't expect an American YouTuber or a Hollywood producer to do that for us, but we are grateful for 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR to tell the full story, supported by John McManus' September Hope (2012), Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection (2013) - all Americans! Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), and Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020) for using unpublished material from the Cornelius Ryan (any relation?) Collection of documents and interviews held at Ohio State University. British history is long enough to have enough mistakes made by British Generals without having to take the blame for American Colonels as well. That's a bit cheeky!
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  164. The name 'Puma' was strictly applied to the German concept of putting a large calibre anti-tank gun into an armoured car in a rotating turret, and this was done for the SdKfz 234/4 vehicle with a 7.5cm L46 PaK 40 gun introduced in December 1944. The previous versions 234/1/2/3 mounted the 2cm kanon, 5cm anti-tank gun, and 7.5cm L24 close support howitzer, respectively. Some 234/4 Puma vehicles were used by 2.Panzer-Division in their leading battlegroup that made the deepest penetration of the Ardennes counter-offensive at Celles, just short of the River Meuse at Dinant. The name 'Puma' is often used for all 8-wheeled German armoured cars, but it's not really correct, and the 234/4 Pumas were too late for the Normandy and MARKET GARDEN timeframes. SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Viktor Eberhard Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at Arnhem had at least two surviving 8-wheel armoured cars of the older SdKfz 231 series, as well as three SdKfz 222 series 4-wheeled armoured cars, all in the 1.Kompanie and armed with 2cm kanon. The 1.Kompanie after Normandy also had rolled into it the surviving five SdKfz 250/9 half-track armoured cars from the disbanded 2.Kompanie, and these were also armed with the 2cm kanon. It appears these did not go to Nijmegen with Gräbner, they seem to have been operating west of Arnhem in action against 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions attempting to get to the bridge, which was also part of Gräbner's mission, with at least one SdKfz 250/3 command vehicle from the Abteilung 'stab' (staff or HQ) being photographed in the Oosterbeek area. Gräbner's 3.Kompanie, which also contained vehicles from the disbanded 4.Kompanie, had twelve SdKfz 250 series half-tracks, and the 5.Kompanie (heavy company) had six SdKfz 251 half-tracks. The latter 5.Kompanie were intitially left behind at Nijmegen until elements of 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived to secure the bridges, and then also withdrawn to Elst at midnight on 17 September. They remained at Elst when Gräbner attempted to rush the Arnhem bridge with his wheeled armoured cars of 1.Kompanie and the halftracks of 3.Kompanie. He followed up the armoured attack with a number of trucks reinforced by sandbags and earth-filled oil drums, which may have been the few trucks listed as part of 3.Kompanie - six light and medium trucks. The Abteilung also had a 6.Kompanie, a Versorgungs (supply) company, with twenty-one medium and three heavy trucks, but I don't believe they (all) went to Nijmegen. When Frost first arrived at the Arnhem bridge, most of Gräbner's unit were observed crossing over on their way south to Nijmegen, and the first traffic Frost was in a position to interdict were four trucks apparently carrying fuel supplies, possibly from Gräbner's supply column following behind, and it was the fuel cargo spilled from these trucks that caused the huge conflagration that prevented any further attempts to take the south end of the bridge. Gräbner himself is said to have been using a captured British Humber Mark IV armoured car acquired in Normandy. There is no sign of this vehicle among the wrecks photographed on Arnhem bridge and possibly it was recovered by the Germans not too badly damaged after the battle or was not present, but Gräbner was one of the men recorded as having perished on the bridge. Another SS-Hauptsturmführer, Karl-Heinz Recke, is recorded as taking over, but I don't know if he was an officer already within the Abteilung or transferred from elsewhere in the division.
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  165. What do you mean "Montgomery was late"?
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  166. It's actually not relevant. The miscommunication was between Gavin (82nd Airborne Division) and Lindquist (508th Parachute Infantry Regiment). There's evidence in Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - that in the divisional briefing, Gavin instructed Lindquist "to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation", according to Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ and sat in on the briefing. When on the first afternoon of the operation, Chet Graham reported to Gavin that the 508th were dug in on the initial objective (the ridge) and Lindquist was not sending a battalion into the city until the DZ was cleared (Dog Company was left behind to do this job), Gavin was as angry as Graham had ever seen him. He told Graham "let's get him moving" and they drove to the 508th CP. His first words on seeing Lindquist were "I told you to move with speed." By the time the 1st Battalion started moving into Nijmegen, three men from a recon patrol who had actually captured the southern end of the bridge from the handful of guards there, and after waiting an hour for reinforcements that never came, had to withdraw when it got dark. As they left the bridge, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end. This story is related by Trooper Joe Atkins of the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section in Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013). Chet Graham was also a key witness in several officer's criticisms of Lindquist's command in the Normandy operation, which is described in Nordyke's earlier chapters. Both Ridgway and Gavin didn't trust him, and Ridgway would not promote him despite Lindquist being the senior Colonel in the Division when Ridgway went up to XVIII Airborne Corps, according to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan after the war. I think most of this Nijmegen story has only come out in public since the senior people involved have all gone. Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far in 1974, after both Browning and Montgomery had passed, so they became convenient scapegoats for the American commanders who were mostly still around, but Ryan did not tell the full story of the blunder at Nijmegen and the film based on the book implies that the Germans held Nijmegen in strength from the get go - simply not true!
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  167.  @nickdanger3802  - the point I thought I had made very clear was that Gavin clearly understood that while the high ground was important to securing the position of the division, the bridges were the key to the success of the entire operation. The problem at Nijmegen was that this was apparently not understood by Lindquist, a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, but clearly not a good combat leader. Perhaps aware of his shortcomings, Gavin took time out to explain what he wanted Lindquist to do, as the book I'm currently reading makes clear, and this is from another American author: 'At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.' 'At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership.' (Page 64, September Hope - The American Side Of A Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus, 2012).
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  168.  @johnburns4017  - chain of command at Son? My knowledge in the 101st Airborne AO is more limited than Arnhem and Nijmegen, so I have not established who was in charge at the bridges on the Wilhelmina canal at Son and Best. I know the canal defence line was held by Flieger-Ausbildungs-Regiment 53 (a Luftwaffe basic training unit for recruits before posting on to specialist pilot/ground/flak training units) in the Sonsche forest sector between the two bridges and most likely on either side along the whole canal (in 1944 it had two abteilungen), depending on how thin they were strung out. The bridges at Best and Son were reinforced in the days before Market Garden by 3 and 4./schwere.Flak-Abteilung 428 respectively, relocated from Deelen airfield with 8 x 8.8cm and 2 x 2cm guns at Best (presumably two heavy guns were attached from another batterie) and at Son 4 x 8.8cm and 3 x 2cm, with 2 x 8.8cm guns detached to the northern suburbs of Eindhoven (later dealt with by F/506th on 18 September). Both bridges were prepared for demolition and presumably had a 'sprengkommando' of engineers, but I have no knowledge of who they were, or what their orders or protocol for initiating detonation was. I've seen a reference that troops from the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' were at the Son bridge, but nothing specific. The vehicles from the Reserve Panzer Kompanie based at Harderwijk (on the Zuider Zee coast) that were ordered to Hechtel in Belgium to join II.Abteilung on 7 September and broke down near Deelen, famously photographed by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September, had found their way as far as Wolfswinkel, just north of Zon, on 17 September. Those are the only HG troops I know to be even in the area. If I was to speculate, possibly a sprengkommando from the Panzer-Pioneer Kompanie - nominally the 6.Kompanie in August (source: LXXXVIII Korps records on the sturmpanzer site) and detached from II.Abteilung in reserve, but I believe reorganised in September (in the transferr to 1.Fallschirm-Armee whose records are lost) to be part of a new Pionier Bataillon with Kompanie numbers 18-20 (part of the re-org that had the Unter-Lehr-Kommando or NCO training company renumbered from 21 to 29, because the 'Rekruten' Bataillon from Berlin rejected by Fritz Fullriede on the grounds it would be infanticide to use them probably took up Kompanie numbers 21-28). What I do know is that the higher command was still LXXXVIII Armeekorps, as it was also transferred from WBN (occupation command Netherlands) to 1.Fallschirm-Armee (Student), and the commander was General Hans Wolfgang Reinhard based in Tilburg. His first action on reaching his HQ on 17 September was to send the I./SS-Polizei-Regiment, which was also based in Tilburg, to Best (less one company having its time wasted responding to a false report of paratroops at Udenhout, but they later rejoined the battalion at Best). Student's Chief of Staff, Oberst Walter Reinhard (I hope you're keeping up!), had already sent I./Grenadier-Regiment 723 (only reserve from 719.ID northeast of Antwerp), as well as Feldersatz-Bataillon 347 (of 347.ID and previously on Meuse-Escaut Canal, including at Joe's Bridge) and remnants of 59.ID of 15.Armee escaping across the Scheldt. According to Christer Bergström, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vol 1 (2019), chapter IV 'The Screaming Eagles' 17 September 1944, Student (1.Fallschirm-Armee) only had the Flak units at the bridges and these were ordered to defend the bridges at all costs and, as a last resort, to blow them up. Bergström says 2nd Battalion 506th assembled 30 minutes behind scedule due to confused signals on the DZ associated with the 502nd, and the CO was missing, then 2 hours spent house clearing down the main street instead of moving quickly. Impossible to say it made any difference as the bridge was prepared to be blown as soon as it came under pressure. Since there was no delay on XXX Corps in constructing the replacement Bailey bridge entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to move tanks, I see no fault or time delay that could easily be made up in this phase of the operation. These kinds of problems are to be expected and were not fatal to the success of the operation. What happened at Nijmegen was not expected.
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  169.  @johnburns4017  - re the orders for the bridge garrisons at Best and Son (I do prefer the spelling of 'Zon' as this disambiguates the name from an English word - as in Son of God, but apparently 'Son' is the correct spelling notwithsstanding the 'Zon' spelling used on the US GSGS AMS maps used for the operation): I think the orders were probably standing orders, because the way Christer Bergström describes the deployment of the Flak batteries at the bridges suggests their orders were "to defend the bridges at all costs and, as a last resort, to blow them up." I don't know exactly when the batteries of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 were redeployed from Deelen, I only know that the two guns detached from 4.Batterie at Son to the northern outskirts of Eindhoven in a forward deployed position happened the day before they were engaged, which would be the 17 September, the day of the landings. These defence lines along the canals - Wilhelmina canal at Best and Son, the Maas-Waal canal west of Nijmegen, had all their bridges prepared for demolitions and most of these were blown as soon as they were threatened, suggesting they were already well prepared regardless of how soon they were attacked. The lift bridge at Heumen on the Maas-Waal canal, really the only one captured completely intact, was effectively kept under fire by Bravo Company 504th as soon as contact was made, and this seemed to be the reason the demolition charges were not primed. The defences at Son were more extensive with the heavy Flak guns, and regardless of the delay before the defences were attacked, the attack itself took time to press forward until paratroopers were within 100 yards of the bridge as it was blown. As you know from our previous conversations, I think the outcomes at these bridges are due to the Germans being on the ball and doing everything right. Even if they had to report contact to Student (in the case of Son and Best) or Scherbening of Division zbV 406 (in the case of the Maas-Waal canal bridges) and ask permission, they had time to do so and get a reply at Son after contact was made, but I think this may be irrelevant if there were standing orders at bridges along these defence lines. I believe Scherbening was out of contact with the canal defences, it is certainly the case in Kershaw's It Never Snows In September (1990) that Landesschützen-Ausbildung-Bataillon I./6 headquartered at Haus Kreuzfuhrt (grid 7954 on the Groesbeek AMS map) lost contact with its three companies deployed on the Maas-Waal canal. My view with regard to Son and its impact on Market Garden's timetable I have also discussed before, and I am persuaded by John Sliz's observation that the Bailey bridge was constructed entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to operate tanks. The work started at 2000 hrs, within an hour of XXX Corps reaching the bridge site at 1900 hrs, and the Royal Engineers' advance (Recce) party at 1930 hrs. I highly recommend you to Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers During Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2015, 2016), the engineering details are fascinating (you'll be able to build your own Bailey bridge after reading this and be one up on Elliot Gould who, let's face it, is only an actor playing a Colonel who wasn't really there when the bridge was built). The narrative on the Guards' Royal Engineers story of Market Garden is also very interesting, because even though their responsibilty for any bridging required ended at Grave (where the Canadian AGRCE - Army Group Royal Canadian Engineers) took over, they were regrettably not involved in the assault boat saga at Nijmegen despite having assault boats at Nijmegen (nobody asked them). I think the reason for that may be the demarcation of responsibilities into sectors in the corridor and John Sliz's book on the Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden (2021) also revealed news to me that the contingency plan for Nijmegen, in the permutation where both bridges are intact and held by the enemy, were for a river assault crossing by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one or two Brigades up, until Gavin intervened. So these Market Garden Engineers series of books are not a technical or peripheral area of interest to the general topic, they do cut to the heart of many of the issues we frequently discuss, and explain why certain things were organised and done the way they were. So Nijmegen remains as the one place where the plan was not followed - a completely unforced error on the part of the Airborne, and the contingency plan was also abandoned at the insistence of a division commander attempting to make amends for his division's earlier mistake. The events on the canal defence lines were not unexpected and the contingencies of engineered crossings or using alternative 'Heart Route' bridges were carried out successfully. As for your questions about the need for the bridges to be used by a German counter-attack, I have wondered the same thing. I can only speculate that the major crossings at Arnhem and Nijmegen would be too difficult for the Germans to replace in time, whereas the canal crossings could be bridged by engineers in relatively short order, as the Guards Armoured did at Son overnight. I am aware of an example during the Ardennes counter-offensive (which replaced Model's original plan of doing it in the Netherlands in October/November) - the Germans opened the offensive in the 5.Panzer-Armee sector by attacking with 26.Volksgrenadier-Division along a wide front over the River Our (the actual front line on 16 December), which was then bridged by engineers at Dasburg in a matter of hours to allow 2.Panzer-Division to roll over it and pass through 26.Volksgrenadier to take the lead in the advance on a narrow divisional front (called a 'Rollbahn'). This tempo would not be possible if the engineers had to replace, for example, the largest single span bridge in Europe in 1944 - the Waalbrug at Nijmegen.
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  170.  @johnburns4017  - I'm sure I replied to this a few days ago, but my reply seems to have been deleted - which is odd because I don't recall mentioning Nigel Farage at all... I think I had established that each bridge garrison had a commander responsible for holding the bridge at all costs and then blowing it up. This was Student's standing orders described in Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An EPic Battle Revisited vol 1 (2019). The bridges at Son, Best (road and rail) and Oirshott were reinforced by heavy Flak batteries redeployed from Deelen airfield, and each bridge had a 'sprengkommando'. Since the canal line was held by Fliegr-Ausbildungs-Regiment 53, I would guess the bridge commanders would be a company commanders from this unit? Just my guess. The Flak batteries were RAD, so I would say the senior officer would be Luftwaffe. The sprengkommandos may be from one of the engineer companies of the HG regiment - you would only need a Section at each bridge for this job. There's also LXXXVIII Armeekorps war diary entry for late on 17 September that the bridges at Oirschott and Best, I have from the LXXXVIII Korps records online: 17.45 Uhr: Der Kom. General befiehlt dem Kommandanten der Brücken über Wilhelmina – Kanal bei Oirschott und 1 km nördl. Brest sind nur auf schriftlichen Befehl des Generalkommandos zu sprengen. Sie sind bis zum letzten Mann zu verteidigen (A 326) Translation: The Kom. General orders the commander of the bridges over Wilhelmina - canal at Oirschott and 1 km north. Brest can only be blown up by written order from the General Command. They must be defended to the last man (A 326) The commanding General being Reinhard of LXXXVIII Armeekorps. I believe the Son bridge was blown at around 1600 hrs, so it may be that the next two bridges were to be kept open until written permission given to allow withdrawal of forces south of the canal maybe?
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  171.  @johnburns4017  - i) Strayer (who went missing on the DZ) ii) Taylor (who decided to expend resources going for a bridge at Best that Dempsey didn't need)
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  172. Then why did the Americans go along with it, especially after compromising many parts of Browning's original operation COMET plan and then failing to carry out a critical part of Gavin's own 82nd Airborne divisional plan?
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  173. Browning actually had nothing to do with it. The failure occurred between Gavin (82nd Airborne) and Lindquist (508th PIR). 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - tells the story that Cornelius Ryan's research for his 1974 book A Bridge Too Far failed to unearth: Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark." "A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
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  174.  @stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85  - that's a point I initially accepted before on face value, but then thought more about it. The obvious reallocation of glider tugs (it's not the gliders that are limited for a particular lift, it's the towing aircraft) is to tow the second half of the South Staffords Airlanding battalion to Arnhem on the first lift instead. Browning's Corps HQ used 32 Stirling/Horsa and 6 Albemarle/WACO combinations, while the second lift for the South Staffords used 40 Dakota/Horsa and 1 Halifax/Hamilcar combinations (Source: Glider Pilots At Arnhem, Mike Peters and Luuk Buist, 2009). What was the mission of the South Staffordshire Battalion at Arnhem? In Phase 1 it was to protect Landing Zone 'S' for the second lift on D+1, and then in Phase 2 to take up its assigned position in the Airlanding Brigade sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem. I believe all four brigades had sectors allotted so that two battalions were forward in the line and the third in reserve, so while the 1st Border Regiment actually took up its assigned positions on the western side of Oosterbeek as per their Phase 2 orders, the rest of the brigade line was to be held by either the 2nd South Staffords or the 7th KOSB, with the other battalion in reserve. Probably the Staffords were nominal reserve because they arrived last, and the KOSB's role in assisting 4th Parachute Brigade was over ground at Johannahoeve probably familiar to them if they were briefed in England to occupy that part of the perimeter. That seems logical to me. In the event, the Staffords held LZ 'S' in Phase 1 with two Companies (B and D), the battalion HQ and the Hand Cart Mortar and MMG Platoons (requiring a total of only 20 Horsa gliders out of a total of 60 for a whole battalion with the Jeep support platoons). They were supported in that role by Flights from Glider Pilot Squadrons C, E, and F of No.2 Wing, and the Independent Company (pathfinders) at Reijers Camp farm. Each Wing of the GPA were the equivalent of a light infantry battalion equipped like paratroops to fight once on the ground. These three squadrons held the eastern sector of LZ 'S' and cleared the village of Wolfheze and the psychiatric hospital with its extensive grounds and pavilions (these facilities were used as a collection centre for German artillery troops as well as senior Luftwaffe officers and 'Blitzmaiden' from the Deelen airbase). The Staffords, and attached Glider Pilots of No.2 Wing were not under any serious pressure from the Germans during Phase 1, and therefore there was was absolutely no major benefit to be gained from having the whole battalion arrive on D-Day. Unless, of course, you rewrite the entire divisional plan to send six battalions to the bridge and leave no protection for the landings zones, which is probably the way modern airborne doctrine would work instead of telegraphing your intent to reinforce with further lifts by holding the drop zones. By the time Brigadier Hicks (in temporary command of the Division) decided he could spare the Staffords on the Landing Zone and send them into Arnhem to support 1st Parachute Brigade, the 2nd Lift was due, and the second half of the battalion actually landed and caught up with the first half in the western outskirts of Arnhem as the leading companies came into contact. I'm convinced that without substantially changing the divisional plan (which is a whole other debate in and of itself) the Staffords having all four Rifle Companies and complete Support Company on the ground for Phase 1 would not have made an atom of difference to the outcome of the battle at Arnhem. I'm convinced if you want to change the outcome at Arnhem, you have to secure the highway bridge at Nijmegen on D-Day and pass XXX Corps over it as soon as it arrives on the morning of 19 September. Frost was controlling traffic over the Arnhem bridge until around midday of 20 September, and Tony Hibbert (1st Para Brigade Major) maintained they could have received XXX Corps as late as 1300 hrs on 21 September. My understanding of Browning's rationale for going was to be seen to lead his troops on the mission, instead of remaining in England. Part of his glider lift were two WACOs carrying liaison teams from 82nd and 101st Divisions and four WACOs carrying two Fighter Control Teams from the USAAF. The HQ itself was the 32 Horsas allocated. You might be amused/amazed to know that one of the GPR Flights (a platoon sized unit with 44 men) going to Arnhem were actually earmarked to protect Browning's HQ (to join a Flight from A Squadron and Regiment HQ that flew him in to Groesbeek). How they were expected to get there nobody could tell them, and the officers in the Flight resolved to find an excuse for not being able to make the journey!
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  175. Have to disagree. There was a telephone link used by the Dutch resistance between Arnhem and a phone in the 505th area of Groesbeek, so some worrying news about the situation at Arnhem was getting through and was passed to Browning's Corps HQ. I think Gavin had a clear grasp of the overall operation's objectives and there's witness evidence he tried to make that clear in his final divisional briefing when he instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th on his mission at Nijmegen [quote]: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012) - That last sentence ending - "as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" is a perfect summary. Clearly Lindquist was at fault for not moving on the bridge as quickly as he should and Gavin had to intervene to get him moving, by which time it was too late and 10.SS-Panzer-Division was already feeding some units into the city. In his interview with Cornelius Ryan for Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974), Gavin made some revealing comments about Colonel Lindquist as well as some comments about objectives. Ryan I think made some incorrect after-the-fact commentary about Gavin having three days to get the bridge, which is ridiculous because Gavin had no way of knowing if the British tanks would reach him in three days or one day when his division landed, but that aside, Ryan's interview notes make interesting reading [my square brackets]: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) So Gavin's responsibility for what happened originated in his planning decisions. The 'British request' to drop a battalion north of the bridge probably came from Browning, because General Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army had removed the double airlift and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that were in Browning's original operation COMET plan, and the fallout of the operation LINNET II affair meant that Browning could not protest the changes - he knew he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps if he threatened to resign a second time. Gavin's decision to assign the critical Nijmegen mission to Lindquist's 508th is controversial, given that Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy (Nordyke's earlier chapters refer). He decided to assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th to the purely defensive role of holding the Reichswald sector of his perimeter, and he had arguably the best battalion in the whole division, Ben Vandervoort's 2nd/505th, in division reserve sitting on Hill 81.8 behind Groesbeek for the first couple of days. I think Gavin put his own division before the mission, and that ultimately led to the failure of the operation and the destruction of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Lindquist's story is no less interesting, but you have to do a deep dive into Nordyke's regimental history to get into that.
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  176. Opposed major water crossings were always backups to the primary method of seizing the bridges if those went wrong. The opposed river assault at Nijmegen should not, and would not, have been necessary if the 508th PIR had "moved with speed" on the highway bridge as Gavin had instructed in the divisional briefing in England. Source: Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012). The backup plan for the Waal bridges in Nijmegen being held in strength by the enemy was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to conduct a river assault to the west with either one or two Brigades up. They had one battalion in two of their Brigades fully motorised in DUKW amphibious trucks for this eventuality, but this plan was apparently thrown away when Gavin insisted his own troops be used if XXX Corps could supply boats. I believe he was trying to make amends for his blunder in assigning the wrong regiment to the Nijmegen mission. Source: Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Market Garden, John Sliz (2021). Both British and US Airborne Divisions were well served with field artillery and anti-tank guns, although the Americans opted to leave most of their artillery for later airlifts and land on D-Day with all their paratroopers. Most indications of German armour were in the Arnhem area and 1st Airborne took 83 anti-tank guns (52 x 6-pounder, 16 x 17-pounder, and 15 x 6-pounder in the Polish Brigade) and 24 pack howitzers (75mm) to Arnhem. Considering Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B (facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400), I think that's quite a lot of heavy weapons! The operation failed because a key officer was a poor combat leader and ignored a specific instruction from his division commander in the face of zero opposition from the enemy. Nothing to do with Eisenhower or Montgomery.
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  177.  @stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85  - US school system + Hollywood = indoctrinated ignorance.
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  178.  @stormblooper  - cheers, thank you.
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  179. To be fair, he had a lot of help. The failure was the result of a chain of compromises made by Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist. Gavin was the only character from this chain of command to be portrayed in the film A Bridge Too Far (by Ryan O'Neal), and the critical episode on the ground on D-Day of the operation was not filmed, and not really fully explored beyond a brief paragraph in Cornelius Ryan's original book. TIK's reading list does not drill down to the regimental history of the 508th PIR (Put Us Down In Hell by Phil Nordyke, 2012), so he didn't really get to Lindquist in any detail. He had similar form in Normandy and was not a good field commander.
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  180.  @bigwoody4704  - the film version of A Bridge Too Far is exactly 50% historically accurate based on screen time compared to the book, and the most accurate scenes of the planes being loaded and glider tow ropes being unfurled are some of the longest scenes obviously designed to pad out the accurate bits to achieve that 50%. Much of the real story wasn't even in Cornelius Ryan's book, which was rushed to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and unfortunately the enemy in this case were the USAAF planners in 1st Allied Airborne Army, who butchered Browning and Montgomery's outline plan approved by Eisenhower, and General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist in the 82nd Airborne Division compromised the operation on D-Day at Nijmegen - an episode predictably missing from the Hollywood film, which does not feature a single trooper from the 508th Regiment. At least Montgomery was in it - the real one, not an actor.
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  181. It's not hubris to overestimate your allies and you can't blame the plan if the plan was not even followed. Market Garden was compromised at Nijmegen when the 508th PIR failed to secure an undefended bridge on the first afternoon, contrary to the division commander's specific instructions. 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) chapters 9 and 10 refers. Montgomery and 1st Airborne Division were let down by a completely unforced blunder.
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  182. Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan (1974) - Although General Browning had directed Gavin not to go for the Nijmegen crossing until the high ground around Groesbeek was secured, Gavin was confident that all the 82nd's objectives could be taken on this first day. Evaluating the situation some twenty-four hours before the jump, Gavin had called in the 508th's commander, Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, and directed him to send one battalion racing for the bridge. In the surprise and confusion of the airborne landings, Gavin reasoned, the gamble was well worth taking. "I cautioned Lindquist about the dangers of getting caught in streets," Gavin remembers, "and pointed out that the way to get the bridge was to approach from east of the city without going through built-up areas." Whether by misunderstanding or a desire to clean up his initial assignments, Lindquist's own recollection was that he was not to commit his troopers in an assault on the bridge until the regiment's other objectives had been achieved. To the 1/Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, Jr., Lindquist assigned the task of holding protective positions along the Groesbeek-Nijmegen highway about a mile and a quarter southeast of the city. Warren was to defend the area and link up with the regiment' remaining two battalions to the west and east. Only when these missions were accomplished, Warren recalled, was he to prepare to go into Nijmegen. Thus, instead of driving for the bridge from the flat farming areas to the east, Warren's battalion found itself squarely in the center of those very built-up areas Gavin had sought to avoid. September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 – As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
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  183. Your quote from Beevor (a very poor book and a hack author recycling an outdated narrative) relates to 18 September - the day after the D-Day for the operation on 17 September, and after the first failed attempt to secure the bridge on the night of 17/18 September, when it should have been taken earlier in the evening just as PFC Joe Atkins and his S-2 Section point team had proven was possible. Browning reasoned that any further attempt to take the bridge should wait until armoured support arrived from the Guards Armoured Division. In view of how difficult it was to try taking the bridge on 19 and again on 20 September, it was undoubtedly the right decision. My quotes come from Gavin himself in his letter to the official US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, noting that he instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge - the history was subsequently written in a book by another Historical Officer called MacDonald. This instruction was confirmed by Gavin in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), who did not explore the problems with Lindquist any further, or the lack of enemy troops in Nijmegen itself until the battalion was finally got moving after an intervention by an extremely "mad" Gavin, too late to beat SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 to the bridge. The events in the city have not come to light until the more recent books by McManus and Nordyke in 2012, using first hand accounts from officers and troopers involved. There's also an interesting account from the German point of view in Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010), using the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting as adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, and later 'Kampfgruppe Reinhold' in charge of the Nijmegen defence), but this specialist subject book had a limited print run and may be difficult to obtain. Reinhold and Traupel were probably the last Germans crossing the Arnhem bridge from north to south before Frost's men starting interdicting traffic and Traupel said they arrived in Nijmegen and... "To my complete surprise I came across the complete SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner. Never before had I seen so many armoured vehicles; there were maybe thirty or more. From Gräbner I learned that many American troops had landed west of the Reichswald. Gräbner had received orders to go back to Arnhem. As the Nijmegen bridge was very short of the troops required to defend it, I asked him to leave one Zug (five Panzerspähwagen) for the defences. He agreed and left for Arnhem around nine o'clock in the evening. Feeling better about the situation I went back to our Headquarters in Lent and took a nap. Around midnight the officer in command of the Zug of Panzerspähwagen arrived at the Headquarters and told me that he had received orders to join the rest of his unit at Elst." "After he left I went across the bridge again to visit the troops located around the bridge in Nijmegen. Another thirty to forty men had arrived which belonged to a military police band and had been incorporated into the defence. I was still waiting for Quandel [5./SS-Pz.Rgt 10] and his tanks [16 x Mark IV] and had no information on why they had not arrived. Early in the morning of 18 September I was surprised to see the first arrival was SS-Obersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel with about ten men from his Pionier Kompanie [1./SS-Pz.Pi.Abt 10]. Reinhold and I then learned what had happened at the Arnhem bridge and on hearing this information made me adjutant of the Kampfgruppe. In the early afternoon SS-Hauptsturmführer Euling arrived with elements of his Battalion [former II./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21]. Both units crossed the Nijmegen bridge to strengthen the bridgehead on the southern side of the Waal." - The police band was the Musikkorps-Zug from the BdO (HQ of the German Order Police for the entire Netherlands and equivalent to a division HQ), that had evacuated at about 1830 hrs going north to their training depot at Schalkhaar (near Deventer) and then finally new digs at Zwolle. They left their Musikkorps-Zug behind to guard the bridges, so it's my view that they were there the whole time when Traupel first arrived, but he simply did not notice them while Gräbner's troops were there in force. 30-40 men split between guarding both ends of the road and rail bridges would be consistent with a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge according to Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, and seven men surprised by PFC Joe Atkins of the 1/508th's S-2 Section when his team took possession of the southern end of the highway bridge also fits this narrative. Quandel's unit (5./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) had failed to arrive because Frost was in possession of the Arnhem bridge and his Mark IV tanks were too heavy for the ferry at Pannerden, so they were held back until the Arnhem bridge was retaken three days later. Only the four StuGs in the 7.Kompanie could be ferried across, plus some infantry, engineers, and one artillery abteilung, for the defence of Nijmegen. The Nijmegen highway bridge itself was not prepared for demolition until the SS engineers arrived. The explosive cutting charges were available, stored in the bridge piers as numbered wooden boxes shaped to fit the superstructure in corresponding numbered locations, and even painted the same shade of green to match the bridge. An NSDAP 'Schutzgruppe' (ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands and volunteered as a militia) had been trained to place the explosives and drilled every month by an engineer officer, Oberleutnant Brettschneider, from von Tettau's staff at the WBN (Wehrmacht HQ Netherlands). The last drill was carried out mid-August and on 17 September the Schutzgruppe simply failed to show up. Brettscheider was in Nijmegen, he was also responsible for the rail bridge, and he was able to direct the SS engineers to prepare the highway bridge as soon as they arrived. Now you know about as much as I do, and I don't see how Browning can be blamed for missing the bridge at Nijmegen. He was constantly compromised by American officers in the planning process at 1st Allied Airborne Army, and on the ground was very much in James Gavin's hands and his troopers at Nijmegen.
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  184.  @thevillaaston7811  - I only wrote the last comment top and tail around Traupel's quotes in my own words, so you should credit the original sources as I have given them. I did copy them faithfully from the Gavin letter, Ryan notes, McManus and Nordyke books, including the inserts [in square brackets] are the original author's, except for the inserts on the Traupel quote, which are my own and not Gerritsen and Revell's identifying the German units. Hope that makes sense? I think these sources are the key ones that tell the full story. The Zig Boroughs extract on PFC Joe Atkins is verbatim in Christer Bergström, but I got Boroughs' book to have the source, and McManus also refers to Atkins so his book is a good general one and the best for the bridge versus ridge debate.
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  185.  @thevillaaston7811  - maybe Beevor was talking about himself? I think they call it 'projection'. I think someone has suggested he writes for the American (book) market, if that's the case then he's not only distorting the true story, he's a tart distorting the true story!
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  186.  @johnlucas8479  - I don't think Adams attacked the bridge at all. His Company was leading the battalion's belated advance into Nijmegen from about 2200 hours - he gives a 10pm timecheck in Nordyke (chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) when his company was at the initial point (Krayenhoff barracks on Groesbeekseweg), where they were waiting for B Company, and then told to move on without them. At some point after that they bumped German units at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle on the west side of town near the railway station, because their Dutch guide was taking them to the bridge via the resistance headquarters (located in a hotel on Molenstraat at the corner with Tweede Walstraat). By this time I believe Gräbner had left for Elst with most of his unit (at 9pm per Traupel), but left an SPW Zug armed with 7.5cm close support kanon - SdKfz 251/9. The interesting thing is that some accounts of this engagement include the killing of an SS-Hauptsturmführer by Corporal Jim Blue, which would not be Victor Gräbner himself, but most likely one of his company commanders. It's my theory that Gräbner left the whole 5.Kompanie behind, but this only consisted of 5 SPWs of the Kanon Zug, a couple of trucks that was probably a supply train, and an SdKfz 251/3 command half-track that would be the company commander's vehicle. It's the only explanation for an SS-Captain to be present when only a 'platoon' of vehicles were supposed to be left behind. I think it's semantics - the platoon was essentially the whole reduced strength company. After B Company arrived and moved through A Company to continue the attack, Adams was tasked with contacting the resistance HQ, but Lt Lamm (2nd Platoon) could not seem to locate it, Adams was then told to send a patrol to the control station for the bridge demolitions, said to be in the Post Office in the centre of town. As time was pressing and Lamm was having trouble reading the map, Adams decided to lead the patrol himself. They were in contact just short of the Post Office, but Lamm and six men assaulted the building and set fire to it, reporting back there were switches in the building that could have been just ordinary light switches. As they withdrew, they were under fire from 20mm kanon coming from the Keiser Lodwijkplein traffic circle south of the highway bridge, but they managed to advance to the Keiser Lodwijkplein, destroying several machine-gun nests. Adams attempted to radio battalion, but couldn't raise them, so they withdrew back to "the park" (Keiser Karelplein traffic circle to the west) with their casualties. They found they were cut off and after attempting several different routes back to the Keiser Karelplein, and it was beginning to get light, they decided to hole up in a building in the city centre area to the north of the traffic circle. It seems to me that the bridge defences were still very weak at this time, Adams was able to assault the area of the traffic circle to the south of the highwaay bridge (Keiser Lodwijkplein) with Lamm's platoon, but did not have the troops to secure the bridge itself and had to withdraw. The Germans were in the process of establishing their defence perimeter, which was based on both traffic circles and the main avenue (Oranjesingel) linking them, so this was the beginnings of Kampfgruppe Hencke - essentially the staffs of Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1 commanding the Maas-Waal canal sector of the German MLR in the area, and the co-located Fallschirm-AOK Ausbildungsstelle under Oberst Hartung - both formerly headquartered in the NEBO monastery at De Ploeg, which was now occupied by the 508th PIR. There's also mention that they were establishing an outpost line around the city, I think this was using machine-guns from the heavy Flak batteries that ringed the city to the south and were bombed in the morning of the 17th September. Spare Flak troops were gathered to man the gap between the two bridges as Kampfgruppe Melitz, who was Hartung's staff Major, and I think it was probably these troops forming road blocks on the defence line that Adams was trapped behind. As we've discussed before, the timings are not necessarily reliable because they often rely on recollections and there are different time zones used by the Germans and Allies, but I think I have a sense of the sequencing of events, which I think is the critical thing. At midnight, the SPW Zug was also withdrawn to Elst (according to Traupel), but the bulk of 1st Battalion 508th had also disengaged, apart from Adams' patrol, which was trapped behind the German defence perimeter and became evaders for a couple of days.
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  187.  @johnlucas8479  - it's also clear from Traupel's diary that the reason Gräbner was withdrawn to Elst was because this was midway between Arnhem and Nijmegen and therefore he had a radio relay link between the SdKfz 251/3 command half-track presumably left in Nijmegen, and an armored car he left on the Arnhem bridge. He could therefore report back to II.SS-Panzerkorps (Bittrich) if there was enemy activity in Nijmegen or Arnhem, and also best placed to move to either location if needed. Also, reading recently a series of booklets on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery: A-Z Troop volumes, by Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022), there's an incredible story in the Z Troop volume that is worth mentioning here. There's a big problem with some of the glider schedule data because of late changes made to take Browning's Corps HQ to Groesbeek, and this disrupted the anti-tank gun 1st lift schedule, much to Urquhart's annoyance - another discussion for another day. However, Z Troop (a divisional unit of 6-pounder guns for protecting Division HQ) landed with the 2nd lift, but there's a story from the Troop Leader that seems only possible if he landed with the 1st lift: Lt Eustace McNaught was Troop Leader of Z Troop, whose glider suffered a broken tow rope and landed short near Zetten on the Betuwe ('island'). He had seven of his gunners, the command Jeep with a No.22 Set radio, a trailer with ammunition, and the two glider pilots. He decided his best course of action was to leave the trailer and just take three men (driver, batman, and radio operator) in the Jeep and head for the Arnhem bridge, where he knew the Division were due to seize it, and he could arrange transport to come back and pick up the rest of the men and the pilots. They got to the (Arnhem-Nijmegen) main road and headed north, but as they approached the bridge they could see an armoured column heading towards them. Realising they must be German, McNaught turned the Jeep around and headed south for Nijmegen, where he knew the Americans would be taking the bridges (ha!) They got to Nijmegen as it was getting quite dark and cautiously drove over the bridge and were quite surprised they were not challenged at all, which made McNaught quite angry - where were the Americans? They were stopped in the city centre by some Dutch people who told them the Germans were heading into the city and they would have to be hidden, so they were taken to a monastery (I don't know which one) where they remained hidden with the Jeep, monitoring troop movements until Allied units entered the city in strength on 19 September. By coincidence when he ventured out, he ran into Lt Howe of his own battery's sea tail, who had suffered a road traffic accident and was having his injuries attended to at the roadside. McNaught related his story, left his three men with Howe and left in the Jeep saying he was going to find the nearest SAS section to attach himself to. Howe said that after the war he heard that McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and later served with MI6 as a military attaché. I have not been able to verify this with any other source and have to confess I don't know what to make of it. The glider Chalk No is 1005, which officially landed on D+1, but the official records are a mess because of the late changes for the Corps HQ. Many of the records are known to be wrong because they were not updated with late changes. The book is a new one and the result of many years of painstaking research and talking to veterans of the Anti-Tank Batteries over many decades. Lead author Nigel Simpson is the son of Sergeant Eric Simpson of Z Troop Gun No.1. The records say the glider CN.1005 flew D+1 when the guns of the Troop landed, but this story is surely impossible unless it went on D-Day, which makes the story possible if the timing is right. I just wish I was a fly on the wall in Nijmegen when all this was happening - some of it beggars belief!
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  188.  @johnlucas8479  - it's like a police investigation to establish a timeline, but you have to be wary of witnesses giving timings because they can wrong, and there's a one-hour diffrence between Allied and German time zones, unless the Allied timings have been correctly adjusted to continental time. I think we have to allow at least an hour margin of error on some of the timings, especially if they're estimates or recollections after the war. My sense of the sequencing is this: The 82nd Airborne starts to drop parachute elements at 1300 hrs, the 508th on DZ 'T' at around 1330. German rear echelon units (the Ortskommandantur and the Ordnungspolizei headquarters) evacuated Nijmegen in the afternoon of 17 September and there is a sense in the early evening that the city is deserted of the occupiers and the Dutch think their liberation is at hand. HQ of Kampfgruppe Hencke (Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1 staff commanding mixed reserve troops stationed on the Maas-Waal canal MLR) and Hartung's Fallschirm-AOK Ausbildungstelle (95 staff and 14 officer candidates), both located in the NEBO monastery at De Ploeg, is evacuated. The 508th PIR occupy their initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge south of Nijmegen at De Ploeg (1st Battalion), De Hut (2nd Battalion) and Berg-en-Dal (3rd Battalion), establishing roadblocks on the main routes out of the city. Regiment HQ follows on to De Ploeg and is met by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who tells Colonel Lindquist the Germans have deserted the city and the highway bridge is guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. Lt Weaver's pre-planned recon patrol (based on 3rd Platoon of C Company and led by the 1st Battalion S-2 Section) is organised and sent into the city. Weaver loses contact with PFC Joe Atkins' S-2 point team after taking a wrong turn, but Atkins pushes through the crowds of celebrating Dutch to reach the bridge, surprises seven gaurds at the southern end and takes them prisoner. Weaver's patrol is lost in the back streets and stops at a house to ask the resident to find a guide from the resistance. Atkins waits an hour until it gets dark and no one from their patrol has showed up, so they decide to release their prisoners and withdraw. As they did so, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge. Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrive and conducts a reconnaissance of the city, establishes that American paratroops have landed west of the Reichswald. Obtaining a guide, Weaver attempts to reach the bridge well after dark and runs into German resistance in the area of Mariaplein, preventing them from reaching the bridge. They manage to establish radio contact with battalion on the SCR-300 set, and are told two companies (A and B) have been sent towards the bridge, so Weaver decides to withdraw and return to C Company, which remains in reserve position at De Ploeg. Reinhold and Traupel (Kommandeur and Adjutant, II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) arrive in Nijmegen to assess local defences and are suprised to find Gräbner's entire SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 with 30 or more vehicles, along with some senior army officers [unit(s) unknown] discussing what to do. Gräbner is ordered to withdraw to Elst, so Traupel asks for a platoon of SPWs to be left behind while there are so few troops to defend the bridge. Captain Adams' leading A Company bumps German machine guns and armoured half tracks at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle. An attack on the Keiser Karelplein by B Company passing through A Company allows Adams to slip through with a patrol to the Post Office to destroy alledged controls for the bridge demolitions, and then attempts to reach the highway bridge, but despite putting several MG posts out of action in the Keiser Lodwijkplein area south of the bridge, is forced to withdraw with casualties. The 1st Battalion 508th (minus Adams' patrol) is withdrawn from the city, considering the bridge to be too strongly held. Traupel, resting in Lent, is informed at midnight the SPW platoon has been ordered back to Elst and crosses the bridge to assess defences and finds the police band has been incorporated into the defence (I personally think they were the bridge guards left there when the police HQ pulled out and Traupel simply hadn't noticed them before with Gräbner's troops there) and was wondering what had happened to Quandel's panzers and why they had not arrived. In the early hours, the first arrivals are engineers from 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10. Cut off behind the German defence line established between the two traffic circles, Adams is blocked from reaching the Keiser Karelplein, and with it starting to get light, decides to hole up in a warehouse to await an opportunity to exfiltrate back to the battalion. Bataillon Euling (former II./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21, also aka "the ghost battalion") arrives in the afternoon and forms the main element of Kampfgruppe Reinhold's defence south of the bridge.
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  189.  @johnlucas8479  - I can answer some of those questions, but I'll try to take each one in turn: 1.) The defence of the bridge when Gräbner left with most of his abteilung was a platoon of SPWs and a few troops? Traupel did note there was a Flak battery in the area, and since there was no Flak installed on the highway bridge itself (the rail bridge had 2cm kanon on it and at both ends) I'm guessing he was referring to the heavy Flak position down on the polder southeast of the bridge, and some time between 11 September (when they appear on my copy of the defence overprint map) and the 20 September crossing by Grenadier Guards, these were repositioned for ground defence - one in Hunner Park, one in Mariaplein, and two on the Lent side of the river by all accounts. I would also point out that we need to disambiguate the defences of the bridge itself and the MLR being constructed between the two traffic circles and the outpost line around the south side of the city, I can only assume from Luftwaffe and RAD Flak troops from the heavy Flak positions around the city that were bombed on the morning of 17 September. The troops on the canal MLR did not withdraw into the city to help defend the rail bridge until after they were dispossessed of their canal bridges, and Frank van Lunteren's book Battle Of The Bridges: The 504th PIR in Market Garden (2014) is the best work I have on that as he identified some of the canal bridge defenders and what they did after withdrawing from the canal. 2.) My impression was that it started getting dark around 1930 hrs and was fully dark by 2000 hrs, which would better fit the known movements of Weaver and Atkins because 1st Battalion allegedly reached De Ploeg at 1830 hrs, Warren received the order to move his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen at 2000 hrs, A Company reached the IP at the Krayenhoff barracks and then waited an hour for B Company before being ordered to move without waiting on them at 2200 hrs, and the engagement at the Keiser Karelplein was between this time and around midnight. These are timings in Nordyke (off the top of my head) and possibly also McManus. If Gräbner was seen by Frost crossing the Arnhem bridge at around 1830-1900 hrs and they reached Nijmegen at 2000 hrs as Frost was getting into position, that would fit. Frost started interdicting traffic at around 2100 hrs, his first victims were four fuel trucks that may have been part of Gräbner's supply column (6.Kompanie). 3.) Where does Hencke and Hartung evacuate to? As far as I can make out they spend some time evading American patrols. Nordyke relates that the 508th kept getting Dutch civilian reports of German troops in the woods, and whenever a patrol was sent to check it out, they would be gone. It seems that Hencke and possibly also Hartung (who ended up in Lent north of the rail bridge) were attempting to slip into the city, but having to avoid American movements as they did so. The 508th PIR approached De Ploeg (and their NEBO monastery HQ) from the east, as the route from Drop Zone 'T' was first northwest to just south of Berg-en-Dal, and then 1st Battalion swung west, so Hencke may have been cut off from the city for a while and evaded the Americans by looping around them in the woods. It's also possble Hencke's first instinct was also to contact his troops on the canal MLR, so he may have headed west for that reason before slipping back into the city. It also occurs to me that there were 200 troops manning the Luftwaffe Feld-Luftmunitionslager 15/VI west of Groesbeek in the 505th PIR sector (one of the MG posts nearly killed Gavin on his way to his CP if you recall), and these troops would have been ideal for Hencke's outpost line, as I think about it. I believe they mostly evacuated the munitions dump after detonating it, but Gavin's encounter indicates some stayed behind as a rearguard. 4.) Gräbner was ordered to withdraw to Elst, it was not his decision. His unit is not supposed to get involved in direct combat as a reconnaissance unit, although it was often the case that the SS divisions did treat them as additional battlegroups. It's one of the reasons in the Battle of the Bulge the SS divisions in 6.Panzer-armee on the northern shoulder did not penetrate as far as the army divisions in 5.Panzer-armee in the centre - they were not using their recon units to find the best routes forward. My personal impression is that both sides at this point in Nijmegen were feeling out the other side's strength, so it's a bit too easy for us to judge from an armchair and with hindsight. Both sides were quite weak in the city on the first night, but both sides were also feeding in more units. 5.) Who did Weaver's patrol bump in the Mariaplein area? I don't know, seems to be just a roadblock, but the truck that came up from behind them is interesting as it may be part of Hencke's or Hartung's staffs slipping into town and approaching the bridge themselves, but that's just a thought that occurred as I was reading that. 6.) The 'additional' troops in Nijmegen could really only have been the spare Flak troops, but they were not stationed in the city itself but on open spaces around the edge of the city in four heavy Flak positions, and a lot of light Flak in the power station area. It's logical that Hencke was organising these troops to concentrate on building a defence line in the city centre, based on the two large traffic circles, and an outpost line that would be on the edge of the city to give advance warning of enemy troop movements. They didn't all coalesce at the highway bridge, which accounts for a two company attack penetrating the position at the Keiser Karelplein and Adams' patrol slipping through to the Post Office and almost to the bridge. He was mostly having to deal with Machine-gun nests. As I said, I wish I was there just to see what was happening.
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  190. I think that's dancing on the head of a pin. Market Garden is an upgrade of Comet and Montgomery presented the Market Garden plan to Eisenhower at their Brussels airport meeting on 10 September after cancelling Comet.
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  191. I think the problem with the timings is that a lot of them are recollections after the war in interviews with the authors, so unless it's very specific (to the minute) and has a time code after it, I don't think a timing can be relied on. What I do think is important is the sequence of events, and that reveals that PFC Joe Atkins, who was one of the three point men from Lt Lee Frigo's S-2 (Intel) Section leading Lt Robert Weaver's reinforced patrol based on his 3rd Platoon from C Company 508th PIR, reached the bridge unmolested and held seven POWs at the southern end for an hour until it got dark. Because nobody else from the patrol showed up, they decided to withdraw, because they couldn't hold the bridge on their own if there was an attack. As they withdrew, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other (northern) end of the bridge. PFC Atkins says his team got separated in the crowds of Dutch civilians celebrating their apparent liberation, but pushed through and found their way to the bridge. The rest of the section and Weaver's platoon apparently got lost and couldn't find the bridge, which is disappointing to say the least. Only Weaver had an SCR-300 radioman from Battalion HQ with the range to report back to battalion the situation at the bridge. They decided to ask for help and spent some time at a house waiting for someone from the Dutch resistance to arrive and act as a guide. It was when they resumed their attempt to reach the bridge they started running into trouble and the way to the bridge was blocked. It's my impression that these roadblocks were SS troops belonging to Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, because I don't think the few rear echelon elements in the city would have given paratroopers as much trouble. So what German forces were in Nijmegen before Gräbner arrived? Well, in the morning, when Oberst Fritz Fullriede did his rounds of his greatly distributed units in Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', he noted in his diary that 245 men (iirc) of the 29.Unterführer-Lehr-Kommando (NCO Training Company) were camped in Hunner park at the southern end of the bridge before he continued south to visit his battalions on the front lines. Some references use 21.ULK, as the regiment was undergoing a reorganisation during this period and the company was renumbered from 21 to 29 as the Berlin 'Rekruten' batallion was transferred to the west and officially joined the training regiment with its companies 1-8 renumbered 21-28. Once 82nd Airborne arrived, this NCO unit seemed to be in combat almost everywhere, from Nederasselt at the northern end of the Grave bridge to the Honinghutje bridges on the Maas-Waal canal, and a reference at Heumen bridge of a couple of officers and fifteen NCOs being taken prisoner leads me to suspect they were from the NCO training company as well, as most of the Maas-Waal defenders were the three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 - a home guard type unit of sub-standard troops controlled by Division zbV 406 across the border in Kleve, and part of the Maas-Waal defence line along those two rivers and interconnecting canal. It's my belief that the NCO company deployed to forward positions at Nederasselt and on the Maas-Waal canal as soon as the landings started and the alert went out that an attack was under way. That would explain why the Nijmegen highway bridge, behind the lines and not even yet prepared for demolition, was left relatively undefended with just a few guards. I'm currently reading Cornelius Bauer's The Battle Of Arnhem (1963 in Dutch, 1966 and 2012 in English), based on Dutch researcher Colonel Boeree (who was the resistance leader in Ede) who says Model expected the British to make their main Rhine crossing and airborne attack at Wesel via the Maas at Venlo, and only a flank protection force to cross the Maas at Grave and swing south from Nijmegen in support. He ordered the defences appropriately, with 1.Fallschirm-Armee occupying the rear combat area he expected to contain the British operation and von Tettau's Netherlands occupation forces held back on the Waal defence line. He didn't expect the British to land airborne forces at Arnhem and go north, or he wouldn't have established his headquarters in Oosterbeek. Who was Hencke and when did he arrive? Well, Oberst Fritz Hencke was a parachute commander from 1.Fallschirm-Armee in command of Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1, but with no troops, just a headquarters. He was sent to Nijmegen to take command of the battalions on the Maas-Waal defence line in the Nijmegen sector, and (iirc) he arrived around 15 September, a couple of days before Market Garden. He established his headquarters at the NEBO monastery near De Ploeg (the 1/508th objective), sharing accommodations with Oberst Günther Hartung's Fallschirm-Armee Ausbildungsstelle (parachute army training staff). I have figures for Hartung's unit - 95 staff personnel and 14 officer candidates on a course. When the Americans landed, both staffs evacuated NEBO and apparently spent some time evading patrols in the woods until they could slip into the city. My sources for all this is fragmentary and it's not possible to put accurate timings on them, but the best source I have for the German impression once units from II.SS-Panzerkorps started arriving is Retake Arnhem Bridge by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014), using the account of SS-Obersturmführer Gernot Traupel, acting adjutant of II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, aka Kampfgruppe Reinhold. Traupel and Reinhold were probably the last people to cross the Arnhem bridge before Frost closed it to traffic and arrived in Nijmegen after dark to be astonished to find Gräbner's entire SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 there with about 30 armoured vehicles, more than Traupel had ever seen in one place. He also noted there was a large number of senior staff officers present from every branch of the military (possibly from Rustungs Inspektion Niederland) discussing the situation, but there were no combat troops to speak of apart from Gräbner's reconnaissance unit. Gräbner told him the Americans were not in the city in any force and he had been ordered back to Elst, halfway back to Arnhem. Traupel asked him if he could leave a few vehicles as his own kampfgruppe had not yet arrived and Gräbner agreed to leave a platoon of half-tracks armed with 7.5cm kanon.
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  192. I will not defend those American interests who compromised MARKET GARDEN purely for political reasons with a view to dominating the post-war era instead of concentrating on ending the war as quickly as possible, and some of the comments aimed at reducing Britain's role in the war betray the mentality behind those interests. Unnecessary compromises were made by US Generals to a plan originally conceived by British commanders, rendering the operation vulnerable to compromise on the ground at a single critical point - Nijmegen. Browning was unable to object after being politically neutralised by Brereton during the LINNET II affair, and Montgomery's only options would probably have started an almighty row with the Americans, or he could simply cancel the op, but this doesn't get his 2nd Army over the Rhine as Eisenhower wished. I agree that the operation, as originally conceived, was worth the many risks, but too many people in US air force circles in particular were focussed on other objectives. In spite of this, the operation in its final form may still have succeeded if Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR had sent his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge immediately after landing, as General Gavin had instructed. This tactical compromise fatally compromised the entire operation.
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  193. @laaston7811- yeah, I probably pointed out the fact that while Burriss claimed he got to the far end of the highway bridge first before Robinson's tank Troop came over, his testimony also notes he passed an abandoned German Pak 40 anti-tank gun on the north bank between the two bridges, and that this was the gun that Sergeant Pacey's tank in Robinson's Troop knocked out while crossing the bridge 45 minutes earlier, so it was Carrington's 'rear link' tank that crossed over as Burriss arrived. By the way, I'm curently studying the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Operations) documents available to purchase for about 12 dollars (and change) on PaperlessArchives as a pdf download document with 9,333 pages! Lots of raw data in there in terms of PW unit identifications and informtion gleaned from interrogations, and a few translated captured documents. One surprise is that the anti-tank guns the Germans had at Grave (1 x 7.5cm and 2 x 5cm) and at the Maas-Waal canal bridges and in Nijmegen, and probably the gun in Lent seen by Burriss and hit by Pacey, came from the 2.Batterie of SS-Panzerjäger-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Abteilung 2 from Hilversum. Many of the prisoners taken were not identified as SS, but a minority identified the unit specifically as the SS training unit. My theory is that the unit was collecting straggler anti-tank troops from army units shattered in Normandy and collecting them at Hilversum into the SS battalion, but were mobilised and deployed to the Maas-Waal line before they could get new uniforms and dog tags. I always wondered where all these guns marked on the defence overprint maps and in the accounts of the Nijmegen battle came from, and this seems to be the answer.
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  194. These large operations taking several days become a reinforcement race. The race was won by the Allies in Normandy as the build-up of forces delivered from England outpaced those the Germans could bring in across the continent, and in MARKET GARDEN the airlifts were seriously delayed by weather after the first two days, so the Germans began to win the reinforcement race after that, when the operation was supposed to have been already completed.
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  195. Part of the problem is that WW2 didn't change that. Eisenhower as president almost went to war with Britain and France during the Suez crisis in 1956. He managed to see reason before committing himself to any action.
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  196.  @TheNoonish  - good question about resupply, as both supply drop zones were outside the city and only one was (just) inside the planned extended perimeter formed by four brigades, and that perimeter would not have been possible with just two brigades on the ground. The reason the southern end of the bridge was not taken was because of the fires and exploding ammunition (Edit: having read a new book covering this, it appears it was burning fuel from the interdiction of four fuel trucks, probably from Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 supply column) at the north end that made crossing the bridge too dangerous, and the area aound the southern bridge ramp was open flood plain with no cover. It was effectively a kill zone until you get to the winter embankment. The distance from the southern bridge pier and superstructure to the winter embankment and the nearest cover is 300m or 1,000ft - all elevated roadway above the open flood plain. The important end of the bridge is the northern end because that's the end that XXX Corps cannot capture from the south One correction - all the forces from 9.SS-Panzer-Division sent to Nijmegen, Gräbner's Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, came back to Arnhem because they were only temporarily attached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division and didn't stay, so the whole of 9.SS-Panzer-Division, such as it was, fought in the western suburbs of Arnhem and Oosterbeek against the main body of 1st Airborne Division. It was units from 10.SS-Panzer-Division that were assigned to the Nijmegen bridgehead and started arriving in the evening of 17 September, led by the headquarters of Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) and most of Gräbner's unit then withdrew to Elst for the night. 10.SS-Panzer-Division was also responsible for clearing the Arnhem bridge, because it was on their supply line to Nijmegen, but in order to conserve their own forces for fighting further south, they delegated as much of the task as possible to army reserve units from Germany under Kampfgruppe Knaust.
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  197. An example of Gavin being disingenuous after he knew he was responsible for the failure to secure the Nijmegen bridge on D-Day. "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." (Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945) Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. (September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012) Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012) USAAF General Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army commander) had removed Browning's dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from the proposed operation SIXTEEN outline for the final MARKET plan, the outline Eisenhower had approved on his 10 September meeting with Montgomery. Browning could not protest the changes after already threatening to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation and knew if he tried it again Brereton had planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. We presume Browning was therefore behind "a British request" to Gavin to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge as an alternative and Gavin discarded it. Since they did not serve in the same army, Browning had no authority to order Gavin to provide a coup de main attack on the bridge, it could only be a "request". Gavin then assigned the critical Nijmegen mission to his weakest regiment, the 508th under Lindquist, instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. I have one further extract for you on what happened once on the ground: Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " (Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012) What could Browning have done if he didn't "approve" (remember this is Gavin's word) Gavin's divisional plan, except perhaps advance the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd to the 1st lift in the hope he could influence events once on the ground. For his trouble, Browning is now accused of going on an "ego trip", despite doing everything he could to ensure the success of the operation and wasn't very successful because the Americans always demanded a leadership position within the alliance. You're trying to have it both ways, and you just can't do that.
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  198. Frederick Browning - Wikipedia: Browning fought in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October and the Battle of Cambrai in November.[12] He distinguished himself in this battle, for which he received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).[13] The order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross.[14] His citation read: For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He took command of three companies whose officers had all become casualties, reorganised them, and proceeded to consolidate. Exposing himself to very heavy machine-gun and rifle fire, in two hours he had placed the front line in a strong state of defence. The conduct of this officer, both in the assault and more especially afterwards, was beyond all praise, and the successful handing over of the front to the relieving unit as an entrenched and strongly fortified position was entirely due to his energy and skill. [12] Mead, Richard (2010) General Boy: The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, pp. 21-22. [13] The London Gazette (Supplement). 4 February 1918. p. 1600. [14] "Orders and Decorations — Distinguished Service Order". Veterans Affairs Canada.
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  199.  @igorscot4971  - Interesting paper, but it deals with a very narrow subject matter, examining just one of the arguments that historians have debated over for many decades. It was written in 2001, pre-dating the recent works by Phil Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) and Zig Borough's (The 508th Connection, 2013) on the story at Nijmegen. Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell's book Retake Arnhem Bridge on Kampfgruppe Knaust (2010) also contains much useful information from Ustf Gernot Traupel, who acted as adjutant for SS-Kampfgruppe Reinhold of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division at Nijmegen. The fact that the Guards reached Nijmegen on schedule blows a hole in the one narrow road excuse. If the 508th had the Nijmegen bridge in their hands, as they should have, and easily could have, according to the recent literature, then I have no doubt they would have rolled straight through to Arnhem in Montgomery's predicted two days. Browning fulfilled his promise of holding the Arnhem bridge for four days, but the delays at Nijmegen overcame 1st Airborne's ability to hold their bridge any longer. The paper also pre-dates the story that emerged in 2016 behind the infamous aerial photo obtained by Major Brian Urquhart and contains a glaring error. 'Oblique' photo reconnaissance (as shown in A Bridge Too Far) was NOT used to hunt for troops and tanks in open countryside - it would be a futile exercise, like hunting a needle in a haystack. The oblique technique was only used against known point targets, like bridges and barracks. Aerial photos, overlapping to produce a stereoscopic 3D mosaic, are used to hunt for troop concentrations over wide areas, and this was the type of reconnaissance flight that found tanks located in the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield on 12 September by a 541 Sqn Spitfire flying from RAF Benson. The overlapping images are frames 4014/4015 (I have a poster copy of 4015 hanging over my desk!), and were found in a Dutch government archive of RAF photos donated after the war to help with land use surveys and reconstruction, and emerged only when the Dutch digitised their archives and put them online in 2015. The images were studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch and attention was drawn to frame 4015 that had marked areas of interest indicated on the prints. Under magnification the image shows tanks parked under trees along a woodland track, next to a supply dump, apparently undergoing maintenance (tanks had their engine hatches open). The tank models were identified as Mark III and early Mark IV (with the short 7.5cm gun), ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight and knowing what units were in the Netherlands on 17 September, we know that these old tanks belonged to the Luftwaffe training unit Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' based in Utrecht, and we know the reserve panzer company was sent on 12 September south to fight British units at Hechtel in Belgium. Only three tanks successfully made the journey, to be destroyed by Guards Armoured Divison at Hechtel, the others all broke down and never made the trip. On 17 September they were laagered at Wolfswinkel, opposite the 101st Airborne's drop zone on Zonsche Heide, and when they fired on the drop zone they were immediately shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Two tanks did escape the attack, running a gauntlet of 502nd troopers in St.Oedenrode (a bazooka man hit a tank but the projectile was not primed), and by-passed the 501st at Veghel. They then showed up at the 504th's (82nd Airborne) roadblock at Grave, where troopers thinking they were British tanks arriving early came out of their foxholes and were killed by tank fire. The tanks turned around and retreated, and were not seen again. In dismissing the tanks as obsolete and probably not operational, Browning's judgement again seems to be on the money, contrary to the impression Cornelius Ryan had after interviewing Brian Urquhart, and the rather conflicted performance Dirk Bogarde gives in the film version of Ryan's book. The RAF's study of the photo is available as a free pdf download you can find by searching 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story - Royal Air Force' on the RAF MoD website, written by Sebastian Ritchie. Some of the information in the booklet was incorporated into the 2019 revision of his 2011 book, Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden.
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  200. Why would they do that? Montgomery was let down by his allies (specifically at Nijmegen). If anyone at Arnhem had a gripe about Montgomery, they probably weren't aware the 82nd Airborne missed an undefended bridge in an evacuated city on the first day. Hardly Montgomery's fault at all.
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  201. A lot to unpack here. First, the intelligence picture at Arnhem was remarkably accurate, but Nijmegen was an unknown until Airborne troops had already landed and made contact with the local Dutch resistance. The intelligence on Arnhem was that there was a local security unit, Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, consisting of WW1 rear echelon troops that were deemed unfit for combat use in the 'Great War' but were deployed at Arnhem and Deelen airfield to guard the bridges and airfield, and the SS battalion 'Germania' was also known to be Arnhem based. In fact the 'Germania' name was out of date, it was renamed SS-Panzergrendier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 12 to train Hiter Youth replacements for the 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' until August, when a change in unit number to '16' was made in anticipation of 1,600 new recruits for the 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Reichsführer-SS' were due to arrive. At the time of the operation, the battalion still had about 300 Hitler Youth finishing up their training, hence the assessment of "old men on bicycles and some Hitler Youth". It was even known that an estimated 400 artillery troops from units shattered in Normandy were in a collection centre at the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital, the reason it was bombed, and this turned out to be accurate. The presence of the II.SS-Panzerkorps refitting in the eastern Netherlands was also known, as Dutch resistance had reported SS-Panzer troops being accommodated in towns and villages between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, but only the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' had been positively identified from vehicle insignia. Both divisions were known to be each reduced to a regimental battlegroup of 3,000 - 3,500 troops with few if any tanks, because it was British units in Normandy that had reduced them to that condition. Second, there was a fear that the excellent barracks facilities in Nijmegen could easily accommodate a regiment of troops and it was thought the SS divisions were to receive new tanks from a depot in the Kleve area. So the significance of the Groesbeek heights just south of Nijmegen and north of the 82nd Airborne drop zones was obvious. It also started the silly rumour that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, although Generalfeldmarschal Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400. There was some debate about allocating Nijmegen to 1st Airborne and Arnhem to the 82nd, since British airborne divisions had more anti-tank weapons (83, including 16 x 17-pounders and 15 x 6-pounders in the attached Polish Brigade) than their US counterparts (with 36 x 6-pounders). The US divisions conversely had twice as much field artillery (48 howitzers to 24). The balance of risk seemed to be at Arnhem with the Dutch reports of SS units northeast of that city, so 1st Airborne went to Arnhem. I don't see how British armour could reach Arnhem any sooner after arriving at Nijmegen still on schedule in less than two days, only to find the Waal bridges at Nijmegen were still in German hands and significantly reinforced with SS-Panzer troops. Tanks can't jump over the widest river in the Netherlands! The 508th had the job of seizing the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon, something they could have easily done after it was known from Dutch contacts on the ground that the city was evacuated and the highway bridge guarded by just an NCO and seventeen men. Instead of moving with speed, as Gavin had instructed, they only sent a recon patrol into the city. Just three Scouts from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section surprised the 6/7 guards at the southern end of the bridge and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived. They had to withdraw when it got dark, and only as they did so they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end. When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving off the ridge, he was as mad as their liaison officer to Division HQ, Captain Chet Graham, had ever seen him. Gavin and Graham drove to the 508th CP and Gavin's words to Colonel Lindquist were "I told you to move with speed." The best sources for this are Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013) for 1st Battalion S-2 Trooper Joe Atkins' account, and Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's two books - Lost At Nijmegen (2011), and Little Sense Of Urgency (2013). So I do think the 82nd Airborne compromised the operation. The British Airborne secured their bridge at Arnhem and held it for four days, in spite of the opposition, just as Browning had promised Montgomery. They were all let down by the blunder at Nijmegen.
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  202.  @forrestsory1893  - I don't think you understand it at all. The Germans had just three tanks in Arnhem, two of them were disposed of by the "light infantry" of 3rd Parachute Battalion in the western suburbs of Arnhem on 19 September - the first by dropping a Gammon bomb out of an upper storey window and the second by PIAT bomb. Most of the damage done to 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions in Normandy had been done by infantry units like 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with their anti-tank guns. After fighting the war for over four years already, these SS units held no fears for British units at this stage of the war - they were not the supermen they thought they were, and they actually did not use their armoured units quite as well as their own army counterparts, which was graphically illustrated in the Battle of the Bulge if you compare the relative performance of the army's 5.Panzer-Armee against the 6.SS-Panzer-Armee. The Germans had no time to destroy the Arnhem bridge, it was not even prepared for demolition, as was the case at Nijmegen. The rail bridges seem to have been prepared and there was a 'sprengkommando' on the Oosterbeek rail bridge for months. The Nijmegen highway bridge had prepared cutting charges in numbered wooden boxes custom built to fit corresponding numbered locations in the bridge superstructure and painted the same shade of green to match. The explosives were stored in the bridge piers and a 'Schutzkommando' of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands had been trained to place the charges and prepare the firing circuits with drills held every month under the supervision of an engineer officer from von Tettau's Pionier staff of the WBN. The last drill had been held in August and on 17 September the Schutzkommando failed to show up. The engineer officer had no resources to get the charges placed on the bridge until an engineer company from the 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived later on the morning of 18 September. The essential fact remains that the Arnhem bridge was secured and held for four days, but the Nijmegen bridge was not secured on the first afternoon, allowing it to be reinforced by the Germans that evening and prepared for demolition the following day.
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  203.  @norwayitalo  - my interpretation of Montgomery's 90% successful comment is based on geography. Operation Market involved 24 bridges (depending on how you count them), including alternative rail crossings and multiple canal crossings to provide alternative routes - the "single road" myth comes from A Bridge Too Far. A minimum of 10 crossings on the main 'Club Route' are needed to get to Arnhem, and some of the 'Heart Route' alternatives involve as few as 9 crossings. Considering that Operation Market successfully captured 9 out of those 10 minimum needed, only the highway bridge at Nijmegen was missed in a blunder by 508th PIR, and the eventual total held by the ground forces after Operation Garden was missing only the final Arnhem bridge. So, 9 out of 10 bridges is 90% successful. It's just a theory - I don't know what exactly was going through Montgomery's mind when he wrote that, but it does fit the facts. Many people are not aware that well-educated public figures use the language very skillfully to make a pointed criticism, without the general public being aware of it. A good example is Churchill's speech in the House of Commons made after Dunkirk, in which he constructed the key passage that begins "we shall fight on the beaches..." and ends with "we shall never surrender" using only words derived from Old English, except for the very last word which is derived from the Old French "sur rendre", meaning to give up. To most people listening to the speech in Britain it was a morale-boosting speech typical of Churchill, but to well-educated senior diplomats in France, it contained a very pointed dig.
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  204.  @norwayitalo  - even Wikipedia has a comprehensive answer, but you only took one figure from it: "German casualties are harder to determine, due to incomplete records. Rundstedt provided an official figure of 3,300, but this has been challenged by historians. Conservative estimates range from 6,400 to 8,000 killed and wounded.[167][168] Kershaw listed the German order of battle, with between 6,315 and 8,925 casualties.[169] In A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan estimated 7,500 to 10,000 additional casualties to those provided by Rundstedt, for a final total of 10,800–13,300 losses.[170]" [167] Reynolds, M .(2001), Sons of the Reich. [168] Badsey, Stephen (1993), Arnhem: Operation Market Garden. [169] Kershaw, Robert J. (2004), It Never Snows In September. [170] Ryan, Cornelius (1999) [1974], A Bridge Too Far.
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  205. Gavin and Browning did not prioritise the heights over the bridge in the planning for the operation. Only after the first failed attempt to secure the bridge on the first day did Browning reject another attempt on the bridge until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived. Gavin has instructed the 508th PIR commander in the divisional briefing in England to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing, and stressed that speed was important as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation. The failure to do so rested with the 508th CO and the responsibility for the divisional plan and for seeing it was carried out rested with Gavin. The best work on this area is John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke in his combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012).
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  206. ​ @nickdanger3802  - you continue to be disingenuous in your use of quotes. The full paragraph of that Pegasus Archive passage continues as follows - 'Browning also told Gavin that he was not to make any attempt to move towards Nijmegen until the Heights had been secured; Gavin agreed though he later felt confident enough in his plan to allow one battalion to head for the bridge immediately after landing. The Groesbeek Heights were certainly important as they served as the Division's main drop zone and dominated the entire area, and so there is no question that the position of the 82nd Airborne Division, not to mention the right flank of the 2nd British Army when they arrived, would have been placed under considerable pressure if the area were to remain in enemy hands. Even so, the priorities of any airborne formation has to be the capture of its ultimate objectives, i.e. the bridges, and all other concerns are entirely secondary. Browning defended his decision long after the War, but it was a great mistake not to attach a higher priority to Nijmegen Bridge as, without it, the 1st Airborne Division would be cut-off behind two large rivers and 13 miles of hostile territory. Had the bridge been taken in strength and with all speed then it is entirely possible that the Guards Armoured Division would have reached Arnhem Bridge before the British defence collapsed. This oversight, however, was not particular to the Nijmegen plan, but a further product of the blind optimism which dogged Operation Market Garden, where the assumption was that resistance would be light and so the airborne forces allowed themselves to become distracted from their main objectives by the need to make the advance of the ground forces as rapid and uncomplicated as possible.' - But who's mistake was it? Later on the same page, Browning's analysis of the battle is revealed in a letter to Air Vice Marshal Hollinghurst on the 8th October 1944 - "The capture of the Nijmegen bridge would have been effected just that number of hours earlier and (in view of the information we now have) we should have beaten the Boche to it quite easily." - The answer is in Gavin's divisional plan. In a letter to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945, Gavin wrote - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." - In his interview with Gavin, Cornelius Ryan noted the following (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967) - 'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' - As I said in my reply to Daniel, the best work on this priorities question is in September Hope: The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, by John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ - As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - As Browning himself said - "we should have beaten the Boche to it quite easily."
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  207. They certainly failed to secure it in strength. The bridge had its own garrison of 25 WW1 veterans, most likely from Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908 - the local security unit that was comprised of WW1 logistics troops that were deemed unfit for combat duties even in 1914-18, but Gräbner was probably unaware of this and in any case may have assumed someone else was assigned the job of reinforcing the bridge - the way these mistakes usually happen. Gräbner's orders were to reconnoitre to the west of Arnhem and south to Nijmegen, where there had been reports of airborne landings. He left at least one armoured car on the Arnhem bridge as a radio relay when he went south to Nijmegen, and this vehicle's 2cm kanon and the light Flak guns at the end of the southern bridge ramp prevented Frost from securing that area.
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  208.  @daniellee2343  - they did, but by then it was too late. They had very little in the immediate area they could use.
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  209. To my knowledge, no British officer has ever blamed Sosabowski or the Polish Brigade for the failure of the operation. This would be ridiculous as they arrived late and the operation was compromised from the start. Sosabowski was difficult to work with and was insubordinate at the Valburg conference on 24 September, which are not disputed facts. Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski after the operation to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and ask for recommendations for awards, and then changed his tune after receiving reports from Browning and Horrocks of their problems working with him. Montgomery then backed Browning's request to have the Polish Brigade removed from his command and the Polish Government-in-Exile decided to remove Sosabowski from command of the brigade. People should investigate the facts before making accusations or repeating those made by others.
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  210. Gavin was not told at a particular time on the ground to go for the Nijmegen bridge. He was told by Browning on D+1 not to make a second attempt on the bridge until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived to provide armoured support, but that gets conflated with a pre-jump instruction. The bridge was always a primary objective, and in the Corps briefing on 16 September (D-1) he was cautioned by Browning that... “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. (September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012, Chapter 3) Browning was concerned about the Nijmegen bridge right from the start with operation COMET. All three of the main bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave were to be seized by dawn glider coups de main assaults in operation COMET, and the same idea was carried over into the provisional operation SIXTEEN outline when COMET was cancelled and expanded into a new operation with three airborne divisions instead of just one. Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army then took control over the detailed planning and they decided on all daylight flights with only one flight per day, and the glider coup de main assaults were not considered feasible for broad daylight landings, so they were removed. Browning could not object after he had threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation was scheduled on just 36 hours notice and was threatened in return with being replaced with Matthew Ridgway as Brereton's Deputy and Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully, LINNET II was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but there was no doubt now who had control over the air planning. Browning then tried unsuccessfully to influence Gavin into making a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge in his divisional plan: The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - box 101, folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Only Colonel Reuben Tucker (504th PIR) insisted on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge, to enable it to be attacked from both ends, and he got it. I'm sure Browning's last minute change (late in the evening of D-1) to the transport schedule for his Corps HQ to be carried on the first airlift, now that Brereton's decision to abandon a double airlift on D-Day meant the second airlift was on D+1 and not the afternoon of D-Day, was almost a desperate attempt to be on the ground during the critical D-Day of the operation. The last minute nature of the change belies the suggestion it was an ego trip on Browning's part. If that were true, it would have been part of his plan all along. You talk about Browning not taking "proper command" - how can he do this when he and Gavin did not serve in the same army? And you question his competence after he had received his DSO as a young Lieutenant (narrowly missing out on a VC) for pulling together several companies that had lost their officers during the 1917 battle of Cambrai, when young Jimmy Gavin was just 10 years old and still in short trousers. The Americans would not accept Browning's appointment to command 1st Allied Airborne Army despite his experience at building Britain's airborne forces and even though they had no suitable candidates of their own (their first choices could not be spared from their current jobs), so Brereton, even with a sketchy record, was prefereable to being under British command. Williams was appointed Air Transport Commander and he had Hollinghurst's 38 and 46 Groups RAF under his command, so there was no way the Americans could be ordered to deploy their forces in a way they didn't wish. Both Brereton and Williams were also charged by Eisenhower when he appointed them to 1st AAA to improve the USAAF Troop Carrier's navigation and drop accuracy record after the disastrous Sicily and Normandy flights. While Browning, with Hollinghurst's support, was prepared to accept 33% casualties going in, so long as the troops were landed close to their objectives, Brereton and Williams were not willing to accept that and they compromised the SIXTEEN outline to protect their own assets at the expense of the airborne troop's requirements. Brereton and Williams were resposible for deleting drop zones for the 101st between Valkenswaard and Son and at Elst for a third brigade of 1st Airborne - all part of Browning's "airborne carpet" concept. The concept was thrown out, but remarkably that phrase still found its way into the script of the Hollywood film. I think that's misleading, as is the suggestion Browning and Montgomery did all the planning. When Montgomery heard about the removal of the double airlift on D-Day, he sent David Belcham (GSO 1 Ops at 21st Army Group) to see Brereton at his Ascot HQ in England and impress apon him the importance of having two airlifts on the first day. Brereton would not change the schedule.
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  211.  @joshuabutcher3645  - thanks, and you're certainly asking all the right questions. I had not previously understood that Montgomery had tried to intervene because he expressed his regrets at not doing so in his memoirs, but Geoffrey Powell's The Devil's Birthday (1984) has this paragraph on Brereton's decision to fly one airlift per day based on William's view that there was insufficient time to turn the aircraft around and fly a second sortie in daylight: The consequence of this decision was that the arrival of Urquhart's 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem would now need to be spread over three days, the implications of which Brereton may have failed to grasp, lacking as he did any intimate knowledge of the problems of the ground battle. Montgomery, however, spotted the snag in the plan as soon as the details reached him in Belgium, and he sent Brigadier Belchem to Ascot by air in order to urge Brereton to change his mind and allow a double lift for the troops who were to tackle Arnhem. But Brereton stood firm, probably rightly so in the circumstnces, since by the time Belchem arrived it was too late to change the plan so radically, as Brereton had insisted at the first planning conference, this was the type of fundamental decision which, once made, must stand if confusion were to be avoided. Brereton's decision on flying only one sortie each day was constrained by his own decision to fly entirely daylight flights. The time to turn aircraft around was therefore squeezed out, in William's view. So the real question is why Brereton did not want to fly the outbound leg of 1st lift and the return leg of 2nd lift at night? Brereton made a binary choice between a nocturnal flight or a daytime one, and nocturnal was ruled out by it being a no-Moon period in mid-September 1944. The RAF's view, promoted by Hollinghurst, was the hybrid option of taking off and landing at night, but the delivery of the airborne troops on D-Day would be at dawn and a second lift delivered before dusk. The reason Brereton made this such a simple binary choice is not explained. Both Hollinghurst and Belchem had lobbied Williams and Brereton respectively for the double airlift and failed to change their minds. It's noted by Powell that this was uncharacteristic of Williams, who had previously been more helpful towards the requirements of the airborne troops. LINNET II only two weeks earlier was based on three divisions landed in two lifts on D-Day, based on 1st lift taking off at 0500. COMET just a week earlier than MARKET had take-off due shortly after 0200 hours (for the dawn coup de main flights), when it was cancelled on 10 September as the men were boarding their aircraft. Beyond that, I don't have any answers from my current reading of the literature. I can say that Brereton was an air force man with backers in Washington keen to develop the "air weapon" with a view to the United States dominating this kind of warfare in the post war era. I'm beginning to wonder if the Americans were thinking of not just the next war (at the expense of getting the current one finished as quickly as possible), but also possibly continuing the war of independence - something they have been doing since the war of 1812, which as far as Britain was concerned was about keeping the USA out of the war with Napoleon, but this is taught quite differently in American schools. It also occurs to me that a decision to fly a single sortie arriving around midday also ruled out the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, because their feasibility was based on night landing under full Moon conditions or dawn landings in a no-Moon period. My question would be: was Brereton concerned by the optics of the 82nd Airborne's two primary bridge targets at Nijmegen and Grave being captured in coups de main by two companies of British Airlanding troops, and how this would play in Washington and the American press, and highlight the fact the US Army had no comparable glider assault capability? The US Glider Infantry Regiments had only been used as reinforcement forces landing on zones secured by paratroopers, and their glider pilots were not combat trained, unlike their British counterparts. This is an issue that had not presented itself in LINNET/LINNET II - which did not use glider coup de main assaults, or COMET, which was an all British/Polish operation except for using two of Williams' Troop Carrier Groups to carry British and Polish paratroops. This is my personal analysis and not one I have seen explored in the literature so far.
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  212.  @joshuabutcher3645  - I personally find it disappointing if it all comes down to politics, but unfortunately that seems to be where we get to when we dig into the 'why' of it. The planning was compromised by inter-Allied politics within 1st Allied Airborne Army, and the compromise on the ground at Nijmegen on D-Day was due to internal politics within 82nd Airborne - Colonel Lindquist was one of the first officer volunteers for the US Airborne and was a gifted S-1 (Admin and Personnel Officer) in the early formations. When the 508th Parachute Battalion was raised he was an available officer to command it, and promoted to full Colonel when it was expanded into a Regiment. Both Ridgway and Gavin had a problem in that they didn't want to promote Lindquist, but they couldn't easily promote another Colonel in the Division over him as he had seniority in the grade. This was probably the reason that when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps and Gavin became 82nd Division Commander, Gavin could not find someone to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was doing both jobs during MARKET GARDEN. I haven't really looked into the Washington politics, it's not really of interest, but that seems to be a factor that comes into Brereton's story.
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  213.  @jbjones1957  - a lot of interesting points, I'll try to take in turn. I think the priorities of the bridge versus ridge at Nijmegen is not really an issue as I think everyone down to Gavin inclusive was (or probably would be if you include Montgomery) in agreement. By far the best historical analysis I've read on this issue is by American historian John McManus in September Hope (2012), and I have posted the full page of that analysis before in other threads, but I haven't done so here. Hopefully you've seen it in one of the other threads. If not, I can easily post it again. What went wrong was a command failure below Gavin, in the 508th PIR, and Phil Nordyke's combat history of the regiment gives very interesting background in his chapters on formation of the regiment and first combat operation in Normandy. Interesting that Nordyke is not a full-time historian, he's actually a computer consultant like myself and just seems to have a particular interest in the 82nd Airborne, writing many books on it, and three regimental histories. I believe he's the 'official historian' of the 505th. His style seems to be to give the facts and first hand accounts, even if they seem conflicting, and let the reader make their own judgement. Browning is an interesting one. Having grown up with the conventional narrative that Montgomery and Browning were the villains of this drama (I first read Cornelius Ryan at age 15, borrowed from a school friend), it has been interesting how my opinion has changed over the years from further reading. The most remarkable thing I find about him is that his judgement seems to have been borne out time and again. He was absolutely dead-on when he first (allegedly) said to Montgomery "we can hold it [the Arnhem bridge] for four [days], but sir, I think we may be going a bridge too far." The second part may be a reference to the fact his own preference was for Wesel as the target instead of Arnhem, and this would have meant one less major river to cross. Browning is often criticised for not having led airborne troops in combat before, but this is disingenuous. He was decorated as a junior officer in WW1, receiving a DSO (Distinguished Service Order) for taking command of three companies that had lost their officers while still only a Lieutenent himself. According to his Wiki page - 'the order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross.' In 1940, he was a Brigadier in command of 128 Brigade of 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, which was a territorial (reserve) unit being mobilised to join the BEF, but the move was cancelled when the French collapsed. He then led the formation of the British Airborne and could draw on the experience of all of its commanders who had been in action before MARKET GARDEN. Browning was criticised for dismissing the only aerial photo image of German armour in the Arnhem area, a key scene in the film version of A Bridge Too Far, but I think his judgement was again spot on after the missing photo recently emerged from a Dutch government archive and analysed. The photo does indeed appear to show obsolete tanks, and we now know they did not belong to II.SS-Panzerkorps and the unit is now identified as a training unit that were camped opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone at Wolfswinkel, north of Son in the 101st Airborne sector. The tanks attempted to interfere with the 506th's landing but were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Cornelius Ryan's telling of this episode rested entirely on interviewing Corps Intelligence officer Major Brian Urquhart (Browning had already passed away). Major is a GSO 2 staff position - the Corps didn't appear to have a GSO 1 (Lieutenent Colonel) for Intelligence, so newspaperman Ryan appears not to appreciate the young Major was probably out of his depth at this level and Browning was a cooler head showing some judgement rather than gung ho for the operation as the film seems to suggest. Browning's widow is well known to have been deeply upset by the film's protrayal, and although Dirk Bogarde also knew Browning personally (he was on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff ironically selecting bombing targets from RAF aerial photos) he appears to have opted to mitigate the script by playing the character as conflicted instead of turning down the role to have another actor take the part. Browning's third major criticism was the decision (presumably his own) to take his Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift, which required taking 38 glider tugs from other possible glider loads. First speculation that they were taken from the second half of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment, but this appears to be incorrect. The changes actually affected some of the anti-tank units going to Arnhem instead. Either way, a study of the anti-tank resources in action at Arnhem and the South Staffords' role can both demonstrate that the outcome at Arnhem would not have been changed if the glider schedule had not been changed. The most interesting thing about this is the fact the changes were made at a late stage, so Browning had not planned to go to Groesbeek on the first lift right from the start, it was a late change. It was so late in fact that some of my books have incorrect glider data, because the books were based on the planned allocation of Chalk Numbers and not actual, and the official records were not updated with the changes. This is specifically described in the recent volumes on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery: A-Z Troop volumes, by Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, and Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022). Some of their data is speculative because it has been reconstructed to take account of the late changes. The problem here is that we don't really know the reason for the late change (unless it's in a book I haven't read, like Mead's biography of Browning). It seems likely to me that it was in his judgement the best way he could influcence events, after he had been politically neutralised by Brereton in objecting to planning aspects in the LINNET II affair. Even Gavin was frustrated by 1st AAA's unwillingness to adjust the air plan devised for LINNET/LINNET II in order to adapt it for MARKET's requirements on the ground, and that also seems to be the main reason some of COMET's key features were removed.
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  214.  @jbjones1957  - that's interesting re 52nd Division - they had one brigade travelling by road, which would be under Dempsey/Horrocks from the start, but the rest of the division was in England and ready for air transport. It makes sense because they were intended to fly into Deelen after the US 878th Airborne Engineer (Aviation) Battalion had landed by glider and repaired a runway, in order to reinforce the Arnhem area after XXX Corps had deployed north of the Rijn, and all these Airborne units would have come under Dempsey in any case. I doubt very much Brian Urquhart had Ultra clearance and if he did he would not have been cleared to fly to Groesbeek. Even Brereton wasn't cleared as an Army commander, although it may also be his rank - he was still a Lieutenent General (usually a Corps commander) and Ultra was not cleared to Corps headquarters. In any case, I've found from reading the volumes on 1st Airlanding anti-Tank Battery by Nigel Simpson et al (2019-2022), the Battery CO Major William Arnold was briefed to expect "heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day", including Panthers and Tigers. This would be an example of how Ultra intelligence could be 'sanitsied' and given to lower level headquarters by stripping out the unit identifications and just giving vague warnings, so the Panthers and Tigers are clear code for a 1944 Panzer Division and Korps heavy panzer abteilung respectively. Gavin was also told there may be "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and tanks in the Reichswald, which was a sanitised warning given because 10.SS-Panzer-Division's exact location was unknown (but strength estimated at regimental battlegroup) and a tank depot was (incorrectly) thought to be in the Kleve area. The breakdown I have on the Corps HQ gliders is 32 Horsas and 6 WACOs (Appendix 8, Glider Pilots At Arnhem, Mike Peters and Luuk Buist 2009). Two of the WACOs carried the two US Airborne Division Liaison officers and their comms teams to Corps HQ (the 101st's crashed near Student's HQ at Vught and he obtained the resupply schedule from a translated document), and the other four WACOs carried the two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron (4 Jeeps) allocated to the HQ. I've just finished reading two books on the Resistance/Jedburghs and No.10 (Inter-Allied) Commando myself, and the Jedburgh command team 'EDWARD' (5 men) had the loan of an SAS Jeep and trailer, so that would account for one of the Horsa loads. The RAF radar detachment went to Arnhem - last minute change made to the second lift, and two of the gliders landed short near Zetten on the 'island', and if I recall the loads were split in a way that neither group on the LZ or on the island could assemble a complete radar unit, so both units were completely useless and the equipment had to be destroyed. I'm sure the majority of the 32 Horsas going to Groesbeek were actually Browning's staff and Glider Pilot Regiment HQ. 1st Airborne's support units were split over the first two lifts and those landed on the first day were those supporting the 1st Parachute and 1st Airlanding Brigades, so they were needed, but even they had elements bumped back to the second lift - the ammunition Jeeps and trailers for the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery (1st 1st Para Brigade) for example, and I believe General Urquhart was concerned about this. The implication for not having the reserve AT ammunition trailer was that the entire allocation of HE rounds for the guns were on the second lift and did not reach the 5 guns that were at the bridge, but they had not exhausted all their AP rounds by the end of the seige because the Germans were wary of sending their tanks in after losing a few in the first engagements. When the Paras ran out of small arms ammunition and tried to break out (rather than surrender), the Germans actually captured stocks of unused 6-pounder AT rounds at the bridge.
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  215.  @jbjones1957  - I've found the Airborne Corps report on the Vrienden Airborne Museum website, so I see where you get the 14 gliders from for Browning's staff. The remainder of the 32 Horsas are not listed, but would easily be accounted for by the Corps signals staff, and there's some clues in the later sections of the report that indicates the numbers of signals staff broken down into Tac (air), Main (seaborne) and Rear (UK) headquarters. It also lists the elements in 157 Brigade Group (52nd Division) arriving by road and it does include one infantry battalion ("6HLI") and the support elements are only the support elements for the one Brigade. The support units arriving in the first lift were support units needed for 1st Parachute and 1st Airlanding Brigades, such as 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery and 1st and 3rd Batteries of the Light Regiment, and about half of the divisional HQ staff. Indeed, some elements as I said were bumped back to second lift, such as Z Troop 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery, which was originally raised as part of the Light Regiment and then transferred to 1st Anti-Tank Battery for protection of Division HQ prior to MARKET GARDEN. The second lift mainly delivered the 4th Parachute Brigade and its support units - namely 2nd (Oban) Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery and 2nd Battery of the Light Regiment, plus its share of the RASC, REME, RE elements that also had Brigade support elements, as well as the second half of the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion and both of its Anti-Tank Platoons (8 guns) in the Support Company and all of its transport. The way the South Staffords were split were two Rifle Companies in each lift, but by keeping the AT guns and and transport back in the second lift resulted in the glider allocation being split 20/41. The odd 1 being a Hamilcar glider carrying two Universal Carriers in the Transport Platoon - every infantry battalion had two carriers allocated for ammunition. The second lift also had some spare capacity to bring in one advance Platoon of the Polish Anti-Tank Squadron with five guns - the remaining 10 guns were due on the third lift to coincide with the parachute element, although the paratroops were delayed by weather in England. I'm quite sure Brian Urquhart was not cleared for Ultra intelligence. Nobody in formations dropped behind enemy lines would be made aware it even existed for security reasons - so that includes Browning and everyone under his command. Even Brereton was not cleared, and I think it was because he was still a Lieutenent General, despite being an Army level commander. Brian Urquhart was receiving the Dutch resistance reports on SS panzer troops in the Arnhem area and was trying to find a means of confirming the reports by aerial reconnaissance. I have a copy of Julian Thompson's Imperial War Museum publication Victory In Europe (2005), a multi-media type book that inludes facsimile inserts of original documents, and my interest in obtaining this book was because the document reproduced in the section on MARKET GARDEN is the Dutch report dated 13-14 September of German troop movements in the Arnhem area, with an English translation at the back of the book. It makes very interesting reading, recording troop numbers and uniform waffenfarbe (piping colours indicating service branches), signposts, vehicle insignia, etc.. It gives a clear indication of 'Hohenstaufen' (9.SS-Panzer-Division) units in the region, but no indications of the 'Frundsberg' (10.SS-Panzer-Division) anywhere. I think trying to confirm the location of the Frundsberg was driving the Intelligence staff nuts, hence the fears over Nijmegen and the Reichswald. The Hohenstaufen were ordered to transfer combat ready units and heavy equipment over to the Frundsberg, so not knowing that only makes the picture look confusing, and there's no sense of the River Ijssel being the inter-divisional boundary that it was.
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  216.  @pagejackson1207  - the 'Heart Route' detours were alternative routes for XXX Corps on the airborne carpet laid down by Operation MARKET. Many of the blown bridges were on prepared German defence lines - the Wilhelmina canal (both the Son and Best bridges were blown) and the Maas-Waal canal link between the Maas and Waal river defence lines (two bridges were blown at Malden and Hatert). The flanking Corps were advancing without the benefit of airborne troops securing crossings over their water obstacles and the lack of promised logistics also affected them because priority went to XXX Corps. You might be familiar with Band of Brothers episode 4: Replacements, which was their MARKET GARDEN episode, and this conflated two actions on 19 and 20 September (D+2 and D+3) in which the first was a reconnaissance by the Cromwell tanks of 15th/19th King's Royal Hussars towards Nuenen at Opwetten, and then an attack on Nuenen itself the following day by the Shermans of 44th Royal Tank Regiment, both supported by Easy/506th PIR and conflated into a single episode. The 15th/19th Hussars were the Reconnaissance Regiment of 11th Armoured Division, the lead unit of VIII Corps on MARKET GARDEN's right flank, and they did not have a convenient bridge over the Meuse-Escaut canal like XXX Corps did for the breakout on 17 September. They had to use the XXX Corps 'Club Route' as far as Valkenswaard to get them started the next day, while 3rd Infantry Division built a Class 40 Bailey bridge over the canal at Sint-Huibrechts. Once that bridge was open, VIII Corps had their own MSR to support their operations independently of 'Club Route'. The 44th RTR were part of 4th Armoured (Independent) Brigade in XXX Corps and were attached to 101st Airborne as soon as contact was made for armoured support to help secure the corridor. Their attack towards Nuenen, the main base for Panzerbrigade 107, was designed to protect the Son bridge from attack and to assist VIII Corps in their advance towards Helmond, and once across the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal, VIII Corps' target was Gennep on the River Maas, just south of the 82nd Airborne's area at Nijmegen, which is where they ended up. Widening the corridor at Nuenen helped 11th Armoured in their advance, and the advance of 11th Armoured removed the threat of PB 107 to the corridor. Similar story on the left flank with XII Corps, which had 7th Armoured and 15th (Scottish) and 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Divisions. It's not the case that the entire operation was supplied via 'Club Route'. It's a misconception. The Airborne were resupplied by air until contact was made with ground forces and their own 'seaborne tail' logistics trains. British Airborne doctrine was that a Division fully resupplied by air could operate independently of the ground forces for a maximum of eight days, so 1st Airborne Division at Oosterbeek holding out for nine days despite most of their resupply falling into German hands after the first two days was a remarkable achievement. In his initial conversations with Montgomery over planning Operation COMET (the British and Polish operation at Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem cancelled on 10 September), he had asked Montgomery how long it would take his tanks to reach the Arnhem bridge and Montgomery said "two days". He responded that "we can hold it for four", but then then added his famous remark that "we may be going a bridge too far", possibly in reference to Montgomery's preferred option of Arnhem over Wesel in Germany, because Arnhem meant an additional major river crossing. The flanking Corps' objectives were Gennep on the River Maas for VIII Corps and s'-Hertogenbosch on the Maas for XII Corps. I don't think they could progress beyond that because XXX Corps were held up on the Waal and the logistics were not available for a prolonged campaign - they were expected to be in Arnhem in 2-3 days and then deploy between there and the Ijsselmeer, establishing bridgeheads over the River Ijssel at Deventer, Zutphen and Doesburg with 43rd (Wessex) and 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Divisions. I'm inclined to agree about the Groesbeek heights. It strikes me that the geography at Nijmegen and Arnhem are very similar but reversed north/south. The British solution was to assign one parachute battalion (1st) to take the high ground north of Arnhem and intercept expected counter-attacks from Deelen-Apeldoorn direction, and have the other battalions (2nd and 3rd) of 1st Parachute Brigade secure the bridges and Arnhem town. Gavin instructed the 508th PIR to secure the high ground south of Nijmegen and send one battalion (1st) directly to the highway bridge. In both cases the priority targets were achieved (the bridge at Arnhem, and the Groesbeek heights), but not the other targets (high ground north of Arnhem and the Nijmegen bridge). There was a difference in approach and I think that affected the outcome.
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  217.  @bigwoody4704  - Heinz Harmel was unaware of Kampfgruppe Knaust already forming a blocking line at Ressen after crossing the retaken Arnhem bridge, which the Household Cavalry had reported on the night of 20/21 September by reconnaissance. Unlike his portrayal by Hardy Krüger as 'General Ludwig' (Harmel did not want his name attached to this piece of fiction), Harmel wasn't even at Nijmegen when the bridges fell. He was also unaware that the tanks that stopped in Lent had no choice: they can't fight at night, only one was still running, and they all needed maintenance and re-arming. You're not living in the real world. Gavin had insisted on using his own troops (the 504th PIR) to cross the Waal in a river assault, despite them not having been trained to use assault boats or conduct this type of operation. The default plans for this scenario of the Waal bridges at Nijmegen remaining intact and in German hands was for a river assault to be conducted by 43rd (Wessex) Division with one or two brigades (operations BESSIE and BASIL). It was Gavin who insisted (twice before the idea was accepted by Browning) on using his own troops, no doubt to make up for the blunder by the 508th on D-Day and his own mistakes in discarding a British request to drop a battalion on the north side of the bridge and assigning his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission. These were American mistakes, and the price paid for them were their own high casualties and the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Sources: Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021)
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  218. You're repeating the conventional narrative started by the book, A Bridge Too Far, which failed to identify the error fatal to the operation, and made worse by the Hollywood film that was never going to expose a blunder made by an American Airborne unit. Your very frist statement, "the failure of MG was in the planning", is correct, but the flawed plan was Brigadier General James Gavin's divisional plan for the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen. Intelligence of German armour in the [Arnhem] area was not ignored, it had a major impact on Comet being cancelled and replaced with Market in the first place. The aerial photo showing German tanks near Arnhem was correctly dismissed by Browning because they were obsolete models and judged probably unserviceable. I can give you a post-2015 reference for a study of the original photograph after it was found in a Dutch government archive. We also know who the tanks beonged to, and that they were nowhere near Arnhem when the operation started, and had failed to reach their planned destination because they broke down. The Dutch staff college exam question for Brigadiers was a theoretical Brigade attack on Arnhem from Nijmegen. There's a correct answer that involves a left flanking move rather than going up the main highway. What A Bridge Too Far ignores in its narrative is that the main highway towards Elst was tried with one battlegroup (2nd and 3rd Irish Guards), because not to do so would be negligent if the area was not strongly held by the Germans, but they also tried a right flank attack towards Ressen (with 3rd Irish Guards) and a left flank through Oosterhout (with the Welsh Guards). All three villages were strongly held by the Germans because the Airborne blunder at Nijmegen on the first afternoon gave them time to build up those forces. Gavin did not order Lindquist immediately after landing. Lindquist was given pre-flight instructions in the divisional briefing (with other witnesses) in England pre-flight: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Source: Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012). In chapter 10 of Nordyke, after the initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge had been secured: Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " The Nijmegen highway bridge on 17 September had explosive charges stored in rooms inside the bridge piers. They were not in place and wired up for detonation, and there was no standing 'sprengkommando' on the bridge, only a militia 'Schutzgruppe' that failed to show up to install the charges. I can go into the detailed German plans for the bridge if you wish, but the important point is that the bridge could only be prepared for demolition after 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 engineers arrived to join Kampfgruppe Reinhold overnight on the 17/18 September, and started work on preparing the bridge for demolition, actually against Model's orders. On the first afternoon, the Airborne could have taken the bridge without hardly firing a shot, as there were only 18 German guards on it until darkness fell and the SS arrived, or fear the bridge being blown. The 508th PIR only had two bridges to secure in their area of operations, the road and rail bridges at Nijmegen. The division's other tasks were being carried out by the 504th and 505th PIRs. Don't use their workloads as an excuse for the 508th failing to move, as instructed, against zero opposition in Nijmegen. Sources: Retake Arnhem Bridge, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013) Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Royal Air Force (2016, revised 2019) Nijmegen Schutzgruppe, Regionaal Archief Nijmegen, NL-NmRAN_80_86_0001 - 0015 (1947)
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  219.  @paulc254  - the reason this has been one of the most hotly debated campaigns in WW2 is because the original narrative never made sense. These things that went wrong are the things that normally go wrong with most military operations and you just manage the problems and get on with it. Weather is never perfect every day. Intelligence is never perfect, but turned out to be remarkably accurate at Arnhem, and the possible "regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and "1,000 tanks in the Reichswald" turned out to be completely absent, which makes the failure at Nijmegen all the more baffling. The 1,000 tanks was always a silly rumour anyway, borne out of the observation that the forest could hide 1,000 tanks, but there was never any reason for that many to be there even if the reported panzer depot at Kleve actually existed (it was actually near Münster). The fact is that Model had less than 100 (one-zero-zero) operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B, and he was facing Montgomery's 21st Army group with 2,400 and Hodges' US 1st Army also on his front at Aachen with yet more tanks. Logistics are a British Army speciality, still is today. The 'one road' was only the main supply route for XXX Corps ('Club Route') and had many diversions on it ('Heart Route') for alternative crossings, and the flanking VIII and XII Corps were using their own 'Spade' and 'Diamond' Routes respectively. These methods were used since the breakout from Normandy and the routes terminated in Germany in 1945 - nothing unsual for Market Garden, but the particular difficulty of the Dutch terrain is the reason they used airborne forces to take the bridges. If there's not enough planes, you fly more sorties, but the IX Troop Carrier Command objected to two airlifts on the first day because it involved night flying and they lacked trained navigators. I'm sure the RAF were most impressed with that. The distance between the landing zones and the primary objectives was an issue how? 1st Parachute Brigade dropped 30 mins later than the 508th, had 3 Km further to march to their prime objective, had an SS training battalion with MGs and mortars, and armoured cars from 9.SS-Panzer on even Frost's 2nd Battalion route, and yet they got 750 troops onto the Arnhem bridge and held it for 80 hours. Browning's Corps headquarters was next to Gavin's Division CP between the 2/505th on Hill 81.8 and the 3/505th cleared the town of Groesbeek and then deployed on the landings zones, so your assertion these troops took the heights to protect the Corps HQ is nonsense. 3/505th was protectng the zones for the second lift and 2/505th was the division reserve. What Cornelius Ryan missed, was that the 508th secured an unoccupied Groesbeek ridge, received a report in person from resistance leader Geert van Hees that the city was deserted and the highway bridge guarded by an NCO and seventeen men, but they only sent a recon patrol into the city, ignoring Gavin's specific pre-flight instructions to "move with speed" on the bridge with 1st Battalion as soon as possible after landing. Three Scout troopers from the 1/508th S-2 (Intel) Section secured seven prisoners at the southern end of the bridge without even firing a shot, and stayed for one hour before the SS panzer troops arrived at dusk, and nobody showed up to reinforce them. Most of the patrol got lost in the back streets and eventually left without reaching the bridge. This was not in Cornelius Ryan's research, and subsequently not filmed for the Hollywood film (would it ever?), so public awareness and most historians were completely unaware of this. Apparently most of the 508th's records have been missing from official US Army records. Only in the last 10-12 years have there been some books published that have set the record straight and explained why a perfectly workable plan - that was working everywhere else - so spectacularly failed at Nijmegen precisely where the intelligence picture turned out to be most favourable. Best work on the planning is probably Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019). Also, Sebastian Ritchie authored the RAF's study on the missing aerial photo of German tanks in the Arnhem area dismissed by Browning and found in 2015 in a Dutch government archive - Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story (2016, revised 2019). Sources on the Nijmegen story: Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust, Bob Gerristen and Scott Revell (2010) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020) TIK has done a great job as far as he went, but he needed to drill down to regimental histories to get the full story.
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  220.  @johnburns4017  - on point 3) the Waalbrug was not wired for demolition at all on the afternoon of 17 September. The position was that most important rail bridges in the Netherlands were prepared for demolition and had 'sprengkommandos' on them for months (apparently) under command of von Tettau's Pionier staff (three officers and six enlisted). This includes the Oosterbeek, Nijmegen Waal, and Mook rail bridges, they even detonated the Ravenstein rail bridge, as soon as a 504th patrol was spotted, but it was never a target bridge under threat. At Nijmegen, a junior offcier from the WBN (Wehrmacht Befehlshaber Niederlande) Pionier staff called Oberleutnant Gerhard Bretschneider was in charge of both Waal bridges, but only the rail bridge was prepared and ready for detonation. Only road bridges on the defence lines were also prepared, which explains rapid detonations at Son, Best, and the Maas-Waal canal bridges, either being detonated or attempted to be detonated. Both the Waal and Rijn highway bridges were behind these defence lines and were not wired up with charges at all. The Waalbrug at Nijmegen did have prepared cutting charges standing by, in specially shaped boxes designed to fit inside the girders of the superstructure in specific places, each box numbered and matched to a corresponding number painted on the superstructure, and the boxes were even painted the same shade of green to match the bridge. They were stored inside rooms inside the bridge piers. An NSDAP 'Schutzgruppe' of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands and recruited for this purpose was trained by German engineers to place the charges and wire them up to detonation circuits. They were practice drilled every month under Bretschneider's supervision so that they would be ready in the event the bridge was threatened. The last drill was in August. On 17 September, the Schutzgruppe failed to show up, which often happened with these militia type groups who were happy to serve as long as it was safe, but failed to show up if elite paratroopers start falling out of the sky. Bretschneider was at the Waal bridges when the SS arrived, so he was able to brief them on the demolitions, and when SS-Untersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel's 1./SS-Panzer-Pioneer-Abteilung 10 arrived by bicycle from Pannerden overnight 17/18 September, he was able to instruct the SS engineers on the placement of the charges. Not a difficult job because of the painting-by-numbers arrangement for the Schutzgruppe, but the SS company was needed for the manpower, it was too big a job for Bretschneider and the corporal and three privates he had with him. Sources are an online pdf on the 'WOII-Rivierkazematten-Lent', and in RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) is a paragrapgh on Bretschneider's responsibility for the Maasbrug at Grave and what happened with the charges on that bridge. The Schutzgruppe Nijmegen is in 1947 documents on the Regionaal Archief Nijmegen site entitled '80 Commissie tot Documentatie van de Bevrijding van Nijmegen 1945 – 1953'. Apart from Poulussen's book, all in Dutch I'm afraid. I had always assumed Bretschneider was an army pionier officer, but since the WBN had a mixed Heer/Luftwaffe/Kriegsmarine staff I believe I have found him in the career summaries documents on 'The Luftwaffe, 1933-45' site, and the entry is: - BRETSCHNEIDER, Gerhard. (DOB: 17.12.11). (n.d.) Fl.Ob.Ing. - which is short on career details but the last bit says he's a 'Flieger Ober Ingenieur', and in the WBN's KStN 17 (war establishment) dated 1.12.42, the third staff officer is Stellengruppe 'K' - Kompanie commander rank of Hauptman or Oberleutnant, and has to be an "(Offz. (Ing.))", but despite the service column having 'H' for Heer, I think this Luftwaffe officer is our man filling that position because the name matches and he has the engineering qualification.
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  221.  @thevillaaston7811  - conventional narrative again. People need to read more these days!
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  222. "Why has Hollywood ignored this?" - we have Al Gore to thank for the appropriate phrase - "an inconvenient truth". Cornelius Ryan did the same thing when he wrote his book. The Cornelius Ryan Collection of his documents and interviews held at Ohio State University and accessible online (albeit difficult to navigate - the boxes and folders are not in any order) has plenty of material inconvenient to this newspaper journalist's 'story', but it's there for anyone to see who doesn't have a common medical problem (bone idle). Another example is the lack of a single 508th PIR trooper in the film, gosh - how their story would be inconvenient! Also the lack of a single airborne anti-tank gun or field artillery gun - to create the impression the airborne troops lacked anything heavier than a PIAT with which to fight tanks, ignoring the fact that the Germans lost many of their panzers in Normandy to British anti-tank guns around Caen (and not Tom Hank's colt .45 pistol), so Model had less than 100 operational panzers in September 1944. Curiously, there is one anti-tank gun seen in the final scene at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek at the end of the film, wrecked and lying on its side among all the wounded left behind, but it's not the airborne Mark III version - it still has the carriage shield on, which made the standard version too big to fit into a Horsa glider. Probably the best book on the operation so far is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944 – An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which uses unpublished material from the CRC and also debunks the many myths from the Hollywood film.
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  223. Ryan was Irish and emigrated to the United States after the war. You also refer to the Dutch staff college question for Brigadiers about how they would approach a theoretical attack on Arnhem from Nijmegen, and those that went up the main road failed the question and those who chose the left flank got a Brigade. When the Irish Guards were blocked on the main road by the German defence line along Stationstraat between Oosterhout and Ressen, the Irish Guards attempted a right flank towards Ressen and the Welsh Guards attempted a left flank to Oosterhout, but both villages were German strongpoints. The Household Cavalry got through Oosterhout the following morning under cover of the early morning mist along the riverbank. The British staff college has exams for Brigadiers as well, and I doubt your attempt to smear those who passed their courses would be appreciated.
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  224. I know it's 8 years ago but nobody gave you the answer: 'Where were the Tiger Tanks from? Formation wise? I know that Heavy Panzer Company Hummel was in Holland at this time, but were these Tigers from that group?' The first Tigers arriving in Arnhem were from Panzer-Kompanie 'Hummel' from schwere.Panzer-Abteilung 500 at Paderborn in Germany - a unit that had fought on the Eastern Front and were probably due to refit with new Tiger II tanks but was being used as a fire brigade unit sent to trouble spots in emergencies. 12 broke down on the road after detraining at Bocholt - they didn't want to get any closer because of air attacks. The two that completed the trip (I think on the 3rd day) made a show of shooting up Frost's perimeter, then thought better of it when they received anti-tank gun fire. The other 12 eventually caught up and the kompanie waited until the bridge was retaken before being deployed onto the 'island'. The Tiger II unit involved was schwere.Panzer-Abteilung 506, freshly reformed with 45 Tiger II tanks at Ohrdruf. They sent 3.Kompanie (15 tanks) to attach to 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' at Oosterbeek and 2.Kompanie (15 tanks) attached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg'. The 1.Kompanie and staff went to Aachen. They arrived later, unloading closer to Arnhem at Zevenaar this time on 24 September towards the end of the Oosterbeek siege and one got too close and was knocked out by a combination of 75mm pack howitzer with an AT round and I think finished off with PIAT hollow charges inside the perimeter in Weverstraat. Both units were used in the Battle of the Bulge with Panzer-Kompanie 'Hummel' attached or assigned to s.Pz-Abt.506 as their 4.Kompanie. The unit was probably split up and kompanies spearheaded Panther units from the panzer divisions - a similar tactic seen in October at Opheusden on the Nijmegen 'island' where the 101st Airborne were attacked by Tiger IIs leading Panthers from 9.(Heer)-Panzer-Division, and Tiger IIs leading columns of Panthers from 2.Panzer-Division by-passing Bastogne at Noville - Don Burgett from A Company 506th PIR was witness to both actions and described them in his 'Screaming Eagle' series of books, The Road To Arnhem (2014) and Seven Roads To Hell (1999).
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  225. Some of General Urquhart's commanders were prepared to risk jump injuries by dropping onto the town, but the RAF warned of substantial flak around the town - there was a mixed Flak Abteilung with four heavy batteries located north, south, east, and west of the town. Operation COMET had included a plan by Browning for glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave highway bridges, but these were deleted for MARKET by Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army and Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command. Browning had earlir warned 2nd Army that COMET should not proceed without the glider assaults on the bridges, but was unable to object to their removal since he tried resigning over objections to a previous operation, LINNET II, and Brereton had planned to accept the resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. That operation was cancelled anyway and both men agreed to forget the disagreement, but Browning was now powerless to object to the MARKET plan. The critical objections to Browning taking up 38 glider tug aircraft to tow his Corps HQ to Groesbeek in the first airlift sounds fine in principle, but the logical re-allocation of those aircraft to take the second half of the South Staffordshire Airlanding Battalion to Arnhem on the first lift would not have changed the tactical situaton at Arnhem if you examine the Phase 1 and Phase 2 roles of the battalion, and its actual use by Brigadier Hicks (in temporary command of the division) in the event. The fact is, it wouldn't have made any difference at Arnhem, and the critical failure of the whole operation was at Nijmegen in Gavin's divisional plan.
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  226.  @nickdanger3802  - Brereton and Williams. Why? Who do you think it was?
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  227. It was American politics that compromised the airborne operation on the dubious grounds that having more troops committed meant they should run the show. Decisions made by American officers Brereton, Gavin, and Lindquist, caused the operation to fail. Blaming the British is just a natural American response, and an ignorant one at that.
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  228. Isn't that what happened in October/November 1944 with operation INFATUATE? I'm not that knowledgeable on the operation, but you seem to have described it to the best of my knowledge.
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  229. Montgomery had conducted an exercise in England using airborne troops to secure bridges for a rapid advance and used the method for real in Sicily with 1st Airborne Division taking bridges on the east coast road. Market Garden was not a surprise proposal from Montgomery if you had followed his career.
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  230.  @phann860  - but why the hate for Montgomery? All he did was select Arnhem as the target for British 2nd Army's Rhine crossing. MARKET GARDEN was compromised by American Generals Brereton and Williams in the planning and on the ground by American Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR failing to move quickly on the Nijmegen highway bridge - despite being instructed by 82nd Airborne commander General Gavin standing over a map with Lindquist to show him the exact route he wanted the 1st Battalion to take to the bridge, and even after Lindquist was told at his initial objective on the Groesbeek ridge by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only an NCO and seventeen men to guard the bridge. Added to this was Gavin's choice to assign the 508th to the Nijmegen mission over the more experienced and aggressive 505th, after Lindquist had performed badly in Normandy, and failing to plan some sort of replacement coup de main assault for the bridge after Brereton had removed Browning's original plan for glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges for Operation COMET. Browning could not object to the changes to COMET for MARKET because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's Operation LINNET II having too short notice to print and distribute maps to the troops, and then had to withdraw the threat when he realised Brereton planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. While Montgomery and Browning were trying to fght the Germans and end the war as quickly as possible, it seems the American commanders were fighting the British all the way for their own political reasons and were incompetent in doing so. I would trust a British commander in a complex operation over an American one every time.
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  231. What's that saying about opening your mouth and removing all doubt?
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  232. Montgomery didn't plan MARKET. That was Brereton and Williams. Stop protecting them.
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  233. It looks to me that Browning's correspondence with Gavin after the war was designed to assist Gavin in establishing the post-war narrative after the fact. Gavin took responsibilty for what happened because it was his divisional plan that was not followed by the 508th at Nijmegen, but he didn't specifically drop Lindquist in it. He appears to have fudged the issue, muddy the waters, and Browning seemed happy to help. After all, the war in Europe was over at the time the July 1945 document was written, and the whole thing was done by the October report. I'm sure both Browning and Gavin understood the importance of the Nijmegen highway bridge to the overall success of the operation. That seems to be reflected in the understanding of combat officers in the 508th PIR that spoke to Phil Nordyke for his book Put Us Down In Hell (2012). Only Lindquist himself has a poor record in combat, and there may be reasons Ridgway didn't remove him after Normandy (explained by Gavin in his interview with Cornelius Ryan) and the reason Gavin gave Lindquist very specific instructions, even using a map to show Lindquist the route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. The Groesbeek heights were an issue because they could potentially be occupied by German troops blocking access to Nijmegen and threatening the division's landing zones, if the intelligence warning Gavin was given that there may be a "regiment of SS" in the Nijmegen barracks proved to be true. This makes perfect sense, because the exact whereabouts of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division were not known, and both the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were assessed to be reduced to regimental battlegroups in strength.
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  234. @Johnny Carroll - Lathbury had a proven combat record in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Unfortunate he had a new Commanding General breathing down his neck on the first evening, the only reason I can think for why he refused his Brigade Major Tony Hibbert's request to move one of the battalions down to the river route used by 2nd Battalion and stop for the night instead. At least he had a couple of excuses (Germans and a General to look after). Lindquist had none! Adams and A Company 508th were sent into Nijmegen far too late. That was the problem with Lindquist's leadership. Battalion commander Shields Warren had no idea his battalion was expected (by his division commander) to be sent to the bridge. In Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012), Adams himself is quoted - “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Adams and his platoon that went to the Post Office in Nijmegen, believed by the resistance to contain detonation circuits for the highway bridge, evaded the Germans after leaving the Post Office and holed up in a warehouse with the Germans unaware of his location. Dover's C Company 2nd Parachute Battalion were under siege in the Utrechtsestraat in Arnhem and only surrendered when they eventually ran out ammunition. Check your facts first before you get so bloody cheeky! Fullriede recorded more like 240 of his troops, 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando (NCO training company) of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' under Hauptman Max Runge, were laagered in Hunner Park on his inspection tour, but these were apparently deployed to forward positions on the Maas-Waal canal at Honinghutje and some were at Nederasselt on the near side of the Maasbrug. The troops at Nederasselt immediately came under attack from the 504th and they fell back to the canal bridge. When that bridge came under attack the next day, they then withdrew into Nijmegen. The 21.ULK occupied the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park to reinforce the 10.SS-Panzer troops, while the survivors of the three companies from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6, the Kriegsmarine 4./Schiffsstammabteilung.14 , and Bau-Pionier Kompanie 434 from the canal defence line formed Kampfgruppe Hencke to protect the Waal rail bridge. It's important to understand they were not in the city on the first afternoon, they were deployed along the canal west of the city, so the 505th and 508th landed in their rear, and the 504th to their front.
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  235.  @andy8862  - interesting. Thanks. I'm more well read on Market Garden and it definitely doesn't apply here, of that I'm quite sure. After Vietnam there is often the media war to take into account, so you make a perfectly valid point re the Falklands in 1982.
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  236.  @thevillaaston7811  - the V-2 issue was a timely intervention by the Germans that might have settled the issue if the case for Arnhem hadn't already been substantially made. The remarkable thing is that American paratroopers came so close to capturing Hans Kammler's SS-Division zV at the Hotel Groot Berg-en-Dal, just as Model's Heeresgruppe B headquarters also had to be evacuated in Oosterbeek. Market Garden came so close to killing a number of birds with one stone...
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  237. You're absolutely correct in your analysis, which is also done by McManus (see ref below), but the answer to your question is already out there in the literature, but not books on TIK's booklist - he hasn't gone deep enough on this particular subject because he covers a huge range of topics and has only a limited book budget. I would draw your attention to these sources: 1) Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." 2) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) - Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. 3) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." 4) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 - As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." 5) Nordyke op cit, Chapter 10 - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
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  238.  @samsonsoturian6013  - perhaps a political career beckons?
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  239.  @MrArdytube  - it's true. I've been reading about Market Garden for 46 years, but the last 10-12 have been the most interesting in terms of new information coming forward, I guess because all the personalities involved have now passed on.
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  240. Gavin was not ordered to prioritise the heights over the bridge. Browning's original intent was to have the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges seized by dawn coup de main glider assaults in operation COMET and the expanded upgrade operation provisionally called SIXTEEN. Brereton's decision to make all flights daylight for his MARKET plan effectively removed the glider coup de main assaults as too risky for broad daylight in the middle of the day. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan the British wanted him to drop a battalion at the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop and the Division disorganised for days. Instead he opted to drop his three regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. On 15 September, 48 hours before the jump in the final divisional briefing, he instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge immediately on landing. The next day, in the final Corps briefing, Browning cautioned Gavin “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” I don't interpret this as placing the priority of the ridge over the bridge, and after being frustrated twice on having a coup de main assault on the bridge to seize it quickly, Browning would be the last person in the world to de-prioritise the bridge altogether. On D-Day, Colonel Lindquist failed to carry out Gavin's instruction, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first before sending a large force to the bridge. Despite getting a first hand report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge, Lindquist and 1st Battalion CO Shields Warren launched a recon patrol to the bridge to report on its condition. Lindquist was not a good field commander and had not performed well in Normandy - Gavin told Cornelius Ryan that neither he nor 82nd commander in Normandy, Matthew Ridgway, trusted Lindquist in a fight. When the first progress reports came in around 1830 hours and Gavin was told that the 508th had not yet sent the battalion into Nijmegen, Gavin was as "mad" as the 508th's liaison officer had ever seen him and ordered the officer into a Jeep to "come with me - let's get him moving." At the 508th CP, Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed." By the time the 1st Battalion was got out of its extended line along the ridge and assembled on the road, it was too late to beat 10.SS-Panzer-Division to the bridge and the first clash was with SS troops at the traffic circle near the rail station a kilometer from the bridge. The operation was not too ambitious, it was compromised - in the air planning, and in the execution on the ground at Nijmegen. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  241.  @nopeplease3047  - exactly my point - Brereton, Williams, and Gavin, took all the flexibility out of the original conceptand they ended up with a plan that was so fragile that Lindquist could compromise the entire operation by being too cautious on D-Day. You're right, the plan was terrible, but it wasn't terrible as originally conceived. The remarkable thing is that it nearly worked, as bad as it was, so the original concept clearly must have had some merits.
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  242. The RAF advised during the original all-British operation COMET planning against certain landing zones because of Flak, but also because of unsuitable terrain. Paratroopers could not be dropped on the southern side of the Arnhem bridge because the area was flanked by two heavy batteries of Flak-Abteilung 591 (each having 6 x 75mm French Schneider M.36 heavy guns and 3 x 2cm light kanon), some additional light Flak around the bridge approaches, and the polder was also crossed by high tension lines (!!) from the Arnhem power station near the bridge. It was ruled out as a landing zone for massed glider landings as the polder is criss-crossed by small drainage ditches, making landing fields too small and unloading of vehicles and artillery too difficult. For MARKET, it was deemed good enough for the Poles to drop there on D+2, after it was assumed the British 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area to suppress the Flak, and the Royal Engineers were scheduled to rendezvous at the Arnhem power station and take control after completing their Phase 1 tasks. The solution to this problem in COMET was the glider coup de main assaults, eighteen gliders carrying three Airlanding (glider infantry) companies to the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges. COMET was cancelled at the last minute when Montgomery received intelligence II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET was not strong enough. He and Browning then drew up an outline proposal provisionally called operation SIXTEEN (COMET had been FIFTEEN) that added the two American divisions to hold the corridor, so that 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade could concentrate at Arnhem with their superior anti-tank gun resources (the American units had a different doctrine and were equipped with more field artillery). SIXTEEN was presented to Eisenhower and he endorsed the idea, and detailed planning was turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army (because it required all of their resources) and USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams. Brereton (1st AAA) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) adapted a previous three-division air plan for cancelled operations LINNET and LINNET II to the COMET objectives, but they decided to delete the proposed double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the bridges. Browning could not object because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation (Liege-Maastricht bridges) being scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps, but it was fortunately cancelled. Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation letter and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation, but Browning now withdrew his letter and both men agreed to forget the matter. The RAF had no input to the planning for MARKET because it was now under American control - Nos 38 and 46 Groups RAF were attached to Williams' IX TCC and under his command. The idea that the RAF was running the air show comes from the Hollywood film, which cast an RAF character, but did not cast roles for USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams. American audiences cannot blame American characters if they do not know they even exist. Browning, for his part, wanted Gavin (82nd Airborne) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge as an alternative coup de main plan. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for his book A Bridge Too Far (1974), that he toyed with the idea, but eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where troops were scattered over a wide area by the Troop Carriers and the division was disorganised for days. Browning could not order Gavin to do this, that wasn't how the alliance relationship worked. Only a senior US officer could compel an instruction on Gavin, so that would have to be Brereton, and he was part of the problem! Colonel Tucker of the 504th was highly experienced and his unit had missed Normandy because it was still recovering strength after Anzio in Italy. He insisted on a special drop zone for one company to drop south of the Grave bridge so it could be taken from both ends, and he got it, but Gavin would not provide for a coup de main on the Nijmegen bridge. He assigned his least aggressive and experienced unit, the 508th, to the critical NIjmegen mission, instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and failed to understand that speed was essential. He thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, only sending a small recon force to the bridge - most of which got lost in the crowds of Dutch civilians in Nijmegen. Three scouts did reach the southern end of the bridge, surprised the seven German guards and took them prisoner without firing a shot. They waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. In the UK, it drives us crazy that Americans commenting on YouTube accept the Hollywood film as an accurate and complete record of the operation. It's not. Even the source book by Cornelius Ryan was incomplete, partly because of his terminal cancer forcing him to publish the book unfinished, but he also failed to follow up any suggestion that American officers were at fault. Gavin was quite open about Lindquist's failings in his interview, he said neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight, but it wasn't included in the book. Ryan also did not investigate the evolution of the planning from COMET to SIXTEEN to MARKET, and how Brereton and Williams had compromised Browning's original concept, sidelining him from having much influence on the operation. The only thing Browning was able to do was advance the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift (now on D+1 thanks to Brereton and Williams) to the 1st lift, which meant taking some RAF glider tugs scheduled to transport some anti-tank assets to Arnhem, and for this he's accused of going on an 'ego trip'. He was hoping to have at least some influence on the operation on the ground from the first day, but the failure at Nijmegen was unfortunately due to a command failure in the 508th to follow Gavin's pre-flight instruction, and there was nothing that Browning could have done about it. When Gavin found out Lindquist wasn't moving, he went to the 508th CP and ordered Lindquist to get the 1st Battalion moving to the bridge, but it was too late and 10.SS-Panzer-Division were already moving armoured units into the city at the same time Gavin's order was being passed to 1st/508th. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020) The 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem: A-Z Troop volumes, Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022)
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  243.  @ToolTimeTabor  - Gavin did not "de-prioritize" the bridge until after the first failed attempt to capture it on the night of 17/18 September. On the afternoon of 17 September, and in Gavin's divisional briefing, it was absolutuely the priority so long as the 508th were able to secure their intitial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge - because that would telegraph that there's no opposition to them moving into the city. Chapters 9 and 10 of Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) makes that very clear. The earlier chapters on the formation of the regiment and first combat in Normandy explain why Lindquist did not move as instructed. He was a gifted administrator, but not a good combat leader. How much Gavin understood that is not known, the command problems in Normandy were dealt with by division commander at the time, Matthew Ridgway, but it is clear from the divisional briefing for Market Garden that Gavin paid special attention to Lindquist's briefing, even explaining on a map exactly which route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. That is in September Hope by John C McManus (2012), which compliments much of what is in Nordyke.
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  244.  @ToolTimeTabor  - Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th in WW2 (2012): Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
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  245.  @ToolTimeTabor  - Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013), a collection of letters and stories from 508th members recalling events from the regiment's history: Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
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  246.  @ToolTimeTabor  - I suppose my take on all of this is that after the war, Gavin didn't want to throw Lindquist under the bus, so he took a lot of responsibility for what happened apon himself. He even seems to have co-opted Browning into giving some cover re the priorities of the heights vs the bridge. As Lewis says in his video 'Was Gavin to blame?', documents produced after the war are not as reliable as sources as contemporary ones, and the problem with the 508th is that much of their records have gone walkabout. That's ironic since Lindquist was noted to be a gifted administrator and in Gavin's words to Cornelius Ryan, he produced documentaion like you wouldn't believe. Another useful reference is RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), which includes as annexes Captain Westover's Q&A from Lindquist, in which I find Lindquist's answers to be disingenuous: "2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you orders to move directly into NIJMEGEN? As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on." He was told BEFORE landing, in England before take-off, according to Gavin and witnesses present. And also the "Field Order No.1, 508 PIR, 13 September 1944 2. a. ... be prepared to seize WAAL river crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on Div order, LINDQUIST Commanding" Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan is also interesting in regard to his comments about Matthew Ridgway not trusting Lindquist and refusing to promote him. In fact, he couldn't promote any other colonel over him because he had seniority. Nordyke's earlier chapters on formation of the regiment and first combat operation in Normandy are important for context, because it demonstrates Lindquist's abilities as an administrator and deficiencies as a combat leader. Gavin inherited a problem in the 508th after Ridgway was promoted to US XVIII Airborne Corps in August, but how much of a problem he knew is hard to say. His rationale for selecting the 504th for Grave is well known, he wanted top priority of securing his division supply line to XXX Corps carried out by his best regiment is understandable. What his rationale was for giving the Nijmegen mission to the 508th is not recorded as far as I know. He may have decided the more experienced and aggressive 505th were better placed to face the potential tank threat from the Reichswald, and he had argualbly the best battalion in the whole division - Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th - in division reserve on Hill 81.8 above the town of Groesbeek. It seems from the witnesses who contributed to Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and John McManus's September Hope (2012), Gavin made sure to explain to Lindquist the importance of the Nijmegen bridge in relation to the overall success of the operation, and even showed him on a map exactly which route he wanted Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion (Warren) to the bridge. I think the post-war debate over priorites involving Gavin and Browning is misdirection, by none other than Gavin himself. It certainly makes a lot less sense than the contemporary evidence unearthed by Nordyke and Poulussen, although it's in witness rather than documentary form. One final thing, XXX Corps already had a contingency plan for the Nijmegen bridges being still intact but strongly held by the enemy, long before Gavin insisted his own troops be sent across the river, if XXX Corps can supply the boats for him. In fact, the planning for Market Garden had an engineering plan for every crossing and for every permutation of possible problem - demolition of bridge, site held by own side, site held by enemy, or bridge intact and held by enemy - and a backup plan for each eventuality. The backup plan for the Nijmegen bridges being still intact but strongly held were a river assault crossing by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one or two brigades up. Two of its brigades had one battalion fully motorised with DUKW amphibious trucks, and the other battalions would follow in assault boats, or if suitable ramps were not available, all waves would use assault boats. During the battle for Nijmegen, it looked like this plan was going to be put into operation and the Royal Canadian Engineers of 1st CAGRE (who were responsible for bridging requirements in the Grave-Nijmegen sector) were put on alert to find suitable sites and then stood down again as Gavin insisted his division make the assault instead. Source: Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021). My take is that Gavin wanted to make amends for the 508th's earlier failure and his decision to assign them to the Nijmegen mission in the first place. I think all these things demonstrates Gavin's decency and willingness to take responsibility, but in doing so he has muddied the waters of the historical record.
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  247.  @ToolTimeTabor  - sorry I didn't get a notification to the previous direct reply or I would have responded 2 days ago (YouTube!), but I just got one a few minutes ago for your latest reply to yourself - so everybody should get a notification. I note the date of this 82nd AB order is 13 September, same date as Lindquist's 508th Field Order No.1 reporduced in Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), and Gavin's: "(3) 508 Prcht Inf will: (b) Seized, organize and hold key terrain features in the area of responsibility, and be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714533) on order of the Div Comdr." ... matches Lindquist's (apart from the grid ref for Nijmegen bridge I assume is your typo, Lindquist's is correct): "2. a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ 'T', seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589)." I think the question is what happened between 13 September and take-off on D-Day 17 September? I think Gavin said in an interview (with Cornelius Ryan?) that when the plan looked like it was shaping up well, he ordered Lindquist to go for the bridge with 1st Battalion as soon as possible after landing, or words to that effect. I think the concerns, on a daily updated basis, were the intelligence estimates, because the possibility of SS troops in Nijmegen and tanks in the Reichswald from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area seems to have played on Gavin's thinking. I don't have a date for the divisional briefing related to Phil Nordyke by the 508th Liaison Offcier, Captain Chet Graham. So, the question is: was it before or after the 13 September orders were written? In his words: "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke, 2012). If Gavin had de-prioritised the bridge and not prioritised it again before take-off, then why this reaction when Chet Graham reported to him with Lindquist's message at around 1830 hrs 17 September: "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " (Chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke, 2012). I maintain that the key to understanding what happened and why it happened is in Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy, and Lindquist's background early career in the Airborne. He was a gifted administrator but had not demonstrated the aggressive leadership the Airborne role required. I think Gavin was aware of this, to some extent at least, because at the briefing Gavin made a point of showing Lindquist on a map exactly the route he wanted 1st Battalion to go. On the ground, Shields Warren was surprised when he finally got an order to move at about 2000 hours (full dark, and would be after Scout Trooper Joe Atkins' S-2 point team had withdrawn from the Nijmegen bridge and SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 had arrived). Another two hours elapsed while A and B Companies got out of their positions strung out along the ridge and A Company couldn't wait any longer and moved off alone with HQ Company. They ran into trouble with the SS troops at the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle, about 1.5 Km from the bridge, at around 0000 hrs.
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  248. @@johnnycarroll4496 - you haven't given a source for Warren's account as this text is not from Nordyke or McManus, although does describe the same events. Unfortunately, all the moves after 2000 hrs are far too late, because this was about the time that the S-2 point team under PFC Joe Atkins had to leave the bridge and SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived on the scene. The time to move the 1st Battalion to the bridge was as soon as they arrived at De Ploeg, instead of stringing themselves out along the ridge and digging-in. The 1st Battalion led by A Company bumped Gräbner's troops at the Keizer Karelplein - the traffic circle near the railway station and 1.5 Km from the highway bridge. I can tell you the resistance headquarters that Geert van Hees was guiding them towards was in a hotel in Molenstraat. The building is now occupied by the Pinnoccio pizzeria if you want to check it out on Street View, on the corner of Tweede Walstraat with Molenstraat. Incidentally, the main German occupiers of the centre of Nijmegen until the airborne attack were also based in Molenstraat at the Oud Burgeren Gasthuis (old civilian hospital), which was the BdO (Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei) - HQ of the German 'Order Police' for the entire Netherlands under Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus, and equivalent to a division HQ. The site has since been redeveloped into the Molenpoort Nijmegen shopping centre. Van Hees was captured by the SS at the traffic circle when he went forward to visit his HQ in Molenstraat. I said Warren was surprised at being ordered to move because Phil Nordyke says the order wasn't expected, and Warren ays it was the first time he heard the battalion was to take the bridge. Chapter 10 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012): At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” It makes perfect sense he wasn't expected to be moving because the battalion was dug-in along the ridge line and it took a couple of hours to get A Company out and assembled on the road, and they waited an hour for B Company, which was further along the ridge, and eventually left without them. B Company caught up with the battalion at the contact on the Keizer Karelplein, and Warren ordered B Company to pass through A Company to try and press the attack forward. John C McManus in September Hope (2012) says much the same thing: A couple miles outside of town, along the main Groesbeek-Nijmegen road, Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, commander of the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was settling his unit into defensive positions for the night. The battalion had easily captured its objective at De Ploeg, along the Groesbeek heights, and Warren was preparing to defend it it against possible enemy counterattacks. Instead, his superior, Colonel Roy Lindquist, commander of the 508th, came to him with a different mission. The battalion was to seize the Nijmegen road bridge over the Waal River. McManus then says that Lindquist had told Warren during a final briefing the previous evening that he might get this assignment, which doesn't make sense because the battalion was clearly not ready to move at all, and it took several hours just to get the battalion out of their defence positions and assembled for the move. McManus doesn't give a source or quote anyone for that statement, so we don't know what he based that on. McManus does not mention that Gavin was "mad" at the report by Chet Graham the regiment was not moving on the bridge and they went directly to the 508th CP to tell Lindquist to get moving. Lindquist is behaving like he was expected to wait until he was told what to do, which was his Normandy behaviour as well, but by then it was far too late. If the battalion had moved into the city at the time Weaver's patrol did, then they should have reached the bridge with an hour to spare to set up defensive positions before Gräbner arrived. Instead, the battalion only got the order at 2000 hrs, two and half hours after arriving at De Ploeg on an unoccupied ridge, and informed by van Hees the city was deserted of Germans and left only 18 guards on the bridge. That's the compromise, right there, and Gavin was understandably angry because it's clear he realised at that moment that the entire operation was now in jeopardy.
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  249. @@johnnycarroll4496 - thanks for giving the reference, I recall seeing the site some years ago and I'll have to revisit it. I used the word "surprised" because the order was "unexpected" (Nordyke's word), and it was clearly unexpected from Warren himself based on his own words - “this was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge." There was nothing in Lindquist's Field Order No.1 that mentioned a specific battalion to take the bridge, only that "the regiment be prepared to seize [the bridge] on Div order." He surely wouldn't have dispersed his battalion along the ridge where it would take 2+ hours to reassemble it on the road to move into Nijmegen if he thought he was going to take the bridge that night. He seemed to be settled in for the night prepared for a counter-attack from Nijmegen, despite being told there were no German troops of any significance in Nijmegen. Warren was following Lindquist's regimental plan, but Lindquist was not following Gavin's instructions. That is the problem. Lt Weaver's adventures are described in some detail by first hand accounts from three members of his platoon in McManus. They got lost in the back streets after getting separated from the point team, holed up in a house for a while to wait for a giude from the resistance to help them, and then started running into roadblocks near the bridge, probably after Gräbner's arrival. They had problems with the SCR-300 radio loaned from battalion, and when they finally did establish contact they were informed two companies were on the way to the bridge, so they decided to withdraw and rejoin C Company back on the heights. McManus also says that Atkins' team also got lost while withdrawing from the bridge and didn't get back until sometime the next day. Seems to me PFC Atkins did his job in getting to the bridge, but everybody else failed to follow him. Weaver's patrol was organised by both Lindquist and Warren, so it may have been using resources from Warren's battalion, but clearly it was a regimental reconnaissance and this was typical of Lindquist according to Nordyke's chapters on Normandy. All in all, it's a shambles, when you consider the geography was very similar at Arnhem - drop zones several kilometres away, a wooded ridge between them and the city with its bridges, and yet Frost stopped for nothing and got most of his 2nd Battalion and Brigade support units to the Arnhem bridge despite actually having opposition from MGs, mortars and armoured cars along the way, and was in a position to start stopping enemy traffic on the Arnhem bridge about the time Gräbner arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. If 1/508th had been on the Nijmegen bridge as Gavin expected, Gräbner's unit would have been bottled up on the 'island' with no escape except either a long detour to the west or the ferries to the east, or destroy himself trying to force the Arnhem bridge as actually happened.
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  250. Absolute tosh. Browning fought in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October and the Battle of Cambrai in November. He distinguished himself in this battle, for which he received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross. His citation read: 'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He took command of three companies whose officers had all become casualties, reorganised them, and proceeded to consolidate. Exposing himself to very heavy machine-gun and rifle fire, in two hours he had placed the front line in a strong state of defence. The conduct of this officer, both in the assault and more especially afterwards, was beyond all praise, and the successful handing over of the front to the relieving unit as an entrenched and strongly fortified position was entirely due to his energy and skill.' Montgomery had nothing to do with Crete, which is a pity because it was a disaster for the German airborne. He used two Rolls Royce cars - from the Milwebs website on his Silver Wraith and Phantom III cars: When Monty went to war he did it in style. The Silver Wraith, together with the elegant Phantom 3 used by General Montgomery before D-Day, will be at this year’s War and Peace Show. It’s the first time the vehicles have appeared together since the Second World War. “Montgomery used the Silver Wraith as his personal staff car from D+3 right through to when he took the German surrender on Luneberg Heath,” said Andrew Robertshaw, curator of the Royal Logistics Corps Museum at Deepcut, Surrey, where the vehicle occupies pride of place. “He was determined to be seen in a better car than any German general. Despite its being highly conspicuous it survived the War unscathed, although Rommel’s camouflaged staff car was shot up by a Spitfire.” The Phantom 3 is owned by Michael Hanson, of Preston Lancashire, an old War and Peace Show hand. He previously won “Best in Show” with his Pacific tank transporter and has carried off a variety of other trophies. “It was built in 1936 and owned by the boss of English Talbot Motor Company, a Mr Frederick Wilcock,” said Michael. “It’s known as the ‘green car’ because it’s black and British racing green. Monty’s other Rolls Royces were just black. “Mr Wilcock loaned it to the Ministry of War Transport on condition that it did not cross the Channel, because he did not want it blown up or shot at. “However this backfired on him. After D-Day the Phantom was reassigned to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Carl Spaatz and an American fuel tanker backed into it causing severe damage.” It would have been used by General Montgomery to commute between his home in Virginia Waters and London. I suppose Eisenhower was German then... Eisenhower was promoted to 'five-star' General in December 1944, three months after Montgomery, who had been his senior throughout their military careers, had been promoted to the equivalent Field Marshal in September 1944.
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  251. ... and back on planet Earth, Eisenhower graduated in the middle of his 1915 West Point class, a class in which 59 members later became General officers. In WW1 he served as a logistician and tank trainer in the United States, and was several times refused requests to serve in combat roles overseas. He held a number of staff positions between the wars but never held an active command above battalion level before the United States' entry into WW2. Montgomery, who served as a platoon commander in the trenches of WW1, only had four words for Eisenhower after their first meeting: "nice man, no soldier."
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  252.  @thevillaaston7811  - probably a good thing. He was a bit of a melt when incoming amounted to not very harsh words during their 10 September Brussels meeting and actually complained about it. For a country that has this weird culture of sons calling their fathers "Sir", they certainly have a completely inconsistent lack of respect for their 1,000 year old mother country... I would never treat my mother like this, would you?
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  253. It wasn't the only intention. It was a potentially useful byproduct of the operation. Eisenhower did not accept Montgomery's analysis when Montgomery pointed this out during their 10 September meeting, but Eisenhower endorsed the operation because it fitted in with his his broad advance to the Rhine and intention to cross it at multiple points. The British 2nd Army crossing in the Arnhem area would be the base for one arm of an encirclement of the Ruhr in conjunction with a US 1st Army crossing in the Koblenz area south of the Ruhr.
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  254.  @nickdanger3802  - the point I thought I had made very clear was that Gavin clearly understood that while the high ground was important to securing the position of the division, the bridges were the key to the success of the entire operation. The problem at Nijmegen was that this was apparently not understood by Lindquist, a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, but clearly not a good combat leader. Perhaps aware of his shortcomings, Gavin took time out to explain what he wanted Lindquist to do, as the book I'm currently reading makes clear, and this is from another American author: 'At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.' 'At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership.' (Page 64, September Hope - The American Side Of A Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus, 2012).
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  255.  @nickdanger3802  - I don't think you know the meaning of the word 'moot' because all the excuses are misdirection. One regiment failing to even attempt to seize its main objective, not attempting it and failing, compromised the entire operation, so it's not moot at all.
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  256. The drop zone on the south side of the Arnhem highway bridge was deemed not suitable for D-Day because it was situated between two of the four heavy Flak batteries around Arnhem and crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station. It was expected to be usable for the Poles scheduled on the third lift on D+2 because it was expected the British 1st Parachute Brigade would be in control of the area to secure the drop zone by then, and the Royal Engineers were also due to rendezvous at the power station to take control of it after completing their Phase 1 tasks. The fact these things did not happen was the reason for the Polish drop having to be re-directed further west to a drop zone near Driel to support the divisional perimeter at Oosterbeek, since the Poles would not be able to use the Arnhem bridge to cross into their assigned eastern sector of the planned Arnhem perimeter. There were also insuficient aircraft to deliver the Poles on the first lift, unless a similar number of troops were bumped to the third lift in their place - such as the British 1st Parachute Brigade. So you pays your money and you takes your choice. If an additional brigade could have been dropped on D-Day, then prirority would have gone to the British 4th Parachute Brigade scheduled for D+1. I would question the Polish Brigade as an "Ace-in-the-Hole" - the brigade was raised as an ordinary rifle brigade from an assortment of men who were able to escape the German occupation of Poland and Sosabowski decided to have them parachute trained as he believed they were more likely to be used if they were airborne. They were not trained to the standards set by the British airborne as special forces and this was the main reason they came in for criticism after the battle because of incidents of poor discipline. Even the SS in Oosterbeek complained that their medics were fired on by the Poles when they tried to retrieve their wounded - something the British normally allowed them to do. No one doubts the Poles were keen to take their revenge on the Germans at the first opportunity and few people in Britain would disagree that it was right to honour the military alliance and declare war on Germany for the invasion of Poland, but the way the Poles were portrayed in the film Battle of Britain would probably also apply to the Polish Parachute Brigade. I think that film is far more accurate than A Bridge Too Far. Sosabowski also made himself unpopular by being difficult to work with and was flagrantly insubordinate at the Valburg conference on 24 September. It was these criticisms that led to the brigade being removed from British Airborne command and Sosabowski was relieved by the Polish Government-in-Exile, who had ultimate political control over the brigade and was their decision, not the British. Taking a poll of pilots is an interesting idea and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the presumed results - it certainly reflected the views of the RAF, but the moment the military becomes a democracy then you have lost all discipline. The fact remains that Brereton and Williams were both charged by Eisenhower to address the issues of navigation and accuracy in the Troop Carrier Command after the misdrops in Sicily and Normandy when they were appointed, and much of the planning compromises for MARKET were made by these men for those reasons, to the detriment of the requirements of the airborne troops and the ground forces expected to relieve them.
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  257.  @gl2773  - still no examples from you of Browning's "ego and flawed decision making" after 3 weeks to think about it, so I take it you've got nothing? Would you like a list of the flawed decisions made by USAAF commanders Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army and Gavin and Lindquist in 82nd Airborne Division that undid Browning's original proposed plan that was approved by Eisenhower? - Brereton decided that all MARKET flights would be conducted in broad daylight to improve the US Troop Carriers poor navigation and drop accuracy record, removing Browning's double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. [4] [7] [8] - Brereton removed a drop zone for a third brigade of 1st Airborne to drop at Elst between Arnhem and Nijmegen on the grounds of insufficient aircraft, despite Gavin and Taylor both having all three of their parachute regiments available on D-Day with battalions in reserve roles. [2] [8] - Brereton's Air Transport commander Williams removed drop zones selected by Browning for the 101st Airborne between Valkenswaard and Son to quickly seize the Aalst-Eindhoven-Son bridges and facilitate a linkup with XXX Corps on D-Day, on the grounds of Flak around Eindhoven. A day was wasted with the Guards held up by an 8.8cm Flak battery and StuG assault guns at the Aalst bridge on D+1. [7] - Browning was unable to object to the changes for MARKET after he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's previous LINNET II operation being scheduled on just 36 hours notice - insufficient time to print and distribute maps to brief the troops - and was in turn threatened with replacement by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ to carry out the operation, which was thankfully cancelled. [9] - Williams refused to change his view that two flights could not be conducted on MARKET's D-Day after an appeal by Air Vice Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst of RAF 38 Group (and 46 Group under his command). [8] - Brereton refused to change his air plan even after Montgomery sent his GSO 1 (Ops) officer David Belchem by air to Ascot to impress apon him the need for the double airlift on D-Day. [8] - Gavin said the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen brudge to take it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop and a division disorganised for days. [1] - Gavin thought he could secure the Nijmegen bridge quickly by instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion 508th PIR directly to the bridge after landing. Lindquist failed to send the battalion immediately, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, while sending only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge - which got lost in Nijmegen, allowing 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy the city and reinforce the bridges. By the time Gavin found out the battalion wasn't moving, it was too late. [1] [3] [5] [6] [7] - Brereton blamed the failure of the operation on the slow progress of XXX Corps, despite he and Williams removing drop zones designed to speed their progress, and the Nijmegen bridges found to be in German hands when XXX Corps got there. [3] [5] [6] [7] Sources: [1] Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) [2] The Military Life and Times of General Sir Miles Dempsey – Monty's Army Commander, Peter Rostron (2010) [3] Lost At Nijmegen – A Rethink on operation “Market Garden”, RG Poulussen (2011) [4] Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie (2011, 2019) [5] September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) [6] Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) [7] Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) [8] Aspects of Arnhem – The Battle Re-Examined, Richard Doherty and David Truesdale (2023) [9] Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, James Daly (2024) All roads on the failure of the operation lead back to Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist, unless you can provide any evidence to the contrary?
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  258. Browning had little choice but to approve of Gavin's divisional plan because all attempts to influence it, and the air plan, had already failed. Browning and Montgomery had drawn up the outline for provisional operation SIXTEEN as a replacement upgrade for the cancelled operation COMET (British and Polish airborne on Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges) by adding the two US airborne divisions to secure the corridor between Eindhoven and Nijmegen. This was the outline presented to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their scheduled meeting on 10 September, which Eisenhower enthusiastically endorsed, and then Browning took it back to England for detailed planning by 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and US IX Troop Carrier Command (Williams), since the new plan would now be using all of their assets. The problems began when Brereton and Williams started removing key aspects of Browning's COMET/SIXTEEN concept and broadly based their final MARKET plan on the cancelled LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) operations that also called for airlifting three divisions. One of those key COMET features was a double airlift on D-Day, one at dawn, and the other in the late afternoon or early evening, to deliver as many airborne troops as possible on the first day. Another key feature were dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, replicating the success at the Orne river and canal bridge raids in Normandy, and the same glider pilots were due to lead the raids. Browning had advised Dempsey (British 2nd Army commander) that COMET should not proceed without the glider raids on the key bridges, he thought they were that critical, but they were removed by Brereton and Williams because they considered them too risky in broad daylight, and the double airlift inpractical because of insufficient turnaround time for aircraft maintenance. Truth be told there were night navigation issues in the US Troop Carrier units and only the lead aircraft in each serial even had a navigator on board the C-47s. The objection to the British glider raids on the main bridges was spuriously deemed too risky in broad daylight, originally planned for dawn in COMET and SIXTEEN, but I suspect the real reason was that Brereton objected to the idea of British glider troops seizing by coup de main the 82nd Airborne's key objectives at Nijmegen and Grave for them. This is only my own opinion, but politics certainly did play a role in MARKET's planning. Browning was unable to object to Brereton and Williams' changes for MARKET because he had already threatened to resign over the previous Brereton plan for LINNET II, which was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps to the troops. Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation letter and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully for everyone involved, that operation was cancelled like so many others when the ground troops overran the landing zones before the airborne troops could take off, so Browning withdrew his letter and both men agreed to forget the incident. Now, Browning was powerless to object to the changes for MARKET, because he knew what would happen if he did. The only thing he could do was advance the transport of his British I Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift to 1st lift (now on separate days thanks to Brereton), taking aircraft due to tow some anti-tank troop gliders to Arnhem (much to 1st Airborne Division General Urquhart's frustration) in an effort to influence events once on the ground. Browning was obviously more concerned about Nijmegen, and events would prove him right. Gavin, for his part, also made compromises to his own divisional plan for Nijmegen. He told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that 'the British' (I assume Browning) 'wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' Gavin's solution to the coup de main problem was to assign his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission, and to instruct its commander to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing. There are witnesses to the final briefing related in McManus and Nordyke (see sources below) that Gavin emphasised speed and even showed Colonel Lindquist on a map the exact route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. On D-Day, Lindquist failed to interpret Gavin's instructions correctly, thinking he had to clear the drop zone (a job done by D Company of 2nd Battalion) and secure his other objectives on the Groesbeek ridge first. The delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to send units from as far as Beekbergen and Vorden to occupy the city and reinforce the undefended bridges, compromising the entire operation. It's notable that after the operation, Browning fully backed Gavin and said that he was very pleased and proud of the performance of the US divisions under his command. It creates the impression he fully approved Gavin's plans, when all the evidence shows that he tried to prevent or mitigate the changes made to his own outline plan, but was frustrated at every turn. Montgomery writing after the war said he regretted not intervening in the airborne planning to insist on troops being landed close to the bridges, but it was left unsaid that this would have caused another row with the Americans, who seemed more concerned with avoiding any aircraft losses to flak as much as possible with little regard to the needs of the airborne troops themselves. Browning said he was willing to accept 33% losses going in, if it meant the majority of troops landed on the objectives. Even Gavin said he was frustrated at the lack of flexibility from Brereton to make any changes once he was given the air plan resources that limited his options. One concenssion he was able to make was to Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th, who "insisted" on a special drop zone south of Grave to enable the Grave bridge to be attacked from both ends, and he got it. Again, this is personal observation, but my impression is that the British commanders Montgomery and Browning may have decided it was probably better to let the Americans have their way without an alliance splitting row, and if the operation failed then they would have to own their own mistakes. They probably hadn't calculated that they would still get the blame anyway, at least in many history books and in YouTube comments, although individuals like Gavin are notably quiet on the matter and people like Brereton and Williams rarely seem to be given any consideration at all. The Hollywood film does not feature either of these important USAAF officers, nor a single 508th trooper or any action in Nijmegen on the first day at all. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020) The 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem: A-Z Troop volumes, Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022)
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  259.  @johnlucas8479  - of course, but the same caveat applied to the operation DEADSTICK assault on the Orne river and canal bridges in Normandy. There's always the option of not trying, but then you guarantee failure, like at Nijmegen.
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  260. I think the key to understanding Lindquist is in the earlier Normandy chapters of Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012), Chapter 8: When Captain Chet Graham, the commanding officer of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion and the acting battalion executive officer, received the attack order he was stunned. "The orders were to cross open ground and take Hill 95, with no information given of enemy strength, nor possible help from our artillery. When I received the orders, I said, 'With WHAT?' (2nd Battalion strength had gone from 640 to 225 with 8 officers.) Anyway that was our job. "I asked Colonel Lindquist, 'What about Colonel Alexander's plan to advance through the cover of the trees?' "He said, 'You have your orders.' " [Alexander had been the 505th's XO and replaced the 508th's XO, who was found to be combat ineffective on D-Day and court-martialled by Ridgway out of the Airborne. Alexander then took over 2nd Battalion when the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Shanley, was critically wounded. Shanley recovered to become regiment XO for Market Garden] When Captain Graham returned to the 2nd Battalion command post, he found out "that Colonel Alexander had been hit in the lungs by a tree burst and evacuated. So I was it (battalion CO)." ... On the right flank, Captain Chet Graham and 2nd Battalion jumped off, attacking southwest toward Hill 95. "We moved at 0800 across the area with no cover and were shelled by 88s for most of the two miles. "F Company was hugging the hill with open ground on its right and being cut up. I pulled them back and planned to move E Company to the right. (Hill 95 had been a Roman outpost. It had a sheltered moat inside the perimeter circling the hill, about ten feet wide. So, we were able to move under cover from side to side.) "During this time, I was being called back to our big radio to converse with Colonel Lindquist. He told me not to move F Company back. ('We don't give up ground we have taken - get them back.') I explained my troubles and my plan, and told him he should come and see for himself, instead of second guessing from a mile away. I was relieved of command on the spot. Royal Taylor came down and followed the plan." ... When Lieutenant Colonel Mark Alexander learned of the costly fight for Hill 95, he was angered by the unnecessary loss of life. "They went right across the open space and straight up the hill instead of taking advantage of the woods. There was no reason why they should go across that open valley. I knew if they did they would get their butts blown off. It shouldn't have been that way. They really got nailed and a lot of guys got killed. "After the war, I asked Captain [Chet] Graham, who took command after I was hit, 'Why did you guys go across the open valley?' "He said, 'We had our orders to go straight ahead, so we did.' "Lindquist stayed back in his CP and never did even come up before giving those orders, I found out afterwards. I know he didn't do reconnaissance. It's foolish, in fact. But he was more of a guy that commanded from back a-ways. He always laid back and relied on information from others, and you generally can't do it that way and be successful. Can't do it. "That operation always bothered me, because I know if I'd been there, a lot of these guys wouldn't have lost their lives." In his interview with Cornelius Ryan in 1967 for A Bridge Too Far (1974), Gavin was quite open about his criticism of Lindquist, but Ryan didn't follow it up: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.” It’s interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant to jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area. (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - box 101, folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Ryan did not explore this any further and the short passage in the published book has the whole Nijmegen story on the first afternoon and early evening, as told in Nordyke's regimental history, completely missing: Although General Browning had directed Gavin not to go for the Nijmegen crossing until the high ground around Groesbeek was secured, Gavin was confident that all the 82nd's objectives could be taken on this first day. Evaluating the situation some twenty-four hours before the jump, Gavin had called in the 508th's commander, Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, and directed him to send one battalion racing for the bridge. In the surprise and confusion of the airborne landings, Gavin reasoned, the gamble was well worth taking. "I cautioned Lindquist about the dangers of getting caught in streets," Gavin remembers, "and pointed out that the way to get the bridge was to approach from east of the city without going through built-up areas." Whether by misunderstanding or a desire to clean up his initial assignments, Lindquist's own recollection was that he was not to commit his troopers in an assault on the bridge until the regiment's other objectives had been achieved. To the 1/Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, Jr., Lindquist assigned the task of holding protective positions along the Groesbeek-Nijmegen highway about a mile and a quarter southeast of the city. Warren was to defend the area and link up with the regiment' remaining two battalions to the west and east. Only when these missions were accomplished, Warren recalled, was he to prepare to go into Nijmegen. Thus, instead of driving for the bridge from the flat farming areas to the east, Warren's battalion found itself squarely in the center of those very built-up areas Gavin had sought to avoid. (A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan 1974) And that's how you conduct a successful cover-up between 1974 and 2012, which includes the period in which a Hollywood film is produced.
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  261. 32 Stirling and 6 Albemarle aircraft were used to tow 32 Horsa and 6 WACO gliders for Browning's Corps HQ and US liaison (1 WACO per division) and fighter control teams (2 WACO per team) to Groesbeek. The second half of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment sent to Arnhem in the 2nd lift required 40 Dakota and 1 Halifax to tow 40 Horsa and 1 Hamilcar (for the 2 universal carriers) [Appendices 8 and 9, Glider Pilots At Arnhem by Mike Peters and Luuk Buist, 2009] The gliders were assigned to their respective loads, but the point is well made that the towing aircraft could have been organised to take a combat unit in the 1st lift. One point of interest, the WACO that crashed near Student's headquarters with documents revealing the airlift resupply schedules carried the 101st Airborne's Liaison Officer to Corps HQ and his Comms Team, and this was the reason Browning did not have communications with the 101st Division throughout the operation.
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  262. The film A Bridge Too Far is indeed 50% fiction and the scenes depicting the final capture of the highway bridge at Nijmegen shows how it was supposed to happen, but not the way it did happen. The film does not include the rail bridge a mile to the west, which was the first objective of 'H' and 'I' Companies 504th PIR, and the Grenadier Guards waiting to cross the highway bridge picked up a radio message stating there was an American flag at the far end of the bridge, not realising it was from the Irish Guards supporting the assault crossing and only have seen the rail bridge. The Grenadiers decided they needed to get moving and after one attempt failed they got four tanks over the bridge at 1830 hrs, losing two at the far side and seeing no Americans the other two carried on into the village of Lent firing at everything that moved in the gathering twilight. There were no US paratroopers at the far side of the highway bridge. 'H' and 'I' Companies were still fighting their way through fortified houses on the north bank between the two bridges. The two tanks of Sergeants Robinson and Pacey first met US paratroopers of 'G' Company from the second wave of the river crossing who had followed the railway north and established a roadblock at the rail overpass over the main highway at 1800 hrs. The tanks arrived, firing at anything that moved until they realised the troopers at the overpass were Americans. The tanks could not proceed any further because a StuG IIIG assault gun was covering the exit of the road underpass further up the highway on the far side. The paratroopers did not have any bazooka rounds to stalk the gun and deal with it themselves. Companies 'H' and 'I' then reached the north end of the highway bridge at 1915 hrs, 45 minutes after Robinson had crossed over, but were in time to see Captain Carrington's Rear Link tank cross over and stop to provide a radio link between Robinson and his Squadron CO back in Nijmegen. He was followed over the bridge at 1930 by two Troops of M10 tank destroyers from 21st Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery, and at 2145, Nos.2 and 4 Company 3rd Battalion Irish Guards infantry to secure the bridgehead. The 504th reached their planned stop line between Fort Hof van Holland and Fort Het Laauwik at 2000 hrs. All these timings are on a contemporary sketch map that can be found online in the battle detectives case studies on Nijmegen and also published in Operation Market Garden: September 1944 by Simon Forty and Tom Timmermans (2018). The highway bridge demolition lines had been cut by Lieutenant Tony Jones of the 14th Field Squadron Royal Engineers walking across the bridge alongside his scout car behind Sergeant Robinson's Shermans. The film incorrectly had Julian Cook leading the attack on the bridge. This is incorrect. It was his Company commanders Kappel and Burriss. Cornelius Ryan's account of this action is very sketchy and does not include any timings, and the narrative suggests Burriss was at the faar end of the highway bridge when Robinson crossed over. Obviously wrong because he inlcudes an account of Burriss passing the abandoned 7.5cm Pak gun midway between the bridges that was hit by Sergeant Pacey's tank as it crossed over earlier, and Ryan has Burriss greeting Robinson's gunner, Johnson, but that's impossible because Robinson's tank was half a mile up the road in Lent with 'G' Company at the rail overpass. Christer Bergström, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vol 2 (2020), Chapter II. 20 September - The Decisive Day: The Encounter North of Nijmegen There are many misunderstandings concerning the capture of the large road bridge at Nijmegen, but a closer study shows that it was the British that took this important object. From SS-Sturmbannführer Schwappacher's report, it is clear that the Americans took the German positions on the railway embankment, west of the road bridge, only after the British had taken the road bridge. In a report for an advanced officer's court at Fort Benning in 1948, Captain Kappel described the American advance towards the road bridge: "At about 1830 hrs tanks were heard on the northern side and were soon identified as British... At about 1938 hrs the Second Platoon H Company, and the group under Company Commander of I Company reached the highway bridge." Other sources: John Sliz, Bridging The Club Route: Guards Armoured Division's Engineers (2015) RG Poulussen, Little Sense Of Urgency: A factbook on operation Market Garden (2014, 2021)
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  263. ​ @Arc Anon Drum - even Julian Cook complained about Redford's performance, because it showed his character doing things he simply didn't do. Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012): Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013): Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." Phil Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men.” This is not obfuscation. This is one of your colonels 'goofing off' in the middle of an operation to shorten the war...
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  264.  @johnburns4017  - just exploring more pages in Box 114 Folder 47, the pages are not in a logical order, keep going and you see more details of Chennell's account and he says the observation site was an old anti-aircraft fortification of some sort (bingo!) an they were there for 10 or 15 minutes before they took the officers back.
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  265. The problem here is that there's no evidence Browning lacked judgement, was self-delusional, or scapegoated the Poles. If you're referring to his dismissal of the aerial photograph of German tanks near Arnhem, he was correct to dismiss it because the photo was located in a Dutch archive in 2014 and found to show obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV models ruling out a 1944 panzer division and belonged to a training unit that was not even in the Arnhem area during the landings. Cornelius Ryan made the mistake of basing this story on one person's account after Browning had passed away and unable to defend himself, and the RAF had donated all their aerials of the Netherlands to the Dutch government after the war and could not be located. If you're referring to his decision to move the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd to the 1st lift, it was a last minute change to the glider schedule and not a pre-planned ego trip. Browning was unable to object to changes Brereton made to his COMET and proposed outline SIXTEEN for the final MARKET plan, because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's operation LINNET II plan scheduled at too short notice to print and distribute maps. That operation was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning knew Brereton had planned to accept his resignation letter and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Browning could do nothing about the changes, except advance his transport to the 1st lift and try to influence events once he was on the ground in the Netherlands. If you're referring to the Poles being blamed for the failure of MARKET GARDEN, that's a ridiculous slur. At no point could the Poles be blamed since they arrived late on D+4, and long after the operation had already been compromised by the Americans (most likely the source of this slur) at Nijmegen on D-Day. But it is an undisputed fact that General Sosabowski was difficult to work with and was insubordinate to General Horrocks at the Valburg conference on 24 September. The Polish troops were also reported to be ill-disciplined when they had a chance to fight the Germans - perhaps understandably - but when you get complaints even from the SS about the Poles firing on their medics trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield, then you have a unit that falls below the disciplinary standard expected in the British Army. Montgomery initially wrote to Socabowski to praise him and his brigade for their efforts and to request recommendations for awards, but after receiving reports from Browning and Horrocks he changed his tune and asked the Chief of the Imperial General Staff to have the Polish Brigade removed from Browning's command and perhaps sent to Italy. At no point to my knowledge did any of these officers blame the Poles for the failure of the operation, and if you have a reference that does, then I would be grateful if you could provide it.
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  266.  @jacobgorman3145  - I wanted to offer corrections on the role of the RAF, but on all of the points you raised the information's out there and the Market Garden research rabbit hole runs very deep. I've been reading on this for 46 years (since reading Cornelius Ryan before the film was released) and I think the first rule of research is not to stop digging when you think you have found the answer - and that's a criticism directed not so much at people reading the comments on YouTube videos, but to historians and professional authors. TIK has done a terrific job in challenging the conventional narrative and he is right to be focussing in his later videos on Gavin and the 82nd Airborne. He hasn't drilled down to regimental level on the blunder at Nijmegen, which is why I would recommend anyone interested in this to read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), because most books on Market Garden as a whole don't even reference it - they are so wedded to the conventional narrative.
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  267.  @bigwoody4704  - I already gave you the source: Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016) Page 44: 'Lieutenant-Colonel Jones [CRE Guards Armoured Division], "Although I had been warned to keep my bridging vehicles off the road, now choc-a-bloc, I took a chance and moved the necessary vehicles up to Valkenswaard, where they would be ideally placed for a dash to Zon if the opposition at Aalst could be overcome." The Irish Guards reached Eindhoven at 1800 hours. At 1900 hours they reached Zon. When the Irish Group began to move, Charles Jones got on the radio and told his men to bring the bridging equipment forward. "John's squadron and the bridging arrived almost simultaneously at 1930 hours, and the squadron got right on with the job." ' Page 49: 'Certain works blame the Zon bridge for putting the operation thirty-six hours behind schedule. This is incorrect. At most, it put the advance only ten hours behind schedule, but I think that this is also not correct. Since the armoured forces did not operate at night, they would have stopped for the night anyhow and started again the next morning. The engineers worked all night and made sure the bridge was ready by the morning.' I'm not giving you the answer for why the ground operation started at 1435 hours on D-Day, and the aircraft were not flying overhead at that time, they had delivered their last loads by around 1400 and were on their way home. You'll have to re-read Ritchie's book you claimed to have read, or if you had the ability, figure it out for yourself! I can think of three reasons - one in Ritchie that has to do with the air plan, one given by Horrocks for the sake of his ground troops, and a third one I can think of myself which has to do with surprise. Ten points for each correct answer!
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  268. Browning's portrayal by Dirk Bogarde in A Bridge Too Far (1977) I believe was deliberately conflicted by the actor himself. Browning's widow was deeply upset about the way her husband was portrayed in the film and Bogarde was also dismayed by the script. The scene concerning the aerial photograph of German tanks in the Arnhem area was particularly interesting because Bogarde served in the RAF as a photo interpreter on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets. He knew most of the personalities involved, including Montgomery and Browning. The actual photograph was 'lost' after the war until the Dutch government digitised its archives and put them online - it transpired the RAF had donated its huge photo library of the Netherlands to the Dutch to help with reconstruction and land use surveys after the war. The RAF's Air Historical Branch found the image in the collection and Sebastian Ritchie wrote a booklet on their study, available as a free pdf download courtesy of the British taxpayer - Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, the 2nd edition is dated 2019. Study of the image appears to show Mark III and early Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), eliminating a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. We now know that the only unit in Holland on 12 September with such vehicles was the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', reorganised as part of the II.Abteilung and ordered south to Hechtel in Belgium on 7 September. Only three tanks made the journey without breaking down, and they were destroyed by Guards Armoured Division on 12 September, the same day the others were photographed by Spitfire in the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield undergoing maintenance at a supply dump in the woods. On the opening day of Market Garden, 17 September, they were laagered in an orchard at Wolfswinkel, opposite the Sonshe Heide drop zone of the 506th PIR, where they were shot up by escorting fighter aircraft as they attempted to fire on the drop zone. Two Mark III tanks escaped, one ran the gaunlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode, where it was only hit by unprimed bazooka rounds, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel and bumped the Easy/504th roadblock at Grave, where the lead tank caused some casualties to troopers that climbed out of their foxholes in the belief they were British tanks arriving early. They turned tail and were never seen again. Dirk Bogarde had the option of turning down the role, but obviously opted to take it, presumably in order to mitigate the script as far as possible in his protrayal of Browning as being somewhat conflicted. The conventional narrative was established only by Cornelius Ryan's interview with Major Brian Urquhart (name changed to "Fuller" in the film to deconflict the character with Sean Connery's Major-General Roy Urquhart), and the aerial photo that might settle the question was lost in a Dutch archive all this time. The photo shown in the film was an inaccurate 'oblique' shot of the type only used for point targets like bridges and barracks. James Gavin, 37 in March 1944, was portrayed first by Robert Ryan, far too old at 52/53 in the 1962 film The Longest Day, and Ryan O'Neal, 35 in 1976 when A Bridge Too Far was filmed. I believe Gavin was a very quiet understated man, but O'Neal's overstated performance would probably have been accurate if book and film had even told the story of his being informed the 508th PIR were not moving on the Nijmegen bridge after landing, as per his specific instructions in the divisional briefing. This is all detailed in 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). On hearing the news that Lindquist's regiment was digging-in on the Groesbeek ridge, Gavin was as "mad" as the 508th's liaison officer, Captain Chet Graham, had ever seen him. He ordered Graham into a Jeep and said "come with me - let's get him moving." On arrival at the 508th CP, Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed." You will never see this in a Hollywood film, not as long as you can blame Montgomery and maintain the confirmation bias of American audiences.
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  269. I think it's an open question whether there was a report sitting unread on a German intelligence chief's desk on Sunday 17 September, when the airborne landings were taking place, and I haven't followed this up in the literature because I am satisfied that the Germans did not act on any actual information received. This suggestion was debunked in 1963 by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree in his book De Slag By Arnhem, translated into English with journalist Cornelius Bauer as The Battle of Arnhem (1966). Boeree had studied the movements of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' to draw his conclusions and it would be questionable why the division was in the process of being withdrawn to Germany for refit (another day and the last elements would have been gone) if it had been sent to Arnhem in the first place because they were expecting an airborne attack there. None of the German Generals interviewed after the war had any idea the airborne attack was coming. General Gavin investigated this aspect of the MARKET GARDEN story himself and was satisfied it was nonsense, and told A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan this in their quite extensive correspondence. If you look in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of his papers held by the Alden Library at Ohio State University, and much of it is digitised for online access, box 101 folder 09 contains copies of Boeree's research that Gavin forwarded to Ryan and letters exchanged between them where Gavin tells Ryan he found the research useful - he even suddenly realised now in 1966 the reports of German armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen in transit to Arnhem. Ryan himself complained that Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands had "a real burr under the saddle" about the whole Christiaan 'King Kong' Lindemans story and was "almost bludgeoning" him into doing it in the book. He thought it was worth a large footnote at the most. The only instance of forewarning that was acted on as far as I can find is from Generalmajor Walter Grabmann of the Luftwaffe 3.Jagd-Division at Deelen airfield near Arnhem. He realised the open fields around his accommodation in the grounds of the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital made ideal airborne landing zones and tried to warn Model his new headquarters at Oosterbeek might be vulnerable. Model dismissed his concerns, pointing out that the area was too far behind the lines and several river barriers for the Allies to risk an airborne operation. The one officer who did take Grabmann seriously was SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Sepp Krafft of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 based in Arnhem. He and Grabmann knew each other from their pre-war service in the German civilian police and took the warning seriously. He arranged for his two training companies to vacate their depot in Arnhem and camp in the woods north and west of Oosterbeek as additional protection for Model. This placed them in the ideal position to block the first moves of 1st Parachute Brigade from the landing zones into Arnhem. The Arnhem barracks were bombed during the morning of 17 September, as was the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital, as British intelligence knew it was being used for senior Luftwaffe officer billets, female 'Blitzmaiden' signals auxiliaries, and as a collection centre for about 400 artillery troops from units shattered in Normandy to refit Artillerie-Regiment 184 from 84.Infanterie-Division. All the indications are that the airborne landings achieved total surprise. Grabmann, having lunch at his quarters, was horrified to see a glider landing less a kilometer away, and because of the landing zones had to make a long detour to reach his command post at Schaarsbergen near the airfield, where he found significant bomb damage to the Divisions-dorf area and total confusion. Other sources: Why Did 3 JD Relocate from Deelen to Duisburg.pdf, gyges web site Denmark, downloaded 13/06/2009 Arnhem, a Few Vital Hours: The SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 at the Battle of Arnhem September 1944, Scott Revell with Niall Cherry and Bob Gerritsen (2013, revised 2021)
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  270.  @jbjones1957  - "one highway" and "main axis" are contradictory terms. The Club Route was the main axis and there were many alternatives using alternative crossings. The Club Route between Nederasselt and Nijmegen was not used because the Maas-Waal canal bridge at Honingutje was deemed to be too badly damaged to support tanks, so the Heart Route alternative via the lift bridge at Heumen was used. This puts the lie to the suggestion there was only one route to Arnhem with no flexibility in the plan - just part of the mythology propagated by A Bridge Too Far. Heart Route "not a highway and only for fighting troops" - what on Earth does that even mean? The route you quoted between Valkenswaard and Grave was one alternative route and one that was used to by-pass Eindhoven and the first cut in the corrider near Veghel, and it wasn't "useless", it was used!
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  271.  @jbjones1957  - the best time to capture the Nijmegen highway bridge was on the first afternoon after the German rear echelon units in Nijmegen had evacuated the city by around 1830 hrs and before Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived as it got dark with 30 armoured vehicles. When the 1st Battalion 508th PIR arrived at their initial objective at De Ploeg in late afternoon, closely followed by the regiment commander, he was met by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted the city and left just an NCO and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge. Instead of sending the battalion, as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing the previous day, the 508th CO sent only a reinforced platoon, Lt Weaver's 3rd Platoon from C Company, to the bridge to report on its condition. The three-man point team under PFC Joe Atkins of the battalion S-2 (Intel) Section got separated in the crowds of jubilant Dutch from the rest of the patrol, who had taken a wrong turn and got lost, made it to the bridge on their own and surprised the seven guards at the southern end without firing a shot. They waited an hour for reinforcements, but none came. Atkins decided they had to leave the bridge when it got dark and as they withdrew they could hear "heavy equipment" arrive at the other end of the bridge, undoubtedly Gräbner's vehicles arriving from Arnhem. Soon afterwards, elements of 10.SS-Panzer-Division's Kampfgruppe Reinhold started arriving and the bridge defences were built up and reinforced from overnight 17/18 September onwards. The job of securing the Nijmegen bridges, or a bridge, was the 508th PIR's of 82nd Airborne Division, not the Guards Armoured Division. This was the point at which Operation Market was compromised on the ground and in the planning, because Browning's Operation Comet plan was for glider coup de main asaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges to be conducted with a Company each detached from the three battalions of 1st Airlanding Brigade, but after Comet was cancelled and expanded to Operation Market with the American divisions added, the planning was passed to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army. He deleted the glider coup de main assaults, ostensibly because of Flak at the bridges, but this is nonsense, the glider release points were 6 Km away on the same track as the main landing zones. Urquhart attempted to replace the Arnhem coup de main by using his Reconnaissance Squadron and for the Grave bridge Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR demanded a special drop zone for one company at the southern end and he got it. Gavin made no such arrangements for the Nijmegen bridge and assigned the mission to a regimental commander who had performed badly in Normandy and thought it would be sufficient to instruct him "to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" and stand over a map with him to show the exact route he expected 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. You're right about losing time, but it was the first vital hours after landing that are the critical hours for seizing a bridge by airborne forces, which is the whole point of using airborne forces. Guards Armoured arrived in the morning of the 19 September after the bridges had been substantially reinforced by the Germans and several combined armour/infantry attacks over a 36-hour period were required to finally secure both bridges. Gavin knew he had screwed up because he insisted his own troops (the 504th PIR) conduct the river assault crossing on 20 September, when the default plan for this scenario was for the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to conduct a river assault with one or two brigades. Sources: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge Little Sense Of Urgency - an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020) Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021)
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  272.  @jbjones1957  - not a problem with the notifications, it happens to me too when the thread gets to about 10 replies. The 8.8cm Flak gun was on the main Keizer Lodwijkplein traffic circle south of the bridge where it was knocked out, but I'm not at all sure when it was positioned there. The 1/508th S-2 Scouts who got to the bridge in daylight through the Dutch crowds obviously didn't see it on their approach or gave it a wide berth. They captured seven guards and a "small artillery weapon", but without an identification of the weapon it's hard to know what sort of unit it belonged to. I believe the 8.8cm Flak guns positioned for ground combat around the highway bridge are the four guns seen on the defence overprint map down on the polder east of the bridge, and there's a Household Cavalry report that this Flak position was dismantled when they reached the area, which ties in. The account of Gernot Traupel (adjutant of Kampfgruppe Reinhold - II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) states that they took over the nearby Flak battery when they arrived after Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 and incorporated it into the defence. I got the impression that was when they repositioned the guns, but I may be wrong. If Hees said the gun was already in the ground defence position, then maybe it was sometime between the 11 September overprint date and 17 September. The resistance headquarters was in a hotel (I forget the name) on Molenstraat, on the corner with Tweede Walstraat - it's now occupied by a pizza restaurant. Ironically, just a few yards down Molenstraat in the old hospital (now redeveloped as a shopping centre called Molenpoort) was the Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei or BdO, this was the headquarters of the German 'Order Police' for the entire Netherlands, equivalent to a division HQ and evacuated from Den Haag in 1943 when the Dutch coast became a possible invasion coast. The HQ was evacuated again on 17 September by 1830 hrs, moving first to the training depot at Schalkhaar (near Deventer) and then to Zwolle. They left behind their Musikorps-zug (band platoon) of 30-40 men, which Traupel notes at midnight were part of the bridge defence, but with all of Gräbner's troops there earlier he may have missed seeing them then. All I know about the glider coup de main attack for Nijmegen in COMET was that Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork, the pilot who flew the lead glider at Pegasus Bridge in Normandy, was due to lead D Company of the 7th KOSB Airlanding Battalion to the bridge and land on the polder next to the bridge from a release point 6 Km west over the Waal on the same track as the air route to the Arnhem landing zones. It was to be a dawn attack because of the no Moon period and he wasn't looking forward to it. Kampfgruppe Hencke was deployed on the Maas-Waal canal, which was the link sector of the Maas and Waal river defence lines, and Hencke's headquarters was in the NEBO monastery at De Ploeg. They were incorporated onto the defence of the Nijmegen rail bridge after they had withdrawn from the Maas-Waal canal bridges during the battle. The city itself was evacuated of German rear echelon troops. The 508th orders containing the "on command of the divisional commander" matches the "on division order" in Lindquist's own Field Order No.1 dated 13 September. Gavin's final briefing according to McManus was the day before the operation, when the plan seemed to be shaping up well - in Gavin's words, so that would be 16 September. It's not in writing, but McManus has Shenley (508th XO) and Nordyke has Chet Graham (508th LO to Div HQ) as witnesses. Together with Lindquist's poor peformance in Normandy (Nordyke's chapter 8 on the Hill 95 attack) I think we can take their words over Lindquist's. I thought McManus' analysis of the bridge versus ridge priorities was very good and I concur with it. It seems that Lindquist struggled to understand this. I can only speculate that Gavin thought the Reichswald was potentially the greater threat and wanted the 505th on that flank. It certainly looks like a big mistake in hindsight, but then the 508th would have been better suited to a defensive role, which apart from the Mook rail bridge target, was essentially the 505th's role. I agree with your comment on reserves, he had the engineer Battalion (less A Company) available as well, they were protecting his HQ in the woods west of Groesbeek, with 2/505th on Hill 81.8 behind it. Just my tuppence ha'penny for what it's worth. Thanks for your own thoughts.
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  273.  @jbjones1957  - sorry JB, I didn't get a notification for this either, just scanning through the threads again by chance. The reason the 82nd and the 101st were switched was only because of the airfields in England. If the 101st based in the southwest of England went to Nijmegen/Grave, they would cross over the flight path of the 82nd based in the west of England going to Eindhoven. That was the reason, nothing sinister. 1st Airborne were based in the East Midlands, so their flight path was clear of the American units but joined alongside the northern approach used by the 82nd. The 101st flew a separate southern route over Allied held territory in Belgium then up the intended corridor. Some of the planning decisions were a bit baffling, but switching the 82nd and 101st made a lot of sense. If you do an image search of Market Garden air routes or navigation map, you should find an example. Could the 101st have done better (at Nijmegen) ? Quite possibly, but only because the attached parachute regiments in the two divisions had different quality in leadership. The 506th (101st Div) and 508th (82nd Div) were both 'attached' rather than 'assigned', since the US airborne divisions were originally raised with two glider and one parachute regiments in 1942, and then the organisation was reversed because it made more efficient use of the available transport aicraft. You get more troops delivered from the aircraft by parachute (18 on average) than by using the same aircraft to tow a WACO glider (13 troops plus a non-combatant pilot). The 506th and 508th were both green but well-trained regiments on D-Day in Normandy, but the 506th was led by Colonel Robert F Sink, who performed well from all reports, but the 508th was led by talented administratve officer Colonel Roy Lindquist, who had excelled as an S-1 (Admin and Personnel) officer in the early US Airborne forces and was also one of the very first officer volunteers. A shortage of command officers meant that Lindquist was given command of the 508th battalion when first raised, and then promoted to 'full-bird' Colonel as the battalion was expanded to a regiment. Lindquist's story, to me, sounds very similar to Captain Herbert Sobel's of Easy Company, 506th - the famous Band of Brothers, who was a strict disciplinarian and hard trainer, but hopeless in the field training exercises. This led to a Sergeants mutiny within the Company before D-Day, all signing a letter resigning their stripes because they did not wish to serve under Sobel in combat. Colonel Sink was furious with them and took some actions such as reducing them in rank and transferring one of them out of the Company, but he also reassigned Sobel to a parachute school in England and Easy got a new CO transferred from (iirc) Bravo Company - Lt. Meehan. Meehan was killed on D-Day and Winters became CO, and the rest is history. In the 508th, there was no mutiny, and Lindquist remained in command throughout the war, although after some incidents in Normandy, 82nd CO Matthew Ridgway did not trust Lindquist and would not promote him, according to Gavin's 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far. This was the situation Gavin inherited when he took over the division from Ridgway in August. He probably had the same problem with regard to promotions, because Lindquist had seniority in the grade he could not promote another Colonel in the division over Lindquist, and this may be the reason Gavin did not replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was doing both jobs during Market Garden. So we have Gavin left with a decision to make on assigning his three parachute regiments to the three main objectives in his AO - Grave, Nijmegen, and protecting his landing zones from potential counter-attack from the Reichswald. His decision to assign the 508th to the critical Nijmegen mission looks like a very bad mistake in hindsight, because the Reichswald was basically unoccupied (I do have details on units in the area on D-Day of the operation if you want them). The potential tank threat didn't emerge, at least until later in the operation when Panzerbrigade 108 arrived in the area, but that was after the Guards Armoured had arrived on the Allied side.
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  274. It's Bellerophon on Pegasus.
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  275. I'm not sure if recommend is the right word as the book did not suit my particular interests, but I was gifted Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister by Nicholas Shakespeare (2017) from my mother, whose father (my grandfather) served on destroyer HMS Mackay in the disastrous 1940 Norway campaign and was there again for the German surrender in 1945. It focuses on the following huge Norway debate in the House of Commons 7-9 May 1940 and how in the six minutes it took for MPs to vote in the division lobbies on no confidence in the Chamberlain government, Churchill unexpectedly became Prime Minister and changed the course of the war. If you want something with more military details (as I was hoping) you would have to look elsewhere, but in terms of the political debate, this has to be the ultimate inside story. I did find it interesting that at least two or three recent TV productions from Norway have been shown in the UK relating events around the German invasion of Norway in 1940, two focusing on the escape and exile of the Royal family and another on the removal of Norway's gold reserves before the Germans could get their hands on it, with echoes of Kelly's Heroes! All of them were excellent productions and if you like Nordic drama with a historical backdrop then they're worth seeking out. I can't recall the names of the series except Atlantic Crossing on the exile of the Crown Princess Martha in the United States and her relationship with President Roosevelt, which starred Swedish actress Sofia Helin - best known for the Danish-Swedish production of police drama The Bridge (Bron | Broen).
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  276.  @Mulberry2000  - you found the report! Thanks, I will check box 100 folder 3 in more detail today. I think you might have misunderstood Lindquist's resources - he had three battalions in his regiment. Lindquist's original Field Order No.1, 508 PIR dated 13 September 1944 (reproduced in RG Poulussen's Lost at Nijmegen, 2011, ANNEXES) states: 2. a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ "T", seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589). 3. x. (6) All Bns will be prepared to attack to the N, within their sectors to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633). (Signed) LINDQUIST Commanding So all three Battalions, except D Company of 2nd Battalion clearing the DZ, were tasked to establish key roadblocks along a line south of Nijmegen, with 2nd Battalion (Otho Holmes) at De Hut blocking the Grave and Gennep highways, 1st Battalion (Shields Warren) at De Ploeg blocking the Groesbeek road, and 3rd Battalion (Louis Mendez) seizing Berg-en-Dal on the Kleve highway. 1st and 3rd Battalions were on the ridge of the high ground overlooking Nijmegen. 2nd Battalion on the left flank were on lower ground nearer the canal and later were to seize Bridge 10 at Honinghutje on D+1. This deployment looks very defensive, because Gavin had been warned the Nijmegen Dutch army barracks might contain "a regiment of SS" troops (the reduced condition of 10.SS-Panzer-Division) and they might be drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve behind the Reichswald. So Gavin's fears were that the SS troops might deploy from their barracks when he lands and form a blocking line along the Groesbeek ridge to deny him access to Nijmegen, so there could be a big fight for the ridge. And he was also fearful that tanks might be coming out of the Reichswald to attack his rear, so he deployed the 505th to secure Groesbeek and establish a perimeter facing the Reichswald. Then, by 15 September, Gavin was apparently feeling more confident, perhaps by a lack of any further intelligence reports confirming these worst fears, he decided... "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." (Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945, reproduced p.11 Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011) He did this in the final divisional briefing, with Jack Norton (Division G-3) and Chet Graham (508th liaison to Division HQ) as witnesses: At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." (September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012) Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) You can recognise Jack Norton's language in the report written in 1945 by Norton (Assistant Chief of Staff G-3) and he possibly seeks to explain why things went wrong, but all the other sources are also personal accounts and putting together multiple sources usually gets you to the truth. The outlier in this case is Lindquist, because he fails to acknowledge being told to move on the bridge two days before the jump, he was expecting an instruction ("on Div order") after landing and in position on the ridge, so he didn't seem to realise that Gavin had decided to give the Division order before the jump. That's why I say Lindquist was not a good field commander (ref Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy), and possibly Gavin did not think he made himself clear enough in the briefing when Chet Graham reported Lindquist was not moving. Personally I think if the ridge was clear, both 1st and 3rd Battalions should have moved immediately into Nijmegen instead of digging-in on the ridge, perhaps each leaving one company behind to roadblock their rear. The 508th plan is a reverse of Lathbury's for 1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem: he directed 1st Battalion (Dobie) to the high ground, 2nd Battalion (Frost) to seize the three bridges, and 3rd Battalion (Fitch) to go directly to the highway bridge to support Frost. Only Frost, Brigade HQ, and C Company of 3rd got through. Hope this helps.
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  277. Having read through everything in that box (box 100 folder 03: Daily Plans, 82nd Airborne), I note a few things documented here I have mentioned to you in my comments: Pages 6-7 (Norton's G-3 report pages 2-3), 11 September, Section II. paragraph d., Norton notes the difficulty of dealing with the "inflexible planning of Troop Carrier Command" (i.e. General Paul Williams of US IX TCC): Their story ran something like this: "We got ourselves set up once to run off Operation 'LINNET'. It's now utterly impossible to re-arrange our plans". (At this time there were approximately five days until "D" Day). They were unable to shift aircraft from one airfield to another, to change serials and their order of arrival over DZ's, to the extent that the ground plan became practically secondary to the air plan. The interesting thing about Operation LINNET (Tournai) and Brereton's alternative target for "LINNET II" (Liège-Maastricht bridges), they were both three-division airlifts with two flights planned for D-Day. Only by the time MARKET was scheduled two weeks later was it determined there was not enough daylight to conduct two airlifts entirely in daylight hours, but Williams (contributing two of his Troop Carrier Groups) was happy to fly two airlifts for the British COMET plan a week ago. The proposed replacement for COMET was an upgrade to three divisions flying broadly the same schedule, with outbound first lift taking off at night to arrive at dawn and the return of the second lift landing at night. Brereton had made an arbitrary decision to conduct all flights from take-off to landing in daylight, as per LINNET and LINNET II, when it was not necessary or desirable to do so. The frustration was felt in all three divisions because they would all receive their reinforcements over an extended period of several days (and the known clear weather window was only two days). 12 September, paragraph II: There was considerable difficulty in making our ground attack plan fit in with the Troop Carrier air plan which was originally set up for "LINNET". Norton makes no mention of the final division briefing on 15 September. Instead he says this on 13 September: Section III. Final briefing of Unit Commanders and issuance of field order. September 15 was set as deadline for submission of unit field orders. 16 September, Section II, paragraph 1: General Browning directed General Gavin not to attempt seizure of NIJMEGEN Bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the BERG-EN-DAL high ground was firmly in our hands. 16 September, Section IV: Meeting of Unit Commanders wherein each commander outlined his plan to accomplish his mission. Colonel Lindquist at this meeting was directed to eize the high ground in the vivinity of BERG-EN-DAL as his primary mission and to attempt to seize the NIJMEGEN Bridge with a small force; namely, less than a battalion. According to Norton's quote in McManus (2012), he recorded Browning as saying: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” And his recollection in McManus was of an earlier briefing with the unit commanders where Gavin told Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Norton's 1945 post-war report does not tally with Gavin's 1945 letter to Westover, Gavin's 1967 interview by Cornelius Ryan, Chet Graham's testimony in Nordyke (2012), and Norton's own testimony in McManus (2012). It seems he conflated the two meetings, or did not recall the final Divisional briefing by Gavin was the day before the final Corps briefing by Browning. Norton's Section IV actually contradicts his own Section II.1, as II.1 suggests the objectives are taken sequentially, while IV suggests possibly both objectives to be secured at the same time. I think TIK absolutely nailed it when he questioned the veracity of Norton's post-war report. Based on the comments in his covering letter to Ryan, Gavin seemed surprised to find it in his papers.
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  278. I recently found the source of that intelligence. The number 1,000 is just a misquote of an observation there could be 1,000 tanks hidden in the forest, but Allied intelligence had already established Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his Army Group B front, or 50-100 is another figure I have seen quoted. In fact, Model's 5 September returns listed exactly 84 operational panzers, which by a bizarre coincidence matches exactly the total number of anti-tank guns in the combined establishments of 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Independent Parachute Brigade. The source for the Reichswald armour intel is Dutch resistance reports of heavy armour in the Reichswald, but the source of the armour was unknown until after the war. In the Cornelius Ryan Collection box 101, folder 9, page 48, is a covering letter from James Gavin to Cornelius Ryan enclosing some papers written by Dutch researcher T.A. Boeree. In the letter Gavin says he had just realised (in 1966!) where the armour in the Reichswald had come from. On 10 September Gavin says he was given a warning order from 1st Allied Airborne Army that he was assigned to operation MARKET and that Nijmegen was his target area, so he immediately went to 1st Airborne Division HQ to see their intel and planning, as they had been studying the area for operation COMET that had just been cancelled that morning. The reports of armour in the Reichswald was part of 1st Airborne's intelligence picture and they had been making their plans accordingly to deal with them, and this presumably now affected Gavin's planning for 82nd Airborne in MARKET. It was only now after reviewing the Boeree papers on the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen's withdrawal route across the Maas at Maastricht on 4 September, concentration at Sittard, and then on 7 September ordered north to Arnhem and the Veluwe region he realised their route took them through the Nijmegen area and the reports of armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen in transit. There are lots of hidden gems in the CRC that Ryan did not put in his book, and you may well speculate why not. He was a newspaper journalist by trade and I believe he did the usual journalistic thing of not digging any deeper once he had got his 'story'.
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  279. Also, Cornelius Ryan Collection (Ohio State University) Box 101, Folder 10 - James Gavin, Pages 2-3. I think the important thing to understand is not that the bridge and the Groesbeek heights were an either/or priority. The problem, as I understand it, was that although the presence of the II.SS-Panzerkorps was known to be refitting in the eastern Netherlands, each SS-Panzer-Division (9. 'Hohenstaufen' and 10. 'Frundsberg') were assessed to be reduced by the fighting in Normandy to a regimental battlegroup with few if any tanks, but they could not both be positively identified and located. The Dutch resistance had done an excellent job of reporting SS troops in various towns and villages in an area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, and had identified a vehicle symbol for the 'Hohenstaufen' and Ruurlo castle as a divisional HQ (but not which division). The fear was that the excellent Dutch army barracks facilities in Nijmegen could easily house a regiment of SS troops and the Panzerkorps could be receiving new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area just across the border behind the Reichswald forest. This led to the silly rumour the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, despite Generalfeldmarshal Model not having even 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400. So this intelligence assessment, which was still prevailing as late as SHAEF Intel Summary #26 on 16 September 1944, created a fear that 82nd Airborne could face significant opposition, rather than all of it being to the east of British 1st Airborne's area of operations. The next logical consideration was the high ground - the heavily wooded Groesbeek ridge or "heights" (which are not very high at all) - that lay between the city of Nijmegen (with its River Waal bridges) and the landing zones for the 82nd Airborne Division. If occupied by German combat troops in an easily defensive position, this could present a significant barrier to the 82nd's attempts to get into Nijmegen to seize the bridges, as well as threaten the landing zones required for subsequent airlifts. It's clear that both Gavin and Browning agreed that securing the Groesbeek heights was the first priority, because it secured the Division's airhead, and therefore the initial objective for the 508th PIR assigned to the Nijmegen mission. Because the intel position was uncertain (in fact, the 10th SS were at Ruurlo and the panzer depot was near Münster deeper into Germany), the 508th were expected to secure the Groesbeek ridge first, and only once that was done, to move into Nijmegen and seize the bridges. Most combat officers in the 82nd Division seemed to understand that, but Colonel Lindquist was a gifted administrator who seemed to think the mission was to secure the heights and wait for a division order to move on the bridges. The absence of a written order from Gavin before the operation seems to lend weight to the conclusions by RG Poulussen (Lost At Nijmegen, 2011) that the detailed plan laid out in Field Order No.1 for the 508th PIR, and repoduced in the appendix of his book, was 'the' plan for the Nijmegen operation. My problem is that Field Order No.1 was signed by "LINDQUIST Commanding" and not by Gavin. It was Lindquist's detailed plan for his subordinate battalion commanders to occupy their initial objectives. In Captain Westover's Q&A with Lindquist after the war (also in Poulussen's appendix), Lindquist denied receiving an order to move on the highway bridge on landing, he was only given the order to move after they were in position [on the ridge]. This is a lie by ommission, because he omits to mention the divisional briefing, in which Gavin says he emphasised the importance of the bridge to the overall success of the operation, and instructed Lindquist to go for the bridge if he could, and this claim has a witness in Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ, who says he sat in on the briefing. Chet Graham's testimony has only appeared in Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2) which was published the following year in 2012. Based on Graham's and others testimony of Lindquist's poor combat performance in Normandy, as related in Nordyke, and both Ridgway and Gavin not having much confidence in him as evidenced by Gavin in the Box 101 Folder 10 document of the Cornelius Ryan Collection, I think this is ground zero for Market Garden being compromised at Nijmegen.
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  280.  @johnburns4017  - if the Groesbeek heights were occupied in strength by the enemy it would imperil both the landing zones and threaten the rear of any moves into Nijmegen, so there's no question the wooded ground had to be cleared, like Hill 81.8, but once clear you have forces available for further operations.
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  281. I see no "sleight of hand" in digging deeper into available sources than most YouTubers. The goals of Market Garden were to cross the Rhine to establish bridgeheads on the River Ijssel for further operations into Germany, which would cut off all German forces in the western Netherlands and also cut the V-2 supply lines to their launch sites on the Dutch coast. Market Garden does NOT end the war by Christmas - only further operations into Germany could do that, and Montgomery was already planning the next phase of a pincer with US 1st Army in his ongoing discussions with Eisenhower during Market Garden. 15.Armee was still a substantial force, originally expected to meet the Allied invasion of the continent in the Pas de Calais. I recommend The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 by Jack Didden and Maartin Swarts (2022) for a detailed history and analysis.
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  282. Sources?
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  283. There was a sound tactical reason for giving Arnhem to 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade, and that was the 83 anti-tank guns they took to Arnhem between them, including 16 of the 17-pounder guns that can deal with the German Tiger tanks. The US Airborne Divisions had just 36 of the 6-pounder anti-tank guns in their AAAT Battalion and Glider Infantry Regiment, although they had more field artillery than their British counterparts. The intelligence picture of German SS panzer units reported northeast of Arnhem and only the unknown supposition of a tank depot at Kleve near the Reichswald probably decided the final divisional deployments.
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  284. I'm currently reading Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts' new book, The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022). The channel port garrisons really hampered the Canadian 1st Army's ability to pursue the 15.Armee up the coast. Much of the less mobile infantry was left behind to invest the channel fortresses, while the armoured units (1st Polish Armoured and 4th Canadian Armoured Divisions) were more mobile and continued the pursuit. When the 15.Armee withdrew into the Breskens pocket west of Antwerp, the canal zone terrain really required infantry as it was not suitable for amoured operations. Considering the 15.Armee was composed exclusively of infantry units itself, with mostly horse drawn transport, they conducted a very skilled withdrawal.
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  285. The 1st Battalion of the 508th PIR was not sent immediately to the Nijmegen highway bridge as Gavin had instructed, whereas at Arnhem two battalions were tasked to move directly to the bridges (2nd Battalion via the rail and pontoon bridges that got through, and 3rd Battalion directly that was mostly blocked except for one company that got through). The 1st Parachute Brigade (veterans of North Africa and Sicily, by the way) got the equivalent of a whole battalion and brigade HQ and support units to the Arnhem bridge and successfully carried out its mission of holding it for four days - twice as long as should have been necessary. The 508th had a poor field commander, not trusted by either Gavin or his predecessor Matthew Ridgway, according to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University, Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967). Gavin had decided against a British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge to seize it by coup de main because of his experience in Sicily (USAAF aircrews panicked by Flak dropped Gavin's 505th over a wide area and Gavin landed with just four or five men to command), so he decided to instruct the 508th to send one battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initital objectives on the Groesbeek ridge. This instruction was not carried out and it had fatal consequences for the entire operation and the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Gavin was clearly more concerned with potential counter-attacks from the Reichswald forest on the German border and assigned the more experienced and aggressive 505th to that sector, and arguably his best battalion in the whole division, Ben Vandervoort's 2nd/505th (Vandervoort was played by John Wayne in The Longest Day), was in division reserve on Hill 81.8 behind the Division CP. The 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald was just a rumour and the source was the fact that the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division was unknown (it was at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek region) and could potentially be in Nijmegen's Dutch army barracks (Gavin was told "a regiment of SS" could be there - sanitised Ultra intel could not reveal the source or specific unit identities) and that they could be drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald (it was actually near Münster). The latest SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26 contained that assessment, and was dated 16 September 1944. I recommend September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012), and Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 by Phil Nordyke (2012), for the details on Nijmegen, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also important context for the 508th's command problems on their first combat operation.
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  286.  @sean640307  - which explain's perfectly Montgomery's statement that - "In my prejudiced view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain Market Garden's unrepentant advocate."
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  287. You're not thinking strategically. The Germans were still off balance after their retreat from Normandy. The correct logic, which even Eisenhower accepted, was that a Rhine crossing should be effected as soon as possible before the Germans could reinforce their river lines. The Rhine would be harder if Antwerp was opened first, but opening Antwerp would be easier if all German forces in the western Netherlands were already cut off from Germany by an advance to the Zuider Zee coast north of Arnhem. Montgomery and Eisenhower were agreed that Antwerp could wait, because Antwerp's port capacity was not needed for Market Garden, but would be needed for any advance into Germany.
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  288. Did your school teach you this or do you just like to troll your British allies in YouTube comments? Montgomery had the measure of Eisenhower after their first meeting - "nice man, no soldier." Just look up their respective military careers to date and you should understand why.
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  289.  @ErikExeu  - I see you've had a melt with John and Tony as well. At least I don't feel like I've been picked on at random!
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  290.  @thevillaaston7811  - my copy went to the Oxfam charity bookstore so that its resale might feed a village in africa...
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  291.  @thevillaaston7811  - Gough didn't like his intended role at Arnhem one bit and was refused a Troop of Tetrarch tanks, .50 cal machine guns on the Jeeps, or even twin .303 Vickers 'K' guns on the Jeeps instead - on the grounds they would use too much ammunition. He had to settle for a single Vickers, but made sure each Jeep also had a Bren gun assigned to it, which made each Section of ten men unusual in having two Vickers and two Bren LMGs between them, but it was hardly even on a par with the SAS armament. Lathbury - I don't recall what Beevor's beef with Lathbury was. If it was stopping overnight in Oosterbeek with 3rd Battalion, that was actually Urquhart's decision. Lathbury was for pushing on during the night, but Urquhart overruled him. Tony Hibbert may have thought it was Lathbury because it was Lathbury he was talking to over the radio. You remember the radios, don't you? They were the ones that were allegedly totally not working, but then that scene with Connery and Hopkins suddenly able to talk over the radio just pops inexplicably into the middle of the movie...
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  292.  @craftingpeople7097  4. When the Nijmegen bridges were finally taken, the tanks stopped in Lent because it was dark and tanks can’t see to fight in the dark. The scene filmed for A Bridge Too Far was misleading, perhaps deliberately so, given Richard Attenborough’s political motivations in portraying British officers as incompetent. Doctrine in WW2 was to pull tanks back behind the infantry lines to laager for the night, and continue operations at first light. It was the same reason they stopped at Valkenswaard on the first day, instead of going on to Eindhoven. Horrocks had said in his book (Corps Commander, 1977) that only twice in his career he had gambled by advancing tanks at night and both times it had paid off, but he was reluctant to try his luck a third time as he was already spooked by Market Garden starting on a Sunday, because in his experience no operation starting on a Sunday had gone well. One of the problems with the Americans complaining after the assault crossing was that two officers claim to have had the confrontation with Captain Lord Peter Carrington, second in command of No.1 Squadron 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Grenadier Guards, but Carrington denied the incident actually happened. This is an area where American historian John McManus (September Hope, 2012) is misleading. He suggests US paratoopers, led by one of those two officers, Captain Moffatt Burriss (CO of ‘I’ Company 504th PIR), reached the far end of the highway bridge as British tanks came across the bridge and stopped. In fact, he had not seen the first tanks cross over 45 minutes earlier and disappear up the road into Lent, before stopping at the rail overpass, where they met troopers of ‘G’ Company and were stopped from advancing further by a StuG III assault gun firing at anything poking its nose beyond the overpass tunnel. Burriss actually blows a hole in his own account when he mentions passing an abandoned 7.5cm PaK 40 anti-tank gun on the north bank between the bridges, a gun that was knocked out by Sergeant Pacey’s Sherman as it crossed the bridge earlier. I’m afraid this is a frequent problem we have with our American cousins; they are still fighting the war of independence 240 years after we thought we had settled the matter. Much of the mythology about Market Garden seems to have originated with Cornelius Ryan, who was an Irish newspaper journalist from Dublin, who may have been working for the Daily Telegraph in London as a war correspondent, but he was embedded with Patton’s US 3rd Army in Europe and emigrated to the United States after the war where he wrote his three books. He doesn’t seem to have given an even-handed account of the operation, and a Hollywood film was never likely to help redress that. As for the liberation of your country, I do wish you well and hope you are able to free yourselves from the Fourth Reich. Just don't do it the way we did, by allowing the liberal elite in control of the country to sabotage the will of the people and make an almighty dog's breakfast of it...
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  293.  @ErikExeu  - "the British delayed the advance"? Source?
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  294.  @ErikExeu  - I appreciate how difficult it is to pull information out of your head on the spot - I have a library of maybe 100 books now on MARKET GARDEN and related subjects, such as unit histories, but off the top of my head the main reason for the delays was the problem of getting units moved up the corridor. It wasn't, as many people suggest, because it was a "single road", although traffic jams undoubtedly did occur. The main problem was that if you advance a unit then you have to replace it with another one to take over the task it was doing. Again, this is just from memory without diving into a lot of books, but I can think of one example and that was the protection for the Grave bridge and surrounding area. This was taken on D-Day (17 September) by the US 504th PIR, until they were relieved by the Welsh Guards group (consisting of 1st Battalion infantry and 2nd Battalion armoured reconnaissance with Cromwell tanks). This enabled the 504th Regiment to become Gavin's division reserve and moved them up to the Jonkerbos woods just east of the Maas-Waal canal between the Honinghutje and Hatert bridges. This was the area the 504th rested until they moved up to the south bank of the river Waal for the assault crossing operation, and in the Hollywood film this was represented by the scene where Gavin comes to see Julian Cook (CO of 3rd Battalion) to tell him his unit is leading the assault. After the Nijmegen bridges were taken, the original plan was for the Guards to hand over the advance to 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, which I think I mentioned before was because the terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was not ideal for an armoured advance into contact - 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment's armoured cars had established the Germans had formed a blocking line at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel, so they knew there would be contact on the advance. The bridgehead was held by 504th Regiment, forming an outer perimeter between the old Dutch forts on the north bank at Hof van Holland and Het Lauuwik. (On Google maps, these forts are now called Fort Beneden Lent and Fort Lent respectively). Bridge security was provided by the two surviving companies of infantry from 3rd Battalion Irish Guards, and they had some M10 tank destroyers from 21st Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery. 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Irish Guards were re-arming after supporting the 504th's crossing, and the Coldstream group were assisting the 505th at Mook against attacks from Fallschirm Kampfgruppe Hermann (6.Fallschirm-Division). Delays got to a point where the XXX Corps commander, Brian Horrocks, decided he could not wait for the 43rd Division to take over the advance and ordered the Irish and Welsh Guards groups to continue the advance. The Irish Guards were in a depleted condition but ready to move by 1300 hrs, and the Welsh Guards at Grave had been relieved by the Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade, which was attached to 43rd Division and took over protecting the Grave bridge. The impression I get is that these movements were like a Chinese puzzle (the one where you move tiles around inside a fixed frame and only one tile can move at a time into the empty square). The failure to secure the Nijmegen bridge(s) on the first day with the airborne forces not only caused a delay while they had to be taken with support from Guards Armoured Division, but it also disrupted the choreography of the planned movement of XXX Corps up the corridoer, which was organised and sequenced with units needed for the advance (Guards Armoured, 43rd and 50th Infantry) but also with 8th Armoured Brigade, which donated battlegroups to support the US Airborne Divisions (the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry relieved the Coldstream Guards to support 82nd Airborne as soon as they arrived, etc., which freed up the Coldstream). The Guards have often been accused of moving slowly, but this is because they are methodical and consolidated their gains before moving further forward. Their advance to Brussels on 3 September established a record daily divisional advance that was better than anything Patton ever achieved (the 11th Armoured Division's advance to Antwerp the next day went even further, but it was a two-day advance from the same start point), and it was a record that I believe was not broken until the First Gulf War in 1991. I have no doubt the Guards were the best unit to lead the ground advance in operation GARDEN, and if they could have got to Arnhem at all, they would surely have done so. Everyone was aware by 20 September that things were not going well at Arnhem and the Germans had in fact forced the highway bridge with three Tiger tanks at 1230 hrs on the same day the Grenadier Guards crossed the Nijmegen highway bridge at 1830 hrs. The race had already been lost. Heinz Harmel, the commander of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division responsible for holding the Nijmegen bridgehead and for re-opening his own supply line at the Arnhem bridge, did say that if the British tanks that crossed the Nijmegen bridge on the evening of 20 September had carried on, "it would have all over for us", but he was incorrect. He was constantly travelling between Arnhem and Lent and was only in intermittant contact by radio with his command. The responsibility for clearing the Arnhem bridge was delegated to the attached army Kampfgruppe 'Knaust', which was a panzergrenadier training battalion and attached panzer training companies 'Mielke' (panzer III and IV) and 'Hummel' (Tiger I). Harmel was unaware that Knaust was able to move south to establish a blocking line at Ressen, and this connected the existing 'hedgehog' positions at Oosterhout (V./SS-Artillerie training regiment) and Bemmel (elements of Harmel's 10.SS-Panzer-Division). He thought there was a gap in the middle on the main road to Arnhem and only a small security unit (two companies from naval cadet training unit Schiffsstammabteilung 14 that were on the 'island') would be in the way of an Allied advance from Nijmegen. In point of fact, the book Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010), is very interesting in that much of chapter 4: Betuwe (the Dutch name for the Nijmegen 'island') is based on the diary of Gernot Traupel, who was acting as adjutant to SS Kampfgruppe Reinhold, the commander of II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and directly responsible for the defence of the Nijmegen bridgehead from a command post in Lent. Unlike the Hollywood film, Harmel (represented by Hardy Krüger's character "General Ludwig") was not present when they tried to detonate the Nijmegen bridge. Neither was Reinhold at the command post either. So it was Traupel (only a 2nd Lieutenant) who watched in horror as the British tanks started to cross and asked the SS engineer officer, Werner Baumgärtel (also a 2nd Lt), if he could blow the bridge on his own authority. Baumgärtel refused, so Traupel ordered him to detonate the bridge on his own authority and Baumgärtel left the command post to carry out the order. Just then, Reinhold arrived and Traupel told him he had ordered the bridge blown and Reinhold said something like "are you completely insane?" and stormed out of the CP to travel a mile up the road (probably to Bemmel) where the radio van had contact with HQ. Baumgärtel then came back into the CP and reported the demolitions had failed and Traupel realised the British tanks would be there in two minutes and ordered the command post evacuated. He found Reinhold in the radio van had calmed down, because he had just recieved an order from Harmel to blow the bridge. Traupel reported the explosives had failed but he was okay about it. I think the true story would have made a better and more dramatic film, but the problem for the filmmakers is that it would have got the British off the hook and they had to sell the film to the American market. I think the same is true of Cornelius Ryan's source book, as Ryan hailed from Dublin and was embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - two finer colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of thought I cannot think of.
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  295.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  both Ryan and Hastings were newspaper journalists. Once they had their 'story', they were not interested in new or other evidence.
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  296. TIK's video on Gavin is heading in the right direction, but doesn't go deep enough to find the full answer. You have to drill down to the 508th PIR and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the regiment - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) chapters 9 and 10, contains most of the information you need in a very professional and unbiased way. Nordyke even gives slightly different views between Warren Shields and Ben Delamater (CO and XO of 1st Battalion) and just leaves it to the reader to form an opinion. Gavin instructed the 508th's CO to "move with speed" on the Nijmegen bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initial objectives on the Groesbeek heights. In my opinion, because Colonel Lindquist's combat leadership was already called into question in Normandy (re Nordyke's earlier chapters), the more experienced and aggressive 505th would have been a better choice for the Nijmegen assignment, but I think Gavin's rationale may have been that if an armoured threat emanated from the Reichswald he would rather have his old regiment holding the line in that sector. Totally agree about the rebranding of the NSDAP after the war by other socialist parties. Never understood the rationale that it's because they were 'nationalists' - so are Sinn Féin and the SNP - parties not noted for being right wing extremists!
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  297.  @ErikExeu  - "I find it fantastic that you declare that Ryan film and Hollywood are not reliable sources" I am laughing my arse off... That has to be a joke? Ryan's research was incomplete (partly due to his terminal cancer, but he was also clearly biased) and did not delve into the 508th's failure to move promptly on the Nijmegen bridge, despite Gavin mentioning it in his interview with Ryan: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Gavin's claim has been corroborated by 82nd Airborne Division G-3 (Operations Officer) Jack Norton in McManus (2012), and 508th PIR liaison officer to 82nd Division HQ Chet Graham in Nordyke (2012): September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The best updated work on MARKET GARDEN is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which uses unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, and he also debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film. For the background on the LINNET II affair and the way Brereton had politically neutralised Browning, I would refer to American military historian Roger Cirillo: The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) For Montgomery's minimal involvement in MARKET - he only ordered the operation, he did not plan it - and his communications with Eisenhower, I would refer to Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book (2014) Poulussen's earlier book, Lost At Nijmegen (2011), was the first that really questioned the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974) and also includes Gavin's 17 July 1945 letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, and Colonel Lindquist's 508th PIR Field Order No.1 dated 13 September and his responses to Westover's Q&A form. If you have any better references, then I would be interested to hear recommendations, but please not a Hollywood film!
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  298.  @johnlucas8479  - "Therefore, coupe de main would have to be added to Operation Linnet Air plan for Market not deleted has you Brits like to claim, because you cannot delete something that did not exist in the first place." - John, I resent this suggestion about "you Brits like to claim". I could be bloody Chinese as far as you're concerned, as I'm just someone interested in the history of this operation and reading as many sources as I can find to understand what happened. I deeply resent anyone taking 'sides' just to have an argument, or who get partisan over it, as if the revolutionary war was still being conducted by other means. If that's all you're interested in, then go and annoy someone else instead of being a dick on my time. Its stupid and childish, and we're not going to learn any thing from it. Most of the latest research is from Dutch and American authors and historians, perhaps the best overall work correcting Cornelius Ryan's is currently Swedish historian Christer Bergström's two-volume Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019, 2020). The only British contribution to this particular area of the air aspects is probably Sebastian Ritchie, and American military historian Roger Cirillo did write his PhD thesis on MARKET GARDEN while studying at Cranfield's College of Defence Technology in the UK. That's about it from the "Brits". So there's no reason to get pissy about any of this, nobody is suggesting it was your fault and I presume you weren't even born yet when all of this happened. The SIXTEEN proposal was Browning and Montgomery's outline devised on the morning of 10 September after Montgomery had cancelled COMET in the early hours as the troops were loading their aircraft, and presented to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their Brussels airport meeting in the afternoon for approval. It should be noted, as American historian Roger Cirillo does in his thesis, that SIXTEEN was called SIXTEEN because: 'FAAA had only nine operations on the books at the time. British 1st Airborne Division, however, had planned fifteen. The original draft order is marked "Operation Sixteen". "SIXTEEN" was proposed by I Airborne Corps. (Footnote 692, P.387, The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944, Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) SIXTEEN was born out of COMET, which you shouldn't be surprised had the provisional name of FIFTEEN. SIXTEEN was based on COMET's objectives, but expanded to three divisions, and included an extension to the south to Eindhoven, which was not in the COMET plan. It included the double airlifts and glider coup de main assaults from COMET, because Browning saw them as critical to the success of COMET. He had previously advised Dempsey that they were essential for COMET, he obviously considered them that important. Here, I do rely on Sebastian Ritchie, if I may: [After consulting with the RAF] Hollinghurst apparently believed that some of his 38 Group glider tug crews would be able to navigate successfully to the Arnhem-Nijmegen area in darkness and that limited numbers of glider-borne troops might thus be landed safely next to the bridges. Browning accepted the plan and signalled Dempsey on the evening of 5 September 'that he considered it essential to land coup-de-main glider parties on each bridge on the night of 7/8 Sep and then bring in the first main lift early daylight 8 Sep, otherwise surprise would be impossible' [CAB 44/253, p. 69] (P.111, 2019 paperback edition, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie) While looking this up, I came across the source for my comment about the USAAF crews not being as well trained in night navigation, so I have pleasure in reproducing the following footnote [8] to page 110's discussion of day versus night operations: 'Predictably enough, 46 Group later claimed that they could have operated at night, and that the real problem lay in the fact that American air transport crews were not trained for night operations.' If you want to take issue with this, contact Sebastian. I simply note the reference and move on. There was no detailed air plan for SIXTEEN as yet, because that would be done by Brereton's staff at 1st Allied Airborne Army in England, and Brereton did this by adapting his three-division air plan from LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) to create the detailed plan for MARKET, because it used the same force assigned for LINNET and LINNET II. He could have created a new air plan completely from scratch, but he chose to clone an existing plan instead and adapt it to the new mission. As a trained analyst/programmer, I appreciate the logic that 'cloning' an existing entity that has already had many of the bugs ironed out makes sense and is the most efficient use of time and resources. What is frustrating, and Gavin had this problem with Brereton as well, was Brereton's (possibly Williams, but Brereton seems to back Williams up anyway) unwillingness to change the air plan for MARKET's airborne troop's particular needs. It was at this stage that they deleted the double airlift on D-Day - features of both LINNET II and COMET, on the pretext of not enough time for aircraft maintenance turnaround - although you argue the USAAF could navigate in the dark, I'm not alone in thinking this was actually an issue for the USAAF. Opting for a single airlift in the middle of the day apparently then made the glider assaults too risky, so they were deleted - Cirillo uses the word "ignored" with the regard to the coup de main landing zones next to the bridges rather than 'deleted' for the whole coup de main concept - but the fact is that they were not carried over from SIXTEEN into MARKET after the first planning meeting of 1st AAA on the evening of 10 September. This is why Browning - and I presume it was Browning, because Montgomery said he did not intervene in the air planning for MARKET - wanted Gavin to drop a battalion north of Nijmegen. The exact words in Cornelius Ryan's interview notes are: 'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) So Gavin still didn't trust his own air corps even in broad daylight more than a year after Sicily. I don't know if I find that interesting or exasperating - I just note the facts, and move on. So Browning had been trying to keep a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge all along, but was frustrated by Brereton/Williams and then Gavin. Gavin said his plan was "approved" by his Corps Commander - he wasn't specific it was Browning, as Ridgway was officially his Corps Commander, or maybe he did mean Browning as Corps commander for the operation and was being a little disingenuous about his use of the word "approved". Browning could hardly object, because of the LINNET II affair and Brereton's plan to accept his resignation and replace him with Ridgway (did Gavin know about all of this?), and he could not order Gavin to drop his troops on the north end of the bridge if Gavin thought it was too risky to commit them or just wanted to drop his men together as concentrated forces. His plan, with the exception insisted on by Tucker for a 504th company dropped south of Grave, was to drop his three regiments intact as a "power center", and then have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. One look a map of the 82nd Division's deployment for MARKET should make it obvious that was indeed his thinking.
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  299. TIK has RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), but to drill down on Gavin's decision he needs to investigate 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), and also John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012). Gavin's decision not to prioritise the Nijmegen highway bridge over the Groesbeek heights was a post-war decision after things had gone wrong on the operation, and he wanted to take responsibility for the error instead of throwing one of his regimental commanders under the bus. These authors quote eye witnesses at the divisional briefing held before the operation in which Gavin instructed 508th Regiment commander Colonel Roy Lindquist to go for the bridge as soon as possible after landing. Nordyke's witness was Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the CO of the 508th PIR's HQ Company and the regiment's Liaison Officer to Division HQ. McManus' witness was Lieutenant Colonel Jack Norton, the Division G-3 (Operations Officer). According to Nordyke, chapter 9: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." In McManus, chapter 3: At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Cont...
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  300. Nordyke, Chapter 10 continues on the ground after the drop: Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013), chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." Nordyke, chapter 10 continues: Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.” - It is clear to me from these accounts that have only come to light after the key players had passed (Chet Graham passed a short time later in 2015) that Gavin (and Browning according to McManus) realised that both the Groesbeek heights and the Nijmegen bridge both needed to be secured, but while the heights were not going anywhere and could be recovered if lost, the bridge was a perishable asset (as McManus puts it) because the Germans could destroy it. It's clear that the confusion over priorites was only confusing at the time to Lindquist, who was not a gifted combat officer in Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy, and Gavin himself sought to muddy the waters after the war in order to take on the responsibility himself rather than throw a subordinate under the historical bus. It also explains why Gavin insisted that his own troopers of the 504th PIR undertake the assault river crossing, when the default contingency plan for the Nijmegen bridges being strongly held by the enemy was an assault crossing to be made by the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, with either one or two Brigades up (according to John Sliz in Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, 2021). Cornelius Ryan failed to pick up on this, or didn't include it in his book, so A Bridge Too Far (1974) established the conventional narrative after both Montgomery and Browning had passed, and has persisted until the more recent researches carried out about 10-12 years ago has filled in the missing story of the 508th and the failure at Nijmegen.
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  301. I always ask the Patton fans what he would have done differently if he had been the one that reached Nijmegen and found the bridges still in German hands?
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  302.  @johnburns4017  - do you have a copy of Bergström's Arnhem 1944 vol 1? Pages 131-132, 135, 142-143, and 148 on Son defences. Reinhard (LXXXVIII AK) was at Oirschot (page 131-132) when the transports flew over and then he made his way back to his HQ in Tilburg. Page 135 has the quote from Student - it's in the 501st PIR section of the narrative regarding the capture of the bridges at Veghel, but these were not on a defence line and only rear echelon German troops were found here. I believe the quote relates to all the bridges prepared for demolition in his area, so that I would reasonably argue includes the Wilhelmina canal bridges at Best and Son, guarded by 3./Flak.Abt 428(+) and 4./Flak-Abt 428 respectively, with the canal line held by Flieger-Ausbildungs-Regiment 53 (iirc the 5.Kompanie was on the canal between these bridges in the Sonsche forest). The chain of command up from the bridge commander would logically be his battalion (I or II./FAR 53?), FAR 53 HQ, LXXXVIII AK (Reinhard), and then 1.Fallschirm-armee (Student). If Student's quotation in Bergström is correct, then the bridge commanders had standing orders to blow their bridges when threatened with being overrun, which is exactly when the Son bridge was detonated. The LXXXVIII AK war diary note timed at 17:45 mentioned only the Oirschot and Best bridges to be blown only on written orders, and that may be a consequence of the Son bridge already having been blown at 16:00. The movement of XXX Corps at night may not have been permitted beyond Son or certainly not beyond Veghel, because then it is territory possibly held by the enemy. The only time possibly saved if the Son bridge were taken intact was the time taken to drive from Son to Veghel, but that's still taking a risk in the areas between the 101st Airborne's regimental strongholds at Son, St Oedenrode, and Veghel. Given what Horrocks said about night movement and not wanting to push his luck, I think he would say "no".
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  303.  @johnburns4017  - as I understand it (I'm not as well read on the 101st AO as I said before) - the regimental strongpoints had big gaps between them. So the road was not held by the 101st between Son bridge site (some engineers and a platoon from the 506th) and St Oedenrode (502nd minus detachment to Best), and between St Oedenrode and the 501st around Eerde/Veghel. All the maps I've seen suggest that. I wouldn't want to drive a tank between those places on the night of 18/19 September. They would have to get permission from Horrocks to do that and he said in Corps Commander (1977) he didn't want to push his luck after twice doing it during his career and getting away with it. I hadn't thought about this at all until I read John Sliz' book on Bridging The Club Route (2015) and he pointed this out.
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  304.  @johnburns4017  - I still think the Germans should should be given credit for responding to threats against the bridges on their prepared defence lines. The bridges on the Wilhelmina canal (under Stab zbV Oberst von Hoffman) were on the second line behind the part-breached Albert canal line under command of Generaloberst Student. Those on the River Maas and Maas-Waal canal were on a third line under command of General Feldt (Wehrkreis VI), and also linked to the River Waal line west to the North Sea under von Tettau (WBN). Many of these bridges were promptly demolished when threatened during the operation and the evidence seems to suggest the bridge commanders had standing orders. We know that the three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 (Major Ahlemeyer) to guard the Maas-Waal canal bridges immediately lost communications with their batallion headquarters at Haus Kreuzfuhrt (grid square 7954 near the Reichswald) because of the landings between them, yet most of the bridges were detonated, suggesting they had standing orders. Christer Bergström also states that bridge commanders in Student's area (which would include the Wilhelmina canal) had standing orders to defend them to the last man before demolishing their bridge. Of all the bridges on these prepared defence lines, only the Honinghutje road bridge (on the main highway 'Club Route' over the Maas-Waal canal) was damaged when the rail bridge alongside it was demolished and the road bridge charges presumably failed, and the Heumen lift bridge (on the alternatve 'Heart Route' over the canal) was taken intact for reasons that are not clear, possibly left too late or a technical problem. The Son bridge was detonated at approximately 1600 hrs, less than three hours after the 506th landed at 1312 hrs. The 1st Battalion 506th moving directly through the Sonsche forest were held up by tree burst fire from 88s around the bridge and mortar fire causing many casualties. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions moving through the village down the main road were slow in house clearing, but both 1st and 2nd Battalions were close to the bridge when it was detonated (Little Sense Of Urgency, RG Poulussen, 2014). Considering the circumstances, I don't have any real criticism for the 506th at Son. Two of the 88s were emplaced in the main street north of the canal, and were able to fire back up the street at 2nd Battalion, the other two were near the canal northern bank in positions east and west of the bridge. The west gun position gave 1st Battalion so much trouble with the tree bursts in the Sonsche forest approach.
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  305.  @johnburns4017  - further to my earlier posts re Flieger-Regiment 53, a bit more research on this unit indicates that by the start of Market Garden it had already been absorbed by the Fallschirmtruppe and known as Kampfgruppe Hübner. Hübner was a veteran parachute commander and seems to have taken over the two battalions of Flieger-Regiment 53 and attached to Erdmann's 7.Fallschirmjäger-Division, although prisoners taken still had tags and paybooks identifying them as "Fl.Rgt. 53", and I've seen at least one photo of prisoners taken from this unit showing their uniforms are still standard Luftwaffe and not Fallschimjäger. Kampgruppe Hübner seems to have been officially called Fallschirmjäger-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment Hübner while in training, and then became Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 24 assigned to 8.Fallschirmjäger-Division in 1945. Just to complicate things further, Kampfgruppe 'Hübner' on the Wilhelmina canal should not be confused with Kampfgruppe 'Huber' - remnants of Grenadier-Regiment 1035 from 59.Infanterie-Division (15.Armee and transferred to Reinhard's LXXXVIII AK of 1.Fallschirmarmee) in the same general area west of St.Oedenrode during the battle. That unit was an army unit, but had added to it I./Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' from the Luftwaffe.
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  306. It's funny, but German Generals felt the same way about being transferred to the West!
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  307.  @kimnelson-barclay7427  - airborne doctrine was still being developed, but many of the features incorporated into 'Comet' British I Airborne Corps were taken out for 'Market' by 1st Allied Airborne Army, such as the glider coup de main attacks on the three main bridges and two lifts in one day. But even the plan for Market would have worked if it had been followed at Nijmegen as it was (against German opposition) elsewhere. The 508th had an open city in front of them until it got dark, and the entire operation was undone by a simple command failure that first manifested in Normandy (Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell, 2012, refers). What followed after the war was that you had a divisional commander taking responsibility himself instead of throwing a subordinate officer under the bus, muddying the waters with regard to competing priorities, incomplete research by the terminally ill Cornelius Ryan, and public perception influenced by a part-fictional Hollywood film based on his book. If you want to focus on doctrine, then Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) is the best study of that, looking at the lessons learned from previous airborne operations conducted by both sides and applied to Market Garden, but I don't think it's fair to apply modern doctrine to a WW2 operation. The plan was clearly working on its own terms, except at the one place where it wasn't being followed.
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  308.  @kimnelson-barclay7427  - the point of Operation Market Garden was to get British 2nd Army over the Rhine. Operations into Germany would be the aim of subsequent operations, not Market Garden. "Airborne lands, achieves limited objectives, and waits for the army to arrive. At Arnheim, it never did." - It actually did exactly that at Arnhem. 1st Parachute Brigade secured the far end of Arnhem highway bridge and waited twice as long as they were expected to have to for their relief, but XXX Corps never got there because the Germans were allowed to reinforce the Nijmegen bridges and impose a critical delay of 36-hours. The error at Nijmegen was completely unforced and contrary to instructions from the divisional commander, and that was a problem that had previous form in Normandy. It had nothing to do with circumstances in Holland or anything unique to Market Garden. What specifically in the US Army manuals of the day were ignored in Market Garden? You make these dark references to things being ignored, but you don't offer any specifics. Specifically what was the 508th not capable of, that makes you think they did everything they could? When Gavin found out they were not moving on the bridge, he was as "mad" (which I would translate into the English word "angry" rather than taking the English meaning of "insane") as their liaison officer had ever seen him, and they went to the 508th CP to chew out the CO and get him moving. Is that in the Field Manuals?????
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  309. The interesting thing about Berg-en-Dal was that it was the headquarters of SS General Hans Kammler's Division zV for controlling V-2 rocket operations, specifically the Hotel Groot Berg-en-Dal overlooking the flat polderland to the east. When troopers from 3rd Battalion 508th entered the village, the Germans had evacuated and the troopers found the uneaten luncheon meals all laid out on the dining tables and tucked into them while watching the Germans scampering across the border to Germany from the panoramic windows of the dining room. On the Division order to move to the bridge, Lindquist received it in the final divisional briefing on 15 September, 48 hours before take-off. His response to US Army Historiacl Officer Captain Westover's question was very disingenuous: 2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you ordrs to move directly into NIJMEGEN? As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on (Interview Colonel Lindquist, Historical Officer Captain Westover, Frankfurt, Germany 14 September 1945)
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  310. Debunked in 1963. Doesn't anybody have any new questions these days? Sorry, but this is one of those myths that simply refuses to die a dignified death. There's no doubt there were security leaks and at least one report warning of an impending airborne operation in the Netherlands was sitting unread on the desk of a German intelligence chief at the time of the landings, but the specific story concerning Christiaan 'King Kong' Lindemans was investigated by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree in the years after the war and he presented his evidence debunking the theory in his book De Slag By Arnhem (1963), translated into English with journalist Cornelius Bauer as The Battle of Arnhem (1966). Boeree researched the movements of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' to prove that it was not located at Arnhem to meet an expected airborne attack - it was actually in the process of being further withdrawn to Siegen in Germany for refit and only a few 'alarm' companies remained in the Netherlands on 17 September - another 24 hours and they would have been gone too. In fact, these final movements were frustrated on that Sunday by the Dutch rail strike, which was organised by the Dutch resistance at the request of the Dutch Government-in-Exile based in London to coincide with the operation to hinder German reinforcements. Gavin had a copy of Boeree's research papers that he sent to Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, because he had been looking into these rumours of a betrayal himself after the war and came to the conclusion it was nonsense. In the correspondence between Gavin and Ryan (box 101, folder 09 in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of WW2 papers at Ohio State University and accessible online), Ryan agreed with Gavin about the King Kong affair (letter on page 95) and thought it was worth "a large footnote and that is all." Ryan complained that "Bernhard has a burr under the saddle about the whole thing and is almost bludgeoning me into doing it in the book." The same letter also debunks the idea the entire operational plan fell into General Kurt Student's hands, it was a supply roster for 101st Airborne, and Student was unable to communicate his deductions on its significance for 48 hours, by which time everyone in the German command already knew what all the objectives were. Gavin's letter of November 18, 1966 (page 48) also reveals that Gavin had only now realised that the Dutch reports of German armour in the Reichswald that had had concerned him so much when making his divisional plan was actually the Hohenstaufen in transit to Arnhem. They must have made a stop in the Reichswald and that generated the Dutch reports. It's unfortunate that Cornelius Ryan did not give debunking the betrayal myths more print in his book, the result has been to allow them to persist, but the information has been in his papers and in other published works all along. Ryan left a lot of his research you can read in the digital collection out of the book and it is quite misleading as a result. He did give himself a get-out-of-jail-free card by saying he was more interested in the personal experiences of the veterans than writing a comprehensive history, so the reader should not regard A Bridge Too Far as a comprehensive history of the operation. You have to read a comprehensive range of books to get that. Hope this nails that particular myth for you and for anyone else taking the trouble to read the evidence.
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  311.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  copied from the other video: @davemac1197 22 hours ago (edited) ​ @Bullet-Tooth-Tony- you ask, I oblige. At 4:51 on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7UCLf7a-3k (Ambush of the Irish Guards | Operation Market Garden | September 1944) Narrator says "Meanwhile, the tanks of the 2nd Irish Guards began deploying off the road to engage, and get around, the enemy." At 5:06 - note the farm named 'Odiliahoeve' marked on the map in the video, and the lozenge-shaped 'woods' between it and road. I refer to these later. At 5:06 - narrator says "Maneuvering into the field to the left of the road, Cowan's Firefly spotted a tank hidden behind a farmhouse" - not quite correct, Cowan may have reported the inevitable generic "tank", but it was a StuG IIIG assault gun, and we now know the unit was Heeres schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559, specifically the surviving vehicles of 2 and 3.Kompanie. The Abteilung was down to about two vehicles in each Kompanie, with 1.Kompanie having a couple of Jagdpanthers. One was seen the next day near Aalst (reported as a "Panther" [tank]) with a couple of StuGs. The photo I can recall I think is in After The Battle magazine's Operation Market Garden Then and Now volume 1 (edited by Karel Margry, 2002), which I don't have to hand (it's in a box awaiting additional shelf space), and that volume also contains the sketch map of the MARKET GARDEN corridor with notes on terrain and whether suitable or not for off-road maneuvers on each sector, and as you would expect the terrain is very variable and only a few sections of the MSR 'Club Route' has limited ability to manuever - actually just the last sector between Nijmegen and Arnhem the main road is on a raised embankment, hence the original intent to have 43rd Division lead the advance at that stage, but this terrain gets conflated by Hollywood for the whole 64 miles, when it's patently nonsense. If you look at Google maps at the N69 just north of the Belgian/Dutch border, most of the first block of woodland they passed through without incident, then the panzerfaust ambush was at the end of that block just past the driveway to the farm marked with the business name 'Odilia Agro' (Odiliahoeve farm in WW2). The small lozenge-shaped stand of woodland on the left (west) side of the road masking the farm is not on the contemporary maps, so it may not have been there in 1944, but this seems to be the area of the ambush marked on the map (The Breakout, page 32) in Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016). The open fields on both sides of the road to the north seem to be the kill zone for the SP guns (StuG IIIG) incorrectly credited to Röstel's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 10 and marked in positions on both sides of the road, but actually belonged to Heeres schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and I think were only deployed to the west. The topographic map I have for this area is dated 1939 (57a Valkenswaard West 1939) I obtained from a Dutch antique maps site, and apart from the farm fields adjacent to the road, the ground on either side is marked as heathland and obviously quite dry. Only when you get towards the various streams and rivers in the area do you get into some marshes and soft ground, so it's not great tank country for sure, but the scene in A Bridge Too Far where the tanks maneuver awkwardly by staying on the road itself after the ambush (despite the fact the scene is clearly shot on heathland and not polder or farmland) is completely wrong and probably designed to over-emphasise the terrain problems, helping to construct Richard Attenborough's narrative that the British officer class were incompetent. The truth, as always, is a lot more complex.
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  312.  @bigwoody4704  - "Dempsey/Horrocks/Vandeleur sitting on their arses in their tanks until the Troop & Supply transports flew over at 2:35 in the afternoon - did they think they would catch up?" - the reason for that was explained in Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth and Reality (2011, 2019) that you are so fond of quoting from, and the transports did not fly over at 2:35, the ground advance started at that time AFTER they had flown over an hour and a half earlier: H-Hour for MARKET was 1300 hrs. I also recall Horrocks mentioned another good reason for waiting for the airborne transports to show up first in his book Corps Commander (1977). Clearly, you haven't understood it. I suggest you at least read Ritchie's book again.
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  313.  @bigwoody4704  - Brooke's quote was from 5 October - after the operation with the benefit of hindsight - why no quote from him before the operation? Because he didn't know the Americans were going to let Montgomery down perhaps? Montgomery's admission was in thinking the Canadians would be able to clear the Scheldt estuary on their own, it was nothing to do with MARKET GARDEN. One of your favourite quotes you like to take out of context and it's not very clever. You haven't given a source for what Montgomery was thinking about the Germans, so I'm inclined to think you made it up! You're like a child that denies knowing anything about the new burn mark in the living room carpet. It's really insulting of you to think everyone else is too stupid to see what you're doing.
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  314. I suggest you read Roger Cirillo's excellent PhD thesis on the Market Garden Campaign (2001, Cranfield College of Defence Technology) available online as a pdf download. You're right in that politics is at the heart of the disagreements between the western allies and Brereton was attempting to edge out Browning (British I Airborne Corps) in order to replace him with Ridgway (US XVIII Airborne Corps) as his deputy (during the planning for Operation 'Linnet II' in particular), when he was supposed to be fighting the Germans. Airborne warfare was still in development and airborne troops from both allies were used again for the Rhine crossing at Wesel in 1945. Neither Browning nor Montgomery were blinkered - Browning threatened to resign over the inadequate planning for 'Linnet II' (as Brereton had hoped) and Montgomery cancelled the original Arnhem Operation 'Comet' and upgraded it to three divisions as 'Market', precisely because he knew the II.SS-Panzerkorps were known to have arrived in the eastern Netherlands to refit. The only people blinkered here are Americans who have been badly let down by their school system and misled by Hollywood. Both institutions are propaganda factories and don't give you a proper education. Please do some reading!!!
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  315. He had very little input into the planning process. It was done by 1st Allied Airborne Army for the air plan and British 2nd Army for the ground forces.
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  316. Nordyke (op cit), Chapter 10 - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Zig Boroughs’ The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." Nordyke (op cit), Chapter 10 - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
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  317. Have to admit I struggled to understand some of your arguments and questions, but I might be able to help in some areas. I can recommend a book called Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden by Sebastain Ritchie, 2011. It does what it says on the cover and examines Airborne operations by both sides in the war up to Market Garden, so it explains why the decisions that were made, were made based on the available experience, and like everything else in life - there are no real solutions to problems, only trade-offs. It might answer a lot of the specific questions in your post. Being a recent book, it is revisionist history, like TIK's channel, using the latest available information and research. It is therefore controversial, because it challenges the huge inertia of the popular post-war narrative established by A Bridge Too Far and many other books that followed it. Ritchie's book also contains a summary of the detailed research into the infamous aerial photo (actually an 'oblique' photo in the movie) of German tanks in the Arnhem area. Oblique photo reconnaissance was not used to look for tanks in the woods, it was desgined for specific known targets, like bridges and barracks. The Dutch Government digitised their archives in 2015 and all the RAF's aerial photos donated after the war to help with reconstruction came to light, and the suspect photo (Frame 4015, taken on 12 September by a 541 Squadron Spitfire from RAF Benson) was re-discovered. The tanks were found to be obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV tanks, ruling out a Panzer Division as the likely owner. The RAF's analysis has identified the only possible owner in Holland, and this unit was mostly destroyed in Belgium before Market Garden, and the survivors were located near the 101st Airborne's drop zones on the day of the landings. Browning is effectively exonerated from the rather shameful portrayal, but acted so well by Dirk Bogarde in A Bridge Too Far, in this incident. You can obtain a free pdf download of a booklet on this aspect of the story by searching "arnhem the air reconnaissance story royal air force" by Sebastian Ritchie on the Royal Air Force website, courtesy of the British taxpayer. You mentioned Ultra. This intelligence was disseminated no lower than Army headquarters, in order to protect the source, which was not declassified until 1975. Ultra had more easily broken a Luftwaffe code, so 21st Army Group (Montgomery) and British 2nd Army (Dempsey) knew that the Luftwaffe Liaison Officer ('FLIVO') for the German Army Group B (GenFM Model) was located in Oosterbeek, near Arnhem, and it was reasonable to assume Army Group B headquarters was in the same location as the FLIVO. Ultra doesn't tell you everything, the codes had to be broken every day, and some codes were easier to break than others, which is why we knew the Luftwaffe communications before the Army ones. The location of II.SS-Panzerkorps (Bittrich) with 9.(Harzer) and 10.(Harmel) SS-Panzer-Divisions under command, were not known precisely. Dutch resistence had reported some sub-units identified as parts of 9.SS 'Hohenstaufen' Division had moved into the Saksen-Weimar barracks in Arnhem, and in the Apeldoorn and Zutphen areas. Dutch intel was highly regarded, but had to be treated as suspect until confirmed, because of recent German counter-intelligence successes. For example, the entire Oosterbeek underground cell had been penetrated and wiped out. No information on 10.SS was available. The latest intelligence information at Eisenhower's headquarters before the operation was SHAEF Intel Summary #26 (dated 16 September 1944), listed II.SS-Panzerkorps as refitting somewhere in the eastern Netherlands, and presumed drawing tanks from a depot known to be in the Cleve area. This possibly threatened the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen rather than the 1st Airborne at Arnhem, and it led to a silly rumour that the Reichswald forest between Cleve and the 82nd's landing zones could be hiding 1,000 panzers.
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  318. More than possible for one battalion to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge with a bridghead in Lent, the village on the northern bank, if they had moved quickly. The area around the north end of the bridge was not as open as the southern end of the Arnhem bridge, which was effectively a kill-zone (and the 'Mike One' target for the field artillery in Oosterbeek) between the paratroops on the northern end and the Germans occupying the housing area of Zuid-Arnhem, south of the Rijn flood plain and the elevated southern bridge ramp. The weakest aspect of this scenario is the fact the 508th PIR had only two 57mm anti-tank guns (the American 57mm M1 was the British 6-pounder made under licence, except the US Airborne used the British Mark III already adapted to fit in the Horsa glider). The 82nd Division only landed one battery of eight guns on the first day and shared these out on a scale of two per parachute regiment and two held back as division reserve. At Arnhem, the 1st Parachute Brigade had five 6-pounder anti-tank guns at the bridge, but only two were deployed to cover the bridge itself and did most of the damage to Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 as it attempted to force the bridge from the south. At Nijmegen it's unlikely they would have attacked the 508th since their mission was reconnaissance, and they only tried to force the Arnhem bridge because the British had cut off their supply line and Gräbner believed the bridge was only lightly held by around 200 paratroops with no heavy weapons. Gavin held his reserve, which included his Engineer Battalion and the 2nd Battalion 505th (Ben Vandervoort's battalion) in the woods west of Groesbeek around his division CP, but could have sent them into Nijmegen as reinforcements, if a threat to the Lent bridgehead appeared to outweigh that from the Reichswald. I'm currently reading a series of books on the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem and they include an extraordinary story of the Troop commander of Z Troop, Lieutenant Eustace McNaught, landing in his glider short of the landing zones near Zetten on the Nijmegen island. He claims to have taken his command Jeep and three of his men (leaving another four behind with the glider pilots on foot) and tried to reach the Arnhem bridge, but on reaching the deserted main road with no sign of any Germans and then approaching the bridge from the south, saw an armoured force heading in his direction and decided to turn around to head south to the Americans at Nijmegen. He says he reached the Nijmegen bridge as it was getting dark and managed to drive across it without being challenged before running into some Dutch civillians in the city who were concerned that German units were entering the city and arranged to hide McNaught and his party in a monastery until the city was liberated. On 21 September McNaught made contact with Lieutenant Howe, who commanded the seaborne tail of his Battery, and related this extraordinary story to him before driving off alone in the Jeep, intending to make contact with the nearest SAS section so he could attach himself to it. Howe later learned that McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and then after the war joined MI6 as a military attaché. The confusing thing about this story is that the Z-Troop 6-pounder guns were flown in on the second lift, but some sources suggest the Troop HQs were flown in on a first lift glider serial, and the story only makes sense if McNaught landed on the first day and was able to cross the Nijmegen bridge before Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 made its reconnaissance from Arnhem to Nijmegen in the early evening of D-Day. The title of the book is A Lost Opportunity - Battery Z Troop by Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk and Marcel Zwarts (2022). "A lost opportunity" is a quote from an angry McNaught who complained that he could have captured the Nijmegen bridge on his own in those first few hours, but he may have crossed the bridge while 1/508th S-2 Section Scout PFC Joe Atkins was there holding seven German prisoners and presumably lying low by not stopping traffic, as related in Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013). Atkins and his two companions decided to withdraw when it got dark because nobody showed up to reinforce him and he could not hold the bridge alone if counter-attacked. As they left, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge.
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  319.  @daniellee2343  - you might be right about Gräbner looking for a fight - who's to say? I can only offer my own impression of him as a bit cocky and not at all the hard-bitten Nazi type that seemed to be suggested by the non-speaking cameo actor in A Bridge Too Far (1977). He was an army officer who transferred as an Oberleutnent in January 1943 to the SS to further his career, like many army officers did, because the career prospects for promotion were better in the SS as Hitler did not trust the army and sought to expand the Waffen-SS to eventually replace it. He was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer just two months later. Gräbner had just received his Knight's Cross award on 17 September, at a ceremony held before the luncheon was interrupted by the airborne landings, for an action in Normandy. Gräbner’s Knight’s Cross recommendation reads as follows… “On the 16.07.1944 the Pz.-A.A. 9, under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner, was subordinated to Grenadier-Regiment 989. The Abteilung had the mission of supporting the I./989 in its ongoing attack that aimed to retake the old defensive line and, additionally, establish firm control over the village of Noyers. However the I./989 was pushed back by the enemy while the Abteilung was still in the process of being brought up for the attack. Noyers was captured by the English. SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner made a new decision. He deviated from his original mission and launched a bold attack against the enemy with his Abteilung, driving them back in turn and bringing Noyers firmly back into German hands. In the following days Noyers would repeatedly stand at the focus of the fighting. The enemy tried to capture the village and thereby force a penetration by any means necessary, and had strong tank and artillery forces available for this purpose. However they were fought off every time, and in the process SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner would distinguish himself through both outstanding leadership as well as inspiring bravery. The Division points to the combat report of the SS-A.A. 9 as well as the letters of commendation for the SS-A.A. 9 that were written by the commander of the 277. Infanterie-Division and the commander of Grenadier-Regiment 989 as further evidence of Gräbner’s achievements.” To this was added an informative comment by the commander of the II. SS-Panzer-Korps… “SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner has distinguished himself through particularly notable bravery and prudent leadership. His deed was decisive for holding the positions of the 277. Division at its important boundary with the left neighbouring Korps. I thereby particularly approve of this recommendation.” (Gräbner, Victor-Eberhard, Traces of War website) On the single road, I think the problems were exaggerated by the lack of progress after reaching Nijmegen, as the cuts in the corridor and problems moving up 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, were caused by flanking Corps not making adequate progress and continued fighting in Nijmegen even after the bridges fell. The Guards Armoured Division's 'Club Route' was not unique to MARKET GARDEN, but started in Normandy and terminated at Bremen in Germany. There were traffic problems previously on 'Club Route' during the advance from the Seine when the Guards found units of US 2nd Armored Division 'Hell On Wheels' on their road, having strayed across the inter-divisional/corps/army/army-group boundary, and had to be re-directed where to go. On your question of the Germans not securing the Arnhem road bridge, the bridge did have a bridge guard, apparently 25 WW1 veterans (I think from Kershaw, 1990), which sounds to me like the local security unit - Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, who were WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for front line service even in 1918. The north end did have twin 2cm Flak towers built on top of the toll booths, which were reinforced and had machine-guns installed as bunkers. The Flak towers had been hit by the RAF earlier in the day and at least the one on the east side was destroyed. Frost ordered one of his 6-pounder anti-tank guns to be manhandled up onto the roadway and engage the remaining bunker at point blank range, but could not elevate sufficiently to engage the Flak gun on the roof. Gräbner did leave at least one armoured car on the bridge as a radio relay, and its 2cm kanon plus 2cm Flak guns located on the Winter dijk on the south side of the river, prevented Frost's paratoopers from securing the southern end of the bridge. I can confirm the Arnhem highway bridge was not prepared for demolition. Key railway bridges in the Netherlands all seem to have had demolitions prepared and a 'sprengkommando' in place since the Normandy invasion - the reason so many rail bridges involved in the operation were so promptly demolished on 17 September. The Nijmegen highway bridge had explosives stored inside the bridge pier storage spaces in specially prepared shaped and numbered boxes that fitted into corresponding numbered locations in the bridge superstructure, and even painted the same shade of green to match! An NSDAP 'Schutzgruppe' of volunteer ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands were drilled every month to install the charges and connect the detonation circuits under the supervision of Oberleutnant Gerhard Bretschneider from von Tettau's pionier staff in the Netherlands military occupation command (WBN). The last drill was mid-August. On 17 September, the Schutzgruppe failed to show up and Bretschneider, who was in Nijmegen, had to wait for the SS pioniers from 10.SS-Panzer-Division to arrive before he had the men to carry out the installation. A similar problem left the Grave Maasbrug intact to be captured by the 504th, landing close by.
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  320.  @daniellee2343  - by the Germans in Eindhoven, I'm assuming you're talking about the bridges on the Wilhelmina canal at Zon and Best? This canal was the next defence line after the Meuse-Escaut canal in Belgium and manned by men formerly of the Luftwaffe's Flieger-Regiment 52 and now incorporated into the 1.Fallschirm-Armee. The handful of remaining intact bridges were all prepared for demolition, each with a sprengkommando issued with standing orders to detonate if the bridge was threatened. These orders were from General Kurt Student (1.Fallschirm-Armee) through the attached LXXXVIII Armeekorps (former WBN occupation command, under General Hans-Wolfgang Reinhard). Eindhoven itself (which had four small bridges in the city centre to be secured by 2nd Battalion 506th PIR) was largely deserted. An interesting footnote is that the heavy Flak unit, gemischte Flak-Abteilung 428 at Deelen airfield north of Arnhem, had its four heavy batteries removed a day or two before the operation to reinforce this canal defence line. The 3.Batterie was deployed to Best and the 4.Batterie went to Zon, with two guns detached to the northern outskirts of Eindhoven and were dealt with by F Company 506th on 18 September, while the remaining 4 guns on the canal bank and main street had already held up 1st and 2nd Battalions 506th respectively, before the bridge was detonated at 1600 hrs on 17 September.
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  321.  @daniellee2343  - I think it probably was an afterthought or overconfidence perhaps. Part of it was certainly the orders given by Bittrich (II.SS-Panzerkorps), which made 10.SS-Panzer-Division responsible for Nijmegen, but Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 was temporarily attached to them and ordered to recon to the west of Arnhem and south to Nijmegen to locate the airborne landings. It appears that Frost slipped past these patrols which were encountered by all three Parachute battalions on their routes into Arnhem, but A Company's Major Digby Tatham-Water's unique solution to the armoured car roadblock problem was to knock on the front door of a civilian house and ask the resident if they could come through the house - and the whole battalion apparently followed him into the rear gardens and over fences into neighbouring properties until the armoured car was bypassed. I think the car had retreated by the time the Jeeps and anti-tank guns came up, so this is how Frost's battalion got to the bridge as quickly as possible without getting into major engagements.
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  322. It's because the film is only 50% historically accurate.
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  323. "I think Ridgeway as the Airborne Corps Commander, however, and not Browning, could have made a difference." - How would he have made a difference? The compromises to the MARKET plan that caused it to fail were American compromises, and having more American control over the planning is unlikely to help. One of the problems with the planning for MARKET was that once Browning's outline plan for provisional operation SIXTEEN, based on his cancelled all-British and Polish operation COMET, was passed over to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning and became operation MARKET, the concept was compromised by many changes Browning could not object to without losing his position to Ridgway. Browning had already threatened to resign over Brereton's plan for operation LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) because it had been scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps to the troops. Fortunately for all concerned, the ground troops overran the drop zones and the airborne operation was cancelled, so Browning withdrew his resignation letter and both men agreed to forget the incident. When Brereton removed the D-Day double airlift and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges for MARKET, Browning could hardly threaten to resign again, knowing that Brereton had planned to accept his resignation over LINNET II and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Browning's only option was to try to influence events once he was on the ground at Groesbeek and that was probably the real reason he advanced the transport of his Corps HQ from the 2nd to the 1st airlift, at the expense of some anti-tank glider loads scheduled for 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem - we know it was a last minute change to the glider schedule and not a pre-planned "ego trip" as many historians suggest. On the British radios, the equipment was perfectly serviceable, but experienced severely reduced range performance at Arnhem because of the local terrain - sandy glacial moraine with a high iron content. The radios were working, but with greatly reduced ranges than they had experienced in North Africa and Italy. Only the two special VHF sets supplied to the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron teams had been supplied with the "wrong crystals" problem. The standard battalion No.22 sets were virtually useless because of the dispersed deployment of the units, but the Royal Artillery used the more powerful No.18 sets, which although affected by the same problem, the reduced ranges were still useful - the forward observers at the bridge could still contact the Light Regiment's gun batteries at Oosterbeek for example. The British did use the American supplied SCR-536 "handie-talkie" (the "walkie-talkie" was originally the nickname given to the backpack SCR-300 used for battalion communications in the US Army), but both armies found it virtually useless except for very short range and almost restricted to line of sight communcations by the platoons. There was indeed one frequency that could not be used because it conflicted with a very powerful German transmitter at Deelen airfield. Why was German armour ignored by Browning? Because the aerial photos showed obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV models, and this ruled out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. Cornelius Ryan got this story from Browning's intelligence officer, Major Brian Urquhart, interviewed in 1967 after Browning had passed away in 1965 and the photo could not be located. In fact all the RAF's aerials of the Netherlands had been donated to the Dutch government after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys, and emerged in 2014 when the archives were digitised and put online. The suspect frame was identified and analysed by the Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force) and the tanks identified as belonging to the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', the training regiment based in Utrecht for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division currently fighting in Poland. The HG Regiment's reserve panzer kompanie at Harderwijk had been mobilised (under the 'Valkyrie' Plan) on 7 September and ordered south to Eindhoven to join the regiment's II.Abteilung, but only three tanks survived the road march without breaking down and were destroyed at Hechtel in Belgium by the Guards Armoured Division, along with most of the II.Abteilung. Those vehicles that had broken down were being maintained at a supply dump near Deelen airfield when they were photographed by RAF reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September and on 17 September (D-Day for MARKET GARDEN) they were laagered in an orchard at Wolfswinkel, opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone on Sonsche Heide. They attempted to interfere in the landings, but were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft and failed to have any impact on the operation. Browning's decision to disregard the photo can now be seen in a totally different light. Montgomery cancelled operation COMET when he received reports II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem area and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with them. He and Browning then drew up the outline proposal called SIXTEEN by adding the two US airborne divisions to hold the corridor, allowing 1st Airborne and the Poles with their substantial anti-tank gun assets to be concentrated at Arnhem. The operation was compromised not at Arnhem, where a bridgehead was secured and its use denied to the enemy for 80 hours, but at Nijmegen. Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army had compromised Browning's outline plan SIXTEEN to seize the bridges by glider coup de main raids, and Gavin then compromised his own divisional plan by dismissing a British request (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main. Gavin then assigned his weakest regimental commander, Roy Lindquist of the 508th PIR, to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, instructing him to send his 1st battalion directly to the bridge as soon as practical after landing. Lindquist failed to act quickly, allowing 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy Nijmegen and reinforce the bridges. On the latter issue I would agree that Ridgway's presence would have been preferable, but only if he had still been divisional commander of the 82nd. Ridgway had part-dealt with command issues in the 508th in Normandy (the XO was court-martialled and replaced with a 505th officer) and may have been more wary of assigning them to the critical Nijmegen mission. Gavin had also failed to appoint a replacement for himself as Assistant Divisional Commander after Ridgway was promoted to XVIII Airborne Corps and Gavin inherited the 82nd Division, so he was doing both jobs during the planning and execution of MARKET. I don't think importing more American solutions would resolve what were imported American problems in the first place.
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  324. I would recommend September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012), and Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 by Phil Nordyke (2012). McManus does an excellent analysis of the bridge versus ridge debate and draws I think the correct conclusions - Browning and Gavin expected both to be taken as a priority. McManus also compliments Nordyke's regimental history in describing the events where things went wrong in Nijmegen on D-Day, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also illuminating in providing context for Lindquist's poor performance in both operations. The other reference is free online - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) in which Gavin spoke quite freely about his criticisms of Lindquist and discarding a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge - something that Cornelius Ryan didn't use in the book A Bridge Too Far (1974) and he didn't do any further digging into the Nijmegen story at all. Panzerbrigade 107 had nothing to do with the reports of armour in the Reichswald. It was on trains destined for the Eastern Front and then diverted to Aachen, and then after the airborne landings diverted again to Venlo for offloading to attack the corridor at Son. The reports of armour in the Reichswald were much older and were occupying the minds of the British 1st Airborne during planning for operation COMET between 4-10 September, and then gained the attention of Gavin when he was asigned the Nijmegen area for MARKET. If you look in the Cornelius Ryan Collection box 101, folder 09, page 48, you will find a covering letter from Gavin to Ryan enclosing some research papers from Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree, in which he had tracked the withdrawal of the Hohenstaufen Division after it crossed the Maas at Maastricht on 4 September to concentrate near Sittard, and then on 8 September were ordered north to Arnhem and the Veluwe region. Their route took them through Nijmegen and Gavin realised only now (in 1966) that they apparently made a stop in the Reichswald, sparking all the rumours and reports. The division was only in transit and not identified, so when the Dutch identified the division later northeast of Arnhem, the reports from the Reichswald could not be connected and assessed to have moved out.
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  325.  @mikeainsworth4504  - no probs. Come back if you need more. On the orders to 82nd and 101st divisions, I don't know if you would find anthing in British records as the planning for MARKET after Browning's provisional outline for operation SIXTEEN was approved was passed to 1st Allied Airborne Army, so I imagine any such records would be American. I have heard that most records for the 508th Regiment had inconveniently 'disappeared', which is interesting because the reason Colonel Lindquist performed badly as a field officer was because he was a gifted administrator, and according to Gavin produced paperwork "like you wouldn't believe."
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  326. Where did he lie? At least he presented evidence for his conclusions, while you have presented nothing. I suspect you've got nothing.
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  327. Churchill's only involvement in this story was his concern over the new V-2 rocket operations - the first rockets landed in London on 8 September, and after receiving a report from the War Office indicating the launch sites were on the Dutch coast near Den Haag, Churchill signalled Montgomery the next day enquiring when he intended to "rope off" that general area of the Netherlands. It confirmed in Montgomery's mind that Arnhem generated the better outcomes than the Wesel (Germany) alternative considered for a Rhine crossing, so when he decided on the morning of 10 September to cancel Operation Comet (just as the men were boarding the aircraft) due to reports of increased German forces in the Netherlands target area, he proposed an upgraded operation with three airborne divisions called Market Garden at his meeting with Eisenhower later that day. Market Garden was fatally compromised when the Airborne missed a bridge due to a command failure in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Nijmegen, and not because of any fault in YouTube commenter's favourite targets of Browning, Montgomery, or Churchill. This persistent shit-flinging at senior British figures is based on ignorance and Hollywood movies should be seen as part-fiction (or even anti-British propaganda) and go back to reading books. There's plenty of American, Dutch, and even Swedish historians out there, telling the true story: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  328.  @thevillaaston7811  - I believe he was VCIGS, so that makes sense.
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  329.  @thevillaaston7811  - I remember replying to this one but I can't see my reply - YooToob up to it's tricks again!
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  330. The 9 Shermans were knocked out by the anti-tank platoon of Kerutt's I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 18 armed with panzerfausts in the roadside ditches. All the anti-tank guns (I believe they were 11 x 7.5cm PaK 40) were effectively destroyed by the opening artillery preparation, because they were sited out in the open for lack of prime movers to get them away from the roadside.
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  331. Okay, present your evidence it was "Montgomery's Shit Show all the way" and I'll stop posting facts.
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  332.  @juke699  - it's a very superficial answer and misleading as a result. Anyone with any military knowledge will know that detailed planning is done by the units that undertake operations, and Army Group commanders like Montgomery only devise the strategic plan, not the operational and tactical planning done by the lower formations. The article you quote (from the U.S. Army Airborne & Special Forces Museum) has a significant error in it where it says [quote] "the plan failed largely because the British XXX Corps did not reach the furthest bridge at Arnhem before German forces overwhelmed the British defenders. This occurred because Allied intelligence failed to detect the presence of German tanks." There is no date on when the web article was written, but I can tell you this version of events is the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974) and popularised by the 1977 film adaptation. Much of the work that proves this narrative is wrong was published in books in 2011-2012, and the infamous aerial photo showing German tanks near Arnhem was found in a Dutch archive in 2014 and studied by the RAF's Air Historical branch, undermining one of Cornelius Ryan's key witnesses and his one-sided account. The original Arnhem operation called COMET was cancelled by Montgomery on 10 September after he received reports II.SS-Panzer-Division had moved into the target area. He then proposed a replacement operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN and later given the codename MARKET GARDEN) to Eisenhower during a scheduled meeting later the same day, upgrading COMET by adding the two American divisions to land at Eindhoven-Grave-Nijmegen, which allowed British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade to concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun assets. The 'Ultra' source for code decrypts was not declassified to the public until FW Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published in 1974, the same year Cornelius Ryan rushed his unfinished book (he had terminal cancer), A Bridge Too Far, to publication. So, Ryan was unaware of Ultra, as was everybody else below 21st Army Group and British 2nd Army commanders (Montgomery and Dempsey), and Eisenhower. People who needed to know were given 'sanitised' intel (stripped of unit identifications), so British anti-tank batteries sent to Arnhem were told to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day, including Panther and Tiger tanks - which is a sanitised reference to a panzer-division or panzerbrigade and heavy tank battalions respectively. Dutch resistance sources had also reported SS troops being billeted in towns and villages in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel), and had identified vehicle insignia for the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'. There was a concern its sister unit, the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg', was not located, so General Gavin was given a steer that the barracks in Nijmegen may contain "a regiment of SS" (the reduced strength of the Frundsberg) and possibly the Reichswald forest may contain a pool of tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve. This information adversely affected Gavin's divisional planning thinking. The real reason the plan did not work was because part of Gavin's divisional plan was not carried out. He had instructed the commander of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as practical after landing, and this he failed to do. Colonel Lindquist was not a good field commander and had not performed well in Normandy, yet Gavin assigned the critical Nijmegen mission to the 508th instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, which he assigned to the Reichswald sector. By the time Gavin found out the 508th battalion was not moving from its initial objective on the Groesbeek ridge, it was too late to prevent the 10.SS-Panzer-Division moving armoured units in from the area north and east of Arnhem, many miles away. Gavin had also dismissed a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge to seize it by coup de main, because of his experience with a scattered drop on Sicily. The airborne planning after COMET was cancelled had been passed over to 1st Allied Airborne Army, because it now involved American units, and USAAF Generals Brereton of 1st AAA and Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command deleted COMET's double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, so the British were doing everything they could to maximise the success of the operation, but once in American hands the plan was subject to a number of compromise changes. On occasions I have replied sarcastically to people by asking if they thought Montgomery had chosen every drop zone and planned every battalion route march to their objectives? I think once you get into the weeds, people do start to think a bit about it and take the point. There are old references to Gavin's instruction to Lindquist that were there all the time: Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (reproduced on p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Most recent references detailing what went wrong at Nijmegen and ignored by Cornelius Ryan (and the U.S. Army Airborne Museum), and these include first hand accounts from people who were in the final divisional briefing: September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  333.  @juke699  Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." (p.11, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ – As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Nordyke op cit, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
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  334.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  ... it's Montgomery Derangement Syndrome
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  335.  @jeffreybeigie5244  - I've been in the position of working for people whose job I knew I could do better, and in every case it was a political appointment and not someone who was there because they were the most capable. It happens all the time and it's always bloody annoying. I think Ike was lucky Montgomery was not in the habit of carrying a pair of pearl-handled pistols. He might have been tempted to use them!
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  336.  @jeffreybeigie5244  - Marshall probably wouldn't have been acceptable to Churchill, in fact I think I recall reading as much somewhere. Eisenhower was a skilled politician who kept the coalition together, but he had his work cut out with the Generals he had in his own Army. My comment about Montgomery using pistols was obviously tongue in cheek, because he must have felt exasperated at times - but he didn't even slap anyone, to my knowledge. Bradley had to order Patton to halt at Falaise because he feared a friendly fire incident with the Poles, who were leading the Canadian arm of the pincer. Yet time after time I read in YouTube comments that Montgomery let the Germans escape at Falaise! I suspect it's a product of the American school system, because it doesn't even make any sense. Montgomery, as commander of all land forces throughout his brief tenure in June, July, and August 1944, was the architect of the whole encirclement strategy in Normandy. Market Garden, as this video explains, was another encirclement operation devised by Montgomery, unfortunately undone by an American Colonel at Nijmegen, who failed to follow the instructions of his own chain of command. As I said... exasperating.
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  337. It was working until it got to Nijmegen. The reason it failed was not shown in the Hollywood film because it was an American failure to secure the undefended Nijmegen bridges on the first afternoon that compromised the operation. The wrong crystals affected exactly two radio sets at Arnhem - both VHF sets used by the American USAAF Fighter Control Teams attached to 1st Airborne Division. The film doesn't explain that, again for obvious reasons.
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  338. It's not a binary thing. The story is more complex.
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  339. The intelligence was actually quite accurate, but the planning was compromised after Browning and Montgomery's outline plan SIXTEEN was approved by Eisenhower and then passed to 1st Allied Airborne Army to be amended into the flawed MARKET.
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  340.  @AdamsTysu  - yup, I think you're wrong: 1. Montgomery, as an Army Group commander was responsible for strategic and not operational planning, originally ordered (not planned) operation COMET (1st Airborne Div and Polish Brigade on Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges), planned by Browning (I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey (2nd Army). Cancelled by Montgomery after Dempsey received reports from 'Ultra' code intercepts that II.SS-Panzerkorps were ordered to Arnhem to refit and verified Dutch reports of armour in the Reichswald, and because of continuing resistance on 2nd Army front that required additional airborne forces dropped in front of it. Dempsey secured permission from Montgomery to plan an upgraded operation, so Browning flew out to assist and they drew up provisional operation SIXTEEN using three airborne divisions. Montgomery presented the outline plan to Eisenhower for approval and Browning then took it back to 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning. 2. The plan was poorly prepared, I agree. Brereton (1st AAA) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) removed Browning's proposed double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that were key features of COMET/SIXTEEN. Williams also rejected Browning's proposed drop zones for the 101st south of the Wilhelmina canal to seize the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges quickly and effect a linkup with XXX Corps on D-Day. Gavin discards a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge in his divisional plan because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. 3. Browning is unable to object to the changes after already threatening to resign over a previous Brereton plan called operation LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges) scheduled too soon to print and distribute maps and Brereton planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. Thankfully, LINNET II was cancelled, but Browning now knew what would happen if he protested Brereton's MARKET plan, which was based on recycling his LINNET II air plan. 4. According to David Belchem, standing in for Montgomery's hospitalised Chief of Staff Freddie De Guingand, 21st Army Group were only notified of the changes for MARKET after Brereton's 14 September cut-off date for making any amendments. A Montgomery intervention would likely have to go to Eisenhower to adjudicate and probably result in Brereton cancelling the operation, which he had the authority to do. 5. Sosabowski protested the COMET plan. During the MARKET briefings he remained silent. 6. It is undisputed that Sosabowski was difficult to work with and insubordinate to Horrocks (XXX Corps) during the Valburg conference in front of witnesses Browning and Thomas (43rd Division). 7. Sosabowski was in command of a brigade and not even a division, and carried the Polish Army rank of general brygady - the equivalent of Major General (a division commander) in the UK and US, as there is no Major General rank in the Polish Army. He was therefore still subordinate to Lieutenant Generals Browning and Horrocks, both Corps commanders. 8. The Poles were under Polish Government-in-Exile control and only attached to the British Army for operations. They did not fight for the British Goverment and were not paid or pensioned by the British Army. Sosabowski chose asylum in the UK instead of returning to Poland. Britain was impoverished after two world wars, having to pay for American help in both - the final payments were not made until 2006 and the USA profited from the war (the only major combatant to do so) almost to the exact penny the British Commonwealth lost money. If you want Polish soldiers to receive a pension from anywhere other than Poland, I suggest writing to the American embassy (because they have all of our money) and I wish you the very best of luck! 9. Sosabowski and the Poles were not blamed for the failure of the operation, they could not possibly affect the outcome either way after arriving late on D+4 and only scheduled to be a reinforcement on D+2, so this is obviously complete nonsense. Sosabowski and the Brigade were only criticised for disciplinary problems, which Browning and Horrocks reported to Montgomery, after Montgomery had already written to Sosabowski to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and ask for recommendations for awards. Even the SS in Oosterbeek complained about the Poles shooting at medics. The Polish Government-in-Exile chose to relieve him of command after Montgomery only requested the brigade be removed from Browning's command. The Polish Government-in-Exile made their own decision, the British Army had no authority to remove any Polish army officer. 10. Both Browning and Montgomery had frontline experience in the trenches of WW1 as Lieutenants and both received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Montgomery commanded the 3rd Infantry Division in the B.E.F. in France and Belgium in 1940, and took over the role of Corps commander at Dunkirk when Alan Brooke was recalled to England. Browning raised the British Airborne Forces from scratch in 1941 and was the first commander of the 1st Airborne Division. He would have still been senior to US General William Lee, had Lee remained fit to continue service instead of suffering his heart attack and Ridgway became senior US Airborne commander. To put experience into perspective: Browning received his DSO for Cambrai in 1917 when young Jimmy Gavin was 10 years old and still in short trousers. Britain and France both went to war with Germany over the invasion of Poland and this kind of criticism does not show Poles in a very positive light. You need to get your facts right.
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  341.  @jerbs5346  - not able to find it in the 50 items of trivia on IMDb. This entry relates to the glider crash at Vught, but is inaccurate: 'The film includes an event in which a British staff officer brought a complete Corps-level operations order with maps and graphics, which was never supposed to leave Britain, with him on a transport glider and then inadvertently left it on the glider when it landed in Holland. The Germans eventually overran the glider landing zone and found the operations order. But the Germans were convinced that this was a set of fake documents planted for deception by the British, and actually maneuvered contrary to what the documents indicated for the first few days of the battle.' The glider carried an American 101st Airborne liaision officer, a Captain, to Browning's HQ with his comms team. All on board the crashed glider were found dead and the documents retrieved included a resupply schedule for 101st Division. Student had the documents interpreted and using his own airborne experience was able to extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions. Model was unconvinced, as correctly shown in the film, but the film did not cast Student so it doesn't show that he alerted his own Luftwaffe chain of command to have fighter aircraft over the drop zones at the scheduled times. Because the subsequent airlifts were all delayed by weather in England, the move backfired and the fighters were back at their bases in Germany being refuelled when the transports finally arrived. This incident was not "Browning's headquarters company was taken prisoner" or anything of the sort.
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  342.  @mikeainsworth4504 - no problem with the response time, but I often find notifications don't always generate on long threads, so you have to be aware of that possibility. Offhand I would go for RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014) and Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth and Reality (2011, 2019). I hesitate to rely on Richie because he's very pro-airforce and therefore more critical of Montgomery and Browning, while Poulussen is Dutch and more inclined to challenge that conventional narrative. Ritchie says the COMET glider coup de main assaults were timed to arrive at 0545 hrs - before daybreak, with RAF crewed tugs, and the main body of the 1st airlift between 0800-0900 hrs (a USAAF Group dropping the paratroops) and the 2nd airlift between 1730-1830 hrs the same day. The concerns about night navigation were based on the USAAF's previous performance in Normandy, which was regarded as poor, but daylight lifts in Normandy (Operation Mallard on the evening of 6 June) and for Operation Dragoon (south of France) were more accurate. The RAF would be navigating the British glider forces (and the pathfinders flown in RAF Stirlings), but the main airlifts were timed to arrive in daylight hours at both ends of the day because of the concerns over the USAAF aircrews. COMET was cancelled by Montgomery on the morning of the delayed launch - 10 September - in the early hours as troops were boarding their aircraft, because of reports on the worsening intelligence situation in the Netherlands (arrival of II.SS-Panzerkorps), and Browning flew out to meet Montgomery to devise the outline for an upgraded operation provisionally called SIXTEEN. This is approved by Eisenhower at his scheduled meeting with Montgomery later that day and Browning flies back to England to present the outline to 1st Allied Airborne Army, who would now take over the planning. Here's where it gets interesting in Poulussen: [Quote:] At 1800 10 September, a conference began at 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY's headquarters in Sunninghill Park, England, to discuss the outline plan of the operation. The upgraded version of the British operation COMET would be an Allied enterprise. Present were 12 members of 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY, 4 of American 18 AIRBORNE CORPS, 3 of British 1 AIRBORNE CORPS, 3 of American 82 AIRBORNE DIVISION, 2 of AMERICAN 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION, 2 of American 9 TROOP CARRIER COMMAND and 1 of British 38 GROUP. The interests of British 1 AIRBORNE DIVISION could not be defended because they had no representatives at the conference. Brereton announced that Williams was appointed the new air transport commander of 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY, with operational control not only of Williams' American 9 TROOP CARRIER COMMAND but also of British 38 and 46 GROUP and bomber aircraft that might be used for resupply. [The outline plan is presented with 1st Div to Arnhem, 101st to Nijmegen, and 82nd to Eindhoven] In "All British" operation COMET two lifts on D-Day had been planned and approved but now American Stearley (senior G3 officer 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY) argued that "good" counter Flak preparations could not be achieved for a daylight lift and therefore a two-lift operation was negated. Williams stated that - due to the distance involved - a double tow lift was precluded. [Williams also recommended the 101st and 82nd Divisions switch to avoid their air routes crossing] Landing gliders close to the bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave was not considered too great a hazard in operation COMET, but Williams - preoccupied with Flak - cancelled the coup de main actions around the key bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen. Also not without consequence, Williams rejected - again driven by Flak concerns - two suggested drop/landing zones in the area of 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION, namely Valkenswaard and Eindhoven. Browning had proposed these drop/landing zones for 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION so that 30 CORPS could make a good head start on D-Day, by "hopping" from one secured spot to the next, as on an "airborne carpet". Without this "airborne carpet" 30 CORPS would now have to fight its way - for at least 13 miles - through the thickening German crust of defence on D-Day, until they reached Eindhoven, hopefully secured by American 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION. [End quote] Poulussen also publishes here a map from the COMET planning that show the airlift routes to Arnhem and Nijmegen (Grave is off the map and he doesn't mention what happened to the coup de main assault there, but we know that Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR insisted on a special drop zone for a parachute company to land there and got it). The glider coup de main flights to the Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges follow the same track to Arnhem as the main body to LZ 'S', but their release points are when they cross the rivers Rijn and Waal respectively, then make 90 degree turns to the right and glide 6 km to their landing zones next to the bridges by following the river in each case. The tug aircraft are therefore not exposed to Flak near the bridges and the gliders make a silent approach. It's hard to understand why Williams objected to the assaults on the grounds of Flak. I personnally suspect it was Brereton who wanted them deleted, because this was a capability the Americans did not posses in their glider doctrine and it would mean in the expanded operation the British Airlanding Companies assigned to the coup de main assaults would secure the 82nd Airborne's two biggest objectives for them. Brereton had objected to Montgomery's proposed airborne operation INFATUATE for Walcheren to help open Antwerp on numerous grounds, but one of them was that he didn't want to use US troops in an Anglo-Canadian sideshow. His LINNET II plan - not requested by Montgomery's 21st Army Group to which 1st AAA was attached - was his own initiative in case LINNET was cancelled and would land in Bradley's 12th Army Group area to assist his US 1st Army advance across the Maas between Liege and Maastricht. I think American political considerations were driving the conflict between the Allies within 1st AAA. There's no doubt that in the conflict between the airforce and army requirements, the airforce won the arguments, because 1st AAA was dominated by the USAAF and not the RAF or British Army.
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  343. After reading his Arnhem book (and not having read his work before), I concluded that he is what I call a "professional author", and I mean the word 'professional' in the sense of the oldest profession.
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  344. Antony Beevor's book is a totally useless book that does nothing to advance the research on this topic - I only learned one thing from reading it, and that was a joke! The book was donated to my local Oxfam charity shop. The extract refers to the advance from Valkenswaard to Aalst. Market Garden was still on schedule at this point, and did not fall behind until Nijmegen, when XXX Corps found the critical Nijmegen bridges were not in American Airborne hands.
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  345. The Dutch resistance reports of armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen Division in transit to Arnhem, something Gavin only realised in 1966 when passing on some research papers by Dutch Colonel TA Boeree to Cornelius Ryan. Gavin said he was given a warning order by Brereton that his division was to drop on Nijmegen for MARKET, he went immediately to 1st Airborne HQ to see their plans and intelligence for the Nijmegen area in their preparation for the cancelled operation COMET, and made his own divisional plan accordingly. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, which was a suggestion designed to replace the loss of a glider coup de main that was removed by Brereton and Williams' decision to fly all MARKET flights in daylight and only one lift per day. Gavin said he toyed with the idea and eventually discarded it, because of his eperience with the scattered drop in Sicily. Sources: box 101 folders 09 and 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University.
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  346. 25:41 - the Dutch resistance reported SS panzer troops moving into towns and villages over a wide area of the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east banks of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only positively identified vehicles bearing the 'H' insignia of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'. They had also identified (Kasteel - castle) Ruurlo as a divisional headquarters, but not which division it belonged to. So it's technically incorrect to say the resistance had located the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg', because although they had located SS troops in the Achterhoek and their HQ at Ruurlo, they didn't know it was the Frundsberg. They also didn't know the 'Hohenstaufen' Division HQ was at Beekbergen, near Apeldoorn, and that the River Ijssel was the interdivisional boundary between the two divisions. That was the reason the intelligence picture at Nijmegen was an unknown, because the estimate was that the II.SS-Panzerkorps were refitting by drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald (it was actually near Münster), starting the silly rumour there could be 1,000 tanks hidden in the forest. Because the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' had not been identified by the Dutch resistance, Gavin was warned that Nijmegen may have "a regiment of SS" (the estimated reduced strength of both divisions) in the excellent Dutch army barracks facilities in Nijmegen, and these could obviously be alerted by the airborne landings and quickly man a defence line on the Groesbeek ridge to deny Gavin access to the bridges.
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  347.  @TheImperatorKnight  - responsibility goes up the chain of command, but the fault was at regimental level: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation. Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " Source: Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  348. I sometimes wonder what planet people are on when they misread their own history... What terrain was ignored? What intelligence was ignored? What objectives were not achieved in time? What do you mean by "failed to allow for any deviation from his directives"? Where did he make any presumption about aircraft losses? Which Dutch ports could he possibly have secured? In what way was Market Garden not 90% successful? What would Bradley or Patton have done differently when their tanks reach Nijmegen and find the bridges still in German hands?
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  349.  @jrd33  - your timing is perfect. I have just posted a reply on another video on this very question of German armour in the Reichswald because of a recent discovery, so I'll copy and paste the same information here too, if I may: In the Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 9, page 48 - Gavin writes to Cornelius Ryan a covering letter in 1966 to enclose some papers written by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree (I have his book written with Cornelius Bauer called The Battle of Arnhem, 1966 and originally in Dutch as De Slag By Arnhem, 1963), and Gavin had suddenly realised something significant: November 18, 1966 Dear Connie: Here's a paper which I received quite a long time ago from T. A. Boeree. On page 4a it gives the route of march of the Hohenstaufen Division to positions north of Arnhem. One of its stops was at Nijmegen and, according to the intelligence we had, in the Reichswald. As I believe I told you, when I talked to you about Operation Market at one time, the British originally planned to parachute into Nijmegen and they were working with Bestebreurtje on their planning when I was called to Brereton's headquarters on September 10 and given the mission for the 82nd. Immediately following that meeting, I went over to the British headquarters. Their intelligence was that there were very heavy German armored forces in the Reichswald and they had been preparing to deal with them in their plans. It seems obvious, now, that the intelligence coming from the Dutch underground was based on armored forces intransit to north of Arnhem. I don't think that Boeree's paper will contribute much to an understanding of the outcome of Market, but I thought that you should have it in your papers. With best regards, [signed] James M. Gavin - So on 10 September, the situation was that Montgomery had just cancelled COMET because of reports of II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with them, and proposed to Eisenhower an upgraded operation SIXTEEN (later MARKET) that added the US Airborne divisions. They also had these Dutch reports of armour in the Reichswald, but obviously unidentified. Even the later Dutch reports on 13/14 September of SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions north and northeast of Arnhem could only offer an identification of 'H' vehicle insignia identifying the Hohenstaufen Division, and a division headquarters at Ruurlo - but not which division (it was the Frundsberg's). So, by the time MARKET was launched, they knew there were SS panzer troops near Arnhem tentatively identified as the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen', and it was presumed her sister unit the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' was also in the Netherlands, so Gavin was given a 'sanitised' (unit identifications stripped out) warning that the Nijmegen Dutch army barracks might contain "a regiment of SS" (the reduced strength of the Frundsberg) and that tanks may be located in the Reichswald, refreshing from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area (later found to be false and actually located near Münster), but it probably carried less weight than the more recent reports from Arnhem and that best placed 1st Airborne at Arnhem. The tank depot error I cannot explain as yet, but I think may be a confusion between a local place name that may exist near both Kleve and Münster. There was a similar error made by Tieke (In The Firestorm of the Last Year of the War, Wilhelm Tieke 1975) and copied by Kershaw (It Never Snows In September, Robert Kershaw 1990) that conflated the location of Röstel's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 10 that was detached to 7.Armee in the VALKENBURG area near Aachen, with the town of VALKENSWAARD in the MARKET GARDEN corridor. The StuGs and Jagdpanther seen near Valkenswaard belonged to Heeres schwere.Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and not Röstel's unit, so it's obviously hard for people to be forensic in the detail even with decades of hindsight, never mind during the war.
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  350.  @jrd33  - my understanding of the 1,000 tanks was that it was a rumour started by someone suggesting the forest could hide up to 1,000 tanks and we wouldn't know about it. What's interesting about the Hohenstaufen's withdrawal route was that they crossed the Maas upstream and then travelled down the east bank, and there's numerous forested areas in that narrow corrider along the Dutch/German border that could be used for cover against air observation. I had always assumed the movement from Sittard to Arnhem/Veluwe was done in one bound overnight and went straight through Mook-Nijmegen-Arnhem as the map in Bauer's book suggests, but it's of course quite plausible they stopped for a day to shelter in the Reichswald and this stop generated the Dutch reports, or indeed perhaps they didn't go through Mook and transited the Reichswald from Gennep to Kranenburg and then Nijmegen. As for the depot, there would be a forward depot from which tanks delivered from the factory would be collected and then issued to units. Of course, because of the demand outstripping supply, you won't have much of a surplus awaiting issue. The Frundsberg's Panther Abteilung were not operational until January 1945 precisely because every time they got another five tanks delivered to their training depot they would be diverted or taken off them to replace losses in Normandy! Their training programme was extended because they only had one or two tanks per kompanie to train with for a long time. During the battle of Arnhem, Model arranged for 20 Panthers to be delivered (in batches of 8 and 12 tanks) direct to II.SS-Panzerkorps from the factory, and it was interesting to follow the debate in the armour forums online on who possibly crewed these tanks, and I concur with the general conclusion that it was the 'alarm kompanie' of 100 Panther crewmen in SS-Panzer-Regiment 9. It makes absolute sense to me that without trained crews waiting to receive them, the tanks would be of little use on their own and Model would arrange for 20 tanks, not 10 or 30, because the Hohenstaufen had that exact number of crews for them. I have Dieter Stenger's book Panzers East and West (2017) on the Frundsberg Division, and it's clear to me that these Panthers were the source for reforming 8./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, originally a StuG Kompanie.
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  351. Montgomery had been fighting the Germans the first time since 1914, and the second time since 1940.
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  352. Antwerp's port capacity was needed for advances into Germany for Eisenhower's 'broad front' policy, it was not needed for a Rhine crossing by one army. The Scheldt estauary was already fortified and the river and canal defence lines in the interior of the Netherlands was only just forming, so it was logic that dictated the advance to Arnhem first before opening up Antwerp. Even Eisenhower, not a tactician, saw the logic: Eisenhower was similarly unapologetic when he declared after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account, A Bridge Too Far, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) As for the rest of your strategy for Germany, it sounds like something a Sith Lord would think up! Germany certainly has always had ambitions to dominate the continent of Europe ever since the German states were unified by Bismarck in 1871, but the best defence is strong alliances between independent nation states like Britain, France, Italy, and Poland, not "Wipe them out! All of them!"
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  353.  @robinsattahip2376  - actually it was a quote in response to Montgomery's memoirs that criticised Eisenhower and made to Cornelius Ryan, who wrote it in a book - 'He's a psychopath, don't forget that. He is such an egocentric... He has never made a mistake in his life.' The fact is that Eisenhower was not a doctor and was not qualified to make that diagnosis. I think Montgomery got the measure of Eisenhower on their first meeting - 'Nice chap, no soldier'. At least Montgomery was qualified to make that determination.
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  354. Brereton inherited Browning's operation COMET plan for Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave and had the job of expanding it for three divisions to include the US divisions and Eindhoven as a target by grafting his LINNET/LINNET II air plan onto COMET. The deletion of COMET's double airlift and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the three main bridges (Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave) were key features of Browning's original concept and he did warn Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without them. The airborne aspect of the campaign was now taken over by the Americans, who seemed to think they knew better just because they had more resources committed to it, so you may be right that Brereton (as a former USAAF fighter pilot and not an Airborne man) just didn't get the point of MARKET GARDEN. I am convinced Gavin understood the concept of the operation, but his divisional plan seemed to be compromised by politics, again - but this time internal to his own 82nd Airborne Division. According to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Matthew Ridgway - the Division CO in Normandy, did not trust the 508th PIR CO, Colonel Lindquist, and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Gavin said he had a problem in that he couldn't promote any other Colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin may have had the same problem, because after Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII AIrborne Corps and Gavin inherited the division, he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and spent MARKET GARDEN's planning and execution running himself ragged doing both jobs. If Gavin didn't trust Lindquist either, it wasn't to the extent that he was prepared to assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th PIR to the Nijmegen mission, preferring to have his old regiment facing the Reichswald, which he may have perceived as the greater threat in terms of counter-attack than the possibility of mission failure at Nijmegen. Gavin also told Cornelius Ryan the British (presumably Browning) requested he drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, and although he toyed with this idea he eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily where the Troop Carriers dropped the division over a huge area and it was disorganised for days. I think the 101st Airborne performed well, with the exception of Taylor's own decision to target the Wilhelmina canal bridge at Best as an alternative crossing to the one at Son - it was a bridge that Dempsey neither wanted nor had a use for, possibly because the Eindhoven-Hertogenbosch road was headed in the wrong direction - crossing the XXX/XII Corps boundary. The loss of both Wilhelmina canal bridges to German demolition, as well as several on the Maas-Waal canal west of Nijmegen, was not due to sluggish movement by the US Airborne units assigned to take them, but due to the fact these canals were both on prepared defence lines, with the bridges prepared for demolition and the bridge garrisons had standing orders to blow the bridges if threatened. Seizure of an intact bridge in these circumstances depends on as much luck and perhaps a mistake made by the defenders as it does with the assaulting force doing everything right. The lock bridge at Heumen failed to be demolished for reasons that are unknown, and the road bridge at Honinghutje also failed, but was part-damaged by the successful rail bridge detonation alongside it. The Grave bridge had one of the two initiator charges found to be at fault and the delay in sending a man back to Nijmegen for a replacement allowed the bridge to easily fall into American hands in the meantime. Browning's authority, such as it was as Brereton's deputy, had been effectively neutralised during the planning for LINNET II, a Brereton inititative in case LINNET was cancelled like so many others during the rapid Summer advances in August and early September. Browning threatened to resign over the lack of time for maps to be printed and distributed to the airborne troops, but thankfully LINNET II was also cancelled by the ground forces overunning the landing zones before Brereton could put into operation his plan to accept Browning's resignation and replce him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. Both men agreed to put the incident behind them, but Browning was now aware of how precarious his position was politically and knew that protesting Brereton's MARKET planning was not going to effect any change. It would seem that Browning's response was to move the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek up to the first lift in order to try and at least influence events once on the ground, at the expense of some of Urquhart's anti-tank guns destined for Arnhem, which got bumped to the second lift instead. Finally, the Poles were never made scapegoats, and I find this the most disgusting slur to come out of the whole operation. It is undeniable fact that Polish General Sosabowski was difficult to work with and he was insubordinate to Horrocks (XXX Corps commander) at the Valburg conference on 24 September. So far as I have read, there has never been any suggestion from British commanders that the Poles were in any way responsible for the failure of the operation, and people posting such suggestions on YouTube of course fail to provide any references when I challenge them to do so. Such a suggestion would be ridiculous, based on the fact the Poles did not arrive until D+4, and four days after the operation was already compromised by the Americans at Nijmegen - and that perhaps is the real source of the slur as a deflection. The valid criticisms of the Poles' performance, even the SS in Oosterbeek complained that the Poles fired on their medics trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield (in Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September, 1990), has been conflated with the failure of the operation - it's absurd to connect the two issues. Montgomery's initital response after the operation was to write to Sosabowski to praise him and his brigade for their efforts, and to ask for recommendations for awards. It was then he received a report from Browning on his difficulties with Sosabowski and Montgomery backed his request to have the brigade removed from his command by forwarding the report to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke.
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  355. The tanks got to Nijmegen on the 'single road' still on schedule. It was only the Waal bridges still in Germans hands that stopped them for 36 hours.
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  356.  @nickdanger3802  - so let's recap: For operation COMET, Browning had planned for the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, to be seized by a dawn glider coup de main assault, repeating the success of operation DEADSTICK in Normandy on the Orne canal bridge, now renamed 'Pegasus Bridge'. Browning even cabled General Miles Dempsey of British 2nd Army that COMET should not go ahead without these glider coup de main assaults to secure the bridges. COMET is cancelled by Montgomery at 0200 hrs on 10 September, as troops were about to board their aircraft, because Montgomery had received information that II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the eastern Netherlands and COMET was not strong enough to deal with them. Later that day in a scheduled meeting with Eisenhower, Montgomery proposed an upgraded operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN) by adding the two American divisions. This would enable 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade with their superior anti-tank gun resources to be concentrated where the armoured threat was considered to be greatest, eventually determined to be at Arnhem. Eisenhower enthusiastically endorsed the idea and planning for the airborne component of the operation was handed over to General Lewis Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army, as it now involved all of its units and not just the British and Polish. Brereton used his previous three-division air plans for LINNET and LINNET II combined with COMET's objectives to create operation MARKET. However, COMET's double airlift on D-Day is scrapped due to a shortage of night-trained navigators in General Paul Williams' US IX Troop Carrier Command, and the glider coup de main assaults were also deleted as they were considered too risky in broad daylight. Browning is unable to object as he had already previously threatened to resign over Brereton's plan for LINNET II (Liege and Maastricht bridges) being scheduled on too short notice to allow maps to be printed and distributed to the airborne troops. The operation was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident before Brereton had a chance to put into effect his intention to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy, and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for the operation. Browning was now politically neutralised and could do nothing to influence MARKET except move the transport of his I Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek to the 1st airlift and try to influence events once he was on the ground. Gavin makes his divisional plan, first toying with a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge, but eventually dismissing this because of his experience at the hands of the Troop Carriers in Sicily. He assigns the Nijmegen mission to the 508th, which had command problems in Normandy and was not well led, instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, which was assigned to the Reichswald sector of the divisional perimeter. In the pre-flight divisional briefing, Gavin instructs Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing. Lindquist fails to interpret his instructions correctly and after securing the initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge with all three battalions against zero opposition, sends only a pre-planned recon patrol based on a platoon from 'C' Company and led by the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section to the bridge, despite getting a personal briefing from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees at the initial objective, telling him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarded the highway bridge. The patrol gets split up in the streets of Nijmegen and the crowds of jubilant Dutch civilians, and only the three-man point team from the S-2 Section under PFC Joe Atkins pushes through the crowds and reaches the southern end of the highway bridge, surprising and taking seven German prisoners without firing a shot. They wait an hour until dark, and after nobody has shown up to reinforce them, decide to release their prisoners and withdraw. As they leave, they can hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge. Now that we know this, we know that Browning was right about the Nijmegen bridge - "we should have beaten the Boche to it quite easily." And we know that the failure was a chain of mistakes made by Brereton, Gavin, and Lindquist.
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  357. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR failed to "move with speed" on the virtually undefended Nijmegen bridge after landing as Gavin had instructed in the divisional briefing in England, and after being told by resistance leader Geert van Hees, the Germans had deserted the city and the bridge was guarded by an NCO and seventeen men. The blame falls on Lindquist, the responsibility as his supervisor on Gavin. Browning actually had nothing to do with any of this until the blame game started when Cornelius Ryan started researching his book in 1967, two years after Browning had already passed, but failed to unearth the true story or put it in A Bridge Too Far. TIK didn't drill down to a regimental level history, so I refer you to 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), chapters 9 and 10 on the planning and execution of operation Market, but for context on the why it happened I refer to the earlier chapters on the 508th's first combat operation in Normandy. Lindquist was a gifted administrator and S-1 to the US Airborne forces early in the war, but he proved to be a poor combat leader. In Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan, he told Ryan that 82nd commander in Normandy Matthew Ridgway did not trust Lindquist and refused to promote him. In fact he couldn't promote any colonel in the division to XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944 because Lindquist had seniority. Gavin had inherited this problem, didn't mitigate it by assigning the more experienced and aggressive 505th to the Nijmegen mission, and also failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander (possibly because he had the same promotion dilemma as Ridgway), so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs during the planning and execution of Market Garden. I would suggest this was not a satisfactory state of affairs, but Gavin's divisional plan was perfectly workable and would have succeeded except for the choice of regimental assignments, which was because of an internal personnel matter that I doubt Browning would have been aware of.
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  358.  @charlesjermyn5001  - the Afrika Korps were fighting until they were pushed off the continent altogether, by which time Rommel was no longer there (if memory serves). I'm much more familiar with Market Garden and haven't seen any reference to Montgomery blaming anyone for that operation's failure - in fact he wrote that he remained Market Garden's unrepentant advocate. If he had blamed the Americans for the failure at Nijmegen, it would have been explosive for the alliance, but unfortunately by remaining silent he allowed the Americans to blame him for a plan that was compromised by a failure of one of their own regimental commanders to carry out the clear instructions of his own divisional commander. Nothing to do with Montgomery at all, but it completely compromised his operation. I found this video interesting because in this case again, Montgomery became a convenient scapegoat for the Americans simply because they didn't like him and he was conveniently there. In fact it's worse, because in this case it wasn't a blunder at all and there was no need to blame anybody, as I think TIK has successfully argued.
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  359.  @charlesjermyn5001  - I haven't studied Montgomery's entire career, and like TIK I don't take a position of being a fan or critic of him personally. I have only really studied his involvement as it relates to Market Garden, and I have not come across any references to fraud, incompetence, or profiteering by him with regard to that operation. Many times I have asked people for references or any evidence for their criticisms of Montgomery, most recently on Mark Felton's video about two Polish Generals badly treated after the war, one of whom was Stanislaw Sosabowski of the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade at Arnhem. The common trope that Sosabowski and the Poles were scapegoated for Market Garden's failure came up, and by someone who had read Antony Beevor's book on Arnhem. I had read that book myself and don't recall any such blame being made in it, but because the book contained no new data and was a complete waste of money, I donated it to my local Oxfam bookshop. I asked the poster for a quote from the book to substantiate his point and he eventually came back and said he couldn't put his hands on the book either! It's frustrating, but I think I know what is happening: Montgomery wrote to Sosabowski to praise him and his Brigade for their efforts, and to ask for recommendations for awards. He then received reports from Browning about Sosabowski being 'difficult' to work with, and probably from Horrocks/Thomas/Browning about his insubordination to Horrocks at the Valburg conference, and subsequently changed his attitude. The Brigade also exhibited some ill-discipline, the Germans even complained that the Poles fired on their medics attempting to retrieve wounded from the battlefield. I'm not suggesting it isn't undertstandable, but insubordination and breaches of the Geneva Conventions are serious charges, so I can understand if Montgomery and the other British officers were annoyed. But here's the thing - criticising the Poles for discipline issues is NOT the same thing as making them scapegoats for the failure of Market Garden. That is a scurrilous accusation and one that doesn't make any kind of tactical sense. The Poles arrival at Arnhem was delayed through no fault of theirs (bad weather), and they were frankly too late to play any part in the success or failure of the operation. Their actual contribution was to unbalance the German seige of 1st Airborne Division and enable their withdrawal, for which they were duly thanked and praised by Montgomery in his letter to Sosabowski. Without any evidence of the Poles being scapegoated forthcoming, I'm inclined to think it's a case of valid criticisms being conflated with the blame game for Market Garden, further contributing to the Montgomery Derangement Syndrome.
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  360. Another useful reference is RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), which reproduces Colonel Lindquist's Field Order No.1, dated 13 September, detailing his plan for the occupation of the Groesbeek heights at de Hut, de Ploeg and Berg-en-Dal, by 2nd, 1st, and 3rd Battalions respectively. He only includes in the general orders for the regiment in section 2.a: "hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on Div order". Poulussen also reproduces the transcript of Lindquist's interview with Historical Officer Captain Westover (US Army Center of Miltary History) on 14 September 1945: 2. GENERAL GAVIN said he gave you orders to move directly into NIJMEGEN? "As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on." This seems to me to be a lie by ommision, in failing to mention he was instructed in the divisional briefing to move "with speed" on the bridge as soon as practical after landing. I don't have a date for the divisional briefing from Nordyke, but presumably it was before the 13 September Field Order No.1 was written. Nordyke's earlier chapters in Put Us Down In Hell (2012) on the Normandy campaign, the 508th's first combat operation, details incidents of poor command decisions by Lindquist, based on testimony of Chet Graham and other officers in the regiment. Lindquist's background was that he was one of the first officer volunteers for the new Airborne corps after US entry into the war and was an outstanding S-1 (Admin Officer) for the early Airborne forces. When the force was expanded and more officers were required to fill combat command positions, Lindquist was given command of the 508th Parachute Infantry Battalion on formation, and subsequently promoted to full Colonel when the battalion was expanded to a regiment. A question arises about supervision by Gavin, Lindquist's superior and Division Commander after Ridgway moved on to command XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944, but Gavin failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander. Not only was Gavin running himself ragged doing both jobs for the planning and execution of Market Garden, but it seems neither Ridgway or Gavin trusted Lindquist enough to promote him. Gavin said after the war that Ridgway refused to promote him, although he was the most senior Colonel in the Division, and could not promote Tucker (504th) or Ekman (505th) over him. This might explain why Ridgway did not take Lindquist with him to XVIII Corps as his G-1, a role he would be ideally suited to, but that would mean promotion. My impression is that Gavin was overloaded and failed to ensure his instructions to Lindquist had been fully realised by Lindquist's regimental plan (Field Order No.1) for the operation, and I would question what was Gavin's rationale for assigning Nijmegen to the 508th and not the more exprienced and aggressive 505th? I can only assume Gavin's concern for possible enemy forces located in the Reichswald drove his decision to have the 505th covering that sector of the divisional perimeter.
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  361. The Market Garden deployment plan for the divisions of XXX Corps north of the Rijn involved the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to establish bridgeheads at Deventer and Zutphen on the Ijssel River, and the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division a bridgehead over the Ijssel at Doesburg. The Polish Parachute Brigade's part of the planned 1st Airborne Division perimeter around Arnhem also included the Ijssel bridges at Westervoort. While this leaves XXX Corps in a position on the Rhine delta facing east to strike into Germany, reaching the Zuider Zee (or Ijsselmeer) at Nunspeet with the Guards Armoured Division would cut off all German forces in the western Netherlands, including the 15.Armee west of Antwerp and the V-2 rocket launch sites on the Dutch coast. Montgomery had pointed this out to Eisenhower during his 10 September meeting at Brssels airport, but Eisenhower had actually not accepted his analysis. Eisenhower did approve of Market Garden because it fitted in with his strategy of a broad advance to the Rhine, but he did so for the wrong reasons. Montgomery was way ahead of him.
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  362. Actually, Caen was a D-Day target for 3rd Infantry Division, but unfortunately the Germans knew how important it was to their defence. You can't blame Montgomery for that.
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  363. The point was that the terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was not suited to an armoured attack and was ideal for defence, so the delay was inevitable to allow the infantry, still mopping up resistance in Nijmegen, to catch up. By 1300 hrs it was decided they couldn't wait any longer and an armoured column led by the Irish Guards was attempted with inevitable results. The anti-tank screen at Ressen was comprised of forces that were already on the 'island' from the in situ 7.5cm Flak guns (ex-French Schneider M.36 models), at least two Tiger tanks (8.8cm shell casings were later found here), and up to 3 StuGs from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 deployed in Nijmegen had withdrawn to this line, the presence of which having been confirmed overnight by reconnaissance patrols of the 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment. The fact is that the operation was already fatally compromised by the delays at Nijmegen, and efforts to reach the 1st Airborne at Arnhem/Oosterbeek had by this stage become increasingly desperate.
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  364. They did have air support, but it was compromised by deconfliction rules during the airlifts, bad weather, and poor ground to air communications withing the airborne division 'boxes'. You tend not to hear about the air support that was effective attacking targets of opportunity outside the restricted boxes, such as harrassing German troop reinforcements. The Pannerden canal ferrying operation by 10.SS-Panzer-Division could only be conducted at night or during bad weather, reducing the amount of troops they were able to get onto the Nijmegen 'island' (Betuwe), because of the constant attentions of Allied aircraft during the day. Working in the Germans favour was the ability to use main roads even during daylight, thanks to the Dutch practice of planting trees alongside main roads since Napoleonic times to keep marching troops in the shade, and the Germans found this helped avoid observation by Allied aircraft.
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  365. Totally correct, except that 15.Armee would technically be cut off from Germany by MARKET GARDEN if not from the WBN (German armed forces Netherlands) on the Dutch coast in 'Fortress Holland' and 1.Fallschirm-Armee west of the corridor, which would also be cut off by the operation. It was typical of Montgomery to go for a wider envelopment if a smaller one (aimed at just 15.Armee at Antwerp) was not possible or too costly. Montgomery made the point to Eisenhower in their 10 September meeting that a northwards advance to Arnhem would ease the opening of Antwerp, but that Eisenhower did not accept the analysis. Eisenhower did agree that successful operations to the north would open up wide possibilities for future action.
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  366.  @kevinsharkey1336  - the betrayal myth was comprehensively debunked with the publication of De Slag By Arnhem (1963), which was published in English as The Battle Of Arnhem (1966) by Dutch journalist Cornelius Bauer with Dutch army artillery Colonel Theodoor A. Boeree and based on his extensive research since the war. I have a copy and have read it. Just from the blurb on the back it says: "Boeree interviewed many of the soldiers, British and German, who fought in the great battle, documenting their personal opinions and experiences. His painstaking research led him to conclude that the plans for 'Market Garden' were not disclosed to the Germans before the battle by a Dutch traitor, as was widely believed at the time. Boeree proved, remarkably, that it was pure chance, not foresight, which enabled the II SS Panzer Corps to intervene in the battle so quickly. No other author can claim to have researched the Battle of Arnhem with such depth and precision - this truly is the definitive book on the subject." If you have more recent research that refutes this book, then please give me a reference, because I would be very interested in reading it. Gavin and Cornelius Ryan corresponded on the subject somewhat, and their correspondence is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and available to view online. It's in the James Gavin box 101, folder 9, pages 15, 94 and 95: 'November 16, 1966 Dear Connie, This manuscript will be of particular interest to you, particularly in dealing with the Arnhem situation, as well as Lindemans. Immediately following the end of Operation Market, there began to be speculation about a betrayal of the Allies. There were those who said that an underground spy working with the Dutch, who went by the name "King Kong" gave information of the impending landings to the Germans. I am satisfied without question that this is not so.' 'December 24, 1969 Dear Connie, I am sorry that you are going into the King Kong business so thoroughly. Did you read "Operation North Star?" It is about the penetration of the Dutch Underground network by the Germans. I have read extensively on the subject, in fact everything I could get my hands on and there is no doubt in my mind that King Kong did not give away the Arnhem operation. The British know better, too, than to say that he did.' 'Jim Gavin [handwritten note "ca Jan 1970"] Dear Jim, I agree with you about the King Kong affair. It is worth, as I mentioned previously, a large footnote and that is all. However, Bernhard has a burr under the saddle about the whole thing and is almost bludgeoning me into doing it in the book.' - Bernhard is of course Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who many believe was a Nazi sympathiser before his country was occupied and then made a nuisance of himself in various Allied headquarters trying to 'advise' them with his non-military knowledge, despite his official position. I like Cornelius Ryan's turn of phrase "burr under the saddle" - it perfectly illustrates what a pain in the arse Bernhard was and he was quite rightly ignored by Allied commanders, although in the case of Montgomery this fact is of course used against Montgomery by many Americans. I don't see XXX Corps as culpable in any major sense, since it's an undisputed fact they reached the 82nd Airborne in 42 hours and therefore still on schedule to get to Arnhem in 48 hours - or two to three days realistically - until they reached the 82nd and found out the Waal bridges were still in German hands, which led to the fatal 36-hour delay. The default plan for this scenario was for a river assault crossing by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, which was trained, equipped (with DUKWs for two battalions), and experienced (since Normandy) in such operations, to be conducted by one brigade (operation BESSIE) or two brigades (operation BASIL). Before and after trying a frontal assault with combined tanks and 505th paratroopers, Gavin had pressed for a river assault by his 504th Regiment, no doubt to make up for the blunder by the 508th on D-Day, and when his suggestion was finally accepted is where the pre-planning began to go wrong, because the prepared default plans were put aside and an alternative cobbled together, leaving XXX Corps units out of position to exploit. The key conference when this was decided lacked an officer from the Royal Engineers (admittedly an oversight), so it was incorrectly assumed boats would have to be brought up from stores in Belgium, while the RE in the Guards Division actually had 34 boats already in Nijmegen. These details are from Canadian researcher John Sliz and his excellent series of books on Market Garden Engineers, and the relevant volumes are: Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016) Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021) The whole Arnhem operation was put together over two weeks, because the previous week's planning for COMET was rolled into MARKET. People forget that, or they get the wrong impression from the Hollywood film - which quoted a week - strictly only applying to MARKET. The other line from that scene by Dirk Bogarde (as Browning) - "the sooner the better" - is actually correct, although they didn't know that a day later the Hohenstaufen Division would have been gone - another reason the betrayal myth is nonsense. I refute the suggestion there was poor intelligence. The tanks in the Reichswald we now know was the Hohnstaufen in transit to Arnhem (Gavin realised this in 1966 while sending Boeree's research to Ryan - see his cover letter on page 48), and the Arnhem intel in particular was found to be remarkably accurate. Only the exact location of the Frundsberg Division was unknown, because the Dutch had not identified it. The fact Ryan didn't put anything into his book that would make American officers look bad and tried to heap all the blame on the British is now obvious - you only have to read all his research he left out of the book. Gavin was surprisingly open in his own interview, especially about Lindquist. You can find that in the other Gavin folder, box 101 folder 10. What faster Corps was there in WW2? The Guards established a record daily divisional advance on 3 September when they liberated Brussels that was better than anything Patton ever achieved during the entire war, and I believe their record remained unbroken until the First Gulf War in 1991. The biggest problem we have in YouTube history comments is not what happened in WW2 at all, it's the 21st Century's willful ignorance of the facts, the unwillingness to even read the evidence, the lack of any semblance of scholarship - i.e. to do the work. This is why TIK is very good, but unfortunately unusual.
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  367.  @georgesenda1952  - try reading a map. The deepest penetration was not I.SS-Panzerkorps in 6.Panzer-Armee sector on Elsenborn ridge - that was the northern shoulder of the bulge and somewhat hampered by the fact the SS units did not use their reconnaissance units properly to find the best routes like their army counterparts. The deepest penetration in fact was by 2.Panzer-Division in the 5.Panzer-Armee sector in the centre, that by-passed Bastogne and got to within a few kilometres of the Meuse, with only the British XXX Corps waiting for them on the west bank. Their advance was halted by running out of fuel before there was any significant contact with the British. To get to that point, they had penetrated both the forward combat zone and the rear communications zone of the US 1st Army. There were no American troops between 2.Panzer and Paris, Brussels, or Antwerp, which must have worried Eisenhower in his comfortable Palace at Versailles...
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  368.  @thevillaaston7811  - I'm sure I have posted before that I checked the Airborne Corps war establishment and the senior GSO I(I) would be a Lieutenant-Colonel, and his assistant would be a GSO II(I) Major, with a couple of GSO III(Ia and Ib) Captains on the staff, one of which would be a German speaking interrogator. I can find no sign of the GSO I(I) being on the glider loading manifest for the Corps HQ in MARKET and the note against the GSO II(I) reads "GSO II(I) owing to an accident flew in late" - which sounds like Brian Urquharts 'medical leave'. I believe he rejoined the HQ on 22 September. If the GSO I(I) was an unfilled post it would explain a lot, because it would mean Brian Urquhart was probably out of his depth as the senior intelligence officer on the Corps staff. I believe there's no record of an oblique photo recce flight being ordered and it doesn't make sense if they were looking for tanks - oblique flights are aimed at points of known interest, like bridges or barracks. This is all the subject matter of Sebastian Ritchie's lunchtime lecture at Cosford I posted for you - don't know if you've seen it? It's on 17 September 12-2pm at the Cold War Museum, RAF Cosford. Tickets are free but you have to register to get your bar code for entry to the lecture. @oldwolflad and myself are both booked to go and we plan to have a couple of pints somewhere afterwards. It would be great if you could join?
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  369.  @thevillaaston7811  - I highly recommend the Market Garden Engineers series of books by John Sliz, the technical stuff is quite fascinating. The most pertinent volumes are the Guards Division and XXX Corps Special Bridging Force, but all the Airborne field units have volumes as well. The only volume I haven't got is The Storm Boat Kings (23rd Coy RCE), which was the Canadian author's primary interest before he covered all the other engineer units.
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  370.  @georgesenda1952  - You do need to check the map of the bulge again, if you really can read it. 2.Panzer-Division by-passed the "ferocious resistance" at Bastogne and ran out fuel at Celles, just a few kilometers short of the British XXX Corps line on the Meuse. Since Bastogne was Middleton's US VIII Corps HQ before it was evacuated, the Germans were well into the US rear communications zone when they by-passed it. There was no "ferocious resistance" between Bastogne and the Meuse. And Montgomery had to tidy-up the line on the northern shoulder of the bulge by withdrawing 82nd Airborne to better positions, something that Gavin and Ridgway both conceeded later was the right thing to do. Maybe they don't teach that at West Point... can you think of a reason? Montgomery had combat experience in WW1 while Ridgway was sitting on the Mexican border doing not very much, and Gavin was still in short trousers. But you got me with the Napoleonic wars, George. Even I wasn't around for those!
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  371.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  all three Army Corps of British 2nd Army were involved in MARKET GARDEN, the VIII Corps for the first time since Normandy, as their transport was stripped to mobilise XXX and XII Corps in the pursuit across France and into Belgium. For MARKET GARDEN, VIII and XII Corps were advancing on the right and left flanks on 'Spade' and 'Diamond' Routes respectively.
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  372.  @georgesenda1952  - how can you get every statement wrong? You said - "On 9-1 Bradley ordered 5,000 tons of supplies to First Army which was supporting Monty's attack in Holland" - Montgomery was still in France on "9-1". His advance from France to Brussels was on 3 September, Antwerp was liberated the next day. Overnight that night on 3/4 September was Montgomery and Browning's first meeting to discuss a Rhine crossing for British 2nd Army and that operation became COMET. This was still two weeks before MARKET GARDEN. Bradley wasn't supporting Montgomery's attack in the Netherlands at all, Hodges' 1st Army was directed by Eisenhower on Aachen and a crossing of the Rhine between Cologne and Bonn. You said - "if the weak Bradley had allowed Patton to close the Falaise Gap and take a chance even though there might have been some loss of troops from friendly British and Canadian fire... then a great deal of German troops would not have been available for a refit to start the attack in the Bulge." - Bradley stopped Patton's XV Corps from advancing on Falaise because the 90th Infantry Division was already over extended at Argentan and Bradley later wrote that he would "rather have a firm shoulder at Argentan than a broken neck at Falaise." This was sound tactical sense. Montgomery accepted Bradley's decision and ordered a wider envelopment at the Seine instead. You said - "and Monty had bragged that he would be in Caen quickly, it took him a long time" - Montgomery did not brag that he would be in Caen quickly - that really is movie B.S. He said he hoped to take Caen in the first 24 hours, unless the Germans counter-attacked the beaches with armour, in which case 3rd Infantry Division were ordered to hold a line north of Caen to protect SWORD Beach. 21.Panzer-Division was based around Caen and immediately counter-attacked the beaches, reaching the Channel coast between SWORD and JUNO. Anyone who thinks that's not a greater concern than taking Caen quickly needs their brains removed with tweezers and examined under a mircoscope for signs of life. You said - "Everything was geared for Market Garden which was destined to fail because DUTCH intelligence on panzers in the area was IGNORED by the British" - no, Montgomery cancelled operation COMET after he received reports II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area because he knew COMET was not strong enough to deal with it. He ordered an expanded airborne operation to replace it by adding the two American divisions to hold the corridor and this allowed the British and Polish airborne units to concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun assets to meet the armoured threat. The operation did not fail because of II.SS-Panzerkorps. It failed because the 82nd Airborne failed to move quickly to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on D-Day, which cut off the British at Arnhem and led to 1st Airborne Division being destroyed. You said - "the failure to not have bridging units" - actually a double negative, so technically correct and not a failure at all. From Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2021), I listed earlier in this thread the considerable number of bridging columns gathered together in Belgium from three Army Groups Royal Engineers - the Canadian 1st CAGRE, and the British 10th and 11th AGRE. These were in addition to the divisional bridging column in every British armoured and infantry division, of which there were three Corps involved in the operation. You said - "dropping troops not all at once due to a lack of transport" - the available transport was proposed to land two airlifts on the first day as Browning and Montgomery had planned for COMET and carried over into the outline plan SIXTEEN to replace it, but USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams cancelled the double airlift for their final MARKET plan. You said - "being 8 miles away from the bridge" - which would not be a problem if Brereton and Williams had not also deleted the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges planned for COMET and proposed again in the SIXTEEN outline. You said - "IF Patton had been asked he would have said it was more important to clear out Antwerp and the Schelde estuary so supplies could get through" - do you have any evidence for that? EIsenhower's view was - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) You said - "That job was left to the Canadians" - yes, the Scheldt was in their sector. Brereton had refused Montgomery's request for an airborne operation (INFATUATE) on Walcheren, so Antwerp had to wait. You don't expect British 2nd Army to sort out everybody's problems for them, do you?
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  373.  @georgesenda1952  - I'm not harassing you George, I'm correcting your newspaper articles with historical facts. Montgomery and Eisenhower's decision was based on the outline of provisional operation SIXTEEN, and that was changed into operation MARKET by USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams, further compromised by General Gavin, and then fatally compromised on the ground by Colonel Lindquist on the first afternoon. This is a matter of historical fact that Cornelius Ryan left out of his book, although some of the evidence is in his own interview notes. "Monty was a plodding commander" is another American trope, like "the Brits stopped to make tea." It's a load of crap and you shouldn't peddle it. If you think any of it is true, provide actual evidence and not a newspaper clipping.
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  374.  @georgesenda1952  - working with Americans on military operations can often be exasperating. This was widely reported in the UK, but the most full account I've found is on Reaction, dated August 22, 2021 by Tim Marshall: War of words: British and US military clash over Kabul airport chaos In the heat of the moment strong words can be exchanged between colleagues and friends in a war zone. However, what has allegedly been happening at Kabul airport goes deeper and shows the levels of anger in the UK military, and government, about America’s decision to cut and run from Afghanistan. Two independent sources say that last week a senior officer from the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) had a blazing row with the commanding officer from the American 82nd Airborne Division in front of other soldiers at Kabul airport. The exchange of views came after British special forces units made several forays into the city to rescue people who were in hiding and could not pass through Taliban checkpoints to get to the airport. One source suggests 2 Para units have also gone on “snatch” missions just outside of the airport to get people they recognize. On occasion they have aggressively pushed past Taliban checkpoints and ignored demands to go back inside. Following this Maj.Gen. Christopher Donahue from the 82nd Airborne ordered the British officer to cease operations outside of the airport perimeter fence because it was embarrassing the American military and angering the Taliban, thus risking the possibility of firefights breaking out. The British officer reminded the Maj.Gen. that the UK operation was independent of the US. The conversation allegedly ended when the Maj. General was called a “bastard” by a British Major, and the senior British officer told the American to “f*** off!” Apparently the “most vocal” person in the room was a very senior officer from the SAS. Some American officers are unhappy with the caution showed by their Maj. Gen although it’s probable he was under orders from US Central Command (Centcom). One, with close contacts in 2 Para, says: “The Parachute Regiment, bravely venture into Kabul to rescue the Queen’s subjects while our force of now 6000 soldiers and marines strong says it isn’t possible. My brave friends from 2 Para are doing what I would both want to do and expect from my government. I love my Army, my fellow Rangers and paratroopers, but tonight my pride stands with my at risk brothers in 2 Para and my brothers in the UK SAS and other special forces. I will always stand with action vs inaction when it comes to the political will to execute in a time of crisis.’’ Some officers and NCOs in the 82nd have asked permission to go out on escort patrols but have been refused permission. American risk aversion stems from concern that if serious shooting breaks out the entire rescue mission would be in jeopardy. However, it also reflects a high-handed attitude which reflects how the retreat from Afghanistan has been handled. Allies were not told in advance of the accelerated pull out and were blind-sided when the Americans snuck out of Bagram airbase under cover of darkness. There has been a serious lack of communication between Washington and London for weeks on the issue and now sources suggest that the most senior military figure overseeing the British role in the evacuation, Vice Admiral Ben Key, has been frozen out of negotiations between CENTCOM staff and Taliban commanders in Kabul. Other allies are also being kept out of the loop and are not communicating with each other efficiently. This has been a factor in flights leaving almost empty. A large Luftwaffe plane left with only 7 people on board and an Australian C-130 departed just a third full. An argument can be made for the gradual exit from Afghanistan and the end of America’s “forever war”, even if former Prime Minister Tony Blair describes the term as “imbecilic”. But the manner of leaving has shocked people all over the world. Some are in despair, others gleeful. America has not only led NATO into a generational failure, but it has also shown it cannot plan for and manage the immediate fall out. It has also put doubt in its friends minds about its reliability. The UK should not, arguably cannot, end its friendship with the US, but the strong words used at the airport reflect what, in the heat of this moment, the governments of the NATO alliance are thinking. Reaction has approached the MOD for comment on the allegations above, but to date it has not responded.
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  375. It would be better for Gavin, but that wouldn't be honest.
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  376. Gavin is certainly at the centre of this drama (see TIK's video on Gavin) and is not alone, but why Browning to blame? For what exactly? He often gets blamed for things others did and he could not change, so you have to be careful here to check your target. He was certainly made a scapegoat in Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974), because he had already passed away in 1965 before Ryan started his research and interviews in 1967, so he was unable to defend himself.
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  377.  @nexusnero  - Browning had no control over USAAF officers Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) who planned MARKET, removing key components of Browning and Montgomery's outline proposal for operation SIXTEEN, that was approved by Eisenhower, for the final MARKET plan. The outline included two lifts on the first day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, both removed by Brereton and Williams for their own reasons, mainly to save as many of their aircraft from exposure to flak as possible. Browning had threatened to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) that was scheduled with too little notice to print and distribute maps, and Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully, LINNET II was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but it was clear the USAAF was in control of the air planning for MARKET. Browning did try to get General Gavin to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and while Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that he toyed with the idea, he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop leaving the division disorganised for days. Instead, Gavin assigned his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission, instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy, and Gavin noted to Ryan that neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted him in a fight. Lindquist thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, and only sent a recon patrol to the bridge (which got lost). By the time Gavin found out and ordered him to send in 1st Battalion, it was too late and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had already sent armoured units into the deserted city and reinforced the 18-man bridge guard. Browning had done everything he could to ensure the operation succeeded, but he was undermined by American officers Brereton, Williams, Gavin and Lindquist, who all thought they knew better. Browning was in no position to commit the air force, he was almost completely sidelined. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  378.  @johnlucas8479  - what Gavin knew at the time was what the British knew at the time. First thing Gavin did when he was given the Nijmegen assignment was go to 1st Airborne HQ and they took him through the intelligence and planning they had been working on for COMET, so he had all of the information made available to him before he considered his own divisional plan. The reason I know this is because of my note at the bottom about the 1966 Boeree papers covering letter, but to the matter at hand - according to Cornelius Ryan's 1967 Gavin interview notes on the discussion about objectives: 'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area. Gavin hesitated to speculate what might have happened if he had put troops on the northern end of the bridge. He did not, however, think a company could have held it and he openly wondered if even a battalion might have.' (Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 10, page 5) Americans are very fond of accusing Montgomery, and the British in general, of being too cautious, and yet what the actual is Gavin doing here??? Even a company would have made a difference on the day, but Gavin actually instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion from the drop zone. Browning (I'm presuming "the British" was Browning) was right all along, with either a glider company or parachute battalion coup de main. He got neither, and Lindquist messed up Gavin's half-arsed alternative. Tucker knew what he was doing when he insisted on a company drop zone south of Grave and made sure he got it. On another issue that might interest you, I just recently came across a letter written by Gavin to Cornelius Ryan to enclose some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree (I have his book, The Battle of Arnhem, written with Cornelius Bauer, 1963), and Gavin had just realised (in 1966!) that the reports of German armour in the Reichswald that the British had on 10 September must have been the Hohenstaufen Division in transit to Arnhem on their route march from Maastricht described by Boeree as going through the Nijmegen area, which would explain why there were no tanks in the Reichswald on 17 September. The Reichswald report was what he learned during his visit to 1st Airborne, as he said the British were making their plans accordingly to deal with it before their operation was cancelled. (Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 9, page 48)
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  379.  @johnlucas8479  - the problem with the reduced daylight times for SIXTEEN/MARKET (COMET was originally FIFTEEN, not SIXTEEN) means that as an alternative they should have considered an evening drop for the second lift as a better alternative than delaying to the following day. The landing and drop zones would be properly marked, because the pathfinders would already be on the ground and ensure they were in the right place (not like Normandy dropped in the dark and off-target). The fact is that the USAAF did not trust their own airmen and also seemed to think the ground crews would need several hours to turn aircraft around, which seems unnecesarily pessimistic. Several authors have rightly criticised the air planners for putting the airmen's needs above that of the airborne troops, and even Gavin was exasperated with the lack of flexibility from Brereton's people - he had to form his divisional plan within the constraints of the LINNET air plan and Brereton was not prepared to make any changes. All of these people are culpable in the failure of the operation and you can understand why Montgomery and Browning must have been frustrated with them, and Browning's frustration with Brereton goes back to the infamous LINNET II affair, which was inexcusable.
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  380.  @johnlucas8479  - Lindquist was supposed to find out when he was supposed to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing. I know I've posted this before, but if you need reminding: Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.” - It's clear to me Gavin did not know if the SS troops and tanks were there or not, but he had to go for the bridge and expected to take it if they were not, and he would soon know if they were there. By the time Chet Graham reported in that Lindquist was not moving and the 505th liaison officer reported no tanks in the Reichswald, Gavin knew he had screwed up. If Browning had got his way, the Nijmegen bridge would have been in the hands of D Company 7th KOSB by glider, or a US Parachute Infantry Battalion (I would prefer 2nd 505th) landing on the northern end.
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  381. Blaming Montgomery doesn't make any sense. His only input to the planning process was to decide on Arnhem over Wesel as the target for Operation Comet on 3/4 September, with the help of Browning, who looked for suitable landing zones. The detailed planning was then carried out by Browning's (British I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey's (British 2nd Army) staffs. When Montgomery cancelled Comet on 10 September because of the worsening intelligence picture in the Netherlands, he proposed Market Garden to Eisenhower as an upgrade with three airborne divisions instead of one. The planning for the air plan was then turned over to Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) who used the three-division air plan for the cancelled Linnet II, but compromised the Comet plan by removing the glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges and also deleted the second airlift on the first day. These compromises were initiated by Williams and backed by Brereton, who was not an experienced airborne commander but an air force officer. Comet and Market had about a week each to plan and Garden was in the works for the two weeks. Brereton's Operation Linnet II (Maas bridges between Maastricht and Liege) was planned on his own initiative as an alternative if Linnet in Belgium was cancelled. Neither Montgomery's 21st Army Group, to which the 1stAAA was attached, or Bradley's 12th Army Group in whose area Linnet II would have operated, actually requested such an operation to be planned. It was Brereton's own scheme to have Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps utilised instead of Browning's British Corps, as Browning objected to the short notice for Linnet II due to lack of time to print and distribute maps and threatened to resign over the issue as Brereton had hoped. Browning withdrew the threat when the drop zones were overrun and operation cancelled anyway. Browning could hardly threaten resignation a second time over Williams and Bereton's compromised Comet plan for Market, so you can't blame Browning or MOntgomery for American's bullying and throwing their weight around. Market was then compromised on the ground when the 508th PIR failed to move quickly on the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon, per Gavin's instructions in the divisional briefing the previous day. The failure was Colonel Lindquist's, but Gavin effectively covered for him by conflating the relative priority between the bridge and Groesbeek heights (the 508th's initial objective) post-war, with it seems the help of Browning, who backed him up. I can understand your father's comments about conflicting orders, and perhaps the best breakdown on this is in American historian John C McManus' book September Hope, chapter 3, and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) chapters 9 and 10 on the planning and execution of Market. It's clear from Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy that Lindquist was not a good field commander and problems with the command of the 508th, partly resolved by Ridgway court-martialling the regiment XO, were not fully resolved for Market with Lindquist still in place. Aside from these two American authors, Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) on TIK's booklist is another reference worth reading. I don't see what Montgomery has to do with any politics internal to American formations and these sorts of arguments blaming Browning or Montgomery seem more intent on continuing the American revolutionary war than dealing with the job in hand of combating Naziism.
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  382. Great comment. I think it's on the money.
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  383.  @bigwoody4704  - "Harmel was the Germans security/Intel officer in that section from Arnhem-Nijmegen" - No, he was the commander of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division. "he stated there was one field gun there and Carrington stopped anyway" - no he didn't (I have a copy of Kershaw as well). Kershaw does say about that night - the night the British tanks stopped in Lent because they can't fight at night back in WW2, remember? - "By darkness a rudimentary line had been established one kilometre north of Lent, and this gradually thickened into linked outposts as more units, including the Kampfgruppe 'Hartung', became available to Reinhold. By first light German blocking positions occupied the crossroads one kilometre south-west of Ressen, south of the village itself and south of Bemmel down to the Waal river." Kershaw is wrong that Kampfgruppe Hartung arrived by crossing the Pannerden canal, his forces were part of the Nijmegen defence originally on the Maas-Waal canal, incorrectly called 'Kampfgruppe Henke', and the survivors had concentrated around the rail bridge in Nijmegen, with Hartung relocating his command post (originally the NEBO monastery near Groesbeek) to Lent and taking under command army militia, RAD Flak, and Kriegsmarine troops, defending the north bank. Most of his original command lay dead or taken prisoner from the Maas-Waal canal bridges and massacred on the Waal rail bridge. My source for Hartung is the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) documents available to download from PaperlessArchives online, and the raw data on Hartung is from captured documents from his evacuated HQ in the NEBO monastery taken over by the 508th PIR on D-Day. The "one field gun" I presume you mean the Stug IIIG assault gun belonging to 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 firing at any tank that came out of the railway underpass at Lent? There were two field batteries - 21.(15cm) and 19.(10.5cm) - belonging to Schwappacher's V./SS-Artillerie-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Regiment at Oosterhout and Ressen respectively as part of the Waal defence under von Tattau's command, and Harmel also had an overstrength 10.5cm field artillery battalion (II./SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 10) from his own division deployed at Flieren. Carrington had to stop where he did at the far end of the Nijmegen highway bridge to maintain the radio rear link from Sergeant Robinson's Troop of tanks half a mile up the road in Lent, and the Squadron commander a similar distance back in Nijmegen. They were in no condition to push on after fighting a major battle over two days to take the bridges the 82nd Airborne could have secured on D-Day without firing a shot, and even if they could advance immediately, they could not do so in the dark. That scene in the Hollywood film was misleadingly filmed in broad daylight, which was also missing the burning buildings in Lent and the mopping up operations that were still ongoing until well after midnight. Harmel was not even there, his secondhand account is a mis-translation of the first-hand account he got from Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), and particularly Reinhold's adjutant, Gernot Traupel, who kept a diary of the events at Nijmegen. This diary was used as a basis for the account of the battle in Chapter 4: 'Betuwe' of Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). It was Traupel, in the absence of both Reinhold and Harmel from the Lent command post, who instructed the SS engineer officer Werner Baumgärtel (1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 and also only a 2nd Lieutenant like Traupel) on his own authority to blow the bridge. Reinhold only got permission to blow the bridge from Division (Harmel) after Traupel had told him he had ordered the bridge blown and Reinhold left to get retrospective permission, not knowing the explosives had failed. Reinhold was a mile up the road in a radio van at Bemmel, where it could contact Harmel's HQ at Doornenburg via code machine. Harmel was not at Lent, he was not fully aware of what the situation was, and that is why Kershaw's conclusions are out of date. Kershaw's is an older book (1990) and you need to get more up to date sources with more detail to understand what happened and why.
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  384.  @bigwoody4704  - the one gun was a StuG, not a field gun, and Kershaw didn't know the unit it belonged to. His research is out of date. In fact, he conflated Röstel's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 10 with the four StuGs in Nijmegen, he thought they were detached from his unit, but Röstel was detached to 7.Armee at Aachen with all 21 Jagdpanzer IV/L48 vehicles with him. Kershaw thought the Abteilung was in the MARKET GARDEN corridor near Valkenswaard, but those vehicles were a couple of StuGs and a Jagpanther belonging to Heeres schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 - an error he imported from Wilhelm Tieke's In the Firestorm of the Last Year of the War - II. SS-Panzerkorps with the 9. and 10. SS-Divisions "Hohenstaufen" and "Frundsberg" (1975). Tieke probably conflated Röstel's area of operations around Valkenburg near Aachen with Valkenswaard south of Eindhoven, but Kershaw didn't spot it or the fact the two units had different equipment. Kershaw even correctly refers to "assault guns" crossing the Nijmegen bridge into the city, which should have given him a clue if he knew his German armour. I guess he didn't know the difference. So, on 21 September, apart from the lone StuG that had withdrawn from Nijmegen, further up the road along Stationsstraat between the main highway and the Ressen-Oosterhout station, were 11 repositioned heavy Flak guns, ex-French 75mm Schneider M.36 models in the anti-tank role, several supporting 2cm Flak guns, as well as 8.8cm shell casings and tracks left by at least two of the three Tiger I tanks from Panzer Kompanie Hummel that had crossed the Arnhem bridge the previous day. The blocking line was located by reconnaissance conducted by Household Cavalry overnight 20/21 September, so they knew there was a defence line waiting for them and the evidence was found after the area had been cleared. The StuG had been withdrawing from Nijmegen, where 10.SS-Panzer had four from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, deployed with two in Hunnar Park in front of the highway bridge and the other two defending the rail bridge. One near the rail bridge was knocked out by a Sherman and the others withdrew to the north bank before the bridges were taken. Harmel thought the StuG withdrawing up the main road was the only thing between Nijmegen and Arnhem that night because it was the only asset from his division in that area and he didn't know about anything else on the island apart from a couple of marine cadet companies near the Arnhem bridge. All the other stuff belonged to von Tettau's Waal defense line, Hartung's Nijmegen garrison, or kampfgruppe Knaust that had crossed the Arnhem bridge. I always recommend Kershaw's book as part of a foundation course with Cornelius Ryan's, because they both represent first cuts at getting the basic story down from the Allied and German points of view, but they are both flawed, both out of date, containing many errors and omissions. That's why any serious study of the subject has to be developed by more reading, and hanging on to old outdated texts because they suit your bogus argument is just part of your Stage 4 Montgomery Derangement Syndrome.
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  385.  @bigwoody4704  - P.225 of my digital copy for my quote - Chapter XIX The Missed Opportunity, Improvisation... "By darkness a rudimentary line had been established one kilometre north of Lent, and this gradually thickened into linked outposts as more units, including the Kampfgruppe 'Hartung', became available to Reinhold. By first light German blocking positions occupied the crossroads one kilometre south-west of Ressen, south of the village itself and south of Bemmel down to the Waal river." I'd like to know where you read it was "one field gun". My copy can be searched and there are just three instances of "field gun", none related to Nijmegen.
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  386. I think Gavin bears a lot of responsibility for what went wrong at Nijmegen, for sure, but there were people trying to do something about it. Browning's provisional operation SIXTEEN outline included key features carried over from COMET, like the double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, but these were removed from the MARKET plan by the air commanders. Browning also selected drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Son bridge on the Wilhelmina canal and south of Eindhoven, so that the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges could be taken quickly on D-Day as part of his 'airborne carpet' concept and assist the breakout of XXX Corps to effect a link-up with the 101st on D-Day. These were also removed by the air commanders over concerns of Flak around Eindhoven, so the Guards stopped at Valkenswaard with an hour of daylight left on D-Day and only another 4 km to Aalst, so if American paratroopers were there then they could have effected the link 24 hours earlier, which means bridging equipment to replace the Son bridge brought up 24 hours earlier, which means link-up with the 82nd at Grave-Nijmegen 24 hours earlier. In the event, the Guards got held up for most of D+1 at Aalst by a pair of 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG asssault gun covering the bridge, wasting a day getting to Son. Gavin also told Cornelius Ryan "the British" (probably Browning) wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and while he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where the Troop Carriers scattered the 82nd over a wide area, Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. Instead, Gavin planned to land his parachute regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out toward their objectives. He instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge after landing, but unfortunately Lindquist was not a good field commander and delayed until Gavin found out he wasn't moving and went to the 508th CP to chew him out, too late to grab the bridge while it was still undefended. Colonel Tucker of the highly experienced 504th "insisted" on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge, so it could be attacked from both ends, and he got it. The MARKET plan was prepared in a week, but it was built on the previous week of planning for the cancelled operation COMET on the same targets and recycled the three-division air plan for cancelled operations LINNET and LINNET II, so the evolution was two weeks in total. All the right elements were there, but some were willfully removed and they compromised the operation.
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  387. I wonder if this fits with your grandfather's recollections? Pieced together from several books and the online forum discussions between the armour research experts, I established what I believe is the position on 17 September: SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 at Saksen-Weimar kazerne in Arnhem with an alarm kompanie of 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry and the Werkstatt Kompanie. 5 tanks: 3 Panthers and 2 Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' had been removed from the barracks by Friday 15 September and hidden under trees on Heijenoordseweg. According to the Dutch resident of the house on the corner of Callunastraat, who received a knock on the door on Friday morning by SS panzer crewmen asking for spare milk, they explained they were taken out of barracks to avoid any bombing. All other tanks in the Hohenstaufen were handed over to the Frundsberg, in preparation for the Hohenstaufen to be refitted in Germany. Two Panthers were knocked out in the western suburbs of Arnhem by B Company of 3rd Parachute Battalion on 19 September using a Gammon bomb and a PIAT, while the third survived to participate in the siege of Oosterbeek. The Möbelwagen were well documented and photographed in action on the Dreyenscheweg in Oosterbeek against 4th Parachute Brigade. SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Huis 't Medler, Vorden. I.Abteilung was still in Grafenwöhr in Germany, training with just 8 Panthers until receiving all their tanks and deployed in January 1945 for the 'Nordwind' counter-offensive in Alsace-Lorraine. In 1944 they continually received new tanks, only for them to be reassigned as replacements for units fighting in Normandy, hampering training. II.Abteilung at the Klooster (monastery) Kranenburg, near Vorden: 5.Kompanie - 16* x Panzer IV 6.Kompanie - logistics troops acting as infantry 7.Kompanie - 4 x StuG IIIG During the battle of Arnhem, Model arranged for the next 20 Panthers to be delivered direct from the factory in a batch of 8 and another of 12. They were crewed by the 100 de-horsed Panther crewmen of the Hohenstaufen and transferred to SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 as their 8.Kompanie. The II.Abteilung was known as Kampfgruppe Reinhold and ordered to Nijmegen, but the Arnhem bridge was blocked by 1st Parachute Brigade and the Huissen ferry scuttled by the Dutch ferryman after being used by Panzergrenadier Kampfgruppe Euling, so the ferry at Pannerden was to be used. The Mark IV panzers were too heavy for the ferry, according to Harmel the first tank slipped off the raft into the river, so only the 4 StuG managed to cross to the island and into Nijmegen. One was lost in Nijmegen and the others withdrew to the island and deployed in the Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel blocking line after the Nijmegen bridges were lost. *I had no idea how many of the reported 16 Mark IV panzers officially on strength and concentrated in Hans Quandel's 5.Kompanie were operational to start with, but we do know that according to British prisoners taken after the Arnhem bridge was retaken, the Boulevard Heuvelink leading to the bridge had a long line of Mark IV tanks as far as the eye could see were parked under the trees lining the boulevard and were told they were going to be used against them in the morning if they had not surrendered. They were clearly destined to be used against XXX Corps and held back until the Arnhem bridge was cleared, because they were expected by Reinhold to be in Nijmegen. If 14 were undergoing repair and 2 were running, that would add up? Sources: James Sims, Arnhem Spearhead: A Private Soldier's Story (1977). Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell, Retake Arnhem Bridge: An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 (2010). Dieter Stenger, Panzers East and West: The German 10th SS Panzer Division from the Eastern Front to Normandy (2017). Christer Bergström, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vol 1 and 2 (2019, 2020).
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  388. My reading of the strategy is that first, Montgomery argued for a single thrust to Berlin involving his own 21st Army Group reinforced with US 1st Army, and this was finally shut down by Eisenhower at their 10 September Brussels airport meeting, because Ike wanted a broad front of all armies advancing to the Rhine and securing multiple crossings to provide multiple opportunities for later exploitation operations into Germany. It was Eisenhower that then wanted a pincer on the Ruhr industrial region by British 2nd Army from the north and US 1st Army from the south, after both had established their Rhine crossings, as opposed to Montgomery's single thrust idea to Berlin. Having settled that argument, they then turned their discussion to current operations. Montgomery had already cancelled the weather delayed Operation Comet, the Rhine crossing at Arnhem via Grave and Nijmegen by 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade, that same morning, because of the worsening intelligence picture in the Netherlands. Instead, Montgomery proposed an upgraded replacement operation with three airborne divisions on the same axis of advance. The purpose of both Comet and Market Garden was to secure a Rhine crossing for British 2nd Army, not an advance to the Ruhr or Berlin. The supply situation was such that 2nd Army could get to the Rhine without Antwerp open - if it had priority of supplies. Antwerp's capacity was needed for Eisenhower's multiple advances into Germany by all armies. That is why both Montgomery and Eisenhower agreed that Comet/Market Garden had priority over opening Antwerp, while the Germans were still disorganised after the retreat from Normandy. So, the time to secure a Rhine bridgehead was now. Antwerp was to be cleared by the Canadian 1st Army after Market Garden, and during Market Garden they were re-positioning themselves around Antwerp, taking over positions vacated by British 11th Armoured Division, which was transferred to Market Garden's right flank to lead VIII Corps' advance. This explains why Montgomery thought the Canadians would be able to clear the Scheldt and open Antwerp, while he was going to the Ruhr (with British 2nd Army), and this was the bit he recognised after the war was a mistake, because the Canadians actually needed help - they couldn't do it on their own. Since the objective for Comet/Market Garden was to secure a Rhine crossing as a base for future operations into Germany, the first question was why Arnhem and not Wesel? Arnhem and Wesel represented the left and right flanks of the projected British 2nd Army sector of the Rhine, so they had to effect a crossing somewhere between those two places. The initital choice of Arnhem over Wesel for Comet was made by Montgomery and Browning overnight on 3/4 September, as recorded in Dempsey's (2nd Army) diary, but not the reasons for that choice. It's known that both Dempsey and Browning preferred the Wesel option, but obviously Montgomery had won an argument for Arnhem. I believe it was at this point that Browning had expressed his view they may be going "a bridge too far", because Arnhem involved an additional river crossing (the German Rhine splits into the Waal and Neder Rijn after crossing the Dutch border). It's speculated that Montgomery was concerned the axis of an advance to Wesel via a Maas crossing at Venlo would be close to the US XIX Corps boundary and he might end up having to share a Rhine crossing with the Americans, but we may never know. Whatever the initial motive for choosing Arnhem, the first reports of V-2 rockets landing on London, and believed fired from launch sites on the Dutch coast, reached Montgomery on 9 September and the rationale for going north to Arnhem and cutting the supply lines with an advance to the Zuider Zee took on greater importance. When Montgomery presented Market Garden as his Comet replacement, the target was still Arnhem for this stated reason, which Eisenhower readily accepted. In his memoir, Montgomery also argued that an advance to the north would also assist the opening of Antwerp, but he says that Ike did not accept that analysis. Regardless, Ike enthusiastically endorsed Market Garden because it fitted in with his broad front strategy instead of going to Berlin. The final point on Market Garden's destination - this was Nunspeet on the Zuider Zee coast, and not Arnhem for the reasons already explained. TIK's drawing of the Market Garden corridor in green, with the right flank beyond Arnhem following the River Ijssel is exactly right. In order to cross the Rhine in the Netherlands, you have to cross ALL the distributaries of the Rhine delta, and the final distributary before the German border is the River Ijssel, which splits from the Neder Rijn at Arnhem/Westervoort and flows north to the Zuider Zee at Zwolle. Once over the Arnhem bridge held by 1st Airborne Division, 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division was to advance to Apeldoorn, with the attached Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade given the honor of liberating Apeldoorn and the Royal Palace Het Loo. The Guards Armoured Division would continue to Nunspeet on the Zuider Zee coast and deploy between Apeldoorn and Nunspeet. The 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division would also pass through Arnhem and secure forward Brigade bridgeheads on the River Ijssel at Westervoort and Doesburg, while the 43rd (Wessex) deployed between Arnhem and Apeldoorn secured forward Brigade bridgeheads at Zutphen and Deventer. The Germans may demolish these Ijssel bridges, but because they are not immediately required the infantry could make assault crossings and secure bridgeheads for engineers to construct Bailey bridges for future operations into Germany.
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  389.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - I haven't seen a contemporary map showing a planned deployment for 52nd (Lowland) Division, only a map on the Vrienden Museum site (under 'Bibliotheek', page down to maps, and the map is 'Het operatie plan Market Garden – kaart uit Battlefield tour Royal Engineers 1945'). That shows the planned deployment for XXX Corps' divisions only. I imagine the 52nd were to relieve 1st Airborne at Arnhem and defend Deelen airfield, so they would be a backstop for 43rd and 50th Divisions on the Ijssel. Flevoland is a new province created by reclaiming part of the Ijsselmeer (former Zuider Zee) - it didn't exist in 1944.
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  390.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - according to Montgomery's memoirs, he did make that point to Eisenhower and Eisenhower didn't accept the analysis, but they were agreed that the best time for Market Garden was as soon as possible before the Germans could re-organise, and Antwerp's port capacity was only needed for Eisenhower's broad front advances into Germany, it wasn't needed for Market Garden.
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  391. You need to research the advance from the Seine to Brussels and Antwerp. Twice, Horrocks of XXX Corps even risked operating tanks at night and it paid off, but during Market Garden (at Valkenswaard on 17 September) he didn't want to push his luck and stopped overnight. Despite the blown bridge at Zon, which was replaced in 10 hours overnight, the Guards Armoured Division reached Nijmegen still on schedule to get to Arnhem in 48 hours, only to find the Waal bridges were still in German hands. I refer you to Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), and a contribution to Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection contains the story from Trooper Joe Atkins (S-2 Section 1/508th) and how he was one of three Scouts that reached the south end of Nijmegen highway bridge and surprised 6/7 Germans guarding it. They waited for more troops to show up, but after an hour with no shows and night falling, they decided to withdraw, and as they did so could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge. Market Garden failed through no fault of the ground forces or the route planning, but a command failure in one parachute regiment at Nijmegen. That regiment failed to move quickly on a lightly defended bridge and allowed SS-Panzer units to reinforce it on the first evening. Montgomery was let down by an allied unit, he was not too slow at all.
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  392. That was already being done. It was what the US IX Troop Carrier Command units were doing when they were not being used to carry troops for airborne operations.
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  393.  @ghostinthemachine8243  - this may not be the best source because it's not specifically about the logistics, but Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) is probably the best one covering all the issues in the book title. Having a quick skim through, I came across this 7 September memo (while Operation Comet was delayed by weather) to Eisenhower from Montgomery after the head of administration for 21st Army Group warned him that it would be impossible to advance beyond Arnhem before the Channel ports were open and without a substantial increase in airlifted supplies: "My maintenance is stretched to the limit. First instalment of 18 locomotives only just released to me and balance still seems uncertain. Require an airlift of 1,000 tons a day at Douai or Brussels and in last two days have had only 750 tons total. My transport is based on operating 150 miles from my ports and at present I am over 300 miles from Bayeux... I cannot go on for long like this. It is clear therefore that based as I am on Bayeaux I cannot capture the Ruhr." He finished by asking Eisenhower for a meeting to discuss this, and that led to the 10 September Brussels airport meeting on board Eisenhower's plane, the day Montgomery cancelled Comet and presented Market Garden as a replacement, but they also discussed the logistics problems and also Montgomery pressed his single thrust to Berlin argument again. The latter was shot down again in favour of broad front and multiple Rhine crossings to encircle the Ruhr, but Market Garden was approved and Eisenhower promised priority to 21st Army Group for supplies. I hope that sheds some light.
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  394. John keeps forgetting the five tanks (three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen') belonging to SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 that were hidden in the western outskirts of Arnhem on Heijenoordseweg, certainly on Friday 15 September, despite me reminding him every time. It's possible they were being put on a train at Beekbergen on Sunday 17 September along with Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 (the last day the division was due to remain in the Netherlands), but the first reported sighting of these tanks appears to be the 5 tanks and 15 half-tracks on the Amsterdam road on the afternoon of 17 September in Dobie's 1st Parachute Battalion war diary. We also know that two of the Panthers were later dispatched with a Gammon bomb and PIAT by 3rd Parachute Battalion in western Arnhem on 19 September, the third tank survived to take part in the siege of Oosterbeek and was also stalked by PIAT, and the two Möbelwagen are well-documented by PK photographers in action against 4th Parachute Brigade on the Dreyenscheweg north of Oosterbeek on 19 September. The tanks caught on an aerial photograph taken over the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield by RAF Spitfire on 12 September were dismissed by Browning as obsolete models and probably unserviceable - and this proved to be correct when the photo was located in a Dutch government archive in 2014 and studied by Dr Sebastian Ritchie of the RAF's Air Historical Branch. His research is detailed in the pdf booklet Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story (2016, 2019) that was on the RAF website. The unit can now be identified as 2.Kompanie z.b.V. (zur besonderen Verwendung = for special purpose) of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment of the Luftwaffe's only panzer division. After attending a lunchtime lecture given by Dr Ritchie on 17 September to mark the 80th Anniversary of the operation at RAF Cosford, I understand he is planning to publish a 3rd Edition with more data, and is only delayed by trying to find the copyright owner for a photo of a Panzer III wreck at Wolfswinkel he wants to use. These vehicles had all broken down and were photographed undergoing routine maintenance (turrets were turned to allow engine access hatches to be opened) after being ordered south to Eindhoven on 7 September, and the only three tanks to successfully join the Regiment's II.Abteilung were destroyed at Hechtel in Belgium along by the Guards Armoured Division on the same day - 12 September. By the time MARKET GARDEN started on 17 September, the remaining tanks were laagered at Wolfswinkel in a reserve position near Son on the Wilhelmina canal, and opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone on Zonsche Heide. They were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft and only one tank that escaped north to bump the 504th's roadblock at Grave caused some casualties to troopers who got out of their foxholes, thinking it was a British tank. Most of the Arnhem myths have been thoroughly debunked in the literature, but the Hollywood narrative is still the one people seem to think is history.
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  395. 1. Montgomery was 21st Army Group commander and responsible for strategy, not detailed planning of operations. Market Garden was a 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and British 2nd Army (Dempsey) operation. Dempsey, at least, was at his headquarters directing his Corps' operations. Brereton was actually sightseeing along the Market Garden corridor by Jeep and could not always be in contact with his headquarters in England. Matthew Ridgway (US XVIII Airborne Corps) was also doing the same thing, visiting his two US Airborne divisions, despite him not having any role in the operation. 2. Air support - generally it was available, except when weather and deconfliction rules grounded 2nd Tactical Air Force in Belgium while the airlifts were in progress. However, when the airlifts were delayed by bad weather in England, 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) failed to inform 2nd TAF in Belgium that they could fly in the meantime. 3. More than one drop on D-Day was part of the plan for the original Operation Comet involving just the British 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Brigade under British I Airborne Corps (Browning). When it was cancelled and replaced by the upscaled Operation Market (using the air plan for Linnet II involving three divisions) the planning was turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and US IX Troop Carrier Command (Williams) objected to the Comet plan's dawn glider coup be main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, and also the double airlift on the first day. This was allegedly due to Flak at the bridges, the lack of trained navigators in IX TCC for night flying, and the the maintenance turnaround times between the first and second airlift was deemed insufficient by Williams. Brereton backed him up. 4. I'm not familiar with "jildi", but I think you'll find drive was not lacking in the British Army. Their parts of the operation were working, but the failure to secure the undefended Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon was due to a command failure and lack of drive in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Their commander was a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) officer and an early volunteer to the US Airborne forces, however he was not a good field commander and the regiment had command problems exposed during its first combat operation in Normandy (Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012). Gavin inherited the 82nd from Ridgway after Normandy, when Ridgway was appointed commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944. Gavin told A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview that Ridgway did not trust the 508th's CO and refused to promote him. In fact he could not promote another Colonel over him because he had seniority. Gavin probably had the same problem, which may explain why he did not appoint a replacement for himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs for Market Garden. None of this came out in Ryan's book and the blunder in Nijmegen on the first afternoon is simply ignored. However, the responsibility for his divisional plan not being carried out rested with Gavin and that has partly been well explained in this video, but not in as much depth and with background context that 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke provides in his regimental history of the 508th. Gavin knew he had made a mistake in entrusting the 508th to the Nijmegen mission, instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, and that explains why he was so insistent on using his own troops (the 504th PIR) in a river assault crossing of the Waal, when the default XXX Corps plan for this scenario was for the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to carry out an assault crossing with either one or two Brigades up. The Wessex Division had one battalion in two of its brigades fully mobilised in amphibious DUKW trucks specifically for this purpose. They were also tasked with establishing brigade bridgeheads at Deventer and Zutphen on the River Ijssel, had they been able to deploy north of the Rijn at Arnhem as planned (Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz, 2021). Blaming Montgomery is misdirection and it seems to come, not surprisingly, from American sources. I think the 90% successful comment by him was a pointed dig at the Americans, since out of the 24 or so bridges involved in the airborne operation, a minimum of 10 on the main supply 'Club Route' are required to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. Missing the bridges at Nijmegen on the first day made Operation Market 90% successful, but it doomed the British Airborne at Arnhem to late relief at best, or as was the case - withdrawal without holding the bridge, which made Operation Garden ultimately 90% successful as well.
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  396. Browning's Corps headquarters did not have clearance for 'Ultra' intelligence on II.SS-Panzerkorps, which was severely degraded by British units in Normandy and known to be regimental battelgroups in strength with few if any tanks, and his dismissal of a photograph of obsolete tanks near Arnhem has recently been proven to be the correct call when the photograph resurfaced in a Dutch government archive and studied. He did not ignore the planning errors because the planning errors were compromises imposed by General Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command and backed by General Lewis Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army. If Browning had threatened to resign again as he had over Linnet II, his resignation would have been accepted. The great loss of fine allied soldiers was not due to poor planning, but for an unforced blunder to not even follow the divisional plan at Nijmegen. The 508th PIR was instructed by 82nd Division commander Gavin to "move with speed" on the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as possible after landing. Despite being told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted the city and left only an NCO and seventeen men to guard the bridge, the Regiment CO chose instead to send a pre-planned recon patrol into the city. Only three Scouts on point duty reached the bridge without getting lost and took seven prisoners by surprise at the southern end of the bridge. They waited an hour until dark for the rest of the patrol that failed to arrive and then had to withdraw, hearing "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge as they left. The 36-hour delay imposed by the Guards Armoured Division having to assist in the final capture of the Nijmegen bridges sealed the fate of the 1st Airborne Division, the bridge at Arnhem, and the entire operation. Sources: RG Poulussen, Lost At Nijmegen (2011). Phil Nordyke, Put Us Down In Hell: A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012). John McManus, September Hope: The American Side of Bridge Too Far (2012). Zig Boroughs, The 508th Connection (2013), chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge. Sebastian Ritchie, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019). Christer Bergström, Arnhem: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020).
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  397.  @abellseaman4114  - I offered no insult and did not comment on Gavin's birthplace. I certainly never learned anything from SHOUTING at people, so I suggest you try reading instead.
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  398. The possible reason for it was that Browning was sidelined in the air planning by Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier command respectively. He had threatened to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges), which was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps. Brereton planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. The operation was fortunately cancelled, so Browning withdrew his letter and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning was now powerless to object to changes made to his and Montgomery's provisional operation SIXTEEN outline for the final plan codenamed MARKET. All Browning could do was advance the transport of his own British I Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift (now pushed back to D+1 by Brereton and Williams after they deleted the planned double airlift on D-Day) to the 1st lift, in an effort to influence events as soon as he was on the ground in the Netherlands. He was clearly concerned by Nijmegen since Brereton and Williams had also deleted the proposed dawn glider coup de main assaults on all three main Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, and then asked Gavin to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge as an alternative coup de main. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that he toyed with the idea, but eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a dispersed drop, which left the division disorganised for days. Instead, Gavin assigned his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission and Colonel Lindquist failed to follow Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing, thinking he had to clear the Drop Zone and secure his other objectives first. He even ignored a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees who met Lindquist at De Ploeg on the initial Groesbeek ridge objective and told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the bridge. Lindquist instead sent a pre-planned recon patrol, most of which got lost, but three scouts reached the bridge, took the southern end and seven prisoners without firing a shot, and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. When they decided they had to withdraw, they could hear "heavy equipment" arrive at the other end of the bridge. The impact of the last minute switch of glider tugs from Arnhem to take the Corps HQ to Groesbeek was on some elements of the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Records are unreliable as it seems many of the glider schedule entries that were changed last minute were not amended on the official records, but it appears it affected the second line ammunition trailers and Jeeps for the AT Troops (platoons) supporting 1st Parachute Brigade, and was the reason no HE rounds for the 6-pounders were at the Arnhem bridge, and also the guns and Jeeps of Z-Troop (assigned to protect Division HQ) were bumped to 2nd lift, but there's an interesting story associated with the Z-Troop commander. Lieutenant Eustace McNaught was commander of Z-Troop and told his story to the Battery sea tail commander when they made contact in Nijmegen that would only be possible if his glider carrying his command Jeep had remained on the 1st lift schedule. The glider (CN.1005) landed near Zetten, on the Nijmegen 'island' between the Waal and Rijn rivers, and short of the landing zone north of the Rijn. McNaught had seven men of his Z Troop and the two glider pilots with him, plus his command Jeep with No.22 set radio and a trailer of ammunition. He could not transport everybody in the Jeep and elected to leave the trailer, four of his men and the pilots, at the glider with instructions to wait, while he planned to take three men in the Jeep and head for the Arnhem bridge where he expected the Reconnaissance Squadron to have taken it by coup de main and he could arrange transport for the rest of his party. He said they reached the main (Nijmegen-Arnhem) road without seeing any enemy troops and drove north towards Arnhem, and they were within sight of the bridge when they saw a column of armoured vehicles come over the bridge and head towards them. Realising they must be German he turned the Jeep around and headed south towards Nijmegen, where he knew the Americans would be. It was after dark when they reached the Nijmegen bridge and McNaught was surprised they were able to carefully drive over it without being challenged. They had gone a short distance into the city centre when they were stopped by Dutch civilians, who told them the Germans were on their way into the city and offered to hide the men and the Jeep in a monastery. They remained hidden until they were told on 21 September Allied troops had liberated the city and McNaught was able to find Lieutenant Howe from the seaborne echelon of his own Battery and tell his story. McNaught turned his three men over to Howe and alone took the Jeep, saying he was off to find the nearest SAS patrol to attach himself to and Howe learned after the war he did indeed do just that, and then later joined MI6 as a military attaché. The main point McNaught made in his report to Howe was how disappointed and angered he was about being able to cross the Nijmegen bridge without challenge - it was, he said, "a lost opportunity". Sources: Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) The 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem: 'A Lost Opportunity' - Battery Z Troop, Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2022)
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  399.  @steveogle8942  - I only wished to point out that Browning's experience was overlooked and that his judgement has been proved correct a number of times, in the planning when he tried to get troops landed closer to the objectives, and infamously after he was criticised by his own Intelligence Officer Brian Urquhart for dismissing a photo of German tanks near Arnhem. Browning's judgement was proved correct when the 'missing' photo was found in a Dutch government archive only in 2014, and found to show obsolete models just as he pointed out, and having identified the owners were not II.SS-Panzerkorps the RAF study established they were near Son on the day the operation began and did not impact the landings of the 101st Airborne there. Cornelius Ryan made the mistake of basing his 'story' on a one-sided account by Brian Urquhart, and my own checks reveal that as a Major, Brian Urquhart would only be the GSO2 (Assistant) Intelligence Officer in a Corps HQ, so the GSO1 (Lieutenant Colonel) was apparently an unfilled post and Urquhart was probably out of his depth in such an important job. After the war he was involved in setting up the useless and corrupt UN organisation and served as the Under-Secretary-General for 'Special Political Affairs' - apparently a euphemism for peackeeping operations. Impressed by Brian Urquhart, I am not. Browning also made the right call on 18 September when Gavin proposed a plan to make a second attempt on the Nijmegen bridge and Browning rejected it in favour of waiting for the tanks of XXX Corps to arrive for support, and the fact that even with their support a frontal attack failed on 19 September showed that Vandervoort's 2nd/505th would not have succeeded on their own a day earlier. This decision was made before the 82nd Airborne came under XXX Corps command, as would any other decision Browning may have made on the first day - which would not be possible if he wasn't there. Browning's decision to take 38 glider tugs from the Arnhem 1st lift did not impact the battle at Arnhem significantly, if at all. Most of the affected glider transports were 1st Anti-Tank Battery loads involving guns and second line ammunition not used in the first 24 hours. The only negative I have found is that the second line trailers contained all the HE allocation for the 6-pounders, and a comment from someone at the bridge that this might have been useful as they had to rely on the HE bombs for the PIATs that were eventually exhausted. The AT rounds for the 6-pounders were practically the only munition not exhausted at the end of the bridge siege, because German tanks had learned to avoid their fields of fire, so it is debateable what impact having more 6-pounder ammuntion of any type would have had. Even if the glider tugs were used to transport the second half of the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion, you have to consider their Phase 1 task was protecting the landing zones, and when Brigadier Hicks decided to release the first half of the battalion early (because they weren't under any pressure) to go into Arnhem, the leading companies had only just got into the western suburbs of the town when the 2nd lift had arrived and caught up with them anyway - it would have made zero difference. All the evidence, much of which is in Cornelius Ryan's interview notes but selectively not put into his book, points to Gavin's judgement being incorrect in a number of aspects, and it's now clear Browning was concerned by this and was trading off the possible impact of his decisions on Arnhem against his concern the Nijmegen mission would fail in the first critical 24 hours. The long and the short of it is that criticism of Browning is made by people who don't actually know what they're talking about, and haven't dug too deeply into Gavin's role in all of this. My view of both men has therefore flipped 180 degrees since I first read Cornelius Ryan in 1977, and most of that has been from reading literature only published in the last 10-15 years with previously unknown information. Logistics in England were being managed by Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps staff, while Ridgway himself had no role in MARKET GARDEN and contented himself by 'borrowing' a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and driving up the corridor to visit his two divisions, following a few miles behind a similar but more official expedition conducted by Brereton. Gavin returned from dealing with a crisis on the front line to his CP on one occasion to find Ridgway was there studying a map on the wall. Gavin was handed a note about another emergency and left to deal with it before either man could acknowledge the presence of the other. One of the things Gavin had told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview was that neither he nor Ridgway trusted Colonel Lindquist in a fight, and that Ridgway would not promote him, and in fact had a problem in that he couldn't promote Ekman, Tucker, or any other Colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin had the same problem when Ridgway was given command of XVIII Airborne Corps and Gavin moved up to Division Commander, because he didn't replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and was running himself ragged doing both jobs during MARKET GARDEN. You won't find it in the book, but the interview is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 10. It's a mess to be sure, but it's Gavin at the centre of it, and unfortunately Browning was not in a position of real authority to sort it all out because of the nature of the politics within 1st Allied Airborne Army.
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  400. Couple of points. The German 363.Volksgrenadier-Division is located in the wrong place on the video map. It was not attached to II.SS-Panzerkorps in the Arnhem area (with 10.SS-Panzer, 9.Panzer and 116.Panzer-Divisions), it was subordinated to the newly arrived XII.SS-Armeekorps based in Ede, which controlled the newly reformed 363.Volksgrenadier-Division (an army infantry division reorganised with less manpower but more automatic weapons) from Germany, and the in situ Division von Tettau that controlled various training units under German Armed Forces Netherlands during the Airborne battle. 363.Volksgrenadier-Division, having arrived in Ede by train, was deployed across the Rijn to the west of Opheusden, and it was units from this Division that attacked the US 101st Airborne in the Opheusden area, while faint attacks like Oelker's SS training unit (from the SS NCO school) crossed in the Doorwerth area (between Renkum and Driel on the map) as described in the video. These feint attacks were to draw attention away from attacks by II.SS-Panzerkorps in the east that were hoped to retake the Nijmegen bridges. It was even hoped that if all these attacks succeeded, they would link up and clear all Allied forces on the 'island' between Arnhem and Nijmegen. It all came to nought because Allied units on the island were too strong. To avoid any confusion, the 9.Panzer-Division in this video is the army unit relocated to Holland from Aachen along with 116.Panzer-Division, and not its SS counterpart the 9.SS-Panzer-Division, which had been in the process of entraining for Siegen in Germany to be refitted when the Airborne attack took place. After the Airborne battle was over, it completed its move to Germany, leaving its sister division the 10.SS-Panzer-Division in Holland. The second point was that while the Germans controlled the civilian Dutch telephone system, there was another telephone system in the Province of Gelderland that the Germans were completely unaware of. This was an advanced internal network belonging to the PGEM electricity company that used communications cables on the electrical transmission lines running across the province. Since the southern half of Gelderland was in Allied hands and the northern part still in German hands, the Dutch resistance had a secure means of communication across the frontlines the Germans didn't even know existed. Interesting sidebar - one of the switchboards for this system was in a PGEM office building that had been occupied by the SD (the SS Security Service) in Arnhem. The Dutch resistence had to pose as PGEM workers (those with the necessary knowledge worked for the company anyway) to gain access to the building for 'regular maintenance' of 'essential equipment' in order to make their calls to Allied held Nijmegen.
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  401. The Germans found that they were able to move around even in daylight, thanks to the main roads in the Netherlands being lined with trees since the Napoleonic era to enable troops to be marched in the shade. Most reinforcements were brought in by rail from Germany to the rail heads at night, and then road marched. Delays were suffered by the Germans due to air attacks, and the ferry operation conducted by the 10.SS-Panzer-Division at Pannerden was constantly harassed from the air when weather permitted during the day, so operations mainly continued under cover of night. I can't answer for how you managed to get the opposite impression. Air support inside the designated 'boxes' around the airborne divisions were not permitted on an opportunity basis, only by direct communication from the ground, and this was not possible since the 306th Fighter Control Squadron teams attached to the airborne were hastily organised and had their special VHF radios delivered with the wrong crystals and were completely useless. Air support for the ground forces moving up the corridor was obviously limited by weather, but also by deconfliction rules that grounded the 2nd Tactical Air Force in Belgium while the airborne airlifts were in progress. A command failure on the part of 1st Allied Airborne Army in England meant that delayed airlifts due to adverse weather in England were not communicated to 2nd TAF in Belgium, so the air support was often grounded under clear skies in Belgium unnecessarily while waiting for the transports to arrive. While these probems were unwelcome, they were not the reason the operation failed. That was due to the Nijmegen highway bridge not being secured in the first vital hours, while it was undefended and the city evacuated by the Germans. The real problem was poor planning by 1st Allied Airborne Army in making too many compromises to Browning's original Operation COMET concept, in order to avoid the aircraft coming under fire from Flak, and the command failure at the top of the 508th PIR in not sending the 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge as Gavin had instructed in the divisional briefing. The responsibility rests with Gavin for assigning the problematic 508th to the Nijmegen mission, instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, and the decision to dismiss a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the bridge was his. TIK hasn't drilled down to regimental level on this, and hasn't read the 508th's backstory in Normandy that informs the politics within the 82nd Airborne, but he's right to be focussing on Gavin. He is at the centre of this.
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  402. I also have his Arnhem and Bastogne volumes and found Don Burgett a reliable witness to events he was involved in, and I would say it's more reliable than some of Ambrose's work. Episode 4: Replacements of Band of Brothers is somewhat compromised in conflating two different actions at Opwetten and Nuenen into one battle. Episode 5: Crossroads is much better, thanks to Winters' detailed account of the 5 October action practically writing the script for them. My own research into the German units involved was greatly helped by his testimony that clearly shows he knows the difference between a Tiger II and a Panther tank when he sees them (they have very similar profiles), and helped identify the German units, because he described a "Royal Tiger" leading a column of Panthers at Opheusden. This also lent credibility to his later account of meeting a Tiger II face to face at Noville near Bastogne, when most historians doubt the vehicles were even used in the sector. Evidence the schwere Panzer-Abteilung 506 were in the Bastogne area are substantiated by a Tiger I wreck outside the town that had belonged to Panzer Kompanie 'Hummel' at Arnhem and then subsequently incorporated into s.Pz.Abt.506 as their 4.Kompanie for the Ardennes offensive, so I have no doubt Don was on the money. The Germans apparently used this tactic of having the heavy Tigers spearhead attacks by columns of divisional medium tanks on more than one occasion and this happened near Arnhem in support of the October 1944 attack by 363.Volksgrenadier-Division as well as the first attacks and by-passing of Bastogne at Noville in December by 2.Panzer-Division. There's also a video on YouTube of Don travelling to the Nijmegen 'island' with author Mark Bando to locate the famous orchard rest area in which Don participated in the battle with a battalion of 363.VGD that had penetrated the American lines and established a position nearby, so I'm across most of the locations described in Don's books and the Easy Company stories as well.
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  403. That's just trolling. Not a serious comment.
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  404. I can shed some light on this particular thread. The Paras were not told that II.SS-Panzerkorps were in the Arnhem region because it was only known from 'Ultra' code intercepts, the existence of which could not be divulged below Army level (Dempsey) or anyone in the airborne dropped behind enemy lines for security reasons. I Airborne Corps were in receipt of intelligence reports from the Dutch resistance that SS panzer troops were billited in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel), but they were only able to identify vehicle insignia for the 'Hohenstaufen' (9.SS-Panzer-Division). The Dutch also identified Kasteel Ruurlo as a divisional HQ, but could not identify the division (it was actually the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg'). Dutch reports had to be treated with caution because the resistance had been penetrated by the Germans in some areas and false information fed to the Allies, so Major Brian Urquhart at Browning's Corps HQ was trying to verify the Dutch reports by aerial reconnaissance. The one photo he obtained showing German tanks in the Arnhem area (actually at a supply dump near Deelen airfield undergoing maintenance) was famously dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles. When the photo was found in a Dutch government archive in 2014, it was subjected to a study by the RAF's Air Historical Branch and found to show Mark III and early model Mark IV tanks, ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. Browning's judgement was therefore correct. In fact, we now know the only unit in the Netherlands with such old tanks was the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment based in Utrecht for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division that was currently fighting in Poland. In early September the regiment was mobilised by the 'Valkyrie' Plan to mobilise the Reserve Army and the three Abteilung (grenadier, panzergrenadier, and artillerie) were sent to the front in Belgium. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie in Harderwijk on the Ijsselmeer coast were ordered on 7 September south to Eindhoven to join the II.Abteilung, and only three tanks completed the journey without breaking down. They were destroyed by the Guards at Hechtel in Belgium on 12 September, along with most of the II.Abteilung. The broken down vehicles had been caught by RAF reconnaissance Spitfire on the same day near Deelen undergoing repair, and this was the image shown to Browning. Having dismissed them as a threat to the British Airborne at Arnhem, on the day of the landings they were actually camped at Wolfswinkel, just north of the Son bridge in a reserve position for the Wilhelmina canal defence line, and directly across the road from the 506th PIR's drop zone on Sonsche Heide. They attempted to fire on the drop zone and were immediately attacked by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Two Mark III tanks escaped and were sighted at St Oedenrode, Veghel, and eventually bumped the 504th's roadblock at Grave, where the lead tank caused a few casualties (troopers came out of their foxholes thinking they were British and realised their mistake when the tank opened fire). After turning around and escaping, both tanks disappeared. The airborne formations could not therefore be told II.SS-Panzerkorps were in the Arnhem area, because the only source not classified Ultra was unconfirmed, but the anti-tank units sent to Arnhem were given a sanitised steer to expect "heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day", including Panther and Tiger tanks, which is a coded signal to expect a panzer-division and corps heavy tank battalion. This is from research by Nigel Simpson et al in a series of books on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem, Troop volumes A-Z (2020-2022). The Airborne's experience was that the heavy armoured counter-attacks did not start on the first day, but took several days to build up as reinforcements from Germany arrived. SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 did have three Panther tanks hidden under trees on the Heijenoordseweg in the western outskirts of Arnhem, and two of them were dispatched by B Company 3rd Parachute Battalion with a Gammon bomb and a PIAT on 19 September. The third survived to take part in the siege of the Oosterbeek perimeter, where CANLOAN officer Leo Heaps of 1st Parachute Battalion said he helped a PIAT team stalk a Panther tank in a wood that menaced the perimeter, so it makes sense to me that this might be Kampfgruppe Harder's remaining Panther. The anti-tank guns were more than adequate in number and the Germans were wary of getting into their lines of fire, so 1st Airborne ran out of PIAT ammunition trying to stalk them and even at the bridge the 6-pounders still had unused rounds when the PIAT and small arms ammunition ran out and the men attempting to break out were captured. There were five 6-pounders at the bridge (one gun from C Troop got there by missing the 3rd Para RV on the LZ to help some Hamilcar glider crash victims and the Battery CO told them to follow his HQ behind Frost's battalion and Brigade HQ to the bridge), but only two were in positions for action against SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 coming across the bridge from the south on 18 September, and they did most of the damage to the German vehicles rather than PIATs. The paras suffered few casualties in the engagement that practically destroyed 3.Kompanie of Gräbner's unit and got himself killed as well. The Hollywood film, for political reasons to show the airborne troops as virtually defenceless against tanks, does not show a single airborne anti-tank gun deployed or in action. You only glimpse one wrecked 6-pounder, on its side, at the end with the wounded left behind at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek, and that gun has a front carriage shield - obviously not the Mark III airborne version modified to fit into a glider. It should also be noted that the Airlanding battalions did not double their 6-pounder establishment, they always had 8 guns (2 platoons) in their support companies (WE I/239/2 effective 12 March 1943), so with four rifle companies they were usually allocated two guns per company. The whole rationale behind upgrading COMET to MARKET was that by adding the two American divisions to hold the corridor, the 1st Airborne Division and the Poles could concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun establishments, where the armoured threat was considered greater. At one point there was a plan to have the 101st land at Arnhem and the 1st Airborne at Nijmegen, because of the rumoured threat of tanks in the Reichswald, but in the end the assignments were switched so the 1st Airborne went to the location where at least some Dutch reports were more certain. The 101st and 82nd were later switched to deconflict the air traffic, since the 101st was located at more southerly airfields in England. Gavin was given a steer that there might be "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and a tank depot behind the Reichswald near Kleve - so this was the sanitised warning stemming from the fact that neither Ultra or the Dutch had precisely located the Frundsberg Division. TIKs comment at 12:00 I don't really understand - it's not very specific. Browning's decision to move his Corps HQ transport from 2nd to 1st airlift was a late change and it bumped Z Troop (6-pounders for 1st Airborne Division HQ protection) and the second line ammunition Jeeps and trailers to the 2nd lift, but as it turned out, the guns and ammunition were not needed on the first day. The only impact this change did make was that all of the HE (High Explosive) scale for the 6-pounders were in each Troop's second line trailer, and they couldn't now get to the bridge. Some of the AT troops at the bridge said that HE shells might have been useful there on soft targets if they had them, and would have supplemented the HE PIAT bombs the Paras had, but we're not talking about a major game-changing impact here that would have changed the course of the battle. Urquhart argued for more gliders so he could receive a complete transport of his support units, but there were no more available tugs and Browning seemed rightly concerned about the critical Nijmegen battle and wanted to be there.
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  405.  @61st-highland-anti-tank  - my pleasure. I would still question whether de Wolfsburg was used by Gavin, although it would be the nearest such establishment to the first CP location in the woods and I wouldn't be surprised if they have a small museum or memorabilia there, which might mislead the unwary. I do know that German officers used the hotel, but offhand I can't recall from which unit(s). Gavin's route from the drop zone near the Klein Amerika farm was due north, through a fence into the woods, and then on reaching a road turned right (it's a meandering track unnamed on Google) that skirts the southern boundary fence of the Feld-Luftmunitionslager, and eventually connects to Knapheideweg in Groesbeek. Then Arie Bestebreurtje stopped at a house on the corner of Knapheideweg and Mooksebaan (I think it's Mooksebaan 29) to ask the residents for information about the Germans in Groesbeek (I think he had relatives in Groesbeek and this may be the address), before they proceeded along Rijlaan to the CP location and their encounter with an MG post. The house is opposite the Hotel de Wolfsberg on Rijlaan. The photo I think is in After the Battle magazine's Operation Market Garden Then and Now volumes (2002) edited by Karel Margry, but is inconveninently in a box somewhere so I can't easily check it, but Karel was also a resident of Aalst by a bizarre coincidence!
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  406.  @61st-highland-anti-tank  - can I ask how your trip to the Netherlands went after all? Would like to get your impressions as I haven't been to the area - closest I got was a visit to the Philips exhibition in Eindhoven during a family holiday based in Westkappelle in 1975, two years before I read A Bridge Too Far, and a second visit to Amsterdam for just a weekend in 1999.
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  407.  @61st-highland-anti-tank  - thanks for that. The first 82nd Div CP location was just 1 km due west along the Rijlaan where there are track intersections (easy to find on the maps), and Gavin later moved I believe to the girls school at Marienboom on the main road into Nijmegen, about 6 km (or 3.75 miles) north. It makes sense if he did not occupy the building itself and remained under canvas in the surrounding woods as there is a photo of him recieving a visit from General Miles Dempsey (British 2nd Army) - it's the photo on the Jim Gavin page on War History Online - and it shows Gavin kneeling on the ground pointing to a map propped against a tree, while Dempsey sits in a chair observing, apparently inside or next to a tent. The visit cannot be early enough for the Groesbeek CP location, and I have seen it captioned in books as being at Marienboom, so your local contacts I think are on the money for that location, but the first CP was definitely just 1000 metres along from the Hotel De Wolfsberg. Glad you had an informative time there and able to connect with the VERITABLE locations, there's a lot of history in just one small area and I know the Dutch are superb hosts. Although I was still quite young (13) I remember we were very impressed with the whole country in 1975 (despite our parents insisting on taking us to France in later holidays). Of course the only thing I really remember from Westkapelle itself was the Sherman tank monument on top of the dijk from operation INFATUATE. Cheers.
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  408. Nonsense. The failure of Market Garden was due to the failure to move on the undefended Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon and resulted in a 36-hour delay after XXX Corps arrived to assist in taking the reinforced bridges by force, too late to relieve 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. The communications problems at Arnhem didn't help, but they didn't fatally compromise the entire operation.
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  409. - Beevor is clearly not a meticulous historian as TIK has proven in this video. His book published in 2018 offered no new information I wasn't already aware of, apart from a joke (literally), so what was the point of the book? Aimed at the lucrative American market I think, just as A Bridge Too Far (book and film) was, and that's why the debacle at Nijmegen on the first day is missing in all of these accounts. You say - "Browning, Gavin's superior, claims that he instructed that top priority was seizing the Heights, and the Waal bridge secondary to that." - and yet your quote doesn't contradict that, so you haven't made your disingenuously worded point. American historian John C McManus in chapter 3 of September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) quotes Browning's instruction to Gavin: - “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” - McManus then goes on to say: - General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. - This corroborates Gavin's own 17 July 1945 letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover: - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." - And again, in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, where Ryan notes: - Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. - But Gavin is not without some blame in the compromised planning process. Ryan's notes also state: - The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. - I think we agree that Browning and Gavin were on the same page as far as the plan was concerned, they both expected that both the Groesbeek heights were to be secured as well as the bridge, because as McManus says: - High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. Cont.--
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  410. -- So why didn’t Colonel Lindquist move promptly on the bridge? McManus says: At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - 82nd Airborne historian in his combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 – Put Us Down In Hell (2012), published the same year as McManus, also has a key witness to the final briefing - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." - I also don’t know what the intelligence source for the tanks in the Reichswald was, but I would be surprised if it was the Dutch resistance since the forest and the alleged tank depot near Kleve were in Germany, across the border. The figure of “1,000” seems to be a rumour started by someone pointing out that the forest could be hiding 1,000 tanks. Allied intelligence already assessed Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front from Aachen to the North Sea coast, and we now know from the 5 September monthly returns he had 84 panzers listed as operational. For context, Model faced Montgomery with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen with about another 1,500. By a bizarre coincidence, British 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Parachute Brigade also had exactly 84 anti-tank guns in their combined establishments, as if the universe were trying to tell the MARKET GARDEN critics something. Perhaps Montgomery had a point in cancelling operation COMET and then ordering MARKET with the American divisions added, to enable the British and Poles to concentrate at Arnhem where the armoured threat was actually greatest – based on Dutch reports. The American units did not have as many anti-tank guns in their establishments, although they were better equipped in field artillery. After landing on the afternoon of 17 September, the parachute units of the 82nd Airborne moved to their initial objectives and it was about 1730 hrs when the first reports started coming in, one of which was a 505th report that the Reichswald was unoccupied and the trees too dense for armoured operations. Nordyke takes up the story of the 508th: - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " - For all of these reasons, RG Poulussen and TIK are right to focus on Gavin and the 508th PIR. Although published the year after Poulussen and TIK doesn’t have them on his booklist, American historians McManus and Nordyke have provided more firsthand witness evidence they are on the right track. Browning only rejected Gavin’s second attempt to try for the bridge after the first was too late to beat 10.SS-Panzer Division to the bridge, which they secured with Gräbner’s attached SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at about 8 pm (it was after dark, because that was when PFC Joe Atkins decided to withdraw his recon patrol – his account is in chapter 6 of Zig Boroughs’ The 508th Connection, 2013). Browning correctly realised they would now need armoured support to take the bridges, so it was best to wait for XXX Corps to arrive with the tanks. Cont.—
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  411. -- You said – “The idea that the 82nd just waltzes onto the bridge had it rushed there immediately is nonsensical.” – why? The three-man point team from Lt Weaver’s recon patrol did exactly that and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that didn’t arrive. The Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for demolition on 17 September, as you seem to assume. Most accounts state that this work was done only after the engineers from the 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived overnight. Explosive charges were stored inside the bridge pier storage spaces and a volunteer militia NSDAP ‘Shutzgruppe’ of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands were drilled to place the custom made cutting charges in numbered boxes designed to fit in the bridge superstructure in corresponding numbered locations, under the supervision of German engineer officer, Oberleutnant Gerhard Brettschneider of von Tettau’s WBN (military command Netherlands) staff. The Schutzgruppe were drilled every month since the Normandy invasion and the last drill had been mid-August. On 17 September, they failed to show up at the bridge, either because they deserted or in many cases the Dutch resistance knew who they were and made arrests after the landings. You also say – “The idea that there were almost no German troops at the bridge is a prevailing myth. It is based on Dutch resistance again, and is as reliable as armor in the Reichswald. The 82nd encountered more troops than that just trying to get to the bridge (read the action reports).” – I did read the action reports and it’s because they tried to get to the bridge too late! They wasted several hours from 17:30, when they reached the initial objective at De Ploeg, digging-in along the Groesbeek ridge, and then after Gavin’s intervention at 20:00, it took two hours to get A and B Companies out of the line and to the Krayenhoff barracks Initial Point (IP). The clash with elements of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle was sometime between A Company leaving the IP at 22:00 and midnight, when the SS unit was withdrawn to Elst. Nordyke has the American side of the story: - At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.” Cont. –
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  412. -- The German side is provided by Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014), Chapter 4: Betuwe, which has input from SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting as adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, and later 'Kampfgruppe Reinhold' in charge of the Nijmegen defence). He says they crossed the Arnhem bridge before it was closed to traffic (by Frost at about 9 pm) and then crossed the bridge at Nijmegen to get an idea of the defences: - "To get a clearer picture about the troops in Nijmegen which were available for the defence, I crossed the Waal bridge on 17 September 1944. There were only a handful of administrative troops which were under command of some older high-ranking Army Officers. There were men (between thirty-five and forty years old) from all types of units and they were equipped with old rifles. In addition there was a Luftwaffe Flak Battery defending the bridge. All these men came under our command. To my complete surprise I came across the complete SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner. Never before had I seen so many armoured vehicles; there were maybe thirty or more. From Gräbner I learned that many American troops had landed west of the Reichswald. Gräbner had received orders to go back to Arnhem. As the Nijmegen bridge was very short of the troops required to defend it, I asked him to leave one Zug (five Panzerspähwagen) for the defences. He agreed and left for Arnhem around nine o'clock in the evening. Feeling better about the situation I went back to our Headquarters in Lent and took a nap. Around midnight the officer in command of the Zug of Panzerspähwagen arrived at the Headquarters and told me that he had received orders to join the rest of his unit at Elst." "After he left I went across the bridge again to visit the troops located around the bridge in Nijmegen. Another thirty to forty men had arrived which belonged to a military police band and had been incorporated into the defence. I was still waiting for Quandel [5./SS-Pz.Rgt 10] and his tanks [16 x Mark IV] and had no information on why they had not arrived. Early in the morning of 18 September I was surprised to see the first arrival was SS-Obersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel with about ten men from his Pionier Kompanie [1./SS-Pz.Pi.Abt 10]. Reinhold and I then learned what had happened at the Arnhem bridge and on hearing this information made me adjutant of the Kampfgruppe. In the early afternoon SS-Hauptsturmführer Euling arrived with elements of his Battalion [former II./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21]. Both units crossed the Nijmegen bridge to strengthen the bridgehead on the southern side of the Waal." - It should be clear from this that there was only a bridge guard on the bridge until the SS units started arriving, which corresponds with PFC Atkins’ account, some administrative troops with some “high ranking Army Officers” seen by Traupel (I have no further information on them but suspect may be the Rüstungsinspektion Niederlande), and the nearest Flak battery was a heavy battery down on the polder to the east, and these four 8.8cm guns were repositioned during the night as anti-tank defence for the bridge. There were no Flak defences on the bridge itself. Frost had easily outperformed Lindquist, despite landing 30 minutes later, having 3 km further to march to the prime objective, and unlike Atkins’ point team, which did move promptly, Frost had MGs, mortars, and armoured cars on his route to the Arnhem bridge (and only his A Company with him when he took the highway bridge). You seem to think that TIK is biased because he’s British, but he’s actually just following the evidence, and you’ve made some serious errors and assumptions in your narrative, and that’s why it’s incorrect. I don’t have to rely on any British accounts, since the American, Dutch, and German accounts fit together into a cohesive narrative that makes sense. - You said “Frost never controlled the Arnhem bridge. He was just blocking the north end. The British cannot drive across the bridge to liberate Frost without more fierce fighting. The Arnhem bridge is also blown in that circumstance.” – absolute nonsense! Frost interdicted enemy traffic across the bridge for 80 hours, starting at 9 pm on Sunday, about an hour after arriving at the bridge. He is unable to secure the southern approach, the area is open and an effective kill-zone. The Germans cannot place explosive charges, they only attempted at the northern ramp supports and were beaten off. You said – “XXXth Corps was significantly delayed by the time that it got to Nijmegen.” – really? They were supposed to be in Arnhem in two to three days. They were stopped at Nijmegen with 45 hours elapsed for the tanks (43 for the armoured cars) – less than two days, and only because the Nijmegen bridges were still in German hands, instead of having a straight run through to Arnhem as expected. Seems to me they would have had a full day in hand if the 508th had done their job. Instead, the 36-hour delay was imposed by having to fight for the bridges at Nijmegen, doing the Airborne’s job for them. You also said – “The one exception seems to have been Brian Urquhart, who correctly deduced that the plan was flawed, and that it would fail because the Germans were strong enough in the area to wreck the plan.” – you cannot blame the plan if the operation fails because the plan wasn’t followed. It was a command failure in an airborne unit, not the Germans doing anything unexpected. Brian Urquhart was thoroughly discredited when the infamous aerial photo was located in a Dutch government archive in 2014 and analysed, if not before when he was instrumental in setting up the useless United Nations organisation after the war. The Germans were gifted the Nijmegen highway bridge. So, thank you very much Lewis Brereton, Paul Williams, James Gavin, and Roy Lindquist. The Germans would probably not have been able to defeat MARKET GARDEN without them.
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  413. A number of people crossed the Rijn during the battle in both directions. Some glider passengers that came down short on the Nijmegen 'island' due to early tow cable release were able to use the ferry at Driel to cross the river and join their units in the division, including a Jeep and 6-pounder anti-tank gun combination. Some who crossed in the opposite direction included a Royal Engineers Captain from the Division CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) section by Jeep, using the same ferry in order to make contact with XXX Corps, but due to German patrols had to abandon the Jeep and complete the journey to the American bridgehead at Nijmegen on foot. After the Polish Parachute Brigade landed at Driel on 21 September, the Driel ferry had unfortunately just been scuttled by the Dutch ferryman, because he feared the Germans would soon secure it, so further crossings were made by swimmers or some by inflatable dinghy. Officially, the Polish Brigade's Engineer Company had no boats, but before take-off in England they had 'acquired' six RAF inflatable two-man dinghies, but these were of limited use on the river. One of the swimmers was the Polish liaison officer to 1st Airborne Division, probably the man you're thinking of, and also the 1st Airborne CRE himself, Lt Col Eddie Myers, also swam the Rijn to contact the Poles, I think he accompanied the Polish liaison officer if I recall correctly.
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  414.  @johnburns4017  - have to say I'm not convinced it would make a difference. All of the bridges blown were either on defence lines or were rail bridges with 'sprengkommando' stationed on them, obviously with standing orders. The bridge at Zon was on the Wilhelmina kanaal defence line and the troops on it ready to blow the remaining bridges at Zon and Best. Same is true of the Maas-Waal kanaal bridges that were blown, and the Oosterbeek and Mook rail bridges. The Ravenstein rail bridge was also blown just within sight of a 504th patrol and was not even a target bridge. The bridges that were taken intact were either road bridges behind defence lines and not prepared for demolition (Arnhem Rijnbrug), or the demolitions unable to be primed for technical reasons (definitely Grave and probably applies at Heumen). Have to give the Germans some credit!
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  415. @Johnny Carroll - I was re-watching TIKs video on Gavin earlier and the correspondence was in that. The point being that they were establishing a narrative after the war, so the person in the comments who triggered the video TIK made in response was relying on that established conventional narrative. The key to unravelling all of this is to go back to contemporary sources, documents or interviews with people who were there. I'll check your profile later when I hope to have a bit more time to do that. Many thanks for the discussion in the meantime - always a pleasure.
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  416.  @johnburns4017  - did Sebastian Ritchie use any of the bits that were wrong by Harris and then corrected by Browning and not picked up by Ritchie? In other words, is there anything in Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story that is incorrect or can't be relied on? The only issue about that work I'm aware of is the annotation on the photo frame 4015, which was a Dutch post-war addition for a land-use survey and not wartime RAF markings, but I think Ritchie addressed that in the 2019 2nd edition.
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  417.  @johnburns4017  - I was only asking because you said Sebastian Ritchie used Harris heavily and Harris got bits wrong and had to be corrected by Browning. So I'm taking it from your response that either Ritchie did not use the bits Harris got wrong, or he that he included Browning's corrections.
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  418.  @johnburns4017  - yes, this was the march to the initial objective leading 1st Battalion to De Ploeg. In fact that paragraph in Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) begins with the sentence before Adams' quote saying: 'Receiving infomation from the patrols that no enemy was between them and the objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance.' After Adams' quote saying everything was going well but if they had gone straight to the bridge he still believes they would have had it without a fight, the next paragraph reads: 'Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” ' What I think is important about this was that Lindquist's regimental plan was to dig-in on the ridge, because that was clearly Warren's understanding of his mission - he was surprised when he ws eventually ordered to move into Nijmegen and it took time to assemble A and B Companies - they were strung out along the ridge, and eventually A Company moved out first alone because they were nearest the road and assembled first, while B Company were further from the road and took longer to come out of the woods and assemble on the road. B Company followed A and HQ Companies into Nijmegen. On the timings, I think Gavin received the report from Chet Graham about the 508th digging-in after 6:30 pm, because Lindquist arrived at De Ploeg after 1st Battalion, met with Geert van Hees, got the information Nijmegen was deserted and the bridge guarded by an NCO and 17 men, but then set about organising with Warren the pre-planned recon patrol - Lt Weaver's 3rd Platoon from C Company. Nordyke says the regimental CP was established at 6:30 pm, then there's the bit about Chet Graham getting an update from Lindquist of when he intends sending 3rd [?] Battalion to the bridge and Lindquist says "As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that." Gavin got a report from the 505th that the Reichswald was unoccupied at 6:30 pm, so I believe Graham must have reported in with his message soon after. Gavin realised his plan was compromised and they then went to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving: 'At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” ' The other point to appreciate is that the roadblock position was specifically to guard against German movement SOUTH from Nijmegen - this had NOTHING to do with the Reichswald. A lot of people commenting on YouTube seem to have no appreciation of the geography and think that the Groesbeek heights were a defensive position against attacks from the perceived threat of the Reichswald. That may be true of the 505th PIR positions around Groesbeek and Hill 81.8, but the 508th's initial objectives of the line De Hut - De Ploeg - Berg-en-Dal, were specifically to cut the three roads south out of NIJMEGEN against a potential threat from NIJMEGEN, or indeed the Germans possibly occupying the ridge line themselves if they were barracked in Nijmegen and took up those positions as the Americans were assembling on their drop zones. The position could have been a mirror of the one at Arnhem if there had been a formation like Battalion Krafft located in the area and able to quickly form a blocking line to prevent or delay access to the city. And the point is that there wasn't. There were no Germans on the ridge and the barracks were avoided by the Germans because of the risk of bombing. The only available combat troops in the whole Nijmegen sector were training units deployed on the Maas-Waal canal defence line.
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  419. @@johnnycarroll4496 - you need to read Nordyke, Boroughs (or Joe Atkins' story quoted in Bergström), McManus, and Poulussen. Nordyke is particularly important for the earlier chapters on formation of the 508th and Normandy for context. Adams' warning order at 6pm is almost certainly wrong because the 1st Battalion did not even reach De Ploeg and Regiment HQ arrived until around 6:30pm. He said it was beginning to get dark when he got back to the Company, which would be about 7:30pm and it would fully dark by 8:00pm. There were delays n getting the two companies out of the line and assembled and this delay to 10:00pm sounds about right. The problem is that the battalion did not coninue to the bridge as soon as it arrived at De Plog at 6:30pm, or whatever time it was, as expexted by Gavin. Only Weaver's patrol from C Company and the S-2 Section were sent instead. Atkins' point team from the S-2 Section got to the bridge and took the southern end of it from the handful of guards there, and waited one hour before dark, when they decided to withdraw because the rest of the patrol faailed to show up. That was when they heard "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge - undoubtedly Gräbner's SS-Pz.Aufkl.Abt.9, as it was the first unit from II.SS-Panzerkorps to arrive.
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  420. Why? That might seem like a good idea if a Rhine crossing was not possible, but it was, so it made sense to launch Market Garden as soon as possible while the Germans were still off balance following their withdrawal from Normandy. Eisenhower accepted that logic and approved the operation on that basis. Even if you could predict the Americans would fail to secure the undefended Nijmegen bridge on the first afternoon of the operation, that's hardly Montgomery's fault, is it? 15.Armee were mostly contained in the western Holland region while Market Garden was proceeding, although their 59.Infanterie-Division was the first to evacuate across the Scheldt and were transferred to 1.Fallschirm-armee to counter-attack the corridor at Best. If Market Garden had succeeded, it would have completely cut off not only 15.Armee, but also the western half of 1.Fallschirm-armee, and the balance of the WBN (German occupation forces in the Netherlands) west of the corridor.
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  421. Frost's battalion landed at 1400 hours, assembled and was ready to move by 1500 hrs, when they left the Drop Zone. Frost had more opposition on his route than many people are aware, including machine guns, mortars and armoured cars, because of the way it was portrayed in the Hollywood film. The film also didn't show the rail bridge at Oosterbeek, which was to be used to pass a Company over the river to attack the southern end of the highway bridge, and it was prepared for demolition by the Germans with a 'sprengkommando' stationed it since the Normandy invasion. The attack on the rail bridge began at around 1730 hours and the southern span was demolished at 1800 hours with paratroopers already on the northern span. It should be appreciated that the southern access to the highway bridge was an elevated causeway over the river flood plain and was a "no-man's land" between the British and German positions covered by fire, so it was not occupied by either side. If XXX Corps had reached the southern bridge approach while Frost still held the north side, they would have had little problem crossing the bridge to relieve Frost. A useful comparison can be made with the unit expected to take the Nijmegen highway bridge on D-Day, which landed 30 minutes before Frost, on a drop zone 3 km closer to their prime objective, had zero opposition on their initial objective of the Groesbeek ridge, and were informed by Dutch resistance the city had been evacuated by the Germans leaving only a 18-man guard on the highway bridge. The regimental commander failed to follow his division commander's instruction to move with speed on the bridge, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, otherwise the bridge would have been secured easily within a few hours.
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  422. There are main roads north from Arnhem to Apeldoorn and the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) coast plnned to be used by the Guards and 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, and then from Apeldoorn to Deventer and Zutphen. The final dispositions of XXX Corps north of the Rijn included 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division taking the bridge sites over the Ijssel at Deventer and Zutphen with forward brigades, and the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division the Ijssel bridge site at Doesburg. Airborne forces were not required at these locations as it was not essential for the bridges to be taken intact, they could be replaced with Bailey bridges while US 1st Army were securing their own Rhine crossing between Bonn and Cologne. These would then be the start lines for Eisenhower's planned pincer envelopment of the Ruhr with US 1st and British 2nd Armies, once Antwerp had been opened up by the Canadians and sufficient supplies built up to support both armies in Germany.
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  423.  @niekhogendoorn5156  - the evacuation of the Betuwe was caused by the Germans breaching the Winter dijk near Arnhem and flooding the polders - not simply caused by swollen rivers flooding the flood plains in Winter. These rivers can be and were routinely bridged with Bailey bridging equipment all over Europe - the details on the engineering put in place can be found in Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2021). There were plenty of main roads into Germany from the Ijssel bridges - through Oldenzaal, Enschede, Winterswijk, and Zevenaar - I'm reading a German sitution map dated 17.9.44 and these are the main routes from Germany that reinforcements were sent to Arnhem. Allied forces can invade Germany just as easily in the other direction. The basic concept of MARKET GARDEN was compromised by flaws introduced during the planning process.
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  424. Is that a quote from the book? It's very poor English if it is. You do know that Browning's role in the planning for MARKET was compromised by the LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) affair, where he threatened to resign over Brereton scheduling the operation with too short notice to print and distribute maps for the troops? Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Fortunately for everyone concerned, the operation was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but it meant that once Brereton got his hands on Browning and Montgomery's outline proposal called SIXTEEN for detailed planning as MARKET, Browning could not object to the compromise changes that were made. I haven't read Mead, so I don't know what it contains on this matter, but I would ask what would you have Browning do in the game of life if this was the hand he was dealt - having Brereton parachuted in over him as commander of 1st Allied Airborne Army?
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  425. The decision to move as quickly as possible to secure a Rhine crossing before clearing the Scheldt estuary to open Antwerp was the logical one. The Germans were still off balance after their withdrawal from Normandy and were hurriedly trying to establish defence line along the major rivers and canals in the Netherlands. The Canadians, in whose sector the Scheldt lay, were not ready to conduct operations in the area until after MARKET GARDEN was expected to conclude, they were repositioning around Antwerp during MARKET GARDEN in preparation to strike north, so it made sense to strike with the right (British 2nd Army) for the Rhine before German defences fimed up, and then with the left (Canadian 1st Army) when they were ready. Eisenhower was in full agreement with the priorities and after Cornelius Ryan's misleading book A Bridge Too Far was published felt he had to make a public statement clarifying the situation - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) Montgomery later admitted he underestimated the difficulty the Canadians faced in their sector and after an airborne operation on Walcheren island that he requested was rejected by Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army, he eventually had to divert units from British 2nd Army's left flank (XII Corps) to assist them. He had argued in his 10 September meeting with Eisenhower that a northwards advance (to Arnhem and the Ijsselmeer) would ease operations around Antwerp, but although Eisenhower did not accept that analysis, he "agreed that 21 Army Group should strike northwards towards Arnhem as early as possible, and he admitted that successful operations in that direction would open up wide possibilities for future action." (The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery (1958)
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  426. Excellent video, thank you. Currently reading Six Minutes In May by Nicholas Shakespeare about Churchill's rise to Prime Minister in 1940 after the "Norway debate", the six minutes refers to the time alocated to Members of Parliament to enter the Division Lobbies to vote before the doors are locked. The book makes a good read, like a political thriller, but I already know how it ends!
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  427.  @raybarry4307  - if the point you are making is that the airborne's requirements were undermined by the air force commanders, you are correct, and that is indeed one of the main reasons why the operation failed because the compromises removed a lot of the flexibility and redundancy in the original concept and created the situation where evrything would have to go right or the operation would fail. So the failure was the result of a series of planning compromises, and then a command failure in one regiment on D-Day was the fatal compromise that broke the operation. The reason all of this happened, or was allowed to happen, was because of the nature of the Anglo-American alliance. The Americans would not submit to British control, so no senior British commander could compel an American officer of lower rank, or vice versa. The alliance was co-operative, but at every level, a British commander has an American claiming seniority on the grounds of having more troops committed all the way up to Roosevelt, so where does the buck actually stop? Montgomery actually outranked Eisenhower in both grade and seniority when in the same grade, but the actual command arrangement was more political. Browning was also senior in grade to Brereton, but was Brereton's deputy for political reasons. Browning could not order Gavin to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge, unless supported by Brereton. Neither could Montgomery intervene to overrule Brereton and Williams' removal of the glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges. If he did, it would have ignited a row that would probably have involved Eisenhower and would most likely result (and I accept this is speculative) in Brereton refusing to proceed with the operation and Montgomery would be forced to cancel it. A good example of a precedent is Montgomery had requested an airborne operation on Walcheren island to assist the Canadians in clearing the Scheldt approaches to Antwerp in the same timeframe as the British/Polish COMET operation under Browning's British I Airborne Corps was being planned (first week of September), so it would have to involve Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps and one or two of the US Airborne divisions. Brereton refused this operation, arguing it was suicidal because he feared his own air corps would be mis-dropping American paratroops into the North Sea and drown them and because the island was well defended with flak, so Brereton could refuse Montgomery and Eisenhower did not force the issue. If Eisenhower had backed Montgomery and Browning over MARKET, it would be against both Brereton and Williams, and probably Gavin and Ridgway as well. (Ridgway had no role in MARKET, but his XVIII Corps staff in England were involved in organising the resupply airlifts). Sorry about the length of the response (both of them!), but I think you have to get into the weeds to understand all the issues. About two weeks of history were compressed into 2 hours and 56 minutes of the Hollywood film, and it was further compromised by not being a totally honest account made for the American market. I wanted to disabuse you of the notion the RAF compromised the operation in any way. They were actually very co-operative for the most part, particularly in supporting the COMET glider coup de main solution to the lack of suitable drop zones near the bridge targets, but their influence was severely limited by the allied command structure once the plan evolved into operation MARKET and they were removed by the USAAF officers. I think this is where Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis is quite helpful. He is an American military historian, but he studied for his PhD at Cranfield's College of Defence Technology here in the UK. His thesis on allied operational command in the MARKET GARDEN campaign, which you can download for free online, has a few technical errors in it, but it mainly deals with this issue of command and control.
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  428.  @johnlucas8479  - you haven't understood the relationship. No commander in one allied army could order a subordinate in another allied army to put his troops in harm's way if he doesn't agree with it. That is why Gavin was able to discard Browning's idea of dropping a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge. Browning was able to reject Gavin's planned second attempt on the bridge because that did not compel Gavin to put his troops in harm's way - quite the reverse, he was sparing them by rejecting an operation and opted instead to have the 508th PIR remain defensive on the Groesbeek ridge until armoured support arrived - which was a point missing in the Buckingham quote ("vacillated" sounds like Buckingham's biased personal opinion to me). On your other examples in Italy etc., can you show any example of a British commander ordering an American subordinate to put his troops in harm's way and the American officer is not able to refuse the order? Or the reverse? Remember, a refusal of an order is a disciplinary matter only if the officers are in the same army, but the rule does not apply if it involves a British superior and an American subordinate, or American superior and a British subordinate. Modern example I absolutely love: British pop singer James Blunt was previously a Captain in the Household Cavalry during the NATO mission in Kosovo (former Yugoslavia) in 1999, and claims he prevented World War III by refusing an order from an American General to attack a Russian force that had occupied Pristina airfield without agreement from NATO - Although US general Wesley Clark had issued a command to "reach the airfield and take a hold of it", the Russians had arrived there first. "We had 200 Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively," Blunt recalled. "The direct command [that] came in from General Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as 'destroy' came down the radio." "Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III', and told us why don't we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead." "And after a couple of days the Russians there said: 'Hang on we have no food and no water. Can we share the airfield with you?'." If Gen Jackson had not blocked the order from Gen Clark, who as Nato Supreme Commander Europe was his superior officer, Blunt said he would still have declined to follow it, even at the risk of a court martial. (Sources: BBC News 14 November 2010, The Guardian 15 November 2010) - Note that Blunt was in danger of court-martial only from his own British General Mike Jackson if Jackson had confirmed Clark's orders instead of refusing them. Clark could do nothing if a British Captain refused his orders, and neither could he do anything when his deputy in the NATO mission, British General Mike Jackson, did in fact refuse them. This point is also central to refuting the whole disingenuous argument that British commanders were to blame for the failure of MARKET GARDEN. I have demonstrated many times in comments that Browning in particular had done everthing he could to ensure the success of the operation, but was frustrated at every turn by American commanders Brereton, Williams, and Gavin, compromising the planning of the operation, and Browning was powerless to do anything about it. If Browning had escalated his objections to Montgomery, Montgomery could have insisted Brereton land troops closer to the bridges (he later wrote he regretted not doing this), but this inevitably would have caused a row with the Americans and I predict Brereton would have refused on the same grounds he refused Montgomery's request for an airborne operation on Walcheren. Brereton would have to be overruled by Eisenhower to compel him, and I doubt Ike would have done this.
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  429.  @johnlucas8479  - but do you have any examples of officers being forced to follow orders across national boundaries? The point is that military discipline is only enforceable within the same army.
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  430.  @johnlucas8479  - the examples do not satisfy me because you have not provided any instance when military discipline has crossed national boundaries - it's simply not legally enforceable. The example of Browning (or as Ryan noted "the British wanted") Gavin to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge and Gavin discarded the idea. Browning could not order Gavin to do this and discipline him if he refused. In all of your examples there are none that state the order was refused and the refusal was disciplined, so the orders were obviously accepted. I thought my example of James Blunt in the Kosovo NATO mission perfectly illustrated the legal aspects, but you obviously haven't understood it. Blunt would have been in trouble if Jackson has confirmed Clark's order, but Jackson himself refused the American General's order and he could not discipline Blunt or Jackson because they weren't in the same army. There was no legal basis to make it enforceable. I'm familiar with Saunder's book on Nijmegen. You've found an example of a British battalion put under command of an American division under command of a British Army Corps, but nowhere in that is a similar situation Captain Blunt found himself of refusing an order and could not be disciplined by a senior officer in an allied army. I'm not as familiar with your other examples of units under foreign command, but I suspect you will not find any of them involved military dicipline being enforced across national boundaries without support from a senior officer from the same army to enforce the discipline. Your point failed, I'm afraid. On a point of law, not history.
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  431.  @johnlucas8479  - I did come across that when reading about Brereton. He was certainly a keen proponent of the "air weapon" - a term used by his supporters in Washington concerned with dominating the post-war strategic environment. The problem with Brereton was that he was a pilot by training and not a soldier, and that bias was betrayed by his actions as commander of 1st Allied Airborne Army, putting the safety and needs of his aircrews before the needs of the airborne troops he was supposed to be delivering to the objective. There's not much point in launching an airborne operation if you cannot or will not deliver the troops to their objectives, a point Browning understood when he solved the RAF's objections to drop zones near the COMET objectives by using the glider coup de main assaults that were so successful in Normandy. Browning may not have passed the parachute course, although he did qualify as a glider pilot, but once on the ground the airborne trooper is basically an infantryman and that was Browning's background and experience going back to WW1. The thing about Browning is that I quite happily accepted the criticism of him in A Bridge Too Far when that was my only source on the operation in 1977, but the remarkable thing is that my view of him changed radically when new information became available and his decisions started to make a lot of sense. When the missing photo of the German tanks near Arnhem emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2014, and both the vehicles and the owner were identified, it was seen that his decision made a lot of sense. His decision to advance the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek, often dismissed as an 'ego trip', should also be seen in light of his attempts to ensure the Nijmegen bridge was secured as a priority by coup de main, and when that failed, by asking Gavin to drop a battalion on the bridge and was frustrated again. He was obviously concerned about Nijmegen and wanted to be on the ground from the 1st lift, especially since the 2nd was now deleted from the evening of D-Day by Brereton and Williams and scheduled on D+1, in order to try and influence events once on the ground. On closer inspection, his decisions are now clearly on the money, and the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan is at fault, not Browning. Quick search on the interweb reveals that the only airborne operations actually launched in WW1, right at the end in 1918, were by the Italian Arditi (special forces), and they were five operations dropping a lone individual behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. The plane was flown by an RAF pilot with a Canadian observer.
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  432.  @johnlucas8479  - you said - "Your problem is you cannot see the difference between military discipline which I agree do not cross national boundaries and operation orders given by a superior commander to a subordinate regardless of nationality." - what's the difference? If the 'orders' are not enforceable by military law then the 'orders' can only amount to a request in a cooperative alliance. You said - "Browning as Gavin superior could have ordered Gavin to drop a Battalion north of the Waal. If Gavin refused the order Browning could have raise the matter up with either Ridgeway or Brereton both could have discipline Gavin." - exactly! Browning's order was not enforceable if Gavin refuses it. It would have to be backed by a superior officer in Gavin's own US Army chain of command, either Brereton, Ridgway, or even Eisenhower if need be. I have already dealt with that. Brereton was clearly not minded to support Browning - they were already at odds over the whole question of delivering the troops close to the bridge targets (and while we're on the subject - this is all evidence Browning clearly prioritised the Nijmegen bridge), and any strong objection to the point of resigning would bring Brereton's LINNET II scenario into play - replacing Browning with Ridgway. What Browning was hoping for was Gavin's support in dropping the battalion on the bridge and hope Brereton or Williams are not minded to overrule Gavin by denying it. Tucker insisted on a company drop zone south of Grave and Gavin granted it, obviously without objection from Brereton and Williams. You said - "There is no doubt that Boy explicitly instructed Gavin, at a divisional commanders’ conference on 14 September, not to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge until he had firmly established control of the Groesbeek Heights." - Since the heights are between the drop zone and the bridge, this makes perfect sense. From McManus (September Hope, 2012) we have the quote from Browning - "Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” Then McManus, after his perfect analysis of the bridge versus ridge debate and conclcuded both were the priority and both Gavin and Browning were in agreement on this point, goes on to say: 'General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.' This backs up Gavin's account to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover in his 17 July 1945 letter: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." Gavin confirms this in his 1967 interview with A Bridge Too Far (1974) author Cornelius Ryan: 'Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.' And Ryan goes on to note in the interview: 'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' So, the final Corps briefing, where Browning cautions Gavin to secure the heights as well as the Nijmegen and Grave bridges, was 16 September, because the previous day's Divisional briefing was 15 September in which Gavin had already instructed Lindquist "about 48 hours prior to take-off" to send 1st Battalion directly to the bridge. These obviously supercede any meeting on 14 September, and the first Field Orders issued on 13 September that Lindquist in particular relies apon. The idea the bridge had lower priority to the heights was pre-15 September Divisional briefing, and then again on 18 September after the first attempt on the bridge had already failed Browning rejected Gavin's proposal to try again. These get incorrectly conflated with D-Day - 17 September, and the pre-flight instructions and expectations. It's not rocket science - you just have to understand there's a time dimension to take into account of your situational awareness as well. The whole of the Groesbeek heights had been secured when Lindquist failed to order 1st Battalion to move into the city, and ordered Weaver's recon patrol instead. 1st Battalion were deployed all along the ridge line and were digging-in. Gavin was as "mad" as Chet Graham (the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ) had ever seen him at hearing his report that Lindquist was not moving on the bridge and they both went to the 508th CP to "get him moving." Gavin would not have been so "mad" if Lindquist's defensive stance was what Gavin had intended. It was because it took two hours to even get A Company out of their positions and to the IP (Initial Point) at the Krayenhoff barracks, where they moved on at 2200 hrs without waiting for B Company to catch up, that the whole movement was far too late. The SS panzer troops were occupying the city at around the same time Lindquist finally ordered Warren to move his battalion, and only then because he had just received Gavin's Boot up his arse (Put Us Down In Hell, Nordyke 2012). We've been all through this already. You said - "You also have Col Frost comments" - I don't think Frost had read Poulussen (2011), McManus (2012), or Nordyke (2012), on account of the fact Frost passed away in 1993. Funnily enough, I hadn't read these books in 1993 either! So I wasn't any the wiser than Frost was. The time dimension again! You said - "No publish source I have read on the subject mention Browning or British ordering or requesting the drop." - That's unworthy of you. It's in Cornelius Ryan's Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University). Ryan didn't publish it in his book, I would suggest, because he wanted to put the British in the worst possible light and keep Gavin out of it. Most of Ryan's errors are errors of ommission. We've had to wait 37 years for someone to dig into this (Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) and two more books the following year (McManus and Nordyke, 2012) to back it up. You said - "If Browning or British only requested or wanted a drop north of the Waal River then Gavin refusal after consideration would not have raise a disciplinary matter under Military Law only a direct order refusal." - Explain the difference! I think you're dancing on the head of a pin here. If an order was not legally enforceable, it could not be a disciplinary matter under military law, so it could only be a request in the first place. Browning was only doing what he could and no more. The difference between Browning in MARKET GARDEN and Wesley Clark in Kosovo was that Browning was a gentleman who understood the limits of his authority and Clark was an arrogant prick who overstepped his authority. I think Clark was removed or sidelined after this incident in 1999, and a good thing too. You said - "Yet he refused Gavin request to attack the bridge on the 18th" - yes, and it was because Browning judged that it would be better to wait until XXX Corps arrived to provide armoured support to overcome the German armoured defence in Nijmegen. This is another instance when Browning's judgement was proven correct, because if the 2nd/505th could not break the German defence in frontal attacks with the Grenadier Guards in support on 19 September, then it stands to reason that they would not have been able to do it without armoured support on the 18th. A river assault crossing was then deemed necessary to unhinge the defence. If Gavin's and Browning's views had been the reverse and Browning wanted Gavin to make a second attempt on the bridge on 18 September, and Gavin refused the order/request (however it was couched), Browning could not force the matter.
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  433.  @ToolTimeTabor  - part of the problem is that many of the official documents belonging to the 508th are missing from the Army's records, which may be convenient for some and also remarkable because Lindquist was apparently a gifted administrator who (in Gavin's words to Cornelius Ryan) produced documentaion you wouldn't believe. I think the Field Order No.1 dated 13 September still exists because it supports Lindquist and undermines Graham's eyewitness version of events. McManus also notes that Jack Norton, the Division G-3, was also present at the divisional briefing and corroborates Chet Graham's telling of events in Nordyke. So you get a more complete picture if you combine Nordyke's and McManus' books, both published in 2012, so they don't rely on each other. Just a note that the two authors differ in that Nordyke presents his first hand accounts, both versions if they differ (Warren and Delamater's accounts vary slightly), but doesn't offer any opinion of his own, preferring to let the reader make up their own mind. McManus on the other hand, while just as diligent in his research as Nordyke and equally helpful, then goes and offers the irrational opinion that it was all Montgomery's fault because it was his idea in the first place. I don't think that's very professional - it strikes me as irrational and emotional and he doesn't present any argument for it. My view is that Gavin decided to take much of the responsibility on himself, rather than throw a subordinate officer under the bus. That would be the honorable thing to do, and that's in character with what we know about James Gavin as a man. That is why I think Lindquist was at fault, but Gavin was responsible as his supervisor and the author of the divisional plan assigning the 508th to the Nijmegen mission. It's consistent with his reaction to Chet Graham's delivery of the message and his insistence on his own division making the river assault crossing instead of allowing XXX Corp's contingency plan of 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division being used and letting the British get on with it. Gavin seems to have muddied the waters post-war to take that responsibility for the 508th's priorities and even enlisted Browning's assistance in doing so. The recent books have been published after most of the key people have passed on (only Chet Graham passed later in 2015), and I think that's significant. If the true story can't be told now, then when? Securing the Groesbeek ridge line at De Hut (2nd Battalion objective), De Ploeg (1st) and Berg-en-Dal (3rd) does not protect the drop zones directly. This line was the line of the scarp slope facing Nijmegen, while the dip slope is barely noticeable back towards the drop zones and Groesbeek. It blocks the three main roads south out of Nijmegen, and this was the intent expressed in the field orders. The regiment were dug-in against a possible counter-attack from the north out of Nijmegen. Only D Company remained on the DZ to clear it (as Lindquist referenced in his message to Gavin) of supply canisters and assist the S-4 and his small staff that arrived by parachute to establish the regmental supply dump at Voxhil farm. If you have the contemporary US GSGS AMS map 12-NW-Groesbeek, it's in grid square 7657. The potential threat from the Reichswald was mostly in the 505th PIR's sector of the division perimeter and 1st and 3rd Battalions were deployed facing the Reichswald. Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th was on Hill 81.8 (7355) in division reserve and Gavin also had the parachute companies of the Engineer Battalion with him around his CP (7354). When D Company at Voxhil was threatened with being overrun on 18 September, 1/508th was withdrawn from its belated attempt to take the bridge in Nijmegen. It would have been odd if this unit was used if they were defending the bridge and reserves not taken from elsewhere. I urge you to read Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012), and I mean the whole book from the beginning, rather than just the key chapters on Market Garden. Lindquist's role in Normandy informs his subsequent behaviour in Market Garden.
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  434.  @Jsmith2024  - A Bridge Too Far bugs me more and more every day, as I learn more details about the campaign. When I first read the book in 1977, a few months before seeing the film at the cinema, I completely accepted the narrative that it was another Gallipoli-style disaster without question. But I was fascinated by the story and kept reading about it for the next 45 years. The Enigma code breaking effort was not declassified until 1975 and FW Winterbotham's book, The Ultra Secret, which I read when it was first published in paperback. At the time my family home was near Cheltenham, the home of GCHQ and the successor to the Bletchley Park GC&CS (Government Code & Cypher School) organisation that broke Enigma, so it was a bit of local interest as well as wartime history. I have my father's copy of Behind The Enigma - The Authorised History Of GCHQ by John Ferris on loan with me, but heaven knows when I'll get around to reading it - it's quite a heavy hardback! Taking a quick look at it - there's only a chapter on the Second World War as a whole, and no mention of Arnhem or Market Garden at all. On D-Day and the following campaign, it does say success was greatest on the strategic level, on issues such as the number of enemy formations. Our estimates of enemy Divisional strengths was reduced to an error factor of 10% by Ultra. The Germans were still over-estimating our strengths by 200%. At the tactical level - how many tanks the units had, it was more difficult, and tank counting was actually worse than in 1941. This was a limitation of Ultra. Ultra didn't tell us that 352nd Infanterie-Division had moved into the Omaha Beach sector just before D-Day, for instance. So you can understand that Ultra did not tell us everything we wanted to know about II.SS-Panzerkorps in Holland.
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  435.  @thevillaaston7811  - I have no idea. I do know he lived in three caravans at his Tac HQ near the front while Eisenhower moved into the Palace at Versailles.
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  436. It clearly it wasn't a bridge too far for the tanks if they could get to Nijmegen, just 11 miles short of the Arnhem bridge and still on schedule, only to find the bridges at Nijmegen had not been secured by the Airborne on the first day, when they were relatively undefended in a city evacuated by the Germans. The Germans were allowed to reinforce the bridges with SS-Panzer troops and impose a 36-hour delay while the Guards assisted the Airborne in doing their job for them. Arnhem was not a bridge too far for the Guards, it was a bridge too many for one relatively inexperienced Parachute Infantry Regiment. Montgomery was let down by the very allies who claim he was not a good commander. The hyprocrisy is just extraordinary, and it really is about time it stopped.
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  437.  @AnthonyBrown12324  - my copy of Antony Beevor's book on Arnhem went to the Oxfam bookshop, because I didn't learn a single thing from it, except a joke I had not heard before. He simply recycled every aspect of the conventional narrative I've been reading for decades, and no new research that has come to light in the last 10-12 years was included, and no new research was done for his book that advanced my knowledge at all. A complete waste of money, but I hope the Oxfam charity benefits. The Devil's Bridge by Anthony Tucker-Jones (2020) went with it for exactly the same reason - although I did pick up a German unit identification that was hiding in plain sight in Cornelius Ryan's bibliography all along. That's a very poor show for two brand new hardback books. I'm not trusting these 'professional authors' again, they just make money from old rope. For Market Garden, Montgomery had the resources he needed for a swift advance to the Zuider Zee. What he didn't have was enough logistics if he had major problems along the way, and he made that point when he wrote about this afterwards - "In my prejudiced view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain Market Garden's unrepentant advocate." Nobody would have complained about the plan if it had been successful, and it could hardly be successful if it wasn't even followed at Nijmegen. I think Gavin knew the operation was compromised the moment he heard the 508th were not moving, that's why his reaction was anger when he found out, according to the regimental liaison officer who gave him the bad news. My reference is 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), which also details the command problems the regiment previously had in Normandy on their first combat operation. Another good book is RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), but he had only identified Gavin as being responsible, not the 508th specifically being at fault. Probably the best updated work on the whole operation is Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University. There's nothing "strange" about the difference with El Alamein - there wasn't one, except that at El Alamein Montgomery was not let down by an American unit under his command.
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  438.  @AnthonyBrown12324  - nonsense. 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade took 83 anti-tank guns between them to Arnhem, while Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front. Montgomery had 2,400 in 21st Army Group. The operation did not fail because 1st Airborne were overwhelmed with tanks - they weren't. 9.SS-Panzer-Division had just three Mark V Panthers, two of which were disposed of in western Arnhem, and 10.SS-Panzer had 16 Mark IV tanks they couldn't get to Nijmegen as long as Frost held the Arnhem bridge. Market Garden was upgraded from Comet precisely because of the developing intelligence picture in the Netherlands, so again, the intelligence 'failings' are another aspect of the Arnhem mythology that don't stand up to scrutiny. The intelligence turned out to be remarkably accurate. I don't take a view on the failure of the operation, I'm interested in facts, and some interesting ones have emerged in the last few years that challenge the conventional narrative. The evidence is that the conventional narrative is wrong, and the people that had already been fighting the war for five years at that point did actually know what they were doing, including Montgomery.
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  439.  @AnthonyBrown12324  - I think TIK is on the money, but he only managed to drill down to Gavin being responsible in his Market Garden series of videos. If he had read Nordyke's book on the 508th Regiment, which is a deeper dive than he normally does on a campaign level, he would have got to the bottom of the story - at least as far as the bottom of the Market Garden rabbit hole has progressed. The research frontier is always moving forward, and I expect more books will be forthcoming.
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  440. Richard Mead wrote the first biography of Frederick Browning, but it's first published as recently as 2010. I haven't read it and should probably consider it since reviewers in the Brazillian jungle say it has a lot on Market Garden and the negative reviews come from people who still seem wedded to the conventional narrative (and they are legion) that it was all his and Montgomery's fault. Deeper investigation tends to go the other way. In answer to another post I suggested that Gavin did not want to throw 508th PIR commander Roy Lindquist under the bus and accepted that the repsonsibility was his if one of his regimental commanders did not follow his divisional plan. The politics of it is complex and goes back to Normandy and an issue not fully resolved by then division commander Matthew Ridgway. Gavin inherited the division from Ridgway when the latter was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps. In TIK's video on whether Gavin was to blame, he cites a correspondence from Browning that seems to support Gavin's claim that he de-prioritised the bridge in favour of the high ground that and his Corps commander (Browning) approved it. So it seems Browning was willing to take some of the heat, but it's also a fact that Gavin's role in all of this is unclear and he had muddied the waters post-war. The first step in investigating this, if you haven't already done so, is to read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). It details from first hand accounts not only the divisional briefing in which Gavin specifically instructed Lindquist to go for the bridge as soon as possible after landing, he actually pointed out to him on a map which route he wanted the 1st battalion to take to the bridge, but also what went wrong when this instruction was not followed on the ground. The book also charts the formation of the regiment, Lindquist's early Airborne career as one of the first officer volunteers and apparently a gifted S-1 admininstration and personnel officer, as well as the command problems during the regiment's first combat operation in Normandy. I think the answers are in this area, but TIK hasn't drilled down this deep into the regiment, just Gavin and Browning.
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  441. A child deeply disrespecting its parent. I suggest you read the inscriptions on the Peace Arch at the US/Canada border on the Pacific coast - words written by much wiser men than yourself.
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  442. I haven't read Mead, so I appreciate the comment very much. A couple of things I can help with includes the aerial reconnaissance photo referenced by Browning's Intelligence Officer (I assume the GSO 1 position for Intelligence with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel was unoccupied on Browning's staff as Major Urquhart would have been a GSO 2 and possibly out of his depth at this staff level). The story related by Cornelius Ryan in his book A Bridge Too Far (1974) rested entirely on Brian Urquhart's interview with Ryan as the photo itself was 'lost' and Browning had already passed away and could not defend himself. The photo has since emerged from a Dutch government archive when their records were digitised and put online in 2015. The RAF's aerial photos of the Netherlands were donated after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys. The photo in question was identified as overlapping Frames 4014 and 4015 taken by an RAF Benson 541 Squadron Spitfire on 12 September over the 'Deelerwoud' near Deelen airfield. Under stereoscopic magnification, the images show a number of Mark III and older (short 7.5cm L24 gun) Mark IV tanks undergoing maintenance (turrets turned and rear engine deck hatches open) at a supply dump near the Fliegerhorst Deelen complex. SInce these older tanks would rule out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, Browning's judgement that they were obsolete and probably unserviceable seems reasonable. We now know that the tanks belonged to the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment based in Utrecht of the Luftwaffe's only panzer division that was fighting in Poland and named after their sponsor, the Reichsmarschall of the Luftwaffe. They had been ordered south on 7 September, when reserve units were mobilised under the 'Valkyrie' Plan to fight British 2nd Army in Belgium. Most of the tanks broke down, with only three making the journey to join the regiment's II.Abteilung in Hechtel in Belgium, where they were destroyed by the Guards Armoured Division on the same day the breakdowns were photographed, 12 September. The breakdowns, after undergoing repair, had made it as far south as Wolfswinkel, just north of the Zon bridge on the Wilhelmina canal defence line. They were directly opposite the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) drop zone on Sonsche Heide and attempted to interfere with the landings, but were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. The RAF's study of the missing aerials is in a free pdf download from the RAF MoD site and is titled 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story' - it is written by Sebastian Ritchie of the Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force) and an abridged version of the findings are incorporated into the 2019 2nd Ed of his book Arnhem: Myth And Reality (2011, 2019). Secondly, the intel on the Arnhem area turned out to be remarkably accurate, although the II.SS-Panzerkorp's ability to react quickly and effectively was obviously underestimated. The one area where the intelligence picture was incomplete was the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division itself, because the Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops billeted in towns and villages all over the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only reported a Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia (an 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon), and a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo could not be identified. They had no way of knowing both divisions were there and the River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary. So it was feared the Frundsberg Division could be located in Nijmegen and drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area, leading to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest could be hiding 1,000 panzers. Gavin was given the sanitised (removing unit identifications obtained by 'Ultra') warning of possibly "a regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the 10.SS-Panzer battlegroup) may be accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities, and the Reichswald might be a tank laager for the depot. In fact, the division was based at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek and the tank depot was near Münster deeper into Germany, but the intelligence warnings certainly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, and by assigning the problematic 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, he had inadvertently created the conditions for the failure of the operation once it was on the ground. The Groesbeek ridge (the scarp slope, such as it is, lies on the northern side overlooking Nijmegen, and the slip slope is practically flat all the way back to the landing zones) was therefore made the initial objective of the 508th at De Hut (2nd Battalion), De Ploeg (1st) and Berg-en-Dal (3rd), with an instruction to send 1st Battalion directly to the bridge if these were secured (i.e. no resistance). The lack of resistance in Nijmegen was confimed by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who met Colonel Lindquist at De Ploeg, and that the highway bridge was guarded by an NCO and just seventeen men. Lindquist sent only a recon patrol instead of the battalion as Gavin had instructed, losing the race to the bridge to the 10.SS-Panzer-Division despite its remote location at Ruurlo.
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  443.  @nickdanger3802  - which is exactly the whole point of having the Airborne seize the bridges. Once they have them, it's very difficult to dislodge the defenders, as exemplied by Frost at the Arnhem highway bridge, and indeed by Karl-Heinz Euling's SS-Panzergrenadier battalion at the Nijmegen highway bridge. These two battles were mirror images of each other, with Frost stubbornly holding Euling's supply line to II.SS-Panzerkorps, and Euling similarly holding onto Frost's supply line to XXX Corps.
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  444.  @nickdanger3802  - you're really starting to look very silly. The II.SS-Panzerkorps divided the twin objectives of containing 1st Airborne Division and stopping Market Garden at Nijmegen - which involved clearing the supply line to Nijmegen over Arnhem bridge as a priority - between the two divisions, and every available reinforcement sent from Holland and Germany went to both divisions. If you really think the Germans were not applying maximum pressure everywhere they were committed, then you haven't learned anything about the operation, or about the way the Germans went about the business of warfare. If the Allies had the necessary bridges in their hands on Day 1, there was not a lot the Germans could have done about it for exactly the reasons you explained in your previous reply. There's an expression for your situation - "hoisted by your own petard!" Hope you enjoyed wasting your time.
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  445. Not really. The book I've just started reading on the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem has in its introduction - "contrary to what is often suggested, a heavy German counter attack was expected and with substantial armoured vehicles" (Kept My Eyes Peeled For The Enemy - Battery P Troop, Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Marcel Swarts). After D-Day, Allied progress was behind the planned notional phase line schedule until after the breakout, and by the liberation of Paris and pursuit into Belgium and the Netherlands, was ahead of the schedule. Some people look to excuses when the real fault lies elsewhere.
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  446. That would leave a huge gap between the British 2nd Army in Belgium and the 82nd Airborne at Grave-Nijmegen. The British had previously penetrated the first German defence line on the Albert canal at Beringen and then snatched a Meuse-Escaut canal bridge at Neerpelt on 10 September, which was a second line. The next defence line was the Wilhelmina canal at Son, and this was the bridge blown by the Germans as 1st and 2nd Battalions 506th PIR closed in on D-Day. Giving the Germans a day to prepare reinforcements or demolish the bridges all the way from Eindhoven (four bridges over the river Dommel in the city) to Veghel on the Zuid Willemsvaart canal and the parallel river Aa, would have seriously delayed the advance and made the 101st Airborne's job of capturing the bridges intact that much more difficult. It's also worth mentioning that the delay at Son to build a Bailey bridge there was effectively zero hours, contrary to the claim made in the Hollywood film, because the armoured advance arrived at the bridge site at 1900 hrs as it was already getting dark (between 1845 and 2000 hrs in mid-September), the engineers and bridging column arrived at 1930 hrs and work began on the bridge at 2000 hrs with an estimated 10 hours construction time. It was completed just 15 minutes after the estimate at 0615 hrs, before first light, when the first armoured cars of 2nd Household Cavalry passed over, and because the 101st had secured all the bridges to Veghel, they reached 82nd Airborne at Grave in just a couple of hours, and the Grenadier Guards tanks shortly afterwards. The Bailey bridge was constructed entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to move tanks (no night vision), so they would have stopped for the night in the 101st Division area anyway, therefore the delay at Son was zero. The fatal delay was at Nijmegen, where the tanks could not go any further for 36 hours because the Waal river bridges were still in Germans hands and heavily reinforced with SS panzer troops. An examination of the failure of MARKET GARDEN should focus on the Nijmegen bridge on the first day, because this is where the planning and execution failed the operation, and where the Germans correctly exploited the error in order to delay it.
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  447.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  I've now watched that video, and while he still clings to not being a fan of Montgomery, it is a good debunk of the nonsense in the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.
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  448.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  I wouldn't waste my time with him - he's a total bigot (and I don't mean cleared for British Invasion of German Occupied Territory BIGOT security classification), despite all his medals, uniforms, and in depth knowledge of military campaigns...
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  449. 1) Where's your evidence that RG Poulussen has an anti-American bias? I don't understand the attitude that if you're not all "Ra! Ra! Go USA!" then you are anti-American - it's just nonsense. 2) 1000 panzers is a ridiculous number and was only a rumour started by someone who commented that the Reichswald forest could hide a thousand panzers and we wouldn't know they were there. The Allied intel estimate on the number of panzers in Generalfeldmarschal Model's entire Heeresgruppe B front from Aachen all the way to the North Sea coast was just 50-100, and he was facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 and maybe another 1,500 in Hodges' US 1st Army at Aachen. We now know that Model's September 1944 returns listed exactly 84 panzers as operational, which not only vindicates the intelligence at SHAEF but also matches exactly the number of anti-tank guns in the establishments of the British 1st Airborne Division and Polish Parachute Brigade combined. So let's put the 1000 figure in proper perspective - it was always a ridiculous figure that started from a silly rumour. The intel about the heavy German armour in the Reichswald came from the Dutch resistance (although the Reichswald is in Germany on the Dutch border), and it first came to Gavin's attention when the all-British and Polish operation COMET was cancelled on 10 September and Gavin was told his 82nd Airborne Division was assigned to Nijmegen in the new operation called MARKET. He immediately went to British 1st Airborne Division HQ, because they had planned to drop on Nijmegen for COMET and they had the latest intel on the German armour and were making their plans accordingly to deal with it. Montgomery cancelled COMET because he received the new reports of German SS troops moving into the area northeast of Arnhem and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with this German build-up. 3) Gavin made his divisional plan based on the information he was given, and while he was very concerned about a reaction from the Reichswald, he did plan for a battalion to go for the Njmegen bridge immediately on landing and instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion to do this. This was something Lindquist failed to do - he was not a good field officer, had not performed well in Normandy, and I would recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) for the full story in Normandy and Nijmegen. I would also recommend American historian John C McManus' book September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), for more details that compliment Nordyke and an excellent analysis of the whole ridge versus bridge priority debate, which comes to the only logical conclusion that both were the priority and that Gavin and Browning were in agreement on this, but Lindquist simply didn't understand. I want you to understand that I am a Brit recommending two American authors that back up RG Poulussen's research published the previous year in Lost At Nijmegen (2011). Americans should not have a problem with this story because they love to tell the whole story from Band of Brothers about Herbert Sobel of Easy/506th not being a good field officer and how he was removed to an administrative position after a Sergeant's revolt in the Company and they got a new CO. The same situation existed in the 508th, but there was no revolt, so Colonel Lindquist was never replaced. It's sad, but it's true, he got a lot of good men killed in the 4th of July attack on Hill 95 in Normandy and his failure to move quickly at Nijmegen fatally compromised MARKET GARDEN. The delay while the Guards had to fight for the bridges at Nijmegen they should have rolled straight over was 36 hours, and that's the figure that is incorrectly used by Elliot Gould at the Son bridge in the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far. So Gavin also bears some responsibility for this because he did not replace Lindquist when he became division commander in August 1944, as Matthew Ridgway was promoted to US XVIII Airborne Corps, and he told Cornelius Ryan (box 101, folder 10 of the Cornelius Ryan Collection online) in his interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that neither of them trusted Lindquist in a fight and Ridgway wouldn't promote him. In fact, he said Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn't really promote any other colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin had also failed to replace himself as assistant divisional commander when Ridgway was promoted, so it seems Gavin had the same problem. Gavin's decision to prioritise a defence against the Reichswald by assigning the more aggressive and experienced 505th to that sector was prompted by the intel, and the situation in Nijmegen was unknown. In fact, the Germans had evacuated Nijmegen when the landings began and Lindquist was told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the highway bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. This was the case until SS panzer troops arrived in the evening, so the opportunity to grab the bridge without barely firing a shot was missed. Another part of Gavin's correspondence with Cornelius Ryan (box 101, folder 9) is interesting here, because he discovered the source of the Reichswald intel - in a cover letter to Ryan enclosing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree, in which Boeree had researched the withdrawal of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' into the Netherlands, crossing the river Maas at Maastricht on 4 September, assembling near Sittard, then receiving orders on 7 September to go to the area north of Arnhem in the Veluwe. Their route took them through Nijmegen and they apparently made a stop in the Reichswald, and all of a sudden the whole story now fell into place in 1966. It did not get into the book - Ryan was an Irish newspaper journalist apparently biased against the British and did not include anything in A Bridge Too Far that was critical of American officers, and Richard Attenborough wanted to make an "anti-war film" to show the British officer class as incompetent and found Ryan's book the ideal vehicle to adapt. So the blunder of not securing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day is missing, Colonel Lindquist was not cast as a character and neither is there a single 508th trooper shown in the film.
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  450. The problem is that Ryan's book is out of date and was even incomplete (due to his terminal cancer) when it was published. The best update of his work so far is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944 – An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020). It uses unpublished documents and interviews held in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University, and also debunks the many myths from the film version.
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  451. The MARKET air plan was made by Brereton and Williams, discarding many of the key features and drop zones proposed by Browning and Dempsey in their provisional operation SIXTEEN outline and approved by Eisenhower. Gavin said "the British" wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge and he discarded the idea, and assigned Lindquist's 508th PIR to take the bridge from the drop zone instead, where Lindquist then failed to move quickly while the bridge was undefended. Browning had no authority over any of these officers, despite being senior to all of them, because he did not serve in the US Army. Montgomery's 21st Army Group was also not notified of the changes made to Browning's outline plan until after Brereton's 14 September cut-off date for making any further changes to his MARKET plan. Obviously you've not looked at it every way, otherwise you would have realised this.
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  452.  @gl2773  - then educate me. "Browning’s ego and flawed decision making" - give examples.
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  453. Depends on what you mean by "revisionist" much - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruqt8uv__18
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  454. The threat was not ignored - this is the myth created before the existence of Ultra was publicly acknowledged in 1974 - the same year A Bridge Too Far was published. The known presence of II.SS-Panzerkorps was the reason COMET was cancelled on 10 September and replaced with MARKET using three divisions. The strength concentrated at Arnhem was now four brigades (including the Poles) and 83 anti-tank guns, whereas COMET was to drop only the 1st Parachute Brigade and their support elements at Arnhem, preceeded with an airlanding company as a coup de main at the highway bridge. Montgomery (or rather, Browning and Dempsey after obtaining permission from Montgomery to plan the new operation) had quadrupled the force landing at Arnhem and had a whole second division drop at Nijmegen-Grave and a third to secure the corridor. MARKET did not fail at Arnhem, where the bridge was taken and held for almost four days. It failed at Nijmegen when the battalion tasked with taking the highway bridge on D-Day was not sent immediately while it was still guarded by just 18 transport guards and sent too late after it was reinforced by one of the SS panzer divisions coming from many miles away. The reasons for the failure of MARKET was the compromises to the air plan made by Brereton and Williams to deliver the troops over three days and not close to the objectives, Gavin for discarding a suggestion to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge and for selecting Lindquist's 508th Regiment for the critical Nijmegen mission, and Lindquist for failing to send the 1st Battalion directly to bridge after landing as Gavin had instructed. Browning was frustrated at every turn and edged out of the planning process once Brereton and Williams were involved, Dempsey had no authority over the airborne until they came under his command on the ground, and Montgomery's 21st Army Group was not even notified of the changes until after Brereton's 12 September cut-off date for making any further amendments. All of the airborne troops requirements to be landed as quickly as possible as close to objectives as possible were sacrificed by Brereton and Williams to save as many of their aircraft as possible, and to improve on their appalling navigation and drop accuracy record after Sicily and Normandy, and Gavin refused advice from Browning because, ironically, of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop disorganising his division for days. Lindquist was not a good field officer and had not performed well in Normandy. His assignment in MARKET should have been switched with Ekman's more aggressive and experienced 505th Regiment. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, James Daly (2024)
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  455.  @SNP-1999  - you're welcome. I actually have a copy (somewhere in a box!) of FW Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret (1974) that first revealed the German codes were broken during the war - the reason for the late revelation was because Bletchley Park was still breaking codes during the Cold War. The intelligence source was only known to key commanders down to Army level (Dempsey) and special sections in their headquarters that handled the information. Brereton, although the commander of 1st Allied Airborne Army - was not cleared, but I hear that Browning was aware of the information - which I find unlikely included the fact the codes were broken because any airborne officer was a potential risk if captured behind enemy lines. He may have been given a hint or steer that the Dutch resistance information had been confirmed by a secondary source, but no one who knew could reveal the source. The anti-tank units in 1st Airborne had been briefed to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks, based on a new series of books by Nigel Simpson et al on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem (Troop volumes A-Z, 2020-2022), but I don't think this warning was widely spread around all the airborne troops, because this was how 'Ultra' intelligence was 'sanitised' to enable it to be passed down to lower headquarters without attribution to a source. Obviously Cornelius Ryan did not know and his book was rushed to publication unfinished in 1974 as he passed from his terminal cancer the same year. Nobody he interviewed would have been aware of 'Ultra' either. The whole story of Browning dismissing the aerial photo of panzers in the Arnhem area is a distraction Cornelius Ryan seized apon - the photo was located in a Dutch archive in 2014 and found to confirm Browning's assessment they were obsolete vehicles that did not belong to a 1944-type panzer division. The unit involved was a Luftwaffe training unit camped opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone near Son, and at most may have been responsible for the 2nd Battalion's delayed assembly. One tank escaped an air attack and bumped the 504th's roadblock at Grave, causing a few casualties as the troopers got out of their foxholes believing it was British tank arriving early! The point being that Dempsey became aware of II.SS-Panzerkorps' orders to refit in the Arnhem area, which put an identification on resistance reports of armour in the Reichswald, and added to the continued resistance on 2nd Army's front (the reason COMET was postponed several times from 8 September to 10 September), the new information led Dempsey to suggest to Montgomery a rethink was required. So Montgomery ordered COMET cancelled, and Dempsey got permission to plan a new operation with Browning to add two additional divisions to the airborne plan - one to reinforce the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave target area, and another to secure the corridor from XXX Corps' front to the airborne at Grave. There's also an interesting document in the Cornelius Ryan Collection in the other Gavin folder, box 101, folder 09, page 48), which is a covering letter by Gavin to Ryan enclosing the research papers of Dutch Colonel TA Boeree (also in folder 09), who had researched the movements of the Hohenstaufen Division to debunk the betrayal myths (why would the division be entrained for refit in Germany if they were expecting an airborne landing at Arnhem?) Boeree had tracked the withdrawal of the Hohenstaufen from Belgium (where Allied forces lost contact with it) and crossed the Maas into the Netherlands at Maastricht on 4 September and concentrated at an assembly area near Sittard just to the north. On 7 September it received orders to move to the Veluwe region north of Arnhem to refit and passed through Venlo, Gennep, Nijmegen, and Arnhem, reaching their designated billets in towns and villages in the region on 10 September. Movement was restricted obviously to night time and days with weather too bad for flying, so they apparently made a stop in the Reichswald forest that generated the Dutch reports of heavy armour in the area. After COMET was cancelled on 10 September, Gavin was alerted by Brereton he was assigned to the Nijmegen-Grave area, so he went immediately to 1st Airborne HQ to see their plans and intel for the area they had for their own drop in COMET and learned of these reports. Dutch reports of SS troops moving into billets in the Veluwe and Achterhoek areas only started coming in on 14/15 September, and only the Hohenstaufen was identified (by vehicle insignia), which left the exact location of the Frundsberg as a mystery and the possibility it was in the Reichswald and Nijmegen areas. You can see how this would have influenced Gavin's divisional planning! It was only now, in 1966, he realised the armour in the Recihswald was the Hohenstaufen in transit and no longer there when MARKET was launched. Boeree's research was published in Dutch as De Slag By Arnhem (1963) and translated into English by Cornelius Bauer as The Battle Of Armhem (1966). The book has a map of the Hohenstaufen's route linking the major towns on the east bank of the Maas, but does not showa detour to stop in the Reichswald, so this was something Gavin had deduced from Boeree's research and the Dutch resistance reports. The Frundsberg withdrew into the Netherlands by the Eindhoven-Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem route, so both divisions had troops transiting Nijmegen. I've also found that the SS also had their own Lazarett (military hospital) in the Sint-Jozefklooster (St Joseph monastery) on Kerkstraat in western Nijmegen near Neerbosch, with 60 convalescents from SS-Polizei-Regiment III (the main occupation police unit and the Ordnungspolizei HQ for the Netherlands was in Nijmegen) and about 240 men from 8./SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 4 (training and replacement battalion for the 4.SS-panzergrenadier-Division 'Polizei'). The Wehrmacht had their own Reserve-Lazarett in the Jonkerbosch area near Hatert canal bridge. Also, the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) documents available from PaperlessArchives online indicates the anti-tank guns on the Maas-Waal canal defence line and forward outpost at the Grave bridge were from SS-Panzerjäger-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Abteilung 2, so there were a few different SS tunits in the area at the time of the landings that the Dutch resistace and Allied intelligence may not appreciate had nothing to do with II.SS-Panzerkorps, which was now north and east of Arnhem.
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  456. Yes, there was Ultra intelligence placing II.SS-Panzerkorps in the eastern Netherlands and the Luftwaffe codes were a little easier to break, so we knew that the FLIVO (Luftwaffe liaison officer) to Model's Heeresgruppe B had moved into Oosterbeek, so the inference was that Model was there too. The Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops in various billets over a wide area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, they had identified the 'H' insignia of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' on some vehicles, and also identified Kasteel Ruurlo as hosting a divisional headquarters, but not which division. The Dutch had also established that the German headquarters that had moved into Oosterbeek was an Army Group (Heeresgruppe), but the checkerboard insignia with the border around it identified the level of headquarters, not the identitity of the commander as GenFM Model as shown dramatically in the film A Bridge Too Far. The important consideration when assessing the inteliigence is that 'Ultra' was top secret and nobody below the rank of an Army commander could know of its existence, so Montgomery (21st Army Group), Dempsey (2nd Army) and Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) would receive Ultra information, but lower commanders at Corps level like Browning (I Airborne Corps) and Horrocks (XXX Corps) would only get a sanitised summary with no indication of the source. It was not unknown for a Corps Commander to be captured. Richard O'Connor was captured by one of Rommel's reconnaissance patrols in North Africa and spent over two years in an Italian POW camp, until the collapse of Mussolini's regime in 1943, and he then escaped. During Market Garden he was in command of XII Corps on the left flank of Horrocks' XXX Corps. The Dutch resistance groups were very effective as intelligence agencies, because the nature of the landscape precluded partisan activities as in France or Yugoslavia, so intelligence gathering and escape and evasion for aircrews etc., were the main activities. However, the German counter-intel services has penetrated some cells and destroyed them or planted false information, so the British treated their information as unconfirmed unless there was a second source, such as aerial photo reconnaissance. The Americans were less circumspect because they hadn't suffered the bad experiences over four years. The most up to date assessment available was the SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26 dated 16 September 1944, placing II.SS-Panzerkorps refitting in the eastern Netherlands with both divisions reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength with few if any tanks, and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area. This generated the silly rumour the Reichswald might be hiding up to 1,000 tanks and Gavin was told there might be a regiment of SS troops in the excellent Dutch army barracks in Nijmegen. Neither of these were true, but may have influenced his divisional plan to have the more experienced and aggressive 505th PIR secure his southern flank around Groesbeek and the Reichswald. This unfortunately meant tht the least experienced regiment in his division was given the Nijmegen mission, and although it could have walked into Nijmegen without barely firing a shot, they waited on the Groesbeek heights for a recon patrol to report in before receiving a visit from a very angry Gavin to get a battalion moving on the bridge, far too late. To put the tank situation into perspective, Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front in September, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400. The 9.SS-Panzer-Regiment had three Panthers at Arnhem, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Regiment had 16* Mark IV panzers and 4 StuG IIIG assault guns at Vorden. *Another contributor here tells me his grandfather was in the Hohenstaufen and always said they had maybe 14 tanks but only two running at the time of the landings. I think that sounds reasonable and maybe it's 14 plus 2 runners. The Hohenstaufen came out of Normandy with 10+ Mark IV tanks and had to hand them all over to the Frundsberg, who concentrated a total of 16 in their 5.Kompanie and the 4 StuGs in the 7.Kompanie, according to Dieter Stenger's Panzer East and West (2017).
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  457. The French resistance came up with a marvellous way to slow down the 2.SS-Panzer-Division 'Das Reich' from moving quickly to Normandy from the south of France - they drained the axle oil from every flat bed rail car they could get their hands on.
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  458. Roberts (CO 11th AD) blamed himself for not realising the Albert canal terminated north of the city centre, because he hadn't studied the map properly when he planned the 4th September advance on Antwerp (I think you can put it down to fatigue). When he later tried to push an infantry battalion over one of the canal bridges still available in the port area and held by Belgian partisans, they were unable to hold a bridgehead against strong German opposition on unsuitable terrain, reinforced by the recently arrived schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 armed with Jagdpanthers and StuG IIIG assault guns. Montgomery subsequently planned for 1st Canadian Army to redeploy around Antwerp in preparation to clear the Scheldt as their next major operation while the whole of British 2nd Army was needed for Market Garden. Autumn Gale (Herbst Sturm) by Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts (2013) is the best work on this. A 'prequel' book, The Army That Got Away, on the 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 was published by the same authors in 2022. The difficulty of advancing north to cut the Zuid-Beveland peninsula at Woensdrecht is detailed in Autumn Gale and eventually involved five operations by 21st Army Group to complete the task.
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  459. "I have to say the majority of the fault has to lay with Browning... but I think Montgomery was overrated." - any particular reasons or just the usual indoctrination by Hollywood?
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  460.  @sean640307  - the "Field Order NO.1, 508 PIR" reproduced in the appendix of Poulussen (Lost At Nijmegen, 2011) was from "Hq 508 Prcht Inf... 13 September 1944" and signed "LINDQUIST Commanding" - these were HIS detailed orders to his Regimental units outlining the specific initial objectives for the Regiment on the Groesbeek ridge. They were not GAVIN's orders to LINDQUIST. Section 2. a. reads - ", be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order" Section 3. x. (6) reads - "All Bns will be prepared to attack to the N, within their sectors to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633)." Lindquist relies on this to suggest he was not to move until given the order to do so from Division HQ. In question 2 in his interview with Westover, the Q&A were: 2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you orders to move directly into NIJMEGEN? "As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on" A more full account is revealed in Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012): Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." [Note, there's no date associated with Chet Graham's testimony, but I would surmise that Lindquist left this briefing to go and write his Field Order dated 13 September, but it is a divisional briefing days BEFORE departure for Holland] Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " Nordyke's chapters on Normandy, the 508th's first combat jump, are also very interesting, because there were command problems in the Regiment then. Some were sorted out by Division CO Matthew Ridgway, but in August Ridgway was promoted to CO XVIII Airborne Corps and Gavin took over. Gavin, however, failed to replace himself as Assistant Divisional Commander and he was running himself ragged doing both jobs during Market Garden, as well as carrying a painful jump injury to his spine. My impression is that these are the cumulative factors resulting in the command failure at Nijmegen.
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  461.  @sean640307  - there's also the question of what happened to Lt. Weaver's recon patrol into the city. Weaver was given an SCR-300 radio set on the Battalion net - the comms within a Company did not have the range. The patrol got split up and lost in the back streets of Nijmegen and ran into some small pockets of German rear echelon troops still in the city. Eventually they received a radio message that two Companies were being sent to the bridge (the result of Gavin finally telling Lindquist to move), so Weaver decided to withdraw. However, there's an interesting story in Zig Borough's (vet 508th Demolition Platoon) book the 508th Connection (2013), a collection of letters and stories from 508th veterans: Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles...” “The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." The "heavy equipment" was undoubtedly SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, which had come from Beekbergen via Arnhem bridge in the early evening of 17 September. Darkness fell at about 7:30-7:40 at that time of year, and they reached Nijmegen about the time Frost was moving into position at the north end of Arnhem bridge.
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  462. I haven't been able to positvely identify the handful of troops guarding the Nijmegen highway bridge at this time before the SS-Panzer troops started arriving. Nijmegen was host to the BdO - Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei - HQ for the 'Order Police' for the whole Netherlands equivalent to a division HQ under Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus, evacuated from Den Haag in 1943 when the Dutch coast became a potential invasion coast, and evacuated again from Nijmegen on receiving reports of the airborne landings. They left north for their training depot at Schalkhaar (near Deventer) and eventually settled in Zwolle, but I understand they left behind their Musikkorps-Zug (the divisional music band platoon), since there were no combat troops available. I have some information that the bridges at Nijmegen and Grave were the responsibilty of a company from the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', which was the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only Panzer-Division (currently fighting in Poland) and was based in Utrecht. All three battalions of the training regiment were deployed to the front in the Belgian canal zone, but some other units were in reserve (including the tanks famously photographed by RAF Spitfire), and one of them was Kompanie 'Runge' under Hauptmann Max Runge, commander of the 21.ULK (Unter-Lehr-Kommando), which was the 21st (NCO) training company. I'm not clear on their exact dispositions at the time of the airborne landings, but some of them appeared to be forward deployed at Overasselt - the eastern end of the Maasbrug near Grave, and they evacuated as soon as they realised the paratroops were landing on both sides of the river and had them caught in a pincer. The ethnic German Dutchman tasked with detonating the bridge demolitions had failed to show up, so Kompanie Runge withdrew to the Maas-Waalkanaal bridges (road and rail) at Honinghutje, reinforcing the third rate home guard troops defending the canal bridges. When that bridge came under attack on the 18 September by the Americans, they tried to demolish the bridges - the rail bridge was destroyed but the road bridge only damaged - and withdrew into Nijmegen, where they were incorporated into the SS defences around the highway bridge and made their last stand on 20 September at the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park. The 18 Germans the Dutch reported guarding the highway bridge on the first day could have been from either unit or another I haven't yet pinned down. I've been working on the Nijmegen story for a few years now and still putting the pieces together.
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  463. Yes and no, because the true story is always complex: The often cited betrayal myth by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands or the Dutch double agent known as 'King Kong' have been thoroughly debunked, because the Germans were almost completely taken by surprise by the airborne attack. The II.SS-Panzerkorps were located on both banks of the River Ijssel in an area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, with the Ijssel as the inter-divisional boundary. They were located there to reinforce a defence line being constructed along the river, which is the last distributary of the Dutch Rhine before the German border. The 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' on the west bank between Arnhem and Apeldoorn was also in the process of moving to Germany for refit after being ordered to handover vehicles and heavy weapons to the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg'. Neither of these facts would be the case if both divisions had been moved there to meet an expected airborne attack on Arnhem. When the attack did start on 17 September, the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion was being loaded onto rail flat cars at Beekbergen (near Apeldoorn) and had to be unloaded again and have their tracks and guns rerefitted to remove them from an administrative 'in repair' status to avoid handover and back to operational status again. The only German officer who expected an airborne attack on Arnhem was Luftwaffe Generalmajor Walter Grabmann, the commander of the 3.Jagddivision, a nightfighter command at Deelen airbase just north of Arnhem. When Model moved his Heeresgruppe B headquarters to the suburbs of Oosterbeek, west of Arnhem on Friday 15 September, he was warned by Grabmann over dinner that his headquarters may be vulnerable as the fields and heathlands around Wolfheze to the west were ideal zones for airborne landings. Model dismissed this as unlikely because he felt that he was behind too many river barriers from the front lines to be in any danger. The only officer present to take Grabmann seriously was SS-Sturmbannführer Sepp Krafft, commander of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, a training depot based in Arnhem since 1940 and recently part withdrawn from the Dutch coast defences to provide a reserve for the River Waal defence line and additional security for Model. Krafft decided that evening to move his two available training companies out of Arnhem to Wolfheze and Oosterbeek. It was this unit that caused so many problems, out of all proportion to its actual strength, to 1st Parachute Brigade in the first vital hours of the operation at Arnhem. A similar story also involved General Kurt Student of 1.Fallschirm-armee, whose headquarters at Vught was near the crash site of a WACO glider carrying the 101st Airborne Division's liaison officer to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek, and his communications team. Everyone on board was killed, and their failure to arrive was the reason Browning could not communicate with the 101st throughout the operation. The American Captain was carrying documents, not maps and plans as ridiculously shown in the Hollywood film, but including a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne. Student had the documents translated and as the pioneer of Germany's airborne forces immediately understood the sigificance of the schedule, as he could extrapolate the timings of the subsequent airlifts for all three divisions. Model was again famously unconvinced, so Student alerted his own Luftwaffe chain of command to arrange for fighters to be over the drop zones when the airlifts were due. Fortunately, the airlifts were all delayed by weather in England and the fighters were always back in Germany being refuelled when the transports arrived.
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  464.  @johnfleet235  - Montgomery told Eisenhower at their 10 September meeting at Brussels airport that Market Garden was the best way to resolve the problem with Antwerp, but Eisenhower did not accept his analysis. However, he approved the operation because it fitted in with his broad front strategy of advancing to the Rhine. Montgomery was way ahead of Eisenhower, but he still gets the nonsensical critcism and blame.
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  465. Browning had threatened to resign over a previous operation (Linnet II) and then withdrew the threat when he realised it was taken literally - two countries divided by a common language! He couldn't do the same thing again over Market. But I respectfully take issue with your concept of duty. Surely if your primary duty is to the mission and the men under your command, then resigning your command to be replaced by another officer would be the greatest dereliction of duty? Browning is criticised for taking up the airlift capacity of 38 aircraft to carry his Corps headquarters to Groesbeek by glider, instead of the aircraft being used to take the second half of the 2nd Battalion South Staffords to Arnhem in the first lift. It sounds a reasonable point, but Browning clearly saw it as his 'duty' to his men to lead them by taking his own headquarters there, and a study of the battle of Arnhem reveals that the role played by the South Staffords would not have changed at all, or significantly alter the outcome of events at Arnhem. The battalion had the task of holding Landing Zone 'S' in Phase 1, which it successfuly completed even at half strength because the zone was never put under any serious pressure from the Germans. It's Phase 2 role after the second lift arrived was to take up positions in the divisional perimeter, and regardless of this mission being abandoned to move into Arnhem to relieve the bridge, the second half of the battalion had arrived in the second lift to join it anyway. Ironically, actor Dirk Bogarde was faced with a similar situation when he played Browning in A Bridge Too Far. Bogarde was dismayed by the way the script portrayed Browning, who he said he knew personnally from having served during the war as an RAF photo interpreter on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets from aerial photographs, including during Market Garden. Supremely ironic, considering the most controverisal scene involved an aerial photograph of German tanks taken near Arnhem. Bogarde could have turned down the role, but that would mean another actor would have taken it, so Bogarde may have thought he could mitigate the scene as much as possible by playing the character as (by my observation) somewhat conflicted. Nevertheless, Browning's widow was still upset by the film. Incidentally, that scene relied entirely on Cornelius Ryan's interview with Browning's Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (renamed 'Fuller' in the film), because Browning had already passed two years before Ryan began his research for the book and the photo itself was not available for study after the war until it finally resurfaced in a Dutch government archive when digitised in 2015. The RAF had apparently donated all of its photographs of the Netherlands to the Dutch government after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys. The photo in question was identified as frame 4015 (overlapping with 4014 for stereoscope) and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch. The tanks were determined to be Mark III and early Mark IV models with the short 7.5cm main gun, obsolete vehicles ruling out a 1944 panzer division. Browning had made the right call. The photo study is available as a free pdf document download from the RAF MoD site as 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaaissance Story' (2016, revised 2019) by Sebastian Ritchie. An abridged (excuse me) version of the story appears in the revised edition of Ritchie's book, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019).
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  466. Very interesting. Your conclusions - that Hitler used used American investment banks and not the other way round - ties in with Sara Moore's book, 'The Fourth Reich? The EU - An Emerging German Empire' (2016), which is a history of German politics since Bismarck in 1870. The main thrust of her book is that the EU is just another German empire after previous failed attempts to take over Europe by military adventurism. What was new to me was the role of American investment banks, unwittingly it seems, used to hide Germany's wealth by investing it in America's recovery from the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the money made from those investments used for the re-armament of Germany, while pleading poverty at home and an inability to pay for war reparations for The Great War.
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  467. I believe Urquhart was a Montgomery choice or recommendation because he was a proven infantry brigade commander - he had previously commanded 231 Brigade of 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division and a staff position in XII Corps in the meantime. He had very option but to accept the restrictions on his divisional plan imposed by the air commanders. I don't think resigning, as Gale (6th Airborne Division) said he would have done, would have made much difference, the American air commanders at 1st Allied Airborne Army were in control. The one mistake I think you can reasonably place at Urquhart's door was the decision to halt 3rd Parachute Battalion in Oosterbeek on the first night. The Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, had managed to reach Brigadier Lathbury who was with Urquhart and Fitch's 3rd Battalion in Oosterbeek on the radio and advised him that the (2nd Battalion) river route was still open and they should slip one of the other battalions down there instead. Lathbury was all for it, but Urquhart called a halt for the night and intended to push on in the morning. This runs counter to experience that the Germans did not like to fight at night and movement was often preferable at this time to take advantage of the cover of darkness. Browning had been involved in planning airborne operations since the British airborne forces were first raised - he was their commander and the original CO of 1st Airborne Division. People like to make much of the fact he failed the parachute course - due to injury - he was not a young man, having been awarded a DSO (narrowly missing out on a VC) as a young Lieutenant for his actions pulling together a number of companies that had lost their officers during the 1917 battle of Cambrai, when Jimmy Gavin was 10 years old and still in short trousers. Instead, Browning earned his 'Wings' by learning to fly a glider. More experienced than any of them in planning airborne operations was Miles Dempsey, commander of British 2nd Army, which is not well known as it is assumed by many that Montgomery micro-managed Dempsey, but Dempsey's role in the MARKET GARDEN story was much more involved and made decisions often attributed to Montgomery. After the operation, Montgomery wrote to General Sosabowski to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and to request recommendations for awards, as he did with all the units under his command. When he received reports back from Browning and Horrocks, he learned of Sosabowski being difficult to work with and Browning wanted his brigade removed from his command, and that Sosabowksi was insubordinate to Horrocks at the Valburg conference, both undeniable facts. There were also complaints that the brigade was undisciplined, it was raised as an ordinary rifle brigade from soldiers escaping the German occupation of Poland and Sosabowski decided to parachute train them as a means of ensuring the brigade was more likely to be deployed, but it was not trained as a special forces unit like their British counterparts. I get the impression that the British officers took a very dim view of the brigade's discipline and Robert Kershaw's book It Never Snows in September (1990) even records accounts of the SS complaining about the Poles firing on their medics. I have not seen any evidence that British officers blamed the Poles for the failure of the operation, as this would frankly be ridiculous - they arrived on D+4, too late to save an operation already compromised in the planning and on D-Day at Nijmegen. Sosabowski was removed from command of the brigade by the Polish Government-in-Exile, nobody in the British Army had the authority to do this as the brigade was under Polish political control and only attached to the British Army operationally. Sosabowski's lack of an army pension was also the Polish Government's responsibility, having refused to return to Soviet-controlled Poland I don't think there was anything that they, or the impoverished British Government, could do except allow him to remain in the UK and seek work. Sosabowski's treatment was a combination of his own doing and circumstance, but as a former Grenadier Guards officer I think Browning was always professional. I had a former Grenadier Guards officer as headmaster of my school and he was a combination of perfectly turned out gentleman and a quiet but strict disciplinarian. I spent a year taking his German language classes and they were terrifying, but totally professional. The Grenadier Guards set a standard that few, if any, can match.
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  468. Good questions. I think I may have answered some of them in my post (posted today) quoting passages from Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). I don't think TIK has read that one so his investigation only drilled down to Gavin, and he has to take responsibility, but I think the answers are in the 508th's combat history.
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  469.  @michaelandersen-kk4fc  - it was US Army doctrine to delegate tactical judgement to subordinate commanders, but if you read my post on Nordyke's passages that doctrine was underlined by Ben Delamater, the XO of 1/508th: "The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” My take on the whole story, going back to Normandy in Nordyke's earlier chapters as well, was that Lindquist was not a good combat leader. It's similar to the story of Easy/506th before D-Day as portrayed in Band Of Brothers mini-series (2001) - the Sergeants had so little confidence in Captain Herbert Sobel, an excellent training officer but hopeless in the field, that it sparked a mutiny among the NCOs in the Company and he was transferred out of the Company to a parachute training school. In Roy Lindquist's case, he was a gifted administrator, but on D-Day in Normandy his XO was found to be completely combat ineffective, a diagnosis made by the regimental Medical Officer, who had to escape from German capitivity (he had stayed with some jump casualties) and cross the lines to get back to the 508th CP to make his report. He was amazed to see the XO in the CP, sitting in a chair with his M1 rifle between his legs just staring down at the floor. After making a report to Lindquist, the XO was immediately relieved of command and sent up to Division, where Ridgway court-martialled him and returned him to England and out of the Airborne. The officer was later re-assigned to an infantry division and was killed in the Hürtgen forest battles. According to Gavin, Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to Brigadier, although he was the most senior of the Colonels, and that may be the reason he didn't take Lindquist with him to XVIII Corps as his S-1, a position that would have suited him perfectly. It's inexplicable Gavin would give the 508th such an important mission as Nijmegen instead of the 505th, but we don't know his rationale for choosing the 505th and the 508th for their respective tasks, only the 504th for Grave because it was on his supply line to XXX Corps and therefore priority number one in his thinking.
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  470. The British 2nd Army direction of travel was towards the Rhine sector between Arnhem in the Netherlands and Wesel in Germany. So when Operation Comet was being planned a suitable crossing and airborne landing zones were studied along the Rhine in this sector and Arnhem was agreed by Browning and Montgomery over Dempsey's preferred option of Wesel. We don't know why Arnhem was initially preferred by Montgomery, Dempsey's diary only records that overnight of 3/4 September Arnhem had been settled on as the target. Some researchers have speculated that Montgomery considered an axis of advance towards Wesel would be too close to the US XIX Corps boundary to avoid possibly having to share a Rhine crossing with the Americans, or it may be because of Flak and suitable landing zone considerations. The main advantage of a crossing of the Dutch Rijn at Arnhem was that it was a short distance to the Zuider Zee as TIK says, and by terminating at the Zuider Zee coast almost all German occupation forces in the Netherlands (an Army sized formation called Wehrmacht Befehlshaber Niederlande or WBN) and the 15.Armee west of Antwerp on the Scheldt would be cut off. By the time the weather delayed Operation Comet was finally cancelled by Montgomery on 10 September, due to the worsening intelligence picture in the eastern Netherlands, he had received news the previous day that the first V-2 rockets had fallen on London and Antwerp. The London rockets were fired from a battery on the Dutch coast near Den Haag and the Antwerp rockets from a battery in the Reichswald near Kleve. An advance to the Rijn at Arnhem would also disrupt these operations and Churchill wanted to know when Montgomery could rope off this area of the Netherlands, so he proposed Operation Market Garden to Eisenhower with three airborne divisions instead of one for Comet to handle the additional German forces in the area. Montgomery wrote after the war that he made a mistake in thinking the Canadians (1st Army) could clear the Scheldt on their own (it was in their sector of the front) while he went for the Rhur (with British 2nd Army). I've recently finished reading Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts' new book, The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022), and it was clear throughout this period that the Canadians (and the British and Polish units that were part of Canadian 1st Army) were overstretched and had a lot on their plate. Most of the major Channel ports were ordered by Hitler to hold out to the last man last bullet, and this tied up most of the infantry units in Canadian 1st Army to invest those ports, leaving only the 1st Polish Armoured Division and 4th Canadian Armoured Division to pursue the retreating 15.Armee up the Channel coast into the Breskens pocket on the Scheldt. In that area, the terrain resembles the rest of Holland and is unsuited to armoured warfare - infantry was really needed just when those units were not available. I think Montgomery's rationale was that a Rhine crossing while the Germans were still reeling from their defeat in Normandy would shorten the war, and cutting off the 15.Armee and WBN west of the Arnhem corridor would render them ineffective in stopping him - they would literally be sidelined. After Market Garden failed to get British 2nd Army beyond Nijmegen and complete the Zuider Zee cut-off, Montgomery had to turn his attention to helping the Canadians clear the Scheldt by direct assault just as you suggest, and that proved to be a lot more difficult and costly than first anticipated. Those operations are covered in Didden and Swarts' first book, Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) - Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and the German Recovery in the autumn of 1944 (2013). To be honest, it was only after reading Autumn Gale on the battles around Woensdrecht and Didden and Swarts' second book on Kampfgruppe Walther on the battle of Overloon that I appreciated Montgomery's remark that Market Garden was "90% successful." I had previously thought it to be a completely fatuous statement, but I think the operation demonstrated the potential for airborne forces to enable a rapid advance across virtually impossible terrain and only failed because of the failure to secure the Nijmegen bridges on the first day. The battles at Woensdrecht and Overloon demonstrated how difficult and costly these operations are without the benefit of the Airborne to secure the bridges for you, and the events at Nijmegen also underlined that lesson.
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  471. The heights were not prioritised over the bridge until after the first belated attempt to seize the bridge had already failed, but was not made clear in the post-war narrative established by Cornelius Ryan's research. Gavin's instructions to the 508th PIR were to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing. This wasn't done, due to a command failure at the top of the regiment.
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  472.  @samdoss  - none taken.
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  473. USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams were responsible for planning MARKET after throwing out key features of Browning and Montgomery's original proposal that was approved by Eisenhower on 10 September, so make sure you blame the right people. Montgomery's 21st Army Group were not informed of the changes until after it was too late to protest them. Brereton insisted that the air plan not be changed after 12 September, and Browning knew if he protested he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway after he had previously threatened to resign over Brereton's operation LINNET II plan. If Montgomery had intervened in MARKET, Brereton would have likely pulled the plug. And yes, 36 hours would have made all the difference, because even under the fragile MARKET plan Gavin had instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen bridge, which Lindquist failed to do and imposed a 36-hour delay while the bridges were fought over, and Browning's proposed drop zones for the 101st south of Son and Eindhoven to assist taking the bridges at Son, Eindhoven, and a small bridge at Aalst, could have achieved the link-up with XXX Corps 24 hours earlier, which means getting bridging equipment to Son 24 hours earlier, which means getting XXX Corps to Nijmegen 24 hours earlier... Are you starting to get the picture?
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  474.  @johnlucas8479  - "If Montgomery was not happy with Market Plan he should have either cancel the operation as he cancel Operation Comet or postpose the operation to enable changes to be made to the Market Plan." - with the benefit of hindsight a 24-hour delay might have benefitted 1st Airborne at Arnhem because of the movement of the Hohenstaufen division back to Germany, but that aside it was better to go sooner than later because of the increasing German build-up on the river and canal defence lines - which Allied intelligence were certainly aware of. You can't keep cancelling the Arnhem operation until Patton gets to Berlin or I'll start to suspect that's what you’d like to see by your comments. Brereton had pulled the plug on previous airborne operations because he had the authority to do so, which only leaves Montgomery the option of passing the decision to Eisenhower for adjudication, and as James Daly argues in his book (Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, 2024) it's quite likely he would consult his air commander, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery, and he would back Brereton. Montgomery's proposal to use an American airborne division (the British were committed to COMET at the time) to land on the island of Walcheren (operation INFATUATE) was immediately rejected by Brereton on grounds of Flak and a fear his airmen would drop American paratroopers into the North Sea and drown them, but it's also suspected he just didn't want to help Montgomery (actually the Canadians) open Antwerp. “Because Market could not proceed without Garden, but Garden could proceed without Market.” – I think you have that completely wrong. The airborne operation was necessary to seize the bridges quickly before they could be demolished. Clearly that cannot be done by ground forces alone over such unfavourable terrain. “Remember Montgomery deferred the discussion on the 101st Landing Zones to Dempsey. It was Dempsey that approve the change in 101st Drop Zones.” – what’s your source for that? Poulussen (Little Sense of Urgency, 2014) has the cable Taylor sent to Dempsey informing him (not seeking agreement) that Williams refused any drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal (Son) because of Flak around Eindhoven. If Dempsey or Montgomery objected, we’re back to square one again (see above). You say “approved” – did Dempsey have any choice? You should remember that if an American Major General (Williams) does not want to risk his men to Flak, then a more senior British Lieutenant General (Dempsey) cannot compel him to because military discipline does not cross international lines, even in an alliance. Dempsey would have to appeal to Montgomery, and he to Eisenhower, and that’s why we’re always back to square one again. “Browning and Montgomery proposal to Eisenhower was based on Operation Linnet because it included the 3 Divisions in the plan. Operation Linnet plan did not include a Coupe De main.” – bonkers! Proposed operation SIXTEEN was an upgrade to COMET generated by British I Airborne Corps and not Brereton’s FAAA staff (FAAA only had nine operations on its books at the time, as pointed out by Roger Cirillo in his thesis on The Market Garden Campaign, 2001 Cranfield University). COMET had glider coups de main assaults, and SIXTEEN proposed adding the two US divisions at Nijmegen and Eindhoven. It was Brereton that recycled the LINNET air plan for MARKET because it had already worked out the details for carrying three divisions, which is fair enough, but there was no reason he needed to delete the glider assaults because they were drawn from exclusively British resources – tugs, gliders, pilots, and troops. Brereton (and/or Williams) deleted them on the grounds that it was “too risky” for broad daylight raids, but they were only broad daylight after they had decided to conduct all flights in daylight from take-off to landing, and this had also forced the deletion of two airlifts per day. This was the first time an airborne operation had all daylight flights and you have to ask why make such a decision, since it was such an arbitrary one? I suspect it was to remove the glider coups de main assaults, because Brereton did not like the idea of British glider troops seizing the 82nd Airborne’s prime targets for them. In 1944, the Nijmegen bridge was the largest single span bridge in Europe, and the Grave bridge was the longest multi-span bridge in Europe. Brereton and his air force backers wanted favourable headlines for the folks back home. In other words, the Americans let ego get the better of them, which is probably why they are always so quick to stick Montgomery with the same charge when all the evidence points the other way. Your details on the Sun, Moon, and the weather are very nice, but they ignore the fact that COMET was taking off at night for a dawn arrival over the target, and SIXTEEN only expanded on the same basic plan. The timings would have to be altered slightly to allow for it being seven days later in the season, but these are only adjustments. The navigation for the coup de main gliders was to be achieved by releasing the gliders as they crossed each river – Maas, Waal, Rijn, as recognisable waypoints, and then the gliders turn right and follow the rivers to the targets. The map showing these tracks for COMET are in Daly (op cit 2024). This was certainly going ahead for COMET – in fact the operation was only cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft because of the intelligence picture on the ground between Nijmegen and Arnhem, and not because of the weather. The plan for the second lift was for an afternoon flight to arrive before dark, with an option to delay to the following morning: 0145 – coup de main parties emplane 0240 – glider 1st lift emplanes 0315 – parachute 1st lift emplanes 0427 – coup de main gliders RV over landing zone at 6,000ft 0430 – coup de main parties land at targets 0715 – glider 1st lift landings begin 0730 – parachute 1st lift drops 1400 – parachute 2nd lift emplanes 1745 – parachute 2nd lift drops (Daly, op cit 2024, COMET schedule as of 6 September for 8 September D-Day) The postponements to 9 and 10 September advised adjustments to timings, but this was still the basic plan. Making an arbitrary decision to take-off and land all flights in daylight, as Brereton and Williams did for MARKET, made this sort of delivery impossible for the perfectly reasonable reasons explained by Ritchie, which I understand, but it’s hard to understand why they made a decision they didn’t have to unless it was driven by another, non-technical, motive. The Americans wanted to fly their own planes their own way, and there was nothing British commanders could do about it. I think it has more to do with the US Airborne not having an assault glider capability, which they didn’t want to admit to, and they wanted a success with minimal casualties to demonstrate US dominance of the “air weapon” in the post-war era (certainly an objective of Brereton and his air force backers in Washington) and MARKET was seen as an opportunity to help achieve this. Based on the current available information, I still believe MARKET GARDEN was compromised in the planning by politics within 1st Allied Airborne Army and on the ground by politics within 82nd Airborne Division, and that's where we stand today, until and unless more information becomes available that changes my view.
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  475.  @jbjones1957  - obviously meaning getting to Arnhem in two days, still possible as Guards reached Nijmegen before 48 hours had elapsed, only to be informed the Nijmegen bridges were still in German hands.
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  476. That's a myth perpetrated by A Bridge Too Far. As far as is known, the 101st Airborne Division liaison officer to Browning's HQ, whose glider crashed near General Kurt Student's 1.Fallschirm-Armee HQ at Vught, was only carrying documents that included a resupply schedule for his division. Student, as an experienced airborne commander himself, understood the significance of the documents and could extrapolate the airlift timetable for the whole operation. He did not have, as the film version of A Bridge Too Far suggests by using the same prop as Dirk Bogarde used in the briefing scene for the operation, a complete set of operational plans with maps etc.. Incidentally, the liaison officer had his communications team with him in the WACO glider (not a British Horsa as seen in the film) and their loss was the reason Browning was not in communication with the 101st Airborne throughout the operation. The captured documents ironically helped the airborne, because after Model was unconvinced by them, Student was able to alert his own Luftwaffe chain of command to have fighter aircraft over the drop zones at the planned times, but the airlifts were all delayed by bad weather and the planes were back at their bases in Germany when the transports finally arrived. This is one of the many ways that A Bridge Too Far spun the myths that Market Garden failed for many reasons other than the Americans simply dropping the ball at Nijmegen and a study of Hollywood as an American propaganda machine would make an interesting topic all of its own.
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  477. I think the story is complex. The idea that Gavin and Browning de-prioritised the Nijmegen highway bridge in favour of the Groesbeek heights was a post-war and even a post-D-Day conflation that was forced on them by events on the first day. Gavin had instructed the 508th to send one battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initital objectives (on the ridge) in the final divisional briefing before the operation, but the 508th CO failed to interpret the instruction correctly and sent only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge to report on its condition. Gavin had made the claim in a letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." Gavin later confirmed this in his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler.” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), chapter 9: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Cont...
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  478. Nordyke (op cit), chapter 10: Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 - Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge: A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." Phil Nordyke (op cit), chapter 10: Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
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  479.  @richardjansen3317  - the film version of A Bridge Too Far is only about 50% historically accurate, but some scenes are probably quite true to life and very nicely done. One of them is von Rundstedt's return as OB West, relieving Model of one of the two jobs he was doing and now able to concentrate on running Heeresgruppe (Army Group) B. One of the things Model was working on was a counter-offensive, which he was planning to conduct in the Netherlands and scheduled for October. For this he needed II.SS-Panzerkorps refitted, and he needed all the key bridges to remain intact, which is why he refused to allow their demolition, even during Market Garden. In the event, Market Garden's partial success forced Model to reschedule his planned counter-offensive for December, and relocate it to the Ardennes instead of the Netherlands. Interestingly, the 9.SS-Panzer-Division after refitting in Germany took part in the Ardennes offensive, but the 10.SS-Panzer-Division was only able to commit its Artillerie-Regiment, which had been 'over-establishment' since the withdrawal from Normandy and the discovery of an abandoned train in Arras carrying 40 brand new leFH 18/40 howitzers abandoned by its army owners. I'm not Dutch, I'm British, and I read Cornelius Ryan while still in school in 1977 before the film was released that Summer. I've been fascinated by the story ever since, and the arguments over the operation's failure. I think the last 10-12 years have been very interesting with the information coming out about the Airborne failure to secure the Nijmegen bridges on the first day. I think it's no coincidence that A Bridge Too Far puts much of the blame on Montgomery and Browning, as the book and film were released after both gentlemen had passed, but many of the American officers were still alive. Now they're all gone, I think more true stories are coming out in new books. Revisionism is a valid historical process, as indeed TIK has done a video on that issue himself. Obviously, you would be closer to any issues surrounding the Dutch Royal Family, I wouldn't want to comment out of respect to you and your country (we had a great family holiday on Walcheren in 1975!), but I do find it interesting that the first Bilderberg conference was named after the hotel in Oosterbeek where it was held, and it was chaired by Lord Peter Carrington, who as a Captain in the Grenadier Guards was in command of the operation to send the first tanks over the Waalbrug in Nijmegen on 20 September 1944. I remember Carrington as Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary in 1982 when he resigned over the invasion of the Falkland Islands, and yet still became the 6th Secretary General of NATO. I do find it all fascinating! My best wishes to you and everyone in the Netherlands.
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  480.  @richardjansen3317  - we do have issues with our own Royals and while I know it's a Dutch custom to be quite direct, it would be considered rude here for a non-Brit to express a disparaging opinion of our Royal Family. Even if many people here might agree with it! I was just being polite.
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  481.  @richardjansen3317  - Cheers! Just one correction - it's the 'British' Royal family - since the Acts of Union in England (1706) and Scotland (1707) united the two thrones into one United Kingdom of Great Britain. CGP Grey has a great YouTube video explaining the UK and GB etc., I know most Europeans understand most of it, but it seems to really blow the minds of our American cousins on their reaction channels! Great fun watching those.
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  482.  @richardjansen3317  - I even have a favourite Dutch politician - Eva Vlaardingerbroek - but I have to copy and paste her name into the comment! She's been a star guest on GBNews channel in the UK and I've seen her on Tucker Carlson on Fox in the USA. She's standing up to wokery, the nitrogen policy forcing Dutch farmers to sell their farms, and the like. The same sort of things are happening here, so it's great to see someone fighting the good fight!
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  483.  @richardjansen3317  - yeah, a lot of stories about Barclays. I had an IT contract with Barclays. In some ways the banks are the best clients, but this one miscalculated their IT budget while I was there and fired all the contractors and offered replacement contracts at 80% of the original rate to make up the shortfall. I thought they could have done by taking it out of the IT Director's annual bonus - only his wife would probably notice the difference!
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  484.  @richardjansen3317  - we're getting way off-topic here, but I think it's true that there's a cabal that runs the world right now and so-called democratically elected leaders are actually chosen by the global elite. The recent revolving door on 10 Downing Street has been an illustration of how this works - if the Conservative Party elected a new leader (and therefore Prime Minister) that the globalists don't like, they immediately start plotting to remove them and have their man - who has already been rejected in the popular vote - installed by a coup. It's absolutely infuriating and 'we the people' are not happy about it.
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  485.  @richardjansen3317  - appreciate it, thank you!
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  486. I assume from your use of emoticons you were 9 years old when you wrote this? When you're a bit older, try reading 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). It details how the regiment compromised the entire operation by failing to move quickly on the undefended Nijmegen highway bridge in the first vital hours, contrary to their divisional commander's instructions in the pre-flight briefing. Perhaps you could request the book for your 10th birthday?
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  487. I recommend American historian John C. McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) for the best analysis I've read on the bridge versus ridge debate. The key section from Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’, is as follows: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
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  488.  @johnburns4017  Why Lindquist thought he had to wait for a divisional order goes to the character of the man, not a technical reason. He was a gifted administrator and began his airborne career as one of the first volunteer officers to the Airborne forces as the S-1 (Staff officer for admin and personnel) to the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion in 1940, their first experimental parachute unit. In the Spring of 1941 he left the 501st to become S-1 for the Provisional Parachute Group at Fort Benning, Ga. In the Spring of 1942 he was promoted to Major and assigned G-1 (General staff officer for admin and personnel) of Airborne Command at Fort Bragg, NC. In September 1942 he returned to Fort Benning to organise the formation of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which he would command. At this time he was promoted to Lt.Col., and William Ekman (CO of the 505th in Holland) was the Assistant Commander. The 508th was officially activated at Camp Blanding, Florida in October 1942. According to Lt. Chester 'Chet' Graham, temporary CO of 'F' Company, both Regiment S-3 (Operations) officer Major Shanley (Regiment XO in Holland) and Major Louis Mendez (CO of 3rd Battalion) were both "class" officers. "Lindquist was pompous - they were not" (Chapter 1, Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke 2012). After intensive training in the US and England that paralleled the 506th as seen in Band of Brothers and the 507th, the 506th was attached to the 101st Division and the 507th (replacing the 504th left in Italy for Anzio) and 508th were attached to the 82nd Division for the Normandy invasion - their first combat operation for these new units. "As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured" - this is a reference to 'D' Company of 2nd Battalion that had remained on the Drop Zone to clear it - collecting supply canisters and equipment to establish a supply dump at the Voxhill farm (grid square 7657 on the AMS GSGS map 12 NW GROESBEEK) under the supervision of the Regiment S-4 (Supply) officer. The S-4 has only a very small admin team that are parachute trained and are dependent on Jeep transport and other staff of the Regiment Service Company to arrive by glider and 2.5 ton trucks by sea tail. The remainder of 2nd Battalion had the mission of securing the western end of the Regiment's initial objective at de Hut (7059) on the main highway from Nijmegen to Venlo, while the 1st Battalion secured de Ploeg (7259) on the Nijmegen to Groesbeek secondary road, and 3rd Battalion at Berg-en-Dal (7459) on the main Nijmegen to Kleve (Germany) highway. The horizontal grid line 60 along the top of these grid squares actually forms the boundary between this map and the next map to the north (6 SW NIJMEGEN) where the main bridge targets are located and the Nijmegen barracks that might possibly be host to German combat troops. I appreciate the post-war quote from Gavin on pre-flight orders, and both Chet Graham (CO of 508th Regimental HQ Company and designated liaison to Division HQ) and 1st Battalion XO Major Ben Delamater told Nordyke they clearly understood that the highway bridge was the main objective and the Groesbeek ridge (it's actually pretty flat but heavily wooded if you check out the locations on Google Street View) battalion positions were the 'initial' objectives. These positions were potentially a defensive blocking line for any German combat troops barracked in Nijmegen, but in the event the barracks were empty and the only combat troops in the area were all deployed along the Maas-Waal canal defence line. The city was effectively open, and Lindquist was told this by Geert van Hees of the Dutch resistance when they both arrived at de Ploeg soon after 1st Battalion got there at 6:30pm. The recon patrol was then planned by "the regimental and battalion COs", according to Ben Delamater (Chapter 10, Nordyke). In order for the 1st Battalion to go straight for the bridge, it could only do so after seizing the initial point at de Ploeg along the way, but instead they spread out along the ridge and dug-in. I think Nordyke is an essential reference. I also have September Hope by John McManus (also 2012) currently on order, as I believe this book has some detail not in Nordyke.
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  489.  @johnburns4017  - I get the distinct impression the Americans knew they had screwed up and sought to cover this by removing the evidence and then blaming Market Garden's failure on everything under the sun, i.e. all the things that normally go wrong with military operations but don't necessarily compromise their success. I don't know if we have 'Division Order No.1', which should be Gavin's written order for the regimental assignments from which Lindquist developed his regimental plan for the 508th. We do have Lindquist's 'Field Order No.1, 508 PIR', dated 13 September 1944, and reproduced in the appendix of RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011). This Field Order details all the assignments of the 508th, giving specific locations and map references, although an unpublished map overlay is also referred to. It does not contain any specific plan to move on the bridges and only states in the following sections: 2.a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ "T" , seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589). 3.c.x.(6) All Bns will be prepared to attack to the N, within their sectors to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633). It's also clear from Poulussen's reproduced transcript interview notes of Lindquist by Westover after the war that Lindquist was being evasive. When put to him Gavin had given him orders "to move directly into NIJMEGEN", he replied "As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on." Lindquist had ommitted the conditional instruction to move on the bridge straight away if at all possible. This requires judgement in the field, based on the situation and information available. He appeared unwilling to do this, preferring to send a recon patrol (or patrols) and await their results before moving battalions. This was his behaviour in Normandy as well, so there's no inconsistency in Lindquist's behaviour or personality over time. Lindquist was clearly not an aggressive combat leader, and contributors to Nordyke's book from officers within the regiment said as much. He didn't entrust his battalion commanders to proceed on their own intitiative if they did not meet any resistance. Lt.Col. Shields Warren, the 1st Battalion CO, was "surprised" to be ordered to move on the bridge that evening. He had not expected this order and the battalion was all spread out in a line along the Groesbeek ridge and only 'A' Company got out first because it was nearest the road. They waited an hour for 'B' Company to join them because it was further along the ridge, but they moved into town without waiting any longer. 'B' Company only caught up with 'A' and HQ Companies when enemy contact was made at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle, but since these were troops from SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, it was obviously too late to reach the highway bridge without a major battle in the city.
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  490.  @johnburns4017  - my personal view is that Gavin assigned the wrong regiment (or commander) to Nijmegen and the Groesbeek ridge objectives. In my view (albeit with the benefit of hindsight) the 508th (or specifically their leadership) were ideally suited to a defensive role after seizing their intitial objectives. The 505th's objectives were the rail bridge at Mook (7152), roadblocking the main Venlo highway at Reithorst/Plasmolen (7450), and patrolling the Reichswald at Grafwegen (7751), all undertaken by 1/505th. Hill 81.8 (7355) on the ridge behind Groesbeek, undertaken by Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th (Division reserve once complete), and clearing the town of Groesbeek (7555) undertaken by 3/505th. I'm sure that Gavin was worried about the Reichswald when he assigned his old regiment, the 505th, to this very defensive role and having his best battalion commander in Ben Vandervoort (played by John Wayne in the film version of The Longest Day) as his division reserve at Groesbeek in case of trouble. I can understand the rationale. The thing about the 508th, having read Nordyke's combat histories of both regiments, was that the troopers were well trained and highly capable brave men. Comparisons can be made with the more famous 506th formed at the same time. I think Lindquist was perfectly capable of drawing up a plan just as detailed and well thought out for deployments in a defensive line against the Reichswald, and the bridge at Mook was a secondary River Maas crossing that would only be important if Rueben Tucker's 504th failed to secure the highway bridge at Grave. (Note: in the event, most rail bridges in Market Garden were prepared for demolition and were detonated as soon as threatened, while main highway bridges were less ready and the responsible agencies for their demolition either failed to show up or waited in vain for permission from higher authority). If the 505th's assignments had been given to the 508th, I can see the highly capable 3rd Battalion (Louis Mendez) securing Mook and the Venlo highway on their right flank and protecting the landing zones on their left, with a reserve at Groesbeek in the centre. The 505th's 2nd Battalion could be the prime unit in the centre of the Groesbeek ridge at de Ploeg and would have moved "with speed" on the highway bridge under Ben Vandervoort's leadership as Gavin had wished, I have no doubt. I think the debate on priorities between the Nijmegen bridge and the Groesbeek heights is misleading, because the same regiment (whichever regiment it was) would be responsible for both, in serial rather than parallel. I think the question of priorities in Gavin's mind was the relative dangers of opposition coming from a regiment of SS troops in Nijmegen and from their tanks in the Reichswald - both unknowns. I think he chose his old regiment to face the Reichswald, because he saw it as being most likely to be the greater danger. This made Nijmegen his Achilles heel.
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  491.  @johnburns4017  - true. Contrary to the popular narrative - as TIK says opening this video! Also just remembered there's a military rifle range in the woods between de Hut and de Ploeg - so that would be another reason for German troops to be in the area - right between 2/508th and 1/508th's initial objectives! The three grid squares between 7057 and 7258 are all marked as 'Training Area' on the defence overprint version I have of the 12 NW Groesbeek map, which also has marked trenches and Flak positions etc..
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  492.  @johnburns4017  - slow movement, and they also sent recon patrols first, possibly while they were assembling on the DZ. The account by Captain Jonathan Adams (CO 'A' Company) in Nordyke mentions that on the route march to de Ploeg they got word back from the patrols that their initial point was unoccupied, so they picked up the pace (!)
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  493.  @johnburns4017  - apologies for not replying 13 days ago, I don't think YouTube notified me of your replies, which seems to happen when threads get quite long. In answer to other comments today, I posted the following reference, which may also help here: - the point I thought I had made very clear was that Gavin clearly understood that while the high ground was important to securing the position of the division, the bridges were the key to the success of the entire operation. The problem at Nijmegen was that this was apparently not understood by Lindquist, a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, but clearly not a good combat leader. Perhaps aware of his shortcomings, Gavin took time out to explain what he wanted Lindquist to do, as the book I'm currently reading makes clear, and this is from another American author: 'At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.' 'At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership.' (Page 64, September Hope - The American Side Of A Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus, 2012). - so, I think this reference reinforces my view that the personality and character of Colonel Lindquist is the source of the problem at Nijmegen (as it had been in Normandy), although Gavin may be criticised for not giving Lindquist written instructions at the time, maybe he thought that would be taking micro management too far. I get the impression Gavin was not someone who considered writing all of this down contemporaneously to cover his own butt post-war if it all went wrong (like the scene between Sosabowski and Browning), he seemed to prefer taking the responsibility for what happened, and it also explains Gavin's motives for trying to make amends with the assault river crossing by his own division, even though Market Garden's backup plan was apparently for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry to do this (source: Special Bridging Force, John Sliz, 2021).
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  494.  @johnburns4017  - it was always intended that 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division would lead the Nijmegen to Arnhem sector of the advance, because of the nature of the terrain. The division had 8th Armoured Brigade under command (4th/7th Dragoon Guards, 13th/18th Hussars), less one Regiment (Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry), which was assigned to 82nd Airborne once contact was made. Every water crossing to be made in Operation Garden had an alternative plan for each permutation, should a bridge not be secured intact by the Airborne. So each bridge or crossing had a plan for it being blown by the enemy with the site held by the enemy, and another if the site was held by Allied forces, as well as the permutation where the bridge was still intact and still held by the Germans in strength. Each permutation that required a replacement Bailey bridge had an engineering plan and allocated resources. The engineering plan for Market Garden was therefore very complex, and the reason John Sliz wrote a separate volume in his Market Garden Engineers series of booklets on the Special Bridging Force (2021). The Guards Armoured Division was responsible for every water obstacle up to the Maas River, so that included the Wilhelmina canal, the Willems canal, and the River Dommel. Those are covered in his volume Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers in Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016). In Special Bridging Force - 'The 43rd Wessex Division would carry out an assault, if needed, on any of the main rivers with the divisional engineers working assault boat ferries and building the folding boat equipment bridge, while army and GHQ troops engineers would construct and operate storm boat ferries, close support and class 40 rafts, and class 40 bridges.' (Page 34, Special Bridging Force, 2019). The plan was different for each river crossing (and Maas-Waal canal), and each river was assigned an AGRE (Army Group Royal Engineers), so virtually all the engineer bridging resources of 21st Army Group (including those detached from Canadian 1st Army, hence the Canadian storm boats used in the Oosterbeek evacuation Operation Berlin). For a Waal assault crossing there where two columns prepared for either an assault with one brigade up (209 vehicles - 100 RE and 99 RASC), or an assault with two brigades up (419 vehicles - 160 RE and 259 RASC). There was also a planned column for the Ijssel River crossings to be taken and bridged by 43rd Wessex, if the Airborne plan succeeded and XXX Corps deployed north of the Rijn. Going through all the listed permutations, if the bridges were held by the enemy and columns needed by the 43rd Wessex, for a single brigade crossing of the Waal column 'Bessie' was required, and for a two brigade crossing column 'Basil' would be required. These code names would be used for the crossing operation required. On 19 September, with both bridges in Nijmegen strongly held by the Germans, a two brigade assault by 43rd (Wessex) Division was considered, which would be Operation Basil carried out by 1st CAGRE (1st Canadian Army Group Royal Engineers) with 130 Brigade on the right and 214 Brigade on the left. The brigade boundaries were not clear (the plan was obviously not developed in the event) but the main road bridge was inclusive to the right brigade (130). The RASC supporting 43rd Wessex had been issued sufficient DUKWs to mobilise one brigade, and a plan was being developed to assign these to the assault battalions making the initial crossing, with storm boats used for the following units, or for all units if suitable launch sites for the DUKWs could not be used. It seems the plan did not go ahead because these resources were simply not called on. It seems that Horrocks was focussed on getting the Americans across the river to take the bridges, so this was the effect of Gavin's intervention and insistence that his troopers could do the job if they had the boats. There's a whole story associated with the assault boats that is described by John Sliz in Bridging The Club Route (2015, 2016), as it appears the Guards had available boats already in Nijmegen the whole time, but the Generals did not think to invite the Guards Division CRE to the meeting and boats were called up from Belgium instead, but as I said - that's a whole other story! This was because the plan actually carried out was an ad hoc one and not the plan prepared for in advance based on all these possible scenarios. The Canadian engineers in 1st CAGRE were sitting around, bored to death with nothing to do, until one company was eventually called forward a week later to provide storm boats (with outboard motors) for Operation Berlin.
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  495. Not the case at all. Montgomery cancelled Operation COMET, which was to drop British 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade alone on the three main obectives at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, on 10 September as the men were boarding their aircraft. The reason for the last minute cancellation was the intelligence reports on the II.SS-Panzerkorps, with the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' and presumably its sister unit the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg', moving into the eastern Netherlands to refit. Montgomery proposed to Eisenhower in a meeting at Brussels airport later the same day that the operation be replaced with an expanded operation by adding the two US Airborne Divisions to secure the corridor at Eindhoven, Grave, and Nijmegen. The advantage this creates was to concentrate 1st Airborne and the Poles, with their considerable number of anti-tank guns - 84 - at Arnhem, instead of splitting them between Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave for COMET. Generalfeldmarschall Model was estimated to have less than 100 operational panzers in his entire Army Group B from Aachen to the North Sea coast, so it was not an unreasonable disposition. By a bizarre coincidence, as if the universe were trying to make a point, Model's panzer returns for the month of September 1944 listed exactly 84 operational tanks. The concern over the Reichswald came from the fact the exact location of the Frundsberg had not been identified as the Dutch resistance had only identified Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia in the area northeast of Arnhem. The fear was that the Frundsberg (reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength) might be easily accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve, behind the Reichswald forest on the German border. General Gavin was therefore given the 'sanitised' Ultra intelligence that there may be "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and tank storage in the Reichswald. This generated the silly rumour the forest could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, but it was known Model did not have a tenth of that number. The Nijmegen/Reichswald fears turned out to be unfounded. The Frundsberg were at Ruurlo and the panzer depot was near Münster, but it did apparently influence Gavin's divisional planning. He assigned his best regiment to secure his divisional supply line by dropping the 504th PIR at Grave, and his most problematic 508th Regiment to the key objectives of the Groesbeek heights with one battalion to be sent directly to the Nijmegen bridge. The more experienced and aggressive 505th was assigned to face the Reichswald sector, and arguably the best battalion in the division, Ben Vandervoort's 2nd/505th, was held in division reserve on Hill 81.8 behind Gavin's CP in the woods west of Groesbeek. In Cornelius Ryan's notes made during his meeting with Gavin in 1967 for A Bridge Too Far (Box 101, Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University), "The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main." (Because 1st Allied Airborne Army's General Brereton had removed Browning's original COMET glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, when he adapted the plan to three divisions for MARKET). Gavin "toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized." The problem Browning had was that he could not object to Brereton's changes, despite warning during COMET's planning that the operation should not go ahead without the coup de main assaults. He had earlier threatened to resign over Brereton's Operation LINNET II plan for drops at Liege-Maastricht that was organised with too short notice to print and distribute maps for the troops. The operation was cancelled, so both men agreed to forget the incident, but Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Browning's ability to influence the MARKET air plan had been neutralised by American politics. Gavin's decision to entrust the crucial Nijmegen bridge objective to Colonel Lindquist of the 508th was a further compromise, and one that backfired badly. Neither Gavin nor Ridgway trusted Lindquist in a fight (according to Cornelius Ryan's notes), and despite Gavin giving a clear instruction to Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge on landing, he failed to carry this out, thinking he had to secure his other objectives first. Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 easily won the race to secure the Nijmegen bridge, despite having to unload its vehicles from rail flat cars at Beekbergen station, refit tracks and guns that had been removed to render them administratively "under repair", and then had to reconnoitre to the west of Arnhem before going south to Nijmegen to investigate the various reports of airborne landings. MARKET GARDEN was effectively compromised by American political moves to sideline British control over the conduct of the war, but when the British led operation failed to meet its strategic objective (of a Rhine crossing), the blame was levelled at Browning and Montgomery.
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  496. It's been a long time since I read Frost's book, A Drop Too Many, but I don't recall him blaming Browning. I'm sure Frost was aware (at least after the war) that MARKET was planned by Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army and it compromised on Browning's original COMET plan. I am sure that Frost did correctly point out that the American failure to secure the unfended Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day was the unforced error that compromised the operation on the ground. Browning could not object to the planning changes because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's operation LINNET II plan (Liege-Maastricht bridges) having too short notice to print and distribute maps, but LINNET II was cancelled before Brereton could accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ. Browning could hardly threaten to resign again over MARKET because he knew what would happen, and instead moved up his British I Airborne Corps transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift to Groesbeek instead, hoping to influence events once on the ground - although he gets criticised for that as well. The "Hitlerjugend and old men on bikes" was specific intelligence on the SS training battalion and the local security battalion at Arnhem, and it was absolutley correct: SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, aka 'Bataillon Krafft' after the commander Sepp Krafft, was a half-battalion withdrawn from the Dutch coastal defences to their depot at Arnhem as a reserve for the river Waal defence line with just a couple of companies (2 and 4.Kompanie) finishing training some Hitler Youth recruits for 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend'. SS divisions had to share training units and the battalion had just changed its designation from '12' to '16' in preparation to receive another 1,600 new recruits from Germany for training as replacements for 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Reichsführer-SS' when the airborne attack landed. The two companies were unfortunately camped near the British landing zones at Oosterbeek to protect Model's Heeresgruppe B headquarters instead of in their bombed barracks in Arnhem, and therefore did the most to delay the movement of 1st Parachute Brigade into Arnhem on the first day. Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908 was a security unit comprised of WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for combat duty in 1914-18, and after being displaced from its posting near Lille in northern France by the Allied advance, was transferred to Arnhem in the Netherlands and attached to Sicherungs-Regiment 26 as its fourth battalion. It had companies deployed to guard the river Ijssel bridges at Doesburg (1.Kompanie), Westervoort in eastern Arnhem (4.schwere-Kompanie), and to protect Deelen airfield (2-3.Kompanien). This unit probably also provided the 25-man bridge guard on the Arnhem highway bridge, and the only other part in contact with 1st Airborne Division seems to be the 2.Kompanie at Oosterbeek. The II.SS-Panzerkorps refitting in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions were known to be there and was the reason Montgomery cancelled Browning's operation COMET, because he realised it would not be strong enough to deal with them, and proposed the upgraded operation to Eisenhower by adding the two American divisions to create MARKET. This allowed British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade to concentrate at Arnhem, as they had superior anti-tank gun resources capable of dealing with the armoured threat. American airborne units had more field artillery in their establishments, and were therefore suited to hold the corridor from Eindhoven to Nijmegen. The operation did not fail because of a fault in intelligence, although the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had not been identified and was feared may be in the Nijmegen barracks and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve on the other side of the Reichswald forest in Germany. This clearly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, but he dismissed a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge and assigned the 508th PIR to the critical Nijmegen mission. The 508th's commander, Colonel Lindquist, had not performed well in Normandy, but Gavin chose to assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th to guard against the Reichswald sector of his divisional perimeter. Gavin had instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen bridge after landing. Lindquist failed to do this, believing he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives on the Groesbeek ridge first, despite receiving a personal report from the Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left just a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the bridge. This allowed elements of 10.SS-Panzer-Division from as far as Beekbergen (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 on temporary attachment) and Vorden (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 aka Kampfgruppe Reinhold) to move into Nijmegen and reinforce the bridges. MARKET GARDEN was compromised by American politics in 1st Allied Airborne Army and 82nd Airborne Division. Blaming Browning and Montgomery is a deflection, and the blame for that probably originates in popular discourse from Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974). Gavin told Ryan he and Ridgway (82nd commander in Normandy) didn't trust Lindquist and about his instructing Lindquist to seize the Nijmegen bridge before take-off, but he didn't follow this up in his research, preferring to implicate British commanders instead. Cornelius Ryan was a newspaper journalist from Dublin and was working for the Daily Telegraph in London as a war correspondent embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army in Europe. There are no finer colleges of anti-Montgomery military philosophy than Dublin and Patton, so you can draw your own conclusions as to any bias he may have had. I am truly sorry that American politics compromised an operation that would have liberated a more substantial area of your country in September 1944, although all the troops involved fought bravely. Browning above all was very troubled by the failure of MARKET GARDEN, but as a gentleman wouldn't blame any of the officers under his command. I don't know if you're aware of it, but the aerial photo showing German armour in the Arnhem area dismissed by Browning has been located in a Dutch government archive in 2015 (the RAF donated all their photos after the war to help with reconstruction) and the image does appear to show older obsolete models of German tanks. The unit owning the vehicles has been identified as the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' and were camped at Wolfswinkel near Son on the day of the landings, where they were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft while trying to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne Division) on Sonsche Heide. On September 12 they had been photographed by RAF Spitfire at a supply dump near Deelen airfield undergoing maintenance, after breaking down on a road march to Belgium - they never made it.
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  497.  @thevillaaston7811  - at least it made a change from 4th stage Montgomery Derangement Syndrome!
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  498.  @thevillaaston7811  - hey, I got my first Dutch langauge book! Een andere kijk op de slag om Arnhem - De snelle Duitse reactie (Another view of the battle of Arnhem - The quick German reaction) by Peter Berends (2002), as it seemed to be a source for the name Kampfgruppe Henke at Nijmegen - there's no mention of Oberst Henke (possibly meaning Hencke, Friedrich) in the US 82nd Airborne G-2 intelligence reports generated from prisoner interrogations and captured documents. It was always Hartung as the commander of the local defence in Nijmegen. There seems to be a lot of confusion and possible conflation between Fallschirm-Lehrstab 1 (aka Fallschirm-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 1), which had a few survivors from France in the Groesbeek area (confirmed by POWs) and Oberst Hartung's Lehrstabes für Offizierausbildung des Fallschirm-A.O.K., located at the NEBO monastery with the intent of establishing a parachute school (Hartung confirmed by document). According to the narrative, Henke was put in charge of the Nijmegen bridgehead south of the Waal, and Hartung relocated north to Lent and had militia and flak units under command on the north bank. It appears Peter Berends' own source for much of his information on the Germans at Nijmegen is Heinz Harmel and a document he wrote after the war for the US Foreign Military Studies series, specifically P-163 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsberg" Jun - Nov 1944. I've made some enquiries about getting hold of a copy, but it doesn't look like it's going to be easy. I've just had a reply from one professional document provider who says he doesn't have any details on the document beside the fact it hasn't been translated (which is good, because that process can introduce errors), but without a page count can't give me an estimate on cost. I have learned a few bits and pieces from the book about German command posts in the Arnhem area - I was always curious about the unit flags planted in the Velp area after the landings, and it appears the Hotel Beekhuizen was used initially by 9.SS-Panzer (later moved to Kussin's Feldkommandantur 642 at Villa Heselburgh in Arnhem) and 10.SS-Panzer (later Kasteel Doornenburg), and also by II.SS-Panzerkorps (later Huis Lathum). Also, the Kasteel Biljoen estate was used as a depot for the 9.SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 and other armoured units. I suspected these were prime targets for the Germans - they always snaffled the best digs, but it's nice to get specifics confirmed.
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  499.  @johnlucas8479  - is that a direct quote (‘The Groesbeek Heights. Nijmegen Bridge later.’) or Frost's interpretation based on the post-war conflation of events to explain why the Nijmegen bridge was not taken? Surely it's better to get the contemporary witness accounts, which McManus and Nordyke have done. Was Frost at the Corps briefing when the division commanders were given their instructions? I think not. According to McManus (September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, 2012 Chapter 3): As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - I find this account and analysis of the bridge versus ridge debate to be faultless in its logic (aside the mention of Berlin, which is not appropriate since Montgomery had lost that argument on 10 September to Eisenhower's intent to envelop the Ruhr with British 2nd and US 1st Armies). I'm guessing that Browning's post-war support for Gavin was based on him not having anything in writing from Gavin that confirmed he instructed Lindquist to go for the bridge immediately with his 1st Battalion and all the witnesses were American who came forward sometime later, presumably after Gavin and Lindquist had both passed and they felt they could speak out more freely. Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), Chapter 9: Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Nordyke (op cit), Chapter 10: Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " - This story did not come out immediately after the war when the senior commanders wrote thier books, and it seems to me that witnesses like Jack Norton and Chet Graham stayed silent until the more senior people like Gavin and Lindquist had passed on. This is the second cut at getting the history right.
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  500. Eisenhower approved Market Garden because it fitted in with his strategy of a broad advance to the Rhine anf crossing it at multiple points. Montgomery pointed out that it would also help free up Antwerp, but Eisenhower did not accept the analysis. From Montgomery's Memoirs (online), P.247: The quickest way to open up Antwerp was to back my plan of concentration on the left – which plan would not only help our logistic and maintenance situation but would also keep up the pressure on the stricken Germans in the area of greatest importance, thus helping to end the war quickly… It was obvious that he disagreed with my analysis. He repeated that we must first close to the Rhine and cross it on a wide front; then, and only then, could we concentrate on one thrust… But Eisenhower agreed that 21 Army Group should strike northwards towards Arnhem as early as possible, and he admitted that successful operations in that direction would open up wide possibilities for future action.
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  501. It was Lindquist commanding the 508th PIR failing to follow Gavin's divisional plan and final briefing the previous day. You can argue that Gavin had honourable motives in not throwing a subordinate officer under the bus and took responsibility for his plan not being followed, but he did this by suggesting (with some support from Browning in their postwar correspondence) the Groesbeek heights were the higher priority. That's not what he said in the briefing and he was as "mad" as Chet Graham (508th liaison officer to Division HQ) had ever seen him when he found out Lindquist wasn't sending a battalion to the bridge. This doesn't help historians get the story right until after all the key players in the drama had passed and more junior officers like Captain Chet Graham could freely speak. All Gavin would say to Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) was that Ridgway (82nd Division CO in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist and would not promote him. Even that didn't make it into the book. Sources: Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
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  502. The manning of the Westwall and the defeat of Market Garden were both achieved by using the 'Valkyrie Plan' to mobilise the Reserve Army in early September, precisely because the Field Army was shattered and the remnants of it in the west had withdrawn from Normandy in disarray. Putting the Reserve Army, composed of training units that supplied replacements to the Field Army, into the front lines also impacts the Field Army's ability to recover and refit its units, as well as putting untrained or part-trained troops into the front lines with obvious consequences.
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  503. Nobody is wrong automatically. I'm afraid it was a Parachute Infantry Regiment, the US 508th, that fatally compromised the entire operation. The regiment commander, Roy Lindquist, was specifically told to move on the Nijmegen highway bridge with his 1st Battalion as soon as possible after landing and securing his initial objectives on the Groesbeek heights. Lindquist failed to carry out his instructions from his own 82nd Airborne divisional commander, James Gavin, and there were several witnesses at the divisional briefing and their later confrontation at De Ploeg (1st Battalion initial objective and Regiment CP). A key witness to both was Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, commander of the 508th HQ Company and liasion officer to Division HQ. This is detailed in 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), which also details Lindquist's previous unreliable form in Normandy, calling into question the judgement of both divisional commanders Matthew Ridgway in Normandy and James Gavin in Market Garden. A recon patrol of just three Scouts succeeded in reaching the Nijmegen bridge and secure the southern end and seven German prisoners without firing a shot. They then waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived, and heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer troops) arriving at the other end when they decided they had to withdraw. This testimony of Scout Trooper Joe Atkins of the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section is in John McManus' September Hope (2012) and Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection (2013). To put the 508th's performance into context, the British 1st Parachute Brigade landed 30 minutes later, had 3 Km further to march, against opposition from machine-guns, mortars and armoured cars, and yet secured their prime objective for four days, as promised by Browning. The 508th were told by Dutch resistance leader Gert van Hees that Nijmegen was evacuated by the Germans and the highway bridge was guarded only by an NCO and seventeen men. In an operation involving 24+ bridges for multiple redundancy, only 10 crossings minimum were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. Only the 508th Regiment failed to secure a single crossing on their assigned water obstacle - the Waal River - not because there were any Germans stopping them, but because they failed to follow the specific instructions of their divisional commander to "move with speed" and only sent recon patrols, most of which got 'lost' in the crowds of Dutch civilians who were under the impression they were being liberated. Your statement the "fact that the allies were actually able to capture and hold Nijmegen bridge was already a big success" is totally ignorant of the sequence of events. The Guards had to assist the 504th and 505th against strong SS-Panzer reinforcements after the 508th had already failed to move against virtually zero opposition two days previously. The "old men and kids" refers to the Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908 security unit and SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 training unit, which consisted of WW1 rear echelon troops deemed unfit for combat in 1914-18 and 435 Hitler Youth recruits and training staff respectively, both known to be based at Arnhem. Intelligence also knew there were 400 artillery troops at the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital in the middle of the British landing zones - the reason it was bombed before the landings. The intelligence was not at fault, it turned out to be remarkably accurate. The presence of II.SS-Panzerkorps in the eastern Netherlands, with 9.SS-Panzer and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions headquartered at Beekbergen and Ruurlo respectively, was not disclosed below Army HQ level as this depended on 'Ultra' code intercepts, and the Dutch resistence reports could not be verified by other means. The Dutch had not identified the 10.SS-Panzer and it was actually feared they may have occupied the excellent Dutch barracks facilities in Nijmegen and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve across the border. Both fears turned out to be unfounded. The 82nd had a clear run at Nijmegen in the first few hours, but squandered it. The conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan and filmed by a Hollywood producer is only half true, and has misled many historians and the wider public down the wrong path for decades. Revisionist history is necessary (see TIK's video explaining this) to set the record straight and TIK has gone a long way to doing that. I give Lewis a great deal of credit for his work and you need to read a lot more books if you're going to even catch up with him.
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  504. @Johnny Carroll - I don't know about Pogue (I haven't read him) but John McManus says very much the same thing in his September Hope - The American side of a Bridge Too Far (2012). My only issue with McManus is that he's an patriot compromised by the truth. He does an excellent job of research and supports much of what I had already read by Phil Nordyke and Zig Boroughs' collected stories from the 508th, but then goes back to the default narrative that Montgomery should never have come up with the idea in the first place, which comes across a bit 'I don't want to play this game any more so I'm taking the football away'. It may have been John that recommended me to McManus in the first place, because it had a bit more on the 508th recon patrol(s) to the bridge, I don't recall, but these three books cover this story and it's also referenced by Swedish historian Christer Bergström in his Arnhem: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020) based on Cornelius Ryan's unpublished research and debunking many of the Arnhem myths.
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  505. @Johnny Carroll - yes, John and I have both been pushing back against the ridiculous continuation of the American war of independence 240 years after the Treaty of Paris that ended it, so this is all about history and uncovering the facts and not just dying in a ditch over a fixed position. John didn't give a reference for the Pogue quote, so I have no idea if it's fabricated or not, and he hasn't come back on this thread. Books are fine if they rely on primary sources, and Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) uses first hand interviews with the people involved, and his account of what happened on the Groebeek heights and in Nijmegen on the first day is first hand from Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - CO of the 508th HQ Company and regimental liaison officer to 82nd Division HQ, the CO and XO of the 1st Battalion - Lt Col Shields Warren and Captain Ben Delamater respectively, as well as Jonathan Adams - The CO of 'A' Company, which was the lead unit to De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge and then later into Nijmegen after Gavin's intervention. John McManus (September Hope, 2012) has first hand accounts from members of Lt Bob Weaver's (3rd Platoon, 'C' Company) patrol that was sent into Nijmegen with the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section under Lt Lee Frigo, but got split up and lost in the back streets of the city. Only Weaver had a radioman from battalion with an SCR-300 backpack radio on the battalion net capable of operating over the range between Nijmegen bridge and the battalion CP at De Ploeg, but as Weaver never made it to the bridge he could not fulfill his mission of reporting on its condition. After Gavin found out Lindquist had not sent the whole battalion and went to the 508th CP to "get him moving" (Nordyke, 2012), Weaver received a message that two companies ('A' and 'B') were being sent to the bridge, and he decided to withdraw and find his way back to his own ('C') company at De Ploeg. Zig Borough's collection of letters and stories from veterans in The 508th Connection (2013) contains the remarkable first hand account (in chapter 6 - Nimegen Bridge) of Scout Trooper Joe Atkins of the 1st Battalion S-2 Section. He and two other troopers were on point duty leading the patrol into Nijmegen and they got separated from the rest of the patrol in the crowds of Dutch civilians, who naturally thought they were being liberated. They eventually managed to push their way through and get to the highway bridge, where they surprised and captured seven guards and a small artillery weapon at the southern end without firing a shot. They waited an hour for the rest of the patrol to arrive, but when it started getting dark decided they had to withdraw. As they did so, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge. The thing about this account is that it demonstrated what would have been possible if the whole battalion had been sent, as Gavin had instructed Lindquist at the division briefing (Nordyke, 2012), instead of just a reinforced platoon planned by the plodding Lindquist. If the 1st Battalion 508th had taken up positions on the bridge, it would have mirrored the situation at Arnhem where Frost had just arrived with his 2nd Parachute Battalion and secured the Arnhem highway bridge, just after Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 crossed over it on their way south to Nijmegen, and we may have had a spectacular battle with Gräbner at Nijmegen bridge that evening instead of the following morning when he returned to Arnhem and tried to force Frost's position. The problem as I see it after reading Nordyke, which TIK doesn't seem to have done, is that Lindquist was a poor combat leader. This was evident in the 508th's first combat operation in Normandy, but he had previously shown that he was a gifted administrator as an S-1 (admin and personnel) officer in the early days of the US Airborne forces. Nordyke's earlier chapters on the formation of the regiment and action in Normandy are essential reading to understand this important backstory to what happened later at Nijmegen. After the war, in Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Gavin praised Lindquist's abilities as an administrator and said he produced documentation like you'd never seen, but he noted that Matthew Ridgway (82nd Division CO in Normandy) didn't trust him (I assume he meant in combat) and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Ridgway had a problem in that because he wouldn't promote Lindquist, he couldn't promote any Colonel in the Division because Lindquist had seniority. This might explain why Ridgway didn't take Lindquist with him to XVIII Airborne Corps in August as his G-1, which would have been the perfect solution and probably would have shortened the war if his replacement at the 508th was a good combat leader for Market Garden. Gavin himself isn't without some responsibility in all this, he inherited the division from Ridgway, although it has to be said he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and was running himself ragged doing both jobs, and after the jump into Holland he was doing that while carrying a jump injury to his spine. Gavin's performnce was undeoubtedly heroic in many respects, but I also think flawed. He tried to mitigate Lindquist's poor combat leadership by giving him specific instructions to "move with speed" to the bridge in the briefing, even pointing out on a map the route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. He clearly didn't trust Lindquist either, but couldn't or wouldn't replace him before the operation. This all came to a head at about 1830 hrs on 17 September in Holland, when Gavin received a report from Chet Graham that Lindquist was dug in on the heights and not sending a battalion to the bridge until the drop zone was cleared. Gavin was as mad as Graham had ever seen him and ordered him into a Jeep - "come with me - let's get him moving." His first words to Lindquist were "I told you to move with speed."
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  506. @Johnny Carroll - I think one battalion would have to have tighter bridgehead in Lent. The whole 504th were pretty spread out when they crossed over on 20 September and finally established their stop line between Fort Hof van Holland and Fort Het Laauwik by 2000 hrs. The bridge itself is a choke point, and the Germans would not be able to force it if held in battalion strength. Gräbner was impetuous returning to Arnhem because he thought there were only about 200 British paratroopers at the bridge, but on his initial reconnaissance to Nijmegen he would would probably have been (or should have been) more circumspect and report back his findings.
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  507. I don't think he was a twit, either.
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  508.  @sean640307  - American forces rapidly expanded during during the war. At the start of the conflict British and Commonwealth forces already under arms were by far greater and on a global scale. Most of that blood and treasure was expended during the course of the war and by 1945 the US had the larger part of forces in Europe, and of course the Pacific. That inclined them to behave as the 'senior' partner, which for the British must have felt like being bullied by your own son just because he had grown bigger and taller than his dad!
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  509. Not after Antwerp was captured and supply lines to 15.Armee from Germany were cut. Cutting off all German forces west of the Market Garden corridor would have eased operations by 1st Canadian Army to clear the Scheldt, a point made by Montgomery when he presented Market Garden to him at their 10 September Brussels airport meeting - "The quickest way to open up Antwerp was to back my plan of concentration on the left – which plan would not only help our logistic and maintenance situation but would also keep up the pressure on the stricken Germans in the area of greatest importance, thus helping to end the war quickly… It was obvious that he disagreed with my analysis. He repeated that we must first close to the Rhine and cross it on a wide front; then, and only then, could we concentrate on one thrust… But Eisenhower agreed that 21 Army Group should strike northwards towards Arnhem as early as possible, and he admitted that successful operations in that direction would open up wide possibilities for future action." (The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, 1958) The main reason the Channel ports held out so long was because the Canadians did not have the force ratios over the port garrisons to overcome them quickly - the Canadian Army was spread too thin investing the Channel ports AND pursuing the 15.Armee up the coast to the Scheldt estuary. I'm currently on the final chapter ('Conclusions') of Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts' new book, The Army That Got Away - 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022), which I think is probably the definitve history on this since it is such an overlooked part of the European campaign, and is effectively a prequel to their first book, Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) on Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and the German recovery in the autumn of 1944 (2013).
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  510. At 5:45 TIK said "with Mussolini flying to Germany for the Olympics, and in 1937 as well". In English, this means the Olympics were NOT in 1937, which is correct.
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  511. Actually, Hitler was a great help in many ways, but some of the American comanders were a hindrance to Montgomery's efforts to win the war as quickly as possible. American exceptionalism is an absolute pain in the butt-ocks at times. There's a story that John Lennon was once asked by an American journalist if he thought Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world? The story goes that John just laughed and replied that he wasn't even the best drummer in The Beatles. I'm sure Canada is just too polite to point out the obvious parallel!
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  512. ​ @thevillaaston7811 - this is a bit disinegnuous of Gavin since he was writing this after the fact and not before the operation. MacDonald's official history was based on his interviews and the information collected by Captain Westover on the US Army Historical staff. Since Lindquist denied in his interview with Westover being given an order to move on the bridge until after he was in position (on the Groesbeek ridge), Gavin's letter to Westover in which he said he instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge was disregarded, since Lindquist would not confirm it. For that apparent reason, the priority of taking the bridge as well as the ridge is not in MacDonald's official history. American historian John C. McManus found a witness to the final divisional briefing in Lt. Col. Jack Norton (the Division G-3 Operations Officer) and has conducted what I think is a very good analysis of the whole bridge versus ridge priority debate and has come to the correct conclusion that Gavin wanted both secured at the same time, and he and Browning were of one mind on this. Browning made at least two attempts to have the bridge secured by coup de main, but was frustrated in this by Brereton and then Gavin, but at least if all the 508th's objectives were attacked at the same time from the main Drop Zone then the plan at Nijmegen and the whole operation should have, could have, worked successfully. McManus' account (September Hope, 2012) ties in with 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental history of the 508th (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012), who has another witness to the same briefing in 508th liaison officer to Division HQ, Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, who also had to relay Lindquist's message to Gavin he was not sending a battalion to the bridge until he had cleared the DZ, and then went with Gavin back to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving. The US Army Official History had not interviewed enough people to get to the true story, which seems only to have emerged since RG Poulussen started investigating this aspect of MARKET GARDEN for his book Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and was followed by McManus and Nordyke in the next year with their books. I find it extraordinary that Gavin would claim physical possession of the bridge would be "worthless" without the high ground, and it's simply not true that the high ground dominated all the terrain around it. It actually only dominates the polder to the east from the heights at Berg-en-Dal (where 3/508th observed German troops from SS-Division zV headquarters fleeing into Germany), while the ridge to the west is heavily wooded and has a more gradual slope northwards down into the urban area of Nijmegen - it is too flat and too wooded to overlook the city. It looks dominant on the topographical map, but not when you are on it, and anyone can check this from anywhere in the world with an internet connection by using Google Street View. I challenge anyone to get observation on the Nijmegen bridges from anywhere on the Groesbeek ridge and post the coordinates on this thread. If Gavin's logic was correct, then Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion would not be able to hold the north end of Arnhem bridge for four days against an SS-Panzerkorps without Dobie's 1st Parachute Battalion succeeding in their mission of holding the high ground to the north? Obviously nonsense, since Frost did what he did and Dobie's battalion was destroyed abandoning the high ground and trying to reinforce him. A battalion of the 508th on Nijmegen bridge should have been able to hold it even with the Germans on the Groesbeek ridge. Gavin's airhead might have been in serious trouble, but the bridge would be his long enough for XXX Corps to get to him. This is clearly the opinion of an American historian (McManus op cit, 2012), and I commend his analysis. Gavin's opinion after the fact as related to Cornelius Ryan and in MacDonald, were to cover Lindquist's and his own failure.
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  513. Lindquist was a poor field commander and Gavin made a mistake in trusting him.
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  514. 1:29 - Ha! Just realised the US paratrooper pictured on the map of Nijmegen here is Lt. Kelso C. Horne, commander of 1st Platoon, 'I' Company 508th PIR, who was wounded in Normandy and actually missed MARKET GARDEN. It's a well-known photo and appears in many books, including the front cover of the Osprey book on US Airborne Divisions in the ETO 1944-45. The battle in which Horne was wounded was the battle for Hill 95 (Saint Catherine) on 4 July, described in Chapter 8 ("We Practically Got Annihilated") of Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), and it was one of Colonel Lindquist's worst mistakes before he failed to move quickly on the Nijmegen bridge in operation MARKET, and Gavin had to go to the 508th CP to chew him out and get him moving, unfortunately too late. Nordyke's principal witness in both instances was Captain Chet Graham, who was acting 2nd battalion commander at Hill 95, due to officer casualties, and 508th liaison officer to Division HQ in MARKET.
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  515.  @thevillaaston7811  - his Arnhem book was published in 2018 and did not address any of the issues in the 82nd Airborne disclosed by Gavin himself in his 1967 interview with Irish journalist Cornelius Ryan (and not included in A Bridge To Far), in Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost at Nijmegen (2011), or American historian John McManus' September Hope (2012) and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). He had plenty of time to read these books and address the findings, but chose to ignore them and recycle the old narrative established by Ryan instead. It's hard to respect a country that enjoys having smoke blown up its collective arse by the likes of Ryan and Beevor, but they just seem to just lap it up. It's a lack of critical thinking. Beevor's service in the British Army was indeed short and sweet, serving in the 11th Hussars from about the time they became the first unit to receive the Chieftain main battle tank in Germany, and then the regiment was amalgamated with 10th Royal Hussars (Prince of Wales's Own) to form the Royal Hussars in 1969. Beevor resigned his commission in 1970, and as you say missed most of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland. I see that other notable members of the 11th Hussars include Harry Flashman - a fictional character from Tom Brown's School Days (1857) by Thomas Hughes and whose adventures continued in the series of books known as The Flashman Papers by the Scottish novelist George MacDonald Fraser. Flashman was a detestable character, a Rugby School bully in Tom Brown's School Days and described by Fraser in later life in the British Army as "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and, oh yes, a toady." In the Flashman Papers – which are purported to have been written by Flashman and discovered only after his death – he describes his own dishonourable conduct with complete candour. Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who often runs away from danger. Nevertheless, through a combination of luck and cunning, he usually ends each volume acclaimed as a hero. Flashman was played by Malcolm McDowell in the Richard Lester 1975 film Royal Flash. (Harry Flashman, Wiki) I see Beevor as someone who wanted desperately to be Harry Flashman, but lacked the luck and cunning to become a hero. Except in America, of course... Flashman was one of three favourite topics my school history teacher (who was also the head of department) always digressed into when he got bored with teaching us Bismarck, or whatever he was supposed to be doing. His other two favourites were Captain Nolan's death as portrayed by actor David Hemmings in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), and the SAS assault on the Iranian embassy in Princes Gate, London 1980.
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  516.  @bigwoody4704  - blame Lindquist and Gavin. The Guards should never have had to spend two days in Nijmegen fighting for the bridges themselves, when the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment could have secured the highway bridge without firing a shot on D-Day. Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees personally briefed Colonel Lindquist at De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left just an NCO and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge, but contrary to Gavin's pre-flight instruction to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge, Lindquist only sent a recon patrol. The only three scouts from the patrol who didn't get lost in the crowds of liberated Dutch civilians managed to surprise the seven guards at the southern end of the bridge and take them prisoner. They waited an hour until it got dark and then decided they had to withdraw when nobody else showed up. Sources: Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge
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  517. It was senior involement of the American air commanders Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) that were the problem. They decided to compromise Browning's original operation SIXTEEN proposal, based on his earlier COMET plan, in order to protect their air assets for MARKET. This hamstrung the airborne troops in achieving their objectives on the ground: 1) MARKET GARDEN involved more airborne troops than Normandy - both operations involved multiple airlifts, but Normandy required much shorter flights and turnaround times. 2) Ground attack aircraft from 2nd Tactical Air Force were grounded while the airborne transports were in the air for deconfliction purposes. Bad weather was also more of a factor in September than it was in June. 3) SAS did not have the resources for large scale attacks, such as seizing bridges. The glider troops of 1st Airlanding Brigade were initially tasked with this for COMET and SIXTEEN, as they were successfully in Normandy for 'Pegasus Bridge', and these raids were removed by Brereton and Williams when they decided on all-daylight flights for MARKET taking off at dawn, or later if delayed by fog. The glider assaults could only be conducted at night during Moon periods or at dawn in no Moon periods, and to expect an Airlanding Company of 133 men in six gliders to hold a large bridge behind enemy lines all day from dawn until the likely relief near dusk is obviously not practical. 4) The armour reported in the Reichswald southeast of Nijmegen was in transit and the aerial photo of tanks in the Deelerwoud northwest of Arnhem was correctly dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles. Both would have been missed if the carpet bombing you suggest was carried out. The SS Hohenstaufen division that stopped in the Reichswald was dispersed around the Veluwe region between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Zutphen, and the training unit photographed by Spitfire on 12 September were camped at Wolfswinkel north of Son on 17 September and tried to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) across the road on Sonsche Heide, but were shot up by USAAF fighter aircraft escorting the drop. The planners would not have known this in advance, but carpet bombing whole forests in the hope of hitting a few tanks sounds like a game of 'Battleships' to me. The presence of armour was not what compromised the operation and the reason COMET was cancelled and SIXTEEN/MARKET replaced it was to enable the British Airborne with their considerable anti-tank assets to be concentrated at the point of greatest armoured threat, which was determined to be Arnhem in the north. 5) Forward air controllers were provided by a hastily formed USAAF unit called 306th Fighter Control Squadron. These teams (two per division) were the ones equipped with special VHF radios for contacting aircraft and these were the radios delivered with the wrong crystals and did not work. 6) More appropriate DZs for British Airborne? Where? The drop zones chosen were the nearest suitable locations based on terrain and Flak locations. The much discussed area south of Arnhem bridge (Malburgsche Polder) was unsuitable for mass glider landings due to the netwrok of small drainage ditches (the coup de main raids would have landed on the smaller flood plains near the bridges), and a parachute drop there was ruled out for D-Day because it was located between two of the four heavy Flak positions around Arnhem and crossed by high tension lines from the Arnhem power station. It was only deemed suitable for the Polish drop on D+2 on the assumption 1st Parachute Brigade would have control of the area and the Royal Engineers in control of the power station. 7) The diversonary tactic of dummy paratroop drops at Veedendaal and Wesel were conducted and diverted German troops in the first 24 hours. I have a German map timestamped 16.30 on 17.9.44 that shows parachute drops at Veenendaal, Tiel, and "800?" at Zaltbommel, which may be erronoeous reports or dummy drops, or reports generated by baled out aircrews. They certainly caused confusion and German troop movements to investigate. 8) Your question "shouldn't Eisenhower have addressed the Airforce issue on behalf of Monty"? - Well, it's like this: Browning could not protest the changes made to his COMET/SIXTEEN concepts, which he believed important for the success of the operation, because he had already threatened to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges), scheduled too soon to print and distribute maps to brief the troops. Brereton planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation, when it was thankfully cancelled, so Browning knew his political situation was precarious. He could appeal to Montgomery, who would then have to appeal to Eisenhower to adjudicate, and as James Daly (Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, 2024) suggests, Eisenhower would likely have consulted his air chief, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery. The most likely result would be that if Brereton was not backed, he would simply pull the plug on the operation. He had the authority to do this, as he had already rejected a Montgomery request for an airborne operation (INFATUATE) on Walcheren to help the Canadians clear the Scheldt estuary in September. Browning had not entirely given up trying to influence the planning for MARKET. In his interview with A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan in 1967, Gavin said "the British" wanted him to drop a battalion at the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge. He toyed with the idea, but said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where troops were scattered over a wide area and he landed with just four or five men to command. He said the division was disorganised for days. Browning was able to make one last minute change to the glider schedule by advancing his Corps HQ transport to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift (now on D+1 thanks to Brereton and Williams) to the 1st, but this he gets accused of going on an ego trip, when he was clearly concerned about Nijmegen and wanated to be there. It was not soon enough to prevent the debacle of Gavin's choice for the Nijmegen mission, Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR, who failed to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing. The delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to move into the city and reinforce its bridges, fatally compromising the operation on the ground. The air commanders needed to be reined in, not given more control, as they already had full autonomy over the air planning and could ultimately just cancel operations altogether.
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  518. Browning was edged out of the planning process by USAAF commanders Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier Command respectively, and Browning could not protest changes made to his outline proposal for operation SIXTEEN after already threatening to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II and Brereton had planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ before the operation was thankfully cancelled. By the time Montgomery's 21st Army Group was notified of the changes for the final MARKET plan, it was too late for Montgomery to order any further amendments, and if Brereton had refused them the matter probably would have gone to Eisenhower for adjudication, and Eisenhower probably would have consulted his Air Chief, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery. So it was either a case of go with the American plan, or cancel. There's a reason Brereton and Williams are not cast as characters in the Hollywood film - it's hard for people to blame them if they don't even know these men even existed and what part they played in the operation, so naturally the blame goes on those they know.
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  519. I've not read of Montgomery expressing any view on the Groesbeek heights and I think it's unlikely, as they were a tactical objective and not a strategic one. Browning, on the other hand, had been quite vocal about the heights. Montgomery and Browning had met at Dempsey's 2nd Army headquarters on 3 September to discuss an airborne operation in support of 2nd Army's crossing of the Rhine in its sector between Arnhem and Wesel. We only know from Dempsey's diary entry for 4 September that he was informed Arnhem in the Netherlands had been chosen as the objective over Dempsey and Browning's preference for Wesel in Germany. Operation COMET, scheduled for 8 September, was to employ 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Brigade at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, so it was 1st Airborne that was originally to secure this area, and after the weather delayed COMET to 10 September, it was finally cancelled in the early hours as troops were boarding their aircraft by Montgomery on intelligence grounds. He had received reports that II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the area northeast of Arnhem and the operation looked like it was not strong enough against this increased opposition. Browning met with Montgomery again on 10 September to discuss enlarging the operation (provisionally named SIXTEEN), and it was this idea that Montgomery then proposed to Eisenhower in a meeting later at Brussels airport, while Browning travelled to England. The expanded operation was to include the US Airborne Divisions, and after some options based on intelligence grounds for landing one of the US divisions at Arnhem, it was eventually decided to have both the American units secure the corridor and land the British division with the Poles at Arnhem. These changes between the Arnhem and Nijmegen assignments were probably based on intelligence, because the British Airborne divisions were better equipped with anti-tank weapons, while their American counterparts had more field artillery in their establishments, and there was some doubt if the balance of armoured threat was from the known location of II.SS-Panzerkorps northeast of Arnhem or from a panzer depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald where they may be drawing new tanks. You're correct in saying that the 82nd and 101st were then switched because of their airfield locations in England in order to deconflict their airlift routes. 1st Airborne Division planners then briefed their counterparts in the 82nd Airborne for MARKET, because the British Airborne had already been studying the ground between Grave and Nijmegen for a week in preparation for COMET. I find the best analysis on the Groesbeek heights versus Nijmegen bridge priority is in September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012): In Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’, he says this - As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - So, this order to Lindquist witnessed by officers in the briefing and recounted in both McManus (2012) and Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), backs up Gavin's July 1945 letter to US Army Historical officer Captain Westover, and confirmed in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974). It's not clear from the official historical record or Ryan's book that Lindquist failed to carry out this instruction against virtually zero opposition, since it only became clear in Nordyke and McManus more recently (in 2012) that the Germans had evacuated Nijmegen on the first afternoon and the bridge was guarded by an NCO with just seventeen men until elements of II.SS-Panzerkorps started arriving that evening after dark. McManus also refers to the three-man point team led by PFC Joe Atkins that got separated from a 1st Battalion recon patrol that was sent to the bridge, and took the southern end with seven prisoners without firing a shot, but after waiting an hour for reinforcements that failed to arrive, they had to give it up as it got dark and they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end. The full account from Atkins is in Zig Boroughs' book, The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge. There is also a very useful account from SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), in Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014). It fits very well with the accounts we now have from the American side that there were no German combat troops in Nijmegen until SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived there after dark on the first day.
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  520.  @jbjones1957  - the plan we're discussing is Gavin's divisional plan, not MARKET GARDEN as a whole. As I said, it's a tactical consideration, not a strategic one. The discussion in this video centres around the 16 September meeting notes at I Airborne Corps HQ in England, where the notation says "1. General Browning directed General Gavin not to attempt seizure of NIJMEGEN bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the BERG-EN-DAL high ground was firmly in our hands." (Box 100, Folder 03, Daily plans, 82nd Airborne in Operation Market Garden, Page 8. Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University). But I have already provided a more full account than exists in the typed notes on the meeting from McManus, and his witness in that meeting was the Division G-3 (Operations) officer, Lieutenent Colonel Jack Norton, and I'll re-post the first paragraph again - As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” TIK is right when he says (in response to the Clone Warrior [smh] comments on his Beevor video) "the first rule of History Club is that you don't just take a source at face value - you have to scrutinise it first. So we need to think critically here, and we need to ask questions like: what actually is this report? Who wrote these words? When was it written? How believable is this source? Is there any other evidence that contradicts the idea presented in this report?" It turns out that this G-3 report was written by Jack Norton on 5 October 1945. As TIK says, "this is important, because anyone can write anything after the event." In fact Gavin, in his 1966 covering letter to Cornelius Ryan enclosed with the files he was sending, wrote "I did not realize that I had this in my papers until now and I did not give it to Captain MacDonald when he was doing the Department of the Army Official History. Several years ago I asked Browning about this point and he wrote me a letter, which I sent to Captain MacDonald verfying my memory of Browning's instructions to me. As I said above, this is the first time I have come across this note from Jack Norton." TIK then goes on to Page 9 - "Colonel Lindquist at this meeting was directed to seize the high ground in the vicinity of BERG-EN-DAL as his primary mission and to attempt to seize the NIJMEGEN bridge with a small force; namely, less than a battalion." This is virtually word for word Jack Norton's recollection in McManus, and 508th liaison officer to Division HQ Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham recounted a very similar account for Nordyke, as he sat in on the meeting as well. McManus has in between these two points in his book gone into a very good (I think) analysis of the debate between these priorities and concluded that both the heights and the bridge were to be secured on the first day if at all possible, but this did not sink in to Lindquist's thinking. Neither witness to the briefing had stated in their recollections that Lindquist was to wait until all his other tasks were completed before sending the 1st Battalion to the bridge, and that explains why in Chet Graham's account on the first day that "I never saw Gavin so mad" when Graham delivered Lindquist's message that he would send the battalion "as soon as the DZ is cleared and secured." I suspect, as TIK also speculated, that the post-war narrative was established (allegedly with Browning's agreement, assuming his letter to Gavin exists and supports him), in light of the fact the operation had failed. TIK does not have the regimental history (Nordyke) in his book list, so I'm sure he hasn't drilled down that far. I think it was in order to avoid throwing Lindquist under the bus. This is understandable, because ultimately the responsibility for the divisional plan and seeing that it was carried out, rested with Gavin. I think Gavin was an honourable man, and he did also recommend after the war that the US Army change its policy of replacing officers that made mistakes so they can learn from them and remain in place, so it would be in his character. It might be assumed he was talking about himself with regard to the Army policy, but I think he was already implementing such a policy during the war within his own division. Lindquist remained CO of the 508th throughout the war. As far as Gavin's letter to Captain MacDonald and the Official History is concerned, I'm not sure if he remembered the name correctly or not. I believe MacDonald was the author of the Official History, but he wrote to a Historical Officer called Captain Westover on 17 July 1945: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." In the Box 101, Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - Ryan notes: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. - The note about Gavin having "three days" to secure the Nijmegen bridge seems contradictory to me, and perhaps another view (Ryan's?) written from hindsight because XXX Corps did actually arrive on Day 3, unknowable at the time of the landings, and it contradicts both the instruction to Lindquist to send a battalion to the bridge directly after landing as confirmed to both Westover and Ryan, and also the British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge to seize it by coup de main. The latter point suggests "the British" (Gavin didn't say who specifically) saw the bridge as a priority, but Gavin eventually dismissed the coup de main idea in order to avoid dispersing his parachute drop.
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  521.  @jbjones1957  - SIXTEEN was just an outline plan. In IT terms it would probably look like a requirements document rather than a specification. The detailed planning would be a combination of that already done by 1st Airborne Division for COMET and Brereton's three-division air plan for LINNET/LINNET II. The parachute coup de main was almost certainly suggested or "requested" after Brereton had deleted the COMET glider coup de main assaults in the MARKET plan. All I know about the glider assaults is that they were modelled on the Orne canal 'Pegasus Bridge' assault in Normandy on D-Day, which was undertaken by D Company of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiment ("Ox & Bucks"). The units scheduled for the COMET raids were D Companies of the three Airlanding Battalions in 1st Airborne Division (1st Border, 2nd South Staffords, 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers). I know the KOSB's D Company were assigned to Nijmegen and lead glider pilot was Sergeant Jim Wallwork, who flew the lead on the Pegasus Bridge raid. I think (not confirmed) the South Staffords were to assault the Arnhem bridge, which presumably leaves the Border company for the Grave bridge. Exactly where at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge the battalion parachute drop would take place, I don't know. The area is covered by the houses, farms and orchards of Lent village, with few small open fields between them, so it may have to be some distance from the bridge. If you look at the special drop zone for one Company of the 504th at Grave demanded by Colonel Reuben Tucker, it was actually 2 km from the south end of the bridge. It was an accident that one stick (Lt Thompson's) dropped closer (less than 1 km) because after the green light went on he waited for his plane on the left wing of the formation to clear houses (the hamlet of Velp) before jumping. The rest of the Company landed south of Velp between the hamlet and the Zaalheuvel farm. If you accept a distance of 2 km from the Nijmegen bridge, there's more open ground there around the Visveld farm, but there were also two heavy Flak batteries there on the defence overprint map with 6 and 5 heavy guns indicated, and a light platoon of 3 guns. If this was what Gavin was facing in his planning process, I could well understand Ryan's note that "Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily." I think it's understandable. Your suggestion of 1st Parachute Brigade landing on DZ 'K' (Malburgsche Polder) in the other comment was deemed unsuitable for the 1st lift because of the heavy Flak positions bracketing the DZ on the Meinerswijk Polder and Malburgsche Polder itself, and the high tension lines (!) crossing the zone from the Arnhem power station near the bridge. The zone was deemed suitable for the Polish Brigade on D+2, only because it was assumed by that time 1st Parachute Brigade would be in control of the area, with the Flak positions neutralised and the HT lines cut. The planned RV for the Royal Engineers after their intitial tasks were completed was the power station, where they would take control of the station and ensure power to the transmission lines were cut. The zone was also ruled out as unsuitable for mass glider landings because of the network of drainage ditches preventing vehicle and artillery extraction (and incorrectly assumed too soft), and only a small coup de main of six gliders landing infantry near the bridge itself was deemed practical.
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  522.  @jbjones1957  - the doctrine change is consistent with Gavin's own comments to Cornelius Ryan, but the source of the problem was the USAAF Troop Carrier crews over Sicily. They had rejected British advice to fly in columns and flew in a formation that got broken up as soon as they encountered Flak, and that scattered the paratroops over a huge area per Gavin's experience. Taylor's deleted drop zones south of Eindhoven were prompted by Williams (IX Troop Carrier Command again), according to RG Poulussen's Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), which shows a message sent by Taylor to Dempsey on 14 September outlining William's objections on grounds of Flak. Taylor was therefore communicating to Dempsey that based on estimates of time for assembley and road march, his troops would not be in Eindhoven until 2000 hrs D-Day. In fact they were delayed to the next day by the detonation of the Son bridge and could not get across and into Eindhoven before dark. Browning had proposed the zones, according to Poulussen, but in Taylor's message Williams "has determined that it is not possible to drop parachute troops south of WILHELMINA CANAL because of the flak around EINDHOVEN." I'm sure Taylor would have preferred dropping on his objectives, but I believe he did object himself to landing near Uden to bridge the gap between between the bridges at Veghel and the 82nd airborne at Grave, but I can't find where in the book it is mentioned. I think this is more understandable because he simply didn't have the troops available until the 506th at Eindhoven were relieved and could be redeployed north to Uden.
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  523.  @jbjones1957  - not consistent with Taylor's signal to Dempsey on 14 September: "1. The agreed mission of 101st Airborne in operation 'MARKET' includes the securing of the canal and stream crossings at EINDHOVEN. Since this mission was received, Major General P. L. Williams, Commanding General of Troop Carrier Command, has determined that it is not possible to drop parachute troops south of WILHELMINA CANAL because of the flak about EINDHOVEN. Consequently, the nearest drop zone for this EINDHOVEN mission will be about eight miles from the objectives. Allowing two hours to assemble the regiment and three hours for the approach march it is estimated that five hours will elapse before Airborne troops can reach EINDHOVEN. The present tentative drop schedule places the troops on the ground 1500 D Day. Hence Airborne troops will not be able to reach the bridges at EINDHOVEN until about 2000." This is a document (barely readable type) shown in RG Poulussen's Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), and his commentary is that "Williams rejected - again driven by Flak concerns - two suggested drop/landing zones in the area of 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION, namely Valkenswaard and Eindhoven. Browning had proposed these drop/landing zones for 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION so that 30 CORPS could make a good head start on D-Day, by 'hopping' from one secured spot to the next, and on an 'airborne carpet'. Without this 'airborne carpet' 30 CORPS would have to fight its way - at least 13 miles - through the thickening German crust of defence on D-Day, until they reached Eindhoven, hopefully secured by Amrican 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION." This is in addition to the criticisms that Williams had removed the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem and Nijmegen (and presumably Grave) bridges, as well as the double airlifts on D-Day - key components of Browning's COMET plan. It was certainly in Gavin's case he had planned his divisional deployment on a "power center" concept in response to his experience in Sicily, and this was his rationale (per Cornelius Ryan interview) for dismissing a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge.
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  524.  @thevillaaston7811  - Browning and Montgomery certainly had an earlier meeting on the 10 September before Browning flew to England to brief 1st Allied Airborne Army, and Montgomery met Eisenhower at Brussels airport, and this was after Montgomery had cancelled operation COMET at the last minute in the early hours. Troops were boarding their planes and gliders, but Montgomery had received intelligence that II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET would need reinforcement. Quite possible that earlier meeting was at Dempsey's headquarters. The early discussions for COMET between the three men was at Dempsey's 2nd Army HQ on 3/4 September, and according to Dempsey's diary he went to bed and left Browning and Montgomery still assessing the relative merits of Arnhem vs Wesel as the Rhine crossing point. They informed him in the morning of 4 September that Arnhem was decided on, but there's no indication of the reasons. I believe both Browning and Dempsey had preferences for Wesel, but Sebastian Ritchie (Arnhem: Myth & Reality, 2011, 2019) suggests that Montgomery may have chosen to avoid the north-easterly axis of an advance to Wesel as it was close to the US XIX Corps boundary, and he might have been wary of possibly having to share a Rhine crossing with the Americans. So Arnhem was the chosen final bridge for the airborne attack when detailed planning for COMET started. COMET was originally scheduled for 8 September and was delayed by weather to 10 September, when it was cancelled at about 0200 hours. Montgomery had also received the previous day a report on the first V-2 rockets landing on London that were thought to be launched from sites on the Dutch coast, so there was a cable from London asking when Montgomery expected that general area of the western Netherlands to be roped off (by the northwards advance to Arnhem and the Ijsselmeer cutting the supply lines). Montgomery used the V-2 intelligence at the Eisenhower meeting to help sell the COMET upgrade with the two US airborne divisions added, which at this stage had the provisional name SIXTEEN. Eisenhower was already sold on the northwards Arnhem advance because COMET was a done deal and was within minutes of being launched when Montgomery cancelled it, so Eisenhower readily endorsed the SIXTEEN proposal. The arguments earlier in the same meeting were on the single thrust versus broad front strategy that they had been discussing in cables for several weeks, and that cme to a head before the meeting turned to current operations. Too many people think the arguments were about MARKET GARDEN and after A Bridge Too Far was published EIsenhower had to publicly state for the record that “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” The Groesbeek heights were a tactical consideration for Gavin. Montgomery's responsibility was strategic, and the operational responsibility was Browning and Dempsey. There's a video on YouTube explaining the different levels of military planning and the thumbnail says it all - STRATEGIC - OPERTIONAL - TACTICAL - on the blackboard from top to bottom. I recall making a remark in a comment reply that I didn't think Montgomery was burning the midnight oil pouring over maps in his caravan to plan Johnny Frost's route march to the Arnhem bridge. That was not his job. I think on this point of Gavin's planning, Cornelius Ryan's interview notes are very informative: 'We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967) John C McManus' book September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) has, I think, the best analysis on the Groesbeek heights versus Nijmegen bridge priorities, and I have posted that passage many times before. Browning and Gavin expected both to be taken on the first day and only Colonel Lindquist seems not to have understood that speed was required to achieve that.
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  525. Only an American would be obsessing about the War of Independence on a video about WW2. It's not the first time America has been fighting in a different way by fighting the wrong war entirely. Just like during the War of 1812-14, Americans still think it's another war of independence. The purpose of the 1812 British naval blockade of American ports was to prevent the United States from supplying Napoleonic France, and since Britain accomplished its war aims, it won. Both against the United States and Napoleon. You need to do more research, because your parochial school system really badly lets you down.
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  526. Gee whizz Alec, if people knew their history as far back as 1870, the UK would not have joined the Fourth Reich in 1973. The EU's evolution is a return to Bismarck's strategy of unifying the German states into a federal superstate under Prussian domination by stealth treaties.
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  527.  @refuge42  - I think the issue of the Groesbeek ridge was that it was a terrain feature between the drop zones and the city of Nijmegen. For the 508th, assigned to the Nijmegen mission, the ridge was an initial objective for all three battalions - minus D Company, which was clearing the drop zone of containers and assisting the Regiment S-4 Supply Officer to establish a dump at Voxhill farm. I believe De Ploeg (1st Battalion initial objective) was achieved by 1730 hrs, recon patrols reporting no opposition perhaps earlier, and we have a more precise time of 1830 hrs (in Nordyke 2012) for the regiment HQ that followed them, but exact timings are unclear on certain points. There's mounting evidence that Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing - in his letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover (17 July 1945) he said - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." 48 hours prior to take-off was Friday 15 September, two days after the first orders were issued on 13 September, and either Lindquist updated his Field Order No.1 and issue a revised plan in accordance with Gavin's verbal instruction (apparently many 508th records are 'missing'), or he didn't for some reason and stuck to his original plan of having 1st Battalion dig-in on the ridge at De Ploeg and send a pre-arranged recon patrol based on Lt Weaver's 3rd platoon of C Company. When Lt Col Shields Warren (CO 1st Battalion) was eventually told to move the battalion into Nijmegen at 2000 hrs on D-Day, he was surprised by the order, suggesting Lindquist did not update his own Field Orders on 15 September. Gavin confirmed his instruction to Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far: 'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army.' (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) - my square brackets because of the errors. This I think is where the narrative gets distorted. Gavin did not prioritise the Groesbeek heights over the Nijmegen bridge - that part is in Ryan's notes, but not in quotes, so he's not claiming Gavin specifically told him that. Ryan's notes go on to say - 'He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.' - How does Gavin know he has three days before the operation? Only Ryan knows that from hindsight, and it runs counter to the need for speed. Gavin would have no idea if XXX Corps would arrive in 3 hours or three weeks. I believe it was hoped the link-up with 82nd Airborne would be in one or two days - it was actually on D+2 (19 September), but about 43 hours 30 minutes elapsed time for the armoured cars (Household Cavalry) and 45 hours for the tanks (Grenadier Guards), so less than two days. I don't think Ryan understood that Gavin secured his first priority with the 504th, his concern about the Reichswald with the 505th, and that left the 508th to secure the Groesbeek ridge and the Nijmegen bridge(s). For the 508th the Groesbeek ridge was their initial objective, so if it was occupied then a pitched battle for Nijmegen could be expected. If not, as was the case, then Gavin expected the 1st Battalion not to delay in going for the highway bridge in Nijmegen. This has been cleared up by John C McManus (September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, 2012) and Phil Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, 2012), who both have first hand witness accounts of the final briefing and Gavin's instruction to Lindquist (Division G-3 Ops officer Lt Col Jack Norton and 508th Liaison officer to Division HQ Capt Chet Graham respectively). There's also a conflation between this pre-flight instruction and a proposal by Gavin on D+1 to have a second attempt at getting the Nijmegen bridge after the first failed (too late) attempt the previous night. Browning rejected the proposal, preferring they wait until the Guards arrived to provide armoured support. This often gets cited as evidence Browning prioritised the heights over the bridge, but this is nonsense. Browning was reacting to the tactical reality the Germans had reinforced the bridges in Nijmegen with SS panzer troops and all attempts at a coup de main had failed. Brereton had deleted Browning's proposed glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from the MARKET plan, and Gavin had discarded a British request (I presume Browning again) to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge, he told Cornelius Ryan because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. Gavin's own solution was his instruction to Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion from the drop zone without delay, but we know this failed to be understood by Lindquist. Browning and Gavin were of one mind on the objectives, but planning compromises and a miscommunication both contributed to the failure to secure the bridge while it was still undefended.
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  528.  @refuge42  - I think the best analysis on the whole bridge versus ridge debate is in John C McManus' book, September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and this extract from Chapter 3 'Foreboding' I think sums it up very well: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
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  529.  @refuge42  - there's a classic series of children's books by Arthur Ransome in the 1930s called Swallows and Amazons, about children in the English Lake District and their sailing adventures. The children in the sailing boat 'Swallow' saw themselves as explorers, holidaying as they were in the lakes for the first time, and they encounter the sailing boat 'Amazon' crewed by local "pirates" Nancy and Peggy Blackett. Nancy explains that her real name is actually Ruth, but her uncle Jim told her that pirates are supposed to be ruthless, so she calls herself Nancy instead. Now, thanks to you, I think of Nick Danger as Nancy... because he's ruthless...
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  530. Montgomery proposed an airborne operation on Walcheren, but it was rejected by Brereton as a suicide mission on the grounds of Flak.
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  531.  @michaelbourgeault9409  - the Poles were due to drop on DZ 'K' just south of Arnhem bridge on the Malburgsche Polder on D+2, by which time the 1st Parachute Brigade was expected to be in control of the area and neutralised any remaining Flak positions (many had been bombed and strafed on D-Day) and also cut the power to the transmission lines crossing the drop zone (!) - the power station was in the 3rd Battalion sector of Arnhem supporting Frost's 2nd Battalion, and it was also the RV for the Royal Engineers after their other tasks were completed. The intention was that the Polish Brigade would cross over the Arnhem bridge, RV with their transport and anti-tanks guns that had landed on the north side of the river, and take up their assigned positions in the eastern sector of Arnhem in an arc between the Rosendaalseweg and the Westervoort bridges (Zevenaarseweg) to complete the divisional perimeter. An airborne assault on Walcheren would have been a direct assault on a heavily defended Flak concentration that was avoided by bombers going to Germany and also avoided by the air routes planned for Market Garden. Deelen airfield, Arnhem, and Nijmegen, also had a horrible concentration of heavy and light Flak guns, but the drop and landing zones were to the south and west of them on D-Day and D+1 to avoid them.
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  532.  @michaelbourgeault9409  - it would depend on the timing. I'm currently just coming towards the end of Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts' new book, The Army That Got Away - 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022), which is a prequel to their first book on called Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) - Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and the German Recovery in Autumn 1944 (2013). The 15.Armee evacuated from the Breskens pocket between 9-22 September, during which time Walcheren island was full of German Infantry Divisions evacuated from the pocket and then sent along the Zuid-Beveland peninsula to the Dutch mainland. On 23 September that process was complete and 15.Armee assumed responsibility for the whole of the western side of the Market Garden corridor (taking over from 1.Fallschirm-Armee). The only real opportunity would be in early September after the capture of Antwerp on 4 September by 11th Armoured Division and before the evacuation began on the 9 September. The problem was the the broad front policy that meant there was no concentration of forces available in the area. Dempsey wanted to pass 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division through 11th Armoured, but as Didden and Swarts point out in their analysis (I had a quick sneek peek at the final chapter) that idea was just a fantasy and simply not possible. To have concentrated 2nd Army on Antwerp and Zuid-Bevelland at this time would mean abandoning the (Market Garden) pursuit to the Rhine and having to do it later when it would doubtlessly be against fully prepared defence lines. If Market Garden had succeeded in reaching the Zuider Zee, 15.Armee would still be cut off, but in a much bigger encirclement along with another army (the WBN - Wehrmacht occupation forces in the Netherlands), and the V-2 issue came into play on 9 September as well. This would have made it easier for the Canadians to clear the Scheldt estuary because their German opponents would no longer be getting any fresh supplies.
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  533. The overbearing ambition myth is mostly American made. The truth is that he overestimated the abilities of his allies, specifically the 1st Canadian Army's difficulties in clearing the Scheldt by themselves (it was in their sector of the front) and which he later admitted was his mistake, and the American 82nd Airborne Division's ability to seize an undefended bridge at Nijmegen on the first afternoon of Operation Market Garden. Montgomery was not guilty of hubris. He was guilty of underestimating his allies rather than overestimating himself. Gavin (82nd Airborne) realised that his 508th Regiment had probably compromised the entire operation by 1830 hrs on D-Day when he was told they were not moving with speed on the Nijmegen bridge as he had instructed before the operation. He was as "mad" as the 508th's liaison officer had ever seen him, and they immediately went to the 508th CP to confront the regimental commander and get him moving, but it was too late. SS-Panzer units were reinforcing the bridges and the city that evening. 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) details these events, and John Sliz's Market Garden Engineers series volume on the XXX Corps' Special Bridging Force (2021) details the alternate plan for taking the Nijmegen bridges if still held by the Germans as either a one or two-brigade river assault to be made by the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division. It was Gavin attempting to make amends for his division's blunder that led him to propose putting the 504th PIR across the river in boats instead. Market Garden was compromised in the 508th PIR command post, not Montgomery's caravan. Conspiracy theorists have speculated it was deliberate, so that a British led operation would fail, but I don't subscribe to it. Nine times out of ten it's a screw-up rather than conspiracy. The 508th's commander had previous form in Normandy, as decsribed by Nordyke in his earlier chapters, and Gavin himself had inherited command of the division when Ridgway was promoted to US XVIII Airborne Corps in August and then failed to replace himself as Assistant Divisional Commander, resulting in running himself ragged doing both jobs during the planning and execution of Market Garden.
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  534.  @johnlucas8479  - that's the same document TIK tore apart in his response to @Clone Warrior in the video - Gavin wasn't to blame? 'New' evidence on Operation Market Garden's failure? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3p6uWW19U He pointed out that it was written after the operation (and after the war) on 23 October 1945, and contained the infamous line in the previous point: II 1. General Browning directed General Gavin not to attempt seizure of NIJMEGEN Bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the BERG-EN-DAL high ground was firmly in our hands. - The next paragraph is the one your quote comes from: III All unit commanders present expressed deep concern for the air column in its daylight approach to the DZ in that flak losses could be extremely heavy. General Browning stated, in strictest confidence, that he was fully aware of the danger and was prepared to lose 33% of his forces getting in. - If Browning actually said that in paragraph III, then I stand corrected he was referring to the whole force in terms of accepting 33% losses and not just the coup de main (which were probably long gone by the time of this briefing), which would think be much more risky. That scale of losses for the whole force - equivalent to a division - seems a bit extreme, considering how light they actually were on the first day, and did not even approach that level on the subsequent airlifts when the Germans knew they were coming and had brought in an additional Flak Brigade from Germany. Maybe he said this to assure everyone he had taken the flak into account, but didn't think it was realistics figure, or he didn't actually say it at all and the document's author was trying to make excuses after the failure of the operation. My problem with this document is the same as TIK's - it was written by the G-3, Lieutenant Jack Norton, after the war, but another problem I have is that Norton himself was a witness to the final divisional briefing on 15 September in which Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist to go directly for the bridge, directly contradicting his October 1945 report. Norton is quoted in McManus (Chapter 3, September Hope, 2012): As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - Admittedly, it's not clear which quotes come from which individual, as Gavin, Norton, Lindquist and Shanley are all quoted, and McManus collects his sources together into footnote 8 listing the various sources, including 'Norton meeting notes, September 16, 1944, all in Ryan collection' - but does not give a box and folder number for Norton's notes. The notes do, however, indicate that Norton is a primary source for both the divisional briefing on 15 September that included Lindquist and the final Corps briefing on 16 September that included Browning, and it makes sense Gavin and Norton were present for both. So, Norton's post-war report document, which Gavin said in his covering letter to Cornelius Ryan he had not seen before, runs contrary to the contemporary recollections of those present on the Nijmegen bridge priority, including Norton! Like TIK, I don't think you can rely on this document.
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  535.  @sean640307  - not sure your last part is correct at all. You need to search for a few maps online (I can't post external links), the overall plan is easy enough to find. The 6.Panzer-armee (Dietrich) in the north with 12 and 1.SS-Panzer-Divisions was vectored on Antwerp via Malmedy and Werbomont respectively, crossing the Meuse at Liege and Huy respectively. The 5.Panzer-armee (Manteuffel) with 116, 2, and 130.Panzer-(Lehr)-Divisions was vectored on Brussels via Houffalize, Noville and Bastogne respectively, crossing the Meuse at Namur, Dinant, Givet. The flanking mission was the 7.Armee with parachute and infantry units deploying between the start line and Givet on the Meuse south of Bastogne. If you can find a map showing the planned 'rollbahn', which translates as 'runway' but was the term used for the designated panzer divisional routes - I found one hit on 'PanzerPlace' and another on the 'Traces of War' websites. The routes for 2.Panzer and 130.Panzer-(Lehr) Divisions were a single rollbahn from Dasburg-Clerveux (They had to construct a bridge to get the armour over the River Our). The route splits in two before it reached Bastogne, with 2.Panzer going north through Noville and the Panzer-Lehr through Bastogne, before rejoining a single road at Champlon. It splits again for the Meuse crossings at Dinant and Givet. Because 101st Airborne depoyed at Bastogne, the 1/506th was bumped by 2.Panzer at Noville and had to withdraw, while the Panzer-Lehr had to divert south of Bastogne itself into the 7.Armee sector in order to by-pass it, but Bastogne was most definitely in the 5.Panzer-armee sector on the Panzer-Lehr-Division's rollbahn to Givet and presumably a planned deployment between Givet and Brussels.
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  536.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  I have a lot of time for Zaloga. He's an American who actually knows his stuff. I have one of his Osprey books - on the US Airborne Divisions in the ETO.
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  537. The intel on the Arnhem area turned out to be remarkably accurate, although the II.SS-Panzerkorp's ability to react quickly and effectively was underestimated. The one area where the intelligence picture was incomplete was the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division itself, because the Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops billeted in towns and villages all over the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only reported a Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia (an 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon), and a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo could not be identified. They had no way of knowing both divisions were there and the River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary. So it was feared the Frundsberg Division could be located in Nijmegen and drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area, leading to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest could be hiding 1,000 panzers. Gavin was given the sanitised (removing unit identifications obtained by 'Ultra') warning of possibly "a regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the 10.SS-Panzer battlegroup) may be accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities, and the Reichswald might be a tank laager for the depot. In fact, the division was based at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek and the tank depot was near Münster deeper into Germany, but the intelligence warnings certainly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, and by assigning the problematic 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, he had inadvertently created the conditions for the failure of the operation once it was on the ground.
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  538. If you're thinking of the Hunger Winter in the Netherlands, it was created by the Germans blocking the transportation of food from Dutch farms in the east to the major cities in the west of the country in retaliation for the Dutch rail strike on 17 September requested by the Dutch Government-in-Exile to support MARKET GARDEN.
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  539.  @johnburns4017  - that was how I interpreted the sound of crickets after I asked my question...
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  540.  @johnburns4017  🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗
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  541.  @johnburns4017  - I think you'll appreciate it. It's the book Cornelius Ryan should have produced!
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  542. Huis Doorn near Utrecht, was the place in Holland you were trying to think of for Kaiser Wilhelm II's exile. Nowhere near Haarlem, which is on the coast near Amsterdam. On checking with computer for information on Greg Hallett, I discover he is a resident of New Zealand, so maybe Greg's agenda is to depopulate New Zealand of his neighbours so he can move into a bigger house at a lower price? And you've helped a bit by buying his book. I think he got you!
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  543. Read Sebastian Ritchie, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) for a detailed analysis on the air aspects of Market Garden.
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  544. There were upwards of 20 bridge targets in operation MARKET, of which a minimum of nine or ten were required to get XXX Corps to Arnhem, and then a number of crossings over the Ijssel were to be seized (but not necessarily intact) to form a basis for further operations into Germany. The critical failures were the failure to seize the Son bridge quickly - arguable this was a big ask since the Wilhelmina canal was the main defence line in this sector and was well-prepared with bridge demolitions and bridge commanders had standing orders, and perhaps the single biggest failure at Nijmegen, where the highway bridge was undefended in the first critical hours and no move was made to seize it despite Gavin's specific instruction to Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to move with speed. TIK is actually incorrect to suggest Gavin de-prioritised the bridge in favour of other priorities, but he could have taken up a British suggestion of dropping a battalion on the northern end of the bridge or assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th to the Nijmegen mission - so in that sense he didn't ensure its quick seizure and thought his instruction to send the 1st Battalion directly from the DZ would be sufficient. He was let down by Lindquist, who was not a good field commander and had not perfomed well in Normandy. Some of the bridges needed by XXX Corps had drop zones selected by Browning close to them and were then removed from the target list by Williams and Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army on the grounds of Flak or lack of transport aircraft: between Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges (by Williams because of Flak around Eindhoven) and a brigade drop zone at Elst (by Brereton for lack of aircraft). Brereton also decided on only a single sortie by the transport aircraft each day, pushing the second lift back to D+1 and the third lift outside the predictable weather window of two clear days, and this also pushed Browning's proposed dawn glider coup de main assaults on the three big bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave beyond their feasibility window as they were deemed too risky for a midday assault. These factors all contributed to a compromised airborne operation, and in turn led to the delayed ground advance because of the loss of the two key bridges, and the delay at Aalst meant a delayed linkup at Eindhoven and bridging equipment for the Son crossing could not be brought up for 24 hours. The flanking VIII and XII Corps had their progress made more difficult by the lack of supplies promised by Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, who was lobbied by Bradley not to provide them) and without the benefit of airborne troops seizing bridges for them, so their slower progress and high casualty rates probably reflect the greater difficulty. The subsequent battles around Overloon and Woensdrecht involving very high casualties in much the same sort of Dutch terrain also speaks to the difficulty of fighting over this terrain. I think the case has been made that where things went well with the airborne operation, casualties were light, and elsewhere were very heavy.
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  545.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  YouTube is up to its tricks again. Are you able to see my reply to your question on the 'Real consequences of the Allied failure at Arnhem' video about the Irish Guards ambush? My reply is the third on that thread, but YouTube insists there's still only "2 replies" on the thread. I posted a 4th to ask if you can see it, and it's disappeared. Still showing "2 replies". I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but...
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  546. You might as well blame the baby Jesus if you don't back it up with some evidence...
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  547. 1. 82nd Airborne Drop Zone for the 508th was 10 Km (6 miles) from the Nijmegen highway bridge (7 Km to intitial objective at De PLoeg, then 3 Km to the bridge). Taylor objected to a drop zone south of Nijmegen because of Flak positions around the city and the 506th had to march 10 Km to secure the Eindhoven bridges, and another 4 Km to the bridge at Aalst, assuming XXX Corps were not already there. 2. The original all-British Operation Comet plan included glider coup de main attacks like Pegasus Bridge in Normandy for the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, using a Company detached from each of the three Airlanding Battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade, as well as two lifts on D-Day. Both of these elements of Comet were removed by Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army after Williams of US IX Troops Carrier Command objected to the coup de main on the grounds of Flak at the bridges and two lifts per day involved night flying for which he had insifficient navigators, and turn around times between the lifts were insuficient for his ground crews. 3. The delay at Son is arguably zero hours, a point made by Canadian author John Sliz in the volume Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division Engineers During Market Garden (2015, 2016) in his Market Garden Engineers series, on the basis that the Bailey bridge was constructed in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely in the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. XXX COrps reached the bridge site at 1900 hours and the Royaal Engineers' reconnaisance unit 30 minutes later, and the bridging material was brought up the previous night to Valkenswaard in anticipation so it could be brought up in 30 minutes to begin worrk at 2000 hrs after dark. The bridge was open at 0615 hrs, before dawn, releasing the Household Cavalry, and the Grenadier Guards started at first light. 4. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were advancing on their respective Spade and Diamond Routes, towards Helmond-Gennep on the right and 's-Hertogenbosch area on the left. They made late starts due to assembly delays and having to bridge the Meuse-Escaut canal, and slower progress because Montgomery did not get the "absolute priority" in supplies Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff) had promised. Apparently they had different interpretations of "absolute" despite claiming to speak the same language. Bradley's 12th Army Group continued to receive supplies, albeit at a reduced rate, during this period. 5. Air support at Arnhem was to be provided by two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron, delivered in 4 WACO gliders and Jeeps with British drivers. Their special VHF sets for communicating with aircraft were the ones delivered with the wrong crystals - not the British Army sets as often suggested. The British communications were functioning, but at significantly reduced ranges due to the high iron content in the sandy glacial moraine of the Veluwe region, not understood at the time.
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  548. It's probably from A Bridge Too Far on von Rundstedt's re-appointment as commander of OB West and his analysis of the front on 4 September 1944: With the other Channel ports still in German hands, Von Rundstedt saw Antwerp as essential to Eisenhower's advance--so why had Montgomery not moved for thirty-six hours and apparently failed to secure the second-largest port in Europe? There could be only one reason: Montgomery was not ready to continue the attack. Von Rundstedt was certain that he would not depart from habit. The British would never attack until the meticulous, detail-minded Montgomery was fully prepared and supplied. The answer therefore, Von Rundstedt reasoned, was that the British had overextended themselves. This was not a pause, Von Rundstedt told his staff. Montgomery's pursuit, he was convinced, had ground to a halt. Von Rundstedt was sure of it. Further, he was banking on it that Montgomery's slowdown held a far deeper significance. Because of overextended communications and supply lines, he was convinced, the Allied breakneck pursuit had reached its limit. At the close of the conference, as Blumentritt was later to recall, "Von Rundstedt looked at us and suggested the incredible possibility that, for once, Hitler might be right." Hitler's and Von Rundstedt's estimates of the situation, although only partly correct, were far more accurate than either realized. The precious time Von Rundstedt needed to stabilize his front was being provided by the Allies themselves. The truth was that the Germans were losing faster than the Allies could win. This got worked into the script of that scene at the beginning of the film version of A Bridge Too Far. The Germans had repeatedly tried to establish defence lines on major rivers, first on the Seine and then the Somme, but Allied units were able to bounce crossings before the Germans could establish a strong line. The next defence line was established on the Albert Canal, which runs across the nothern 'canal zone' of Belgium from Antwerp to Maastricht, and this only succeeded (mostly) because its establishment finally coincided with the Allied pursuit running out of steam. The Albert canal bridge at Beringen was forced and another bridgehead established over the next canal - the Meuse-Escaut canal at Neerpelt on 10 September - and this became the start point a week later for Market Garden. There's even a reference in the script of that scene to "someone" pulling retreating troops into a defence line on their own initiative (I forget the exact words in the script), and this is a rather nice reference to Kampfgruppe Chill - an ad hoc battlegroup formed by Generalleutnant Kurt Chill of the 85.Infanterie-Division, who on his own initiative disobeyed his orders to withdraw his division into Germany for refit and instead used the remnants of his shattered division and that of the 84.ID to establish checkpoints on the Albert canal bridges, stopping anyone without written orders to incorporate them into the kampfgruppe on the canal. It bought enough time for the 1.Fallschirm-Armee (1st Parachute Army) of Hermann Göring's thousands of redundant Luftwaffe ground crews to be formed to plug the gap in the German lines in Holland.
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  549.  @garylynch7619  - I usually watch it when it comes around on TV quite frequently and enjoy it for William Goldman's script mostly. He had previously written Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), so you can see where the idea of having Robert Redford (the Sundance Kid himself as Major Julian Cook) take the Nijmegen bridge virtually single handed came from - all complete fiction. There was also a rail bridge involved in the operation and a radio message from the Irish Guards reporting an American flag seen at the far end of "the bridge" actually referred to the rail bridge, so the Grenadier Guards waiting to cross the road bridge thought it referred to their bridge and they had better getting moving. They forced a crossing with four tanks at 1830 hrs, a full 45 minutes before US paratroopers even got to it. A lot of other historical inaccuracies were not so much complete fiction but things switched a round to suit the director or the actors. James Caan was offered the role of the Captain who was afraid of dying, but was more interested in the role of Sgt Dohun who saved the Captain's life, so the characters were switched. In reality, Captain LeGrand 'Legs' Johnson, commander of Fox Company 502nd PIR, was a Normandy veteran awarded the Silver Star, and said to be ten times the man Eddie Dohun was, who was Johnson's driver and runner (messenger) in combat. Dohun was running an errand when he returned to the Company during the battle at Best (an alternative crossing to the Son bridge) and found Johnson in a 'dead pile' at the battalion aid station. Dohun knew he carried a lot of money, about $400, and wanted to send it to Johnson's family before the gravediggers got their hands on it and started going through his pockets. It was then he realised Johnson was still breathing and loaded him and four other serious casualties to drive them through the enemy held Sonsche forest to the division field hospital at Son. There, he pulled a pistol on a Major conducting triage, insisting Johnson be seen by the surgeon immediately, and the rest played out almost as per the film. He was sent to his battalion commander, who placed him under arrest for 10 seconds. Johnson "woke up in England six weeks later - blind, deaf, dumb, forty pounds lighter and with a big plate in my head." Except for partial blindness, he recovered. After doing an in depth study of the film, I came to the realisation it was only 50% historically accurate, about 40% had altered or switched characters and situations, and about 10% was completely made up fiction. Most of the changes were to cater for American audiences, who in the wake of the Vietnam War would not be interested in a film where their side lost a battle. By contrast, I estimate episodes 4 and 5 of the Band Of Brothers mini-series, covering the Market Garden period, to be about 80 and 90% accurate respectively.
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  550. Yes. They were unable to establish multiple lines on the Seine and the Somme and finally some order came into being on the Albert canal in Belgium, thanks in part to Generalleutnant Kurt Chill of the 85.Infanterie-Division, who disobeyed an order to withdraw his division to Germany and instead on his own initiative established checkpoints on the Albert canal bridges and inducted any troops attempting to cross them into the remnants of his Division. This became 'Kampfgruppe Chill', and it enabled the Germans to turn a rabble of a rout into an organised defence. The other key individual was head of the shattered Luftwaffe - Hermann Göring - at a command conference of OKW, Hitler asked his Generals if any of them had a solution to fill the enormous gap that had opened up in the front facing British 2nd Army in Belgium? Nobody did, until Göring piped in and said he had 20,000 men he could transform into a parachute army. Apparently, everybody in the room turned to stare at this unbelievable intervention (I would love to have been a fly on the wall), but this is how the 1.Fallschirm-armee was formed under veteran airborne commander Kurt Student, and made up of redundant Luftwaffe ground crews and other troops formed into new 'parachute regiments' and sent to Holland. The concentration centre was s'Hertogenbosch, with Student setting up headquarters just south at Vught on the Eindhoven road. Hitler had forbidden large scale airborne operations after the disaster of the Crete operation in 1941 and the Fallschirmjäger were now used as light infantry units instead of jump-trained, still part of the Luftwaffe but under army command. In the film version of A Bridge Foo Far, the scene at the start where von Runstedt was reinstated as 'OB West' and is told that a commander had pulled together forces on a defence line in Belgium - that was a reference to Kampfgruppe Chill, and the part of II.SS-Panzerkorps commander Bittrich played by Maxilmillian Schell also doubled for Kurt Student where he sees the Allied Airborne Army fly overhead and says "just once to have such power..." The planes only flew over Student's HQ in Vught and he made that comment to his adjutant, while Bittrich was miles further east in Doetinchem and did not see the planes directly.
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  551.  @thevillaaston7811  - no. I believe the origin of this story is from Lieutenant Rupert Mahaffey of the Irish Guards in Cornelius Ryan's book, of which I have digital searchable copy, so I was able to find the reference: 'Lieutenant Rupert Mahaffey of the Irish Guards remembers that an officer of the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade came to the Guards' mess for dinner shortly after the tanks were stopped at Elst. Looking around the table, the Dutch officer said, "You would have failed the examination." He explained that one of the problems in the Dutch Staff College examination dealt solely with the correct way to attack Arnhem from Nijmegen. There were two choices: a) attack up the main road; or but) drive up it for 1-2 miles, turn left, effect a crossing of the Rhine and come around in a flanking movement. "Those who chose to go straight up the road failed the examination," the officer said. "Those who turned left and then moved up to the river, passed." ' This Dutch officer may not have been aware that the Welsh Guards had also tried to advance through Oosterhout on the left flank, but this village was also part of the blocking line in a hedgehog position held by Schwappacher's V./SS-Artillerie-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Regiment, reinforced with tanks and infantry from Kampfgruppe Knaust (four companies from Panzergrenadier-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Bataillone 64, 161 and 4, with attached Panzer-Kompanie Mielke of Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Abteilung 11). The next day (22 Septeembr), a unit from 2nd Household Cavalry was able to slip past Oosterhout in the morning fog and make contact with the Polish Parachute Brigade at Driel. I do recall reading about this in another book, where it was said that the exam was a Brigadier's exam, and if you passed you got the promotion and a brigade, but I can't find where I got that from. I thought Kershaw, which I also have in digital searchable form, but can't find the quote. I don't see the point of not trying the main road. If nothing else, it would pin down the German line at Elst while other units flanked left, which is what happened. Britain has a staff college as well! Our Dutch friends just like to think they have a monopoly on unsuitable terrain. The original plan for MARKET GARDEN had taken terrain into account and the Guards were intended to stop at Nijmegen and the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division passed through to lead the XXX Corps advance to Arnhem, and then the Guards would take over again for the advance to their final deployment between Apeldoorn and Nunspeet. The whole airborne debacle at Nijmegen threw the planned choreography out the window, as the Guards had to fight a major battle for the bridges in Nijmegen and the 43rd could not be brought through the resulting carnage in Nijmegen quickly enough, so they eventually went with resuming the advance with the only Guards unit available - the Irish Group. Welsh Guards had taken over defence of Grave to relieve the 504th PIR as Gavin's reserve for his river assault, and the Welsh Guards could not be freed up to support the Irish Guards' advance until relieved by the Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade, which was attached to 43rd Wessex. Gavin's insistence on using his own troops for the river assault crossing meant that the warning order for 43rd Wessex to move up and conduct the crossing with two brigades (operation BASIL) - for which they had been trained and equipped - never came, and they were languishing in the rear, mostly doing nothing.
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  552.  @thevillaaston7811  - just found out that Gavin figured out after the war where the Reichswald armour rumour came from. In a covering letter to Cornelius Ryan getting some papers by Dutch researcher T.A. Boeree together for his research, Gavin realised that the Dutch resistance had reported armour in the Reichswald during the British planning for COMET and the planners were making arrangements on how to deal with it when COMET was cancelled and replaced with MARKET. Nijmegen was then assigned to the US 82nd Division, so the intel was all handed over to them. Only after the war Gavin realised that armour was the Hohenstaufen, stopped overnight while in transit to Arnhem. D'uh! Mystery solved. Ryan didn't put it into the book. The letter is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online, box 101, folder 9, page 48. Enjoy! I'm going to have to spend a few weeks sometime going through all of his research in the collection - who knows what other unpublished gems are still hidden in plain sight in there.
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  553. The planned deployment of XXX Corps north of the Rijn between Arnhem and Nunspeet on the Zuider Zee coast is not necessary for an advance to the Ruhr, but it does cut off all German forces in the western Netherlands, including the 15.Armee. The best map that shows this is available on the battlearchives site and the filename is: market-garden-objective-areas-and-drop-zones-battle-map The exact reasons for switching the Rhine crossing from Wesel to Arnhem during the planning process for Operation 'Comet' is not recorded, but the sector between the two towns was always the sector that 2nd Army was heading for, and a bridge over the Rhine somewhere between those two points had to be selected. A crossing at Wesel was fine for subsequent operations into Germany, but they did nothing to help the situation regarding Antwerp or prevent the escape of the 15.Armee over the Scheldt estuary, and during this period the Germans also started V-2 rocket operations against London from launch sites on the Dutch coast. The multiple advantages of Arnhem and an advance terminating at the Zuider Zee made 'Market Garden' the potential solution to everybody's problems. One of the (many) worst aspects of the film A Bridge Too Far was the briefing scene in which Browning (Dirk Bogarde) shows Urquhart (Sean Connery) on a map that once over the Arnhem bridge, 2nd Army would be able to sweep down and capture the Ruhr. That development was NOT part of the Market Garden plan. The plan terminated on the Zuider Zee, with the capture of bridgeheads over the River Ijssel (a distributary of the Dutch Rijn and part of the Rhine delta), providing 2nd Army with a base from which to conduct further operations into Germany.
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  554.  @johnpeate4544  - the basic planning for Operation 'Comet' - Wesel or Arnhem - was discussed between Browning and Montgomery on 3/4 September. Dempsey's diary notes that Arnhem had been decided by the morning of 4 September when Browning visited him. This is in Sebastian Ritchie, Arnhem: Myth And Reality (2019). Too early for the V-2 issue, starting 9 September (I think the first rockets were indeed fired on the 8 September), but it did solidify the choice of Arnhem by 10 September. Comet was scheduled for 6/7 September, delayed and then cancelled on the 10th. Montgomery then met with Eisenhower on the 10th to propose Market Garden, an upgraded version of Comet, still on Arnhem, and in that meeting Montgomery used Antwerp to justify the Arnhem axis and Eisenhower rejected his analysis, but agreed with the operation because it fitted in with his broad front policy of advancing to the Rhine in all sectors. The reasons for choosing Arnhem over Wesel are not recorded as far as Ritchie is aware, and he notes that both Browning and Dempsey preferred Wesel, so the impetus for Arnhem seems to have come from Montgomery. Ritchie speculates it may have been heavy Flak at Wesel (but why didn't Browning object, and the Flak at Arnhem/Nijmegen was horrible as well), or possibly a vector on Wesel would bring 2nd Army very close to US XIX Corps boundary, and Montgomery feared a 2nd Army crossing and exploitation might have to be shared with Bradley.
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  555. Further to John's answer, there were problems with deconflicting 2nd Tactical Air Force (the close air support) based on airfields in Belgium and France, with the Transport Command traffic from England delivering the Airborne forces. There was a complex timetable of Airborne activity, three lifts over three days, delivering reinforcements and resupply, and the close air support from 2nd TAF had to be grounded while that was going on. This timetable was compromised by the weather after the first day (which was perfect), such that the 2nd Lift was delayed by several hours. The 2nd TAF could have flown while the 2nd Lift was delayed, but the already complex air plan was not that flexible, so the 2nd TAF remained on the ground until the lift had been and gone, delayed from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. By that time, they had lost practically a whole day of close air support. This is the picture I got from Sebastian Ritchie's book, Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011). I thought I had a note of the weather reports over holland for the Market Garden period but I can't immediately put my hands on it, but as far as I can recall there were days when the weather was bad in England and clear on the continent and then the bad weather would move onto the continent and the weather would clear in England. The Polish Parachute Brigade air movement in the 3rd Lift was badly disrupted. The glider component of the Polish Brigade, bringing their Anti-Tank Company Jeeps and 6-pounder guns, and a Supply Company with Jeeps and trailers, landed on LZ 'L'. This was a battlefield at the time, with the British 4th Parachute Brigade trying to withdraw from contact after several failed attempts to reach their high ground objective north of Arnhem. In the confusion, the British, Germans, and Poles were all shooting at each other, unable to identify friend from foe. Much of the Pole's equipment had to be abandoned. The airfields hosting the parachute elements of the Polish Brigade - the three Parachute Battalions and Brigade HQ, Signals, and Engineers - were still affected by fog and did not fly with their glider element. When the Polish Parachute element was finally given a go-ahead to fly on Day 5, a recall signal was sent due to bad weather reports over the continent, which was only received by the planes carrying the 1st Battalion, which duly turned around and flew back to England. The rest of the Brigade carried on and managed to locate the drop zone near Driel. Much was made of the fact the drop was opposed, but casualties were not as heavy as often suggested, and the reason the Brigade was under strength on the ground was because the 1st Battalion had failed to arrive. No one was aware of the recall, and the 1st Battalion's Mortar Platoon actually did arrive safely, although the Mortar Platoon from one of the other Battalions were missing, so they attached themselves as replacements. The 1st Battalion took off again on a later airlift (can't recall which day offhand) and dropped further south in the 82nd Airborne's area, and had to march north to rejoin the Brigade. I think it's fair to say the whole story is always more complicated, and the difficulties faced by the greatest generation were greater than the armchair tacticians in the 21st Century claim. I've been reading on Market Garden for 45 years since reading Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far in 1977, and I'm still learning stuff every day. I'm currently reading a rare limited print run book I managed to get through a specialist book store - Freddie Gough's Specials At Arnhem: An Illustrated History Of The 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron by Robert Hilton (2017).
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  556. Browning and Gavin were actually in agreement on securing the Grave and Njmegen bridges as quickly as possible, but Browning had stressed that it was also important to hold the Groesbeek heights as well. Brereton and Williams' decision to fly the MARKET flights entirely in daylight meant that the dawn delivery of Browning's proposed glider coup de main raids on the three main bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave was now rendered too risky to be undertaken in broad daylight (conveniently, in my opinion), so Gavin received a British request (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge instead. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far that he toyed with the idea, but eventually discarded it, because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. So Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion (508th PIR) directly to the bridge from the main drop zone after landing, which Lindquist then failed to do, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first. The idea that the Nijmegen bridge was not a priority was a post-war conflation designed to explain why the bridge was not taken on D-Day. This was not in Ryan's book and only more recent research has unearthed the full story, although Ryan's research notes and interviews can be accessed online by anyone with an internet connection. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  557. Author of Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016), makes a valid argument that the delay at Son was zero, since the replacement Bailey bridge was constructed entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks.
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  558.  @61st-highland-anti-tank  - well, I think the main delays were the result of compromises in the planning changes made between the outline proposal called SIXTEEN and the final MARKET plan. So the glider coup de main raids and 'airborne carpet' ideas probably would have helped a lot. There was virtually a wasted day on D+1 (18 September) between Valkswaard and Eindhoven when they were held up by two 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG, both found to be abandoned when they realised Dutch civilians were milling about the guns. The Germans fled when they heard that Eindhoven was liberated, which is a common story when fighting the Germans. They would be absolutely resolute in defence and then morale would suddenly collapse if they knew the enemy was behind them and cut off their supply line. Brits and Americans have no qualms about being surrounded - it's a different psychology. No delay from Son to Nijmegen, but 36 hours to take the Waal bridges was the fatal delay, by which time it was too late to relieve Frost at Arnhem.
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  559. There was an attempt to advance north from Antwerp, but German resistance was too strong for anything but a major operation. The German recovery in the Autumn of 1944 was based on a defence of the Albert Canal - the western end of which was in Antwerp. The canal was breached further east and another bridgehead established at Neerpelt over the Meuse-Escaut canal. That was used as the start point for Market Garden, which promised to encircle the entire 15.Armee and much of the WBN (Wehrmacht occupation forces in the Netherlands), as well as cut the V-2 supply lines and establish bridgeheads across the Rhine delta.
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  560.  @imperialcommander639  - I've not seen this much of the Westover letter and I note that it contains some factual errors, so Gavin certainly isn't infallible. The Groesbeek high ground is not the only high ground in all of the Netherlands - there is very similar terrain north of Arnhem called the Veluwe that extends all the way to the Ijsselmeer coast at Nunspeet - the final planned destination of Guards Armoured Division, and there are other large deposits of glacial moraine to the west of Arnhem extending northwestwards from Rhenen. There are others in the northern provinces, all glacial moraines and often used as military training areas by the Dutch army and the German occupation alike. The highest spot height in the Nijmegen area is marked on the contemporary AMS maps (modern surveys often make more accurate measurements) as 95.6 meters at Berg-en-Dal, the objective of 3rd Battalion 508th PIR. The highest spots north of Arnhem on the Veluwe is the Galgenberg at 104.6 meters at Terlet near Deelen airfield, and the 109.9 spot height on the Rozendaalsche Zand, the locations of the 'Teerose I' and 'Teerose II' radio direction stations respectively established by the Germans, and manned by the Luftwaffe Kampfgruppe Weber force of signals staff that allegedly attacked the British landing zones in the first hours. Highest spot height I can find in the Reichswald is Stoppel-Berg at 91.4 meters just outside Kleve, and the highest spot height on the western edge overlooking the landing zones is the Pyramide at 78.7 meters. I think Gavin was very much focused on his own area and wasn't studying the geography of the entire Netherlands. Tactically, the ridge line to the north overlooking Nijmegen (although 'overlook' is an exaggeration) was between the drop zones and the city, and needed to be secured as a defensive measure before any foray into the city, because the ridge was also a potential defensive position for the Germans. Gavin's concern must have been the sanitised 'Ultra' intel he was given that "a regiment of SS" may be occupying the Dutch army barracks in Nijmegen, because 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' (reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength) had not been positively located by the Dutch resistance in the Achterhoek region northeast of Arnhem, only the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' in the Veluwe region to the north. The Dutch had identified Ruurlo as a divisional headquarters, but not identified the division. It was not appreciated that both divisions were together in these regions, with the River Ijssel as the inter-divisional boundary. The SHAEF intelligence assessment was that the II.SS-Panzerkorps were refitting and may be drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area (I don't know how this happened as the Wehrkreis VI depot was actually near Münster), and since the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, it generated the silly rumour that as many tanks may actually be there. That figure was never a serious one, but some sort of reaction was expected from the Reichswald and undoubtedly affected Gavin's thinking as he was drawing up his divisional plan. At the time, Model was assessed to have less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front from Aachen to the North Sea coast, and the true figure was officially 84 operational panzers in the September returns. For context, a fully equipped 1944 panzer division would have 160 panzers (79 Panther, 81 Panzer IV), times two for the two divisions would be 320, and a schwere panzer abteilung assigned to the Korps would have 45 Tigers. So 365 for the Panzerkorps at full theoretical strength, but something never achieved during the war and not a realistic proposition given Germany's production problems under Allied bombing and the fact the II.SS-Panzerkorps had only just arrived ten days before MARKET GARDEN. Facing Model was Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks and the US 1st Army at Aachen with about 1,500. By a bizarre coincidence, the British 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Brigade had 84 anti-tank guns between them, exactly matching Model's official panzer returns for September, although 83 were actually sent by air to Arnhem. So, faced with this tactical problem, Gavin chose first to assign his best regiment - the 504th - to Grave to secure his supply line to XXX Corps, the problematic (in Normandy) 508th to Nijmegen, and the more aggressive and experienced 505th to Groesbeek town facing the Reichswald sector. Gavin's instructions to the 508th are therefore critical. According to the part of his letter to Captain Westover I am familiar with - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." His interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far confirms all of this: 'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967)
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  561.  @imperialcommander639  - cont. So what happened to that instruction? TIK has only gone as far as RG Poulssen's book, Lost At Nijmegen (2011) in identifying Gavin and Lindquist's possible miscommunication as the direct cause of the Nijmegen mission, and therefore the entire operation, to fail. He has not, as far as I know, read a couple of books that drill down a bit further: September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ - As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge - A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
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  562.  @imperialcommander639  - cont. Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.” [end quotes] I don't see where TIK is a liar, disingenuous or otherwise. I find McManus' analysis of the bridge versus ridge priorities debate to be very comprehensive and I agree with what he says. The problem with not getting the bridges in the first vital hours is that the Germans may demolish them (the Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for immediate demolition and had to await engineers to arrive from 10.SS-Panzer-Division), but the Groesbeek heights (which are not that high and only really overlooks ground to the flood plains to the northeast of Berg-end-Dal) were not going anywhere and could be recaptured by XXX Corps if lost to the Germans. The combat history of the 508th PIR by Phil Nordyke is the real key to understanding what went wrong on the ground, and reading the earlier chapters on Normandy (the 508th's first combat operation) shows that Colonel Lindquist was not a good field commander and explains Gavin's comments to Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview. I think if you try to argue that the Groesbeek heights were the top priority from the outset and were not a post-war narrative to explain why the operation failed, you have the weight of evidence against you. A further conflation was made with Browning's rejection of Gavin's proposal to make a second attempt on the bridge on D+1, but this order was only after the first failed attempt on D-Day and Browning considered the bridge was now too strongly held and the armour of XXX Corps would be needed to support any attempt to take the Nijmegen bridges by force. I think TIK, as far as he's gone, is on the right track with this video, but the literature I've quoted only further supports this line.
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  563.  @imperialcommander639  - my copy of Beevor's useless book of recycled conventional narrative was donated to the charity bookstore, so you'll forgive me if I can't recall what he said about Browning and Gavin. I've seen two people comment that Beevor wrote for the American market, which hadn't occurred to me, but it does explain why he wrote his book with the same anti-British bias as Cornelius Ryan. I find Ryan's research that didn't make it into A Bridge Too Far more interesting and would recommend Swedish historian Christer Bergström's work - Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020) - which used unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection and debunked a lot of the myths perpetrated by the film version of A Bridge Too Far. You have to understand that not only did Ryan rush his book to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer, but he was also born in Dublin and spent the European campaign embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - both premier colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of historical philosophy. What TIK has uncovered is Browning's support for Gavin, rather than pointing the finger. I find both to be honourable men who were reluctant to throw a junior officer under the bus, at least publicly. Gavin also wrote a post-war recommendation to the US Army that they reverse their policy of replacing officers that made serious mistakes and argued that leaving them in place allowed them to learn from their mistakes. Many might think he was talking about himself, but I think he was already practicing this policy within his own division during the war and Lindquist remained as commander of the 508th until it was inactivated after the war. Based on Nordyke's later chapters in Put Us Down In Hell (2012), there didn't seem to be any serious command problems in the regiment during the Battle of the Bulge, so this may be the basis of Gavin's recommendation. I personnally think if you go back to Lindquist's performance in Normandy, especially after D-Day and the way the combat ineffective regiment XO had to be court martialled by Ridgway, and Lindquist's order to attack Hill 95 (Saint Catherine near La Haye) on 4 July 1944 over open ground that got a lot of troopers killed, were grounds for removing Lindquist. The outcome at Nijmegen might have been very different if a good field commander like Lt Col Mark J Alexander had been in command. Alexander had been XO of the 505th and transferred by Ridgway to the 508th "to shake things up over there" after the court martial. Alexander had to take over the 2nd Battalion when its CO became a casualty, and then was seriously wounded himself while Captain Chet Graham was at Regiment receiving the controversial orders from Lindquist. When Graham returned to the battalion CP he found he was in command of what was left of the battalion and had to take the attack in over open ground instead of the covered approach planned by Alexander. When he pulled back Fox Company, which was getting a pasting, to slip Easy Company over to protect its flank, he got called back to the radio and chewed out by Lindquist for pulling the company back. Graham suggested he come down and see the situation for himself instead of second guessing from a mile away and was relieved of command on the spot. Another officer took the attack in on the original plan. Alexander survived his wounds but was unable to return to the regiment. Chet Graham went from 2nd Battalion liaison to Regiment HQ in Normandy to 508th liaison officer to Division HQ for MARKET, where as I've already detailed he was again first hand witness to Lindquist's mishandling of the regiment. Alexander was replaced by Shanley, who didn't seem to be any better than Lindquist, based on his comment about Gavin's pre-flight instruction not being clear in McManus (September Hope, 2012). I have no idea what's in CAB 106-1133, but I would guess it has more to do with maintaining the Anglo-American alliance post-war than it had with actually winning the war as quickly possible while it was still happening.
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  564. What was Montgomery?
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  565. Nonsense on Eisenhower. Eisenhower was similarly unapologetic when he declared after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account, A Bridge Too Far, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015)
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  566. Tried posting information on this but YouTube seems to have sequestered my replies, so I will try one more time. I would presume that since TIK has RG Poulussen's book Lost At Nijmegen (2011) on his list of sources, he probably got it from the ANNEXE copy on page 66 of the Lindquist interview by US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover in Frankfurt, Germany 14 September 1945: He was asked: "2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you ordrs to move directly into NIJMEGEN?" "As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on." Obviously, this is disingenuous because like a defendant in court he does not recall being given the instruction in the final divisional briefing on 15 September 1944, 48 hours before the jump, so he denies being instructed apon landing, when units would not have yet established communications with Division HQ anyway. Gavin was told Lindquist was not moving on the bridge at around 1830 as the first progress reports were coming in and he went to the 508th CP to chew him out and get him moving. By then it was too late. This episode is detailed in 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). Nordyke's source is Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the 508th regimental liaison officer to Division HQ, who sat in on the final divisional briefing in which Gavin gave Lindquist the instruction to move immediately on the bridge with 1st Battalion and was the officer that relayed the message from Lindquist that he was not sending the battalion until the DZ was cleared. This made Gavin as "mad" as Graham had ever seen him, and ordered Graham to come with him in a Jeep to the 508th CP, where Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed." By this time it was too late to get 1st Battalion into the city before the SS panzer troops.
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  567. The "one road" is a myth perpetrated by Hollywood - every Corps operation has a Main Supply Route (MSR) and XXX Corp's 'Club Route' started in Normandy and terminated in Bremen, Germany in 1945. MARKET GARDEN had numerous 'Heart Route' detours using alternative bridge crossings (at least two were used), and the flanking VIII and XII Corps had their own 'Spade Route' and 'Diamond Route' MSRs respectively. Cornelius Ryan mentioned VIII and XII Corps only once in his book (to criticise them) and the film not at all to create the single road myth as a factor in the failure of the operation. The main factor was the failure to even follow the plan to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge immediately after landing, and this was the result of a series of compromises from USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams removing the double D-Day airlifts and dawn glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, and US 82nd Airborne General Gavin discarding a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and his assignment of the critical Nijmegen operation to the problematic 508th PIR commander (he did not perform well in Normandy) instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. Montgomery wrote after the war "In my – prejudiced – view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job – it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd S.S. Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain MARKET GARDEN’s unrepentant advocate." Instead of being dismissive, people should do a bit of digging to see what he meant.
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  568. That would make Eisenhower a cold blooded butcher of Allied troops, a worse fault than anything Montgomery may have been guilty of. A disgraceful slur on an essentially good man.
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  569. A very thoughtful post and I agree with the points made, with the following additions or caveats: 1. While the Malburgsche Polder Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge was unsuitable for large scale glider landings, a small force of six gliders carrying one Company of Airlanding troops was planned to land at dawn (because it was a no-Moon period) in a coup de main raid on the flood plain closer to the bridge for operation COMET, and it was carried over into the provisional operation SIXTEEN outline that was an expansion of the COMET concept. This raid, and similar ones planned for the Nijmegen and Grave bridges, were put beyond feasibility by Brereton's decision for all flights in his final MARKET plan to be conducted in daylight with a midday delivery. The glider raids were the proposed solution to the problem of distance from suitable main landing zones at Wolfheze to the bridge objectives, and their removal was a major flaw in the final MARKET plan. 2. Gavin's main concern was the reports of German heavy armour reported by the Dutch resistance in the Reichswald and SS troops in Nijmegen, at the time he was assigned to Nijmegen for MARKET, and he had gone immediately to 1st Airborne's HQ to see their intelligence on the area and their own plans for Nijmegen for operation COMET. The German units had not been identified, but Montgomery and Dempsey were aware from 'Ultra' intelligence that II.SS-Panzerkorps were ordered to the eastern Netherlands to refit and this report prompted the cancellation of COMET and replacement with an upgraded operation adding the two American divisions. Gavin's divisional plan was predicated on the SHAEF assessment that a "regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of each of the two SS panzer divisons in the Korps) may be in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities and they may be receiving new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve, using the Reichswald as a tank storage area. It was not until after landing that Gavin received reports from the 508th PIR the Groesbeek ridge was unoccupied (and was as "mad" as the 508th liasion officer had ever seen Gavin when told Colonel Lindquist was not moving on the bridge), and from the 505th that the Reichswald was empty and assessed too dense for tanks to operate. It was only in 1966, as Gavin was forwarding research papers from Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree on the Hohenstaufen's movements to A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan refuting the betrayal mythology that he realised the reports of armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen division in transit to Arnhem, as Boeree had researched their route up the east bank of the Maas after concentrating at Sittard and through Nijmegen to Arnhem. Apparently they had made a stop in the Reichswald and generated the Dutch reports at the time COMET was being prepared. Gavin thought that he might have a fight on his hands if Nijmegen was occupied with combat troops that could deploy on the Groesbeek ridge, denying him access to the city. By 48 hours before the jump, and the plan seemed to be shaping up nicely in his words, he thought he could risk sending a battalion into the city to secure the highway bridge, but he instructed Lindquist to use the flat polder land to the east and not go through the city. For whatever reason, Lindquist had not taken this instruction on board, despite Gavin showing him on a map the exact route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge in the final divisional briefing on 15 September, and Lindquist stuck to his original plan of deploying all three battalions along the ridge line and sent only a recon patrol based on a reinforced platoon to go to the bridge and report on its condition. Boeree's research and Gavin's correspondence is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online, box 101, folder 09 (Reichswald letter is on page 48), and Gavin's interview with Ryan is in folder 10, where he discusses his problems with Lindquist and the objectives.
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  570. The Afsleudijk was vulnerable to air attack, and probably even naval bombardment, to prevent any evacuation of German forces trapped in the western Netherlands. A similar situation, far less exposed but effective nonetheless, existed in Ukraine at the recently blown Khakhovka dam. When the northern bank of the Dnipro River was repossessed by Ukrainian forces, they were able to prevent the dam being used by the Russians by destroying the roadway access on top of the dam by artillery systems without damaging the dam itself. Destroying the Afsluitdijk would take considerably more explosive than would be delivered by the fighter bombers that could interdict road travel along the causeway and completely block it with wrecked vehicles. It would have been a shooting gallery with carnage on the scale of Falaise.
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  571.  @stephensmith5982  - I would refer you to 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012): Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' - Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " The earlier chapters on Normandy, their first combat operation, have similar incidents involving the command of the Regiment. Ridgway dealt with a dismissal and replacement of the Regiment XO, and when he was promoted to XVIII Airborne Corps, Gavin took over the Division. However, Gavin failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and was running himself ragged doing both jobs during Market Garden. The chain of command was Browning-Gavin-Lindquist. Lindquist had clear instructions from Gavin and failed to carry them out.
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  572.  @lyndoncmp5751  - I think the operation would have been cancelled if the restrictions placed on it were too onerous. It wsn't cancelled and it nearly worked. 1st Airborne, and its descendants in the modern British Army, deeply resent any suggestion it failed at Arnhem. It's like suggesting the 101st Airborne at Bastogne were 'rescued' by Patton! 1st Parachute Brigade controlled access to the bridge and repelled several German attempts to place demolition charges. That's not the opinion of an armchair historian writing in 2023, that's the opinion of the men who were at the bridge, including the Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, who is on video saying that he still thought they could have passed XXX Corps over the bridge on 21 September until around midday, when they finally ran out of ammunition. They were expected to hold the bridge for two days, and Browning told Montgomery they could hold it for four. They did hold it for four days, so the failure was definitely not 1st Airborne's.
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  573. Montgomery had planned an operation through the Reichswald to follow 'Market Garden' called Operation 'Gatwick', once 'Garden' was officially terminated by the bombing of the Arnhem highway bridge on 7 October 1944. It was cancelled when it became apparant the Venlo pocket on the west bank of the Maas around Overloon could not be reduced by the US 7th Armoured Division and British units would have to take over that sector again - these were known as the first and second battles of Overloon respectively. The next priority became Operation 'Alan' to extend the 'Market Garden' corridor westwards in the 's-Hertogenbosch area, followed by the clearing of the Scheldt estuary in October-November with Operations 'Switchback', 'Vitality I' and 'II', 'Infatuate I' and 'II'. By then the Autumn had transitioned to Winter and the Reichswald operation was put off until the new year, when the 'Gatwick' plan was revived as Operation 'Veritable' in February 1945. This was exploited by the Rhine crossing Operation 'Plunder' and Airborne Operation 'Varsity' between Emmerich and Wesel.
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  574. Montgomery did not ignore the Dutch intelligence reports, he cancelled operation COMET because of them and authorised Dempsey (2nd Army) to plan an upgraded operation with three airborne divisions instead of one. The second-rate German formations were there as well and were known about, they were described as "old men on bicycles and young boys" and referred to the local security battalion of WW1 veterans and Hitler Youth being trained as replacements for 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' by an SS-Panzergrenadier training battalion based at Arnhem. I also have James Sim's excellent book and the tanks he saw under the trees along a boulevard in Arnhem he identified as Mark IV tanks. His witness testimony is quite likely as SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' had sixteen of them concentrated in the 5.Kompanie, and since they were too heavy for the Pannerden ferry they had been held back until Frost and his anti-tank guns had been cleared from the Arnhem bridge. It's unlikely they would have been used against Frost's battalion as Sims' German guard claimed, as they were needed to the south to stop XXX Corps from advancing beyond Nijmegen.
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  575. A little out of date now (1990) but an essential foundation course together with Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974). It's the first book on the German side of the operation. Possibly a publishing decision and not Rob Kershaw's, but he translates the German nomenclature into English instead of preserving the proper names and providing a glossary. This can make further research difficult, as many unit identifications are ambiguous, especially in the Reserve Army and because of the many temporary ad hoc kampfgruppen (battlegroups). One correction on TIK's video - Division 406, aka Division zbv 406 (zbv = zur besonderen Verwendung = for special deployment) was a pre-existing administrative headquarters, just a small office basically, in the Wehrkreis VI (Military District 6) HQ based in Münster (Westphalia, bordering the Netherlands region around Nijmegen). It was mobilised in the first week of September 1944 under the 'Valkyrie' Plan (see the 2008 Tom Cruise film 'Valkyrie' for how the military districts are organised and the Valkyrie Plan was first used to stage a coup against Hitler back in July 1944) and deployed in the northern sector of the Westwall, where it terminated in the Reichswald forest near the Dutch city of Nijmegen. This is the reason it came into contact with the US 82nd Airborne division on 17 September, but it was not really equipped to be operational and even had to requisition civilian transport like cars and busses to move the division HQ to Geldern. After the airborne landings, they had to move again to Kleve, nearer the landings. It had a collection of training units and home guard type militia battalions under command, with none of the usual infantry division service units and logistics to support them - they were all 'depot' units in British terminology. Perhaps the biggest error in Kershaw is that he's not a German armour expert and doesn't know his StuGs from his Jagdpanzer IVs, so unfortunately copied wholesale Wilhelm Tieke's mistake of placing SS-Sturmbannfürer Erwin Franz Rudolf Röstel's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 10 in the southern sector of the MARKET GARDEN corridor near the town of VALKENSWAARD, when it was actually detached to 7.Armee at Aachen near the town of VALKENBURG just east of Maastricht, fighting the US 1st Army with all 21 Jagdpanzer IV/L48 vehicles. The four StuG IIIG assault guns Kershaw believes were detached from Röstel's unit and sent to Nijmegen were from SS-Obersturmführer Franz Riedel's 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, so Wilhelm Tieke (In The Firestorm of the Last Years of the War - II.SS-Panzerkorps, 1975) made an error that has caught out Rob Kershaw and many others as well. The reason the II.Abteilung of the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Regiments were formed with StuGs in the 7 and 8.Kompanien was a legacy of being raised as panzergrenadier-divisions in 1943, and then Hitler ordered them converted to panzer-divisions. The StuG Abteilung was then rolled into the new Panzer-Regiment and made up for a lack of Mark IV tanks to make up the numbers in the II.Abteilung. The StuGs that were seen in the southern MARKET GARDEN corrider near Valkenswaard were from an army unit - Heeres schwere.Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559. Despite the errors, I still rate this impressive body of work as a solid 80%, and for many readers it would be 80% of knowledge they didn't have before reading the book. The other 20% can be corrected by reading more recent works on specific German units, if the reader wants to dive even deeper. I haven't read TIK's other recommended book by Robin Neillands, but another option is to jump ahead to something really up to date, and that is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's excellent update of Cornelius Ryan's research in Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020). I didn't know that A Bridge Too Far (1974) was rushed to publication unfinished because of Ryan's terminal cancer, but I have since found that some of the interviews in his documentation in the online Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University is bibliographed in A Bridge Too Far, but the story the interviewee told doesn't appear anywhere in the text. Bergström also includes the untold story of the operation's compromise at Nijmegen on the first day, first exposed by RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and was completely missing in Ryan and (inexcusably) the recent 2018 Beevor book on Arnhem - both aimed at the lucrative American market no doubt. As TIK recommends, get the large format paperback (or even hardback if you can find it) with the photo montage and German eagle on the cover, and not the more recent pulp paperback version without the maps and photographs.
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  576. Why? Browning was unable to protest Brereton's changes to his provisional operation SIXTEEN outline before it became MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's operation LINNET II over it being scheduled too soon to print and distribute maps to the troops, and Brereton was planning to accept his resignation letter and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps until the op was fortunately cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident. Browning could not even influence Gavin's divisional plan for Nijmegen to make up for Brereton's removal of the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. According to Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin: 'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area.' (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The problem is that American troops do not have to take orders from British commanders if they do not agree with those orders, because military discipline is not enforceable across national boundaries, but if the operation goes wrong then it seems they can still blame the British commanders because it was a (quote unquote) "British-led operation". Irish newspaper journalist Cornelius Ryan then wrote his book omitting any of his research that was unflattering to the Americans, because the United States is the largest English language book market.
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  577. The British landing zones were as close as they could be without landing on the town, woods, or polder crossed with drainage ditches and power lines (people tend to ignore the latter - they just see open spaces on the map). The Polish drop zone on polder near the bridge was deemed safe only for the third lift, and assumed 1st Parachute Brigade controlled the area, dealt with the Flak positions, and cut the power lines crossing the drop zone by this time. The fact this didn't happen was one reason the Polish drop zone was moved to Driel. After Operation Market had ended with the withdrawal of 1st Airborne Division on the night of 25/26th September, Operation Garden continued until 7th October. All efforts to push forward towards Arnhem with Guards Armoured, 43rd (Wessex) and 50th (Northumberland) Infantry Divisions, made little headway, with the capture of the town of Elst being the high water mark. On the night of 5th October, the Germans launched a major counter-attack by II.SS-Panzerkorps across the Linge-Wettering canal that drains the 'island' between Arnhem and Nijmegen, and marked the front line, aimed at recapturing the Nijmegen bridges. The 10.SS, 9., and 116.Panzer-Divisions were under command, based on bridgeheads at Pannerden and Huissen ferries, and Arnhem bridge respectively. They were supported by diversionary attacks of battalion size launched by newly arrived XII.SS-Armeekorps, which had taken over units in the Division von Tettau fighting the British Airborne west of Arnhem. The diversions were launched across the Rijn from Kasteel Doorwerth (SS-Kampfgruppe Oelkers) and Renkum (SS-Kampfgruppe Hensmann). The SS-Kampfruppe Hansmann attack is the one featured in Band Of Brothers episode 5 'Crossroads', and was repulsed by E/506th as shown in the episode. The 101st Airborne DIvision had been brought up by Montgomery in early October to occupy the western side of the Nijmegen 'island' so he could pull out 43rd (Wessex) Division in preparation for Operation Gatwick. This was a plan to strike southeast through the Reichswald towards the Rhine bridge at Emmerich. As part of the switch to Gatwick, the bridge at Arnhem was bombed on 7th October, offically ending Operation Garden. Gatwick had to be postponed to the following year (when it became Operation Veritable) because the Germans still had a bridgehead west of the Maas at Venlo in the Peel marshes, and this was a thorn in Montgomery's side tying up VIII Corps (11th Armoured and 3rd Infantry Divisions). To free those Divisions up for Gatwick, he got the Army group boundary moved so that the American 7th Armored Division could take over the sector. So the battles around Overloon became a major development in an effort to eliminate the German Maas bridgehead. All of this Market Garden epilogue was missing from Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far, because he knew he was dying of cancer and had to rush the book to publication unfinished.
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  578. Nonsense. The facts do not bear that out. The plan was still succeeding even where it was not working perfectly, but the fatal compromise was the one point of failure to even follow the plan, and that was at Nijmegen on the first afternoon. That was an unforced command failure that had nothing to do with planning, intelligence, weather, or Germans. If your argument relies on people who were there and fighting the war for five years already being "stupid", then it's time to re-appraise your argument.
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  579.  @raybarry4307  - don't blame YouTube for putting a line through your text. It's done by using a hyphen immediately before and after the text like this but doesn't happen if you leave spaces like - this - so please check your targets before getting triggered. And you are indeed seriously misinformed. There's a whole school of Montgomery bashing, and it's mostly American and entirely ignorant.
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  580. Montgomery and Browning were sidelined by the planners of operation MARKET in 1st Allied Airborne Army and they had lost control of the Arnhem operation after COMET was cancelled and Brereton and Williams started making changes to the proposed upgrade to create their own MARKET plan. 21st Army Group was notified of the changes too late for any further amendment and if Montgomery had tried to intervene it would probably have gone to Eisenhower for adjudication and he would likely consult his Air CHief, Air Marshall Artur Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery. Browning could not object because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II plan scheduled on just 36 hours notice - insufficient to print and distribute maps to the troops, and Brereton planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVII AIrborne Corps HQ for the operation. Thankfully for all concerned, operation LINNET II was cancelled like so many others and Browning withdrew his letter, but he now knew what would happen if he opposed Brereton's MARKET plan. Sosabowski's treatment was his own doing. He was difficult to work with and insubordinate at the 24 September Valburg conference with Browning and Horrocks. Montgomery had the Polish Brigade removed from his command and the Polish Government-in-Exile, who had political control over the brigade and not the British, chose to relieve him of its command. Sosabowski elected not to return to Poland after the war and took asylum in Britain and any job he could find, which meant he could not receive a pension or any honours from the Soviet puppet Government in Poland.
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  581. Nonsense. 1. Things always go wrong in military operations, but an unforced error in the plan not even being followed at Nijmegen on the first afternoon was the fatal mistake that compromised the whole operation. 2. Lightly armed paratroopers may be, but the anti-tank batteries at Arnhem had plenty of 6-pounder and 17-pounder anti-tank guns. In fact, the 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Brigade had exactly the same number of anti-tank guns (84) as Model had operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B from Aachen to the North Sea in September. Just a stunning coincidence, or the universe's way of telling you that you're wrong? 3. What other blows were fatal? The Division at Arnhem held its bridge objective for 80 hours, nearly twice as long as should have been needed.
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  582.  @jerbs5346  - When? Where? Which German unit? What sources for this?
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  583.  @jerbs5346  - I have September Hope (John C McManus, 2012) and found the reference. The only problem I have with it is that he doesn't name any of the glider passengers or crew and I have not come across any accounts of survivors (he says taken prisoner) telling their story, so there's no source cited for this account at all. I rely on McManus quite a bit to tell the story of the operation's failure point at Nijmegen, because this is based on first hand accounts from people he interviewed and ties in with other corroborating first hand accounts from Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), published around the same time. The Corps HQ crashed glider story, which I have no doubt happened, remains very sketchy on the details as a result of lacking any first hand accounts. We really only have Student's account of what he found in the documents, and he said it was a resupply schedule for 101st AD that was potentially the most useful. I have a copy of the I Airborne Corps report on MARKET GARDEN and it has a few clues. On the signals it has this: 'The Major on the CSO's staff and one attached US Signal officer failed to arrive. The former eventually reached ARNHEM on D + 1 where he had to remain and the latter is known to have landed near TILBURG in enemy held territory.' The glider loading manifest in the document only lists the first 14 gliders (Horsa) carrying the Corps Advance HQ, it does not list the Royal Signals gliders, which would account for the rest of the 32 Horsas, or the six WACO gliders carrying the two air support teams from 306th Fighter Control Squadron (2 WACOs each) and the two liaison officers from 82nd and 101st Divisions (1 WACO each). I have Glider Pilots At Arnhem by Mike Peters and Luuk Buist (2009), and the appendices list the gliders going to Arnhem and Corps HQ (LZ 'N' near Groesbeek). It does not indicate any aborted WACOs, but does list three aborted Horsas from the first serial, Chalk Nos.413, 414, 421. Chalks 413 and 414 probably correspond to gliders 8 and 9 in the Corps report, because glider 8 carried the CSO (Corps Signals Officer) and glider 9 carried his ACSO (Assistant CSO, probably the Major who went to Arnhem on the 2nd lift). Chalk No.21 probably corresponds to glider 15, which unfortunately is the next glider after the 14 detailed in the Advance HQ report manifest, so I have no idea who it carried, but this could be the crashed glider. There's no details in this book on these particular aborted gliders. I do know from recently reading a new series of books on the Anti-Tank Batteries at Arnhem, by Nigel Simpson et al, that some of their Chalk Numbers got re-arranged and were different to the official records, which were not amended to reflect last minute changes, so the changes made to move Browning's Corps HQ up to the 1st lift required changes made to the 1st Anti-Tank Battery lift, bumping some of their gliders back to the 2nd lift, so their Chalk Numbers are known to be incorrect. It makes getting to bottom of some of these questions very difficult, to say the least.
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  584. Montgomery and Browning were both sidelined by Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army, as the final MARKET plan removed key features of Browning's original operation COMET plan and SIXTEEN upgrade proposal put to Eisenhower for approval by Montgomery on 10 September. 21st Army Group were not notified of the changes until after Brereton's 14 September cut-off date for any further amendments and Browning could not object after already threatening to resign over a previous Brereton plan for operation LINNET II. Any late intervention from Montgomery would probably go to Eisenhower to adjudicate and if Brereton was overruled he had the authority to simply cancel the operation. This is what happens when inexperienced American commanders think they know better.
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  585. The drop zone south of the Arnhem bridge - Drop Zone 'K' on the Malburgsche Polder, was not suitable for a landing on D-Day because it was flanked by two heavy batteries of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 and one and a half batteries of leichte Flak-Abteilung 845 clustered around the southern bridge access. The DZ was also crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station located southeast of the bridge. It was deemed suitable for the Poles arriving on D+2, assuming the area was under the control of 1st Parachute Brigade - the drop zone was to be cleared by 1st Parachute Battalion after completing their Phase 1 task of holding the high ground north of Arnhem until 4th Parachute Brigade arrived, and the Royal Engineers were due to rendezvous at the power station and take control after completing their own Phase 1 tasks. Because these plans to clear the drop zone had not been done, the drop for the Poles had to be re-arranged to a safer zone and the area around Driel opposite the divisional perimeter in Oosterbeek was chosen as DZ 'K1'. The drop was also delayed by bad weather to D+4 (21 September), when the area south of the bridge was being traversed by German troops moving south to Elst and reinforcing the blocking line at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel.
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  586.  @marcel-y8c  - as a matter of fact I have been corresponding with author Scott Revell (Retake Arnhem Bridge 2010 and A Few Vital Hours 2013) about Flak and in the middle of writing an email reply today on the subject of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 at Arnhem. He's working on a new book on Flak Kampfbrigade Svoboda this year and another more general book on the Flak at Arnhem, so we're trying to get all of our ducks in a row and agree on what exactly the Flak situation was at Arnhem at the start of MARKET GARDEN. One of the things I had speculated on in trying to identify Flak-Abteilung '19' in Flak Brigade Svoboda from Robert Kershaw's order of battle (It Never Snows In September, 1990), is that these batteries with odd numbers of guns in them (3 x 88mm + 2 x 88mm + 6 x 3.7cm) may have been guns in situ that had been hit by the preliminary bombings on 17 September and the survivors with operational guns incorporated into Svoboda's Kampfgruppe after he arrived, since the text does say he took control of all Flak in the area under his command. I believe the heavy guns may have actually been captured French 75mm Schneider Mle 36 - known as 7.5cm M.36(f) in German service as used by gemischte (mixed) Flak-Abteilung 591 at Arnhem - and Kershaw simply assumed all heavy Flak guns in German service were their own 88mm design. The 6 x 3.7cm is a halb-Batterie or half battery of 2 Zuge (platoons), which matches the testimony of Major Hans Lange, commander of leichte Flak-Abteilung 845 based at Leeuwarden airfield in the northern Netherlands, who was ordered to detach one and a half batteries to the southern access of the Arnhem highway bridge a few days before the battle. I requested the Ohio State University librarian add his folder in the Cornelius Ryan Collection to the digital archive, so it can be read online, and it is now available (box 132, folder 05: Hans Lange). My speculation is that Flak-Abteilung '19' was an ad hoc designation named after the local Flak Brigade XIX (19) headquartered in Arnhem under Oberst Werner Huck (CRC box 132 folder 03). The Germans did a similar thing with the Marine Kampfgruppe 642 sent to Arnhem from the Marine Auffanglager (collection centre) in Zwolle, and I think simply named the kampfgruppe '642' after the late Generalmajor Friedrich Kussin's Feldkommandantur 642 that was the military district command for Gelderland and Overijssel provinces. I put this to Scott and he thinks I may have resolved a real headache for him as well in trying to identify what Flak-Abteilung '19' was, or where it came from. We had both been trying to research this Abteilung and given up, and then I came across Werner Huck's interview in the CRC and as soon as I realised his brigade was based in Arnhem it suddenly all made sense. To answer your question about the effectiveness of the RAF attacks on the Flak in the Arnhem area, I also believe there were 2 x 2cm Flak guns on towers constructed over the toll booths at the northern end of the highway bridge. The toll booths were never used to collect tolls as alternative funding for the bridge was found by the town by the time the bridge was completed in 1935, but the Germans reinforced the glass booths with sandbags to create machine-gun bunkers and the Flak towers were constructed from wood on top of each toll booth roof. I believe the RAF scored a direct hit on the east tower destroying the gun and possibly also the bunker. The west tower and bunker remained intact and this had to be dealt with by Frost using a 6-pounder anti-tank gun to engage the bunker, but it could not elevate sufficiently to engage the Flak gun, so a PIAT was used from a nearby building. The bunker was then attacked with a flamethrower. According to historian Frank van Lunteren (Radboud Nijmegen University), at least one of the 3.7cm platoons south of the bridge was untouched in the air attacks. With the heavy batteries in the area down to 3 and 2 guns each, it looks like the air attacks on 17 September were about 50% successful, which makes sense because it would be remarkable if they hit everything or hit nothing! I think the main means of preventing reinforcements reaching Arnhem was to request the Dutch Government-in-Exile based in London to organise a rail strike for 17 September. A lot of troop movements out of the Netherlands (the last parts of the Hohenstaufen SS Division were due to leave for Siegen in Germany) were stuck because they were loaded on trains, but no locomotives were available because of the strike. The trains had to be taken over by the German Reichsbahn (state rail service). In my research on Nijmegen, the 82nd Airborne took a lot of Reichsbahn prisoners (over 120 listed in the G-2 Intel Section documents), because the Germans had a training Abteilung based in Nijmegen, and although officially listed as combatants with about half the personnel issued with rifles, the Germans attempted to evacuate them rather than incorporate them into the defence of Nijmegen. A train passed through the 505th Regiment lines at Groesbeek without being challenged and escaped to Kranenburg, so a very angry Gavin ordered the line mined and a bazooka team positioned in time to intercept a second train. About 200 troops jumped off this train and many were rounded up and put in the POW cage - the walled garden of the Mookerheide hunting lodge - with security provided by USAAF glider pilots. It's a lot of detail, but I hope it helps build a better picture.
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  587. I really don't understand where all the invective against Montgomery comes from, it's totally irrational. As John says, he didn't plan Market Garden in any detail. He and Browning chose between Arnhem and Wesel for the operation Comet target, based on suitable drop zones and flak we assume, but Dempsey's diary only records that they decided overnight on 3/4 September and advised him of their decision in the morning. It's speculated that Montgomery won any debate over this, because Browning preferred Wesel, as did Dempsey, but it's thought that after the bad blood with Bradley over (the cancelled) airborne operation Linnet, Montgomery wanted to avoid an axis towards Wesel because that would be close to the US XIX Corps boundary and he didn't fancy the propsect of having to share a Rhine crossing with Bradley! By 9 September he was advised of the V-2 rocket threat from launch sites on the Dutch coast and was asked when can he rope off that general area, so Arnhem was now fixed for a compelling reason. I believe the prospect of also cutting off the 15.Armee west of Antwerp, as well as the bulk of the 1.Fallschirm-armee and the WBN (occupation forces in the Netherlands) was a huge opportunity to kill several birds with one stone. Also, not only was Model's Heeresgruppe B headquarters at Oosterbeek, west of Arnhem and known because the FLIVO (Luftwaffe liaison officer) known to 'Ultra' intel to be in Oosterbeek (the Luftwaffe codes were more easily broken) and therefore known to all Allied headquarters down to Army level, but I recently found out that Hans Kammler's SS-Division zV headquarters controlling V-2 rocket operations was located at Berg-en-Dal, southeast of Nijmegen on the Groesbeek heights and the initial objective of 3/508th PIR. I have no idea if this was known to Montgomery, but since both headquarters were hurriedly evacuated and almost captured by British and American paratroopers respectively, I do wonder if Montgomery was relishing those prospects as added bonuses? The failure of Market Garden was not because it was too complicated. When you break it down to individual units, each one had a simple job to do, and there were mulitple redundant bridge targets (a total of 24+ bridges were targets, depending on how you count them), and there were engineering backup plans for each crossing for all the permutations if the bridge was blown, site held by the Allies, site held by the enemy, or the intact bridge still held by the enemy. For example, if the Nijmegen bridges were both intact and held by the enemy in strength, the plan was for a river assault by British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one or two Brigades up - the division that was supposed to lead XXX Corps on the final stage of the advance to Arnhem from Nijmegen in any case. Gavin insisted on his division conducting the river assault because he knew he had already screwed up. So what went wrong? The 508th PIR was tasked with securing the Groesbeek heights with initial objectives at De Hut, De Ploeg, and Berg-en-Dal, with its three battalions. Gavin's divisional briefing made clear to the 508th CO that he was expected to send his 1st battalion immediately to the highway bridge in Nijmegen, and to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation. This is made clear from 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). Instead of carrying out this instruction, against zero opposition on the heights, and a Dutch resistance report made personally to the Colonel at De Ploeg that Nijmegen had been evacuated by the Germans leaving only an NCO and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. The 508th CO stuck to his own pre-flight plan to send a reinforced platoon to the bridge to report its condition. Only three Scouts got there without getting lost in the crowds of jubilant Dutch civilians, took seven priosners at the south end of the bridge and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, and when it got dark decided they had to withdraw. As they did so, they heard heavy equipment arriving at the other end of the bridge; SS-Panzer troops arriving from Arnhem. If you compare the performance of 1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem to the 508th PIR, 1st Para landed 30 minutes later, had 3 Km further to march to their prime objective, had machine guns, mortars and armoured cars on their routes, but managed to secure their bridge and hold it for four days with one of their battalions. Phil Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy tell you the why of this for context. It wasn't in Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and it wasn't in the Hollywood film of course. Instead, there's an irrational hatred of Montgomery that seems to be endemic in American culture.
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  588. The Rhine crossing was deliberately chosen over the opening of Antwerp because it had the potential to end the war sooner. It was also Montgomery's belief that the Canadians could clear the Scheldt on their own (it was in their sector of the front) while he went for the Ruhr (with 2nd Army), and he admitted only with hindsigt after the war that it was a mistaken belief. This puts the lie to the often made charge of hubris. It's not hubris to give your allies too much credit. Quite the reverse. It should be noted that Market Garden was intended to terminate on the Zuider Zee coast at Nunspeet, because the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division was to deploy facing the Ijssel - a distributary of the Dutch Rijn - and seize crossing points at Deventer and Zutphen to allow further operations into Germany. You're really across the Rijn in the Netherlands until you are across all the distributaries of the Rhine delta. So, by cutting off all German forces west of the Market Garden corridor, Montgomery would not only have 15.Armee trapped in the pocket but another Army echelon force in the Wehrmacht Befehlshaber Niederlande (WBN - the German occupation forces in the Netherlands) completely sidelined and effectively out of the war. Antwerp took on more urgency after Market Garden had failed to reach its intended target (beyond Arnhem), but would have been next on the agenda and made somewhat easier if Market Garden had succeeded.
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  589.  @TheImperatorKnight  - my understanding of the 6.Panzerarmee's poor performance compared with the 5.Panzerarmee to the south was at least partly because the SS units in the former tended to use their reconnaissance battalions as additonal battlegroups, while their army counterparts in the south used them more effectively to recon the best routes. The 2.Panzer and Panzer Lehr (130.) Divisions penetrated much further, having by-passed Bastogne to almost within sight of the Meuse, and were stopped by essentially running out of fuel. The implication being that if army units had been on the northern routes they would have better exploited the open southern flank of 82nd Airborne instead of trying to batter it into submission on the Salm.
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  590. YouTube obviously object to any condemnation of the H-word. Apparently the wrong side won the war.
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  591. The 508th Regiment's written Order N.1 dated 13 September states that the three battalions were to dig in along the Groesbeek ridge and be prepared to move on Division order to t he highway brudge in Nijmegen. 48 hours before the drop on 15 September, when Gavin thought the plan was coming together nicely, he instructed Colonel Lindquist in the final divisional briefing to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge apon landing and there are two witnesses to this - the Division G-3 (Ops) Jack Norton, as related in John McManus (September Hope, 2012) and 508th liasion officer Chester 'Chet' Graham in Phil Nordyke's 508th regimental history (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012). When Gavin found out from Chet Graham's report at around 1800 hours that Lindquist was not moving on the bridge, they went to the 508th CP to get him moving, Gavin telling Lindquist - "I told you to move with speed" (Nordyke). McManus does an excellent analysis of the whole bridge vs ridge debate on priorities and comes to the firm conclusion that Browning and Gavin expected both to be taken, but the bridge was the perishable asset. Lindquist was not a good field commander, something Gavin expressed in his interview with Cornelius Ryan was also the view of 82nd CO in Normandy, Matthew Ridgway. Lindquist thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, before sending any sizeable force to the bridge. Nordyke's chapters on the 508th in Normandy are also very illuminating, consistent with Gavin's remarks to Ryan, but Ryan didn't include them in A Bridge Too Far (1974) or what really went wrong in Nijmegen at all.
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  592. The intelligence for Arnhem wasn't ignored, the operation was expanded from one to three Airborne divisions because of the known build up of German forces in the Netherlands, and even the infamous aerial photo dismissed by Browning has recently re-emerged and proved Browning was right to dismiss it. The operation failed for other reasons.
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  593. Deelen was an armed camp with about 2,000 ground personnel still stationed there, protected by a heavy Flak battalion and several batteries of light Flak, and at least two companies from the local army security unit, Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908. The 1st Airborne Division did not have the resources for capturing Deelen, it's principle objective was to assist XXX Corps in crossing the Rijn. 1st Parachute Battalion was blocked from accessing the Amsterdamseweg main road, heading for their high ground objectives at Klein Warnsborn (grid 7279) and Valkenhuizen (7580), because the Germans thought they were heading for Deelen and their ground defences went into action on that basis. The road was then patrolled by a substantial column of vehicles from Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, and then subsequently from von Allwörden's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 9 as part of Spindler's kampfgruppe. The airbase was a planned target for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry and Guards Armoured DIvisions, once they crossed the Rijn, and the plan was for the US 878th Airborne Engineer (Aviation) Battalion to be flown in by glider to repair the runways for the air transportable 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division to be flown in. Relocating the IX Troop Carrier Command Squadrons to the continent would obviously help, but they were engaged full time on transporting supplies to the continent and then the Airborne Army for the operation. Moving house, as anyone who has done it knows, means work stops for the move. Browning's HQ used 38 gliders: - 6 x WACO required for 2 x US Fighter Control Teams and 2 x Comms (82nd and 101st AB Liaison) Teams, and 32 x Horsa required for I Airborne Corps HQ. I take the point, but 70 gliders is incorrect. The second lift requirements for the second half of 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment to Arnhem were 40 x Horsa and 1 x Hamilcar. My source for the data is Appendices 8 and 9 in Glider Pilots At Arnhem by Mike Peters and Luuk Buist (2009). Incidentally, the 101st Division Liaison Officer and his Comms Team was in the WACO that crashed near Student's HQ at Vught, carrying documents that enabled Student to extrapolate the airlift schedule for the operation.
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  594. I think the idea that Hitler was a nationalist was always a deliberate misunderstanding arising from the name of his party, which was simply a national party rather than an international movement like communism, which it opposed. After the defeat of Nazism in the war, other left wing parties throughout Europe, from the various communist parties on the continent to the Labour Party in Britain from which Oswald Mosley had split to form the BUF, sought to distance themselves from Hitler's National Socialists by re-branding them as extreme 'right-wing' nationalists. The whole idea that nationalism is inherently a right wing characteristic is obviously nonsense, since Britain has to contend with two very left wing nationalist parties in the form of Sinn Fein in Ireland and the Scottish Nationalist Party in Scotland.
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  595.  @lyndoncmp5751  - Eisenhower was holding himself in reserve in case the Germans launched a counter-offensive and threatened Paris, or maybe even New York...
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  596.  @lyndoncmp5751  - I just love that script. I had the office in stitches when I used Crapgame's line on the phone one day - "Hey, I've got a little favour to ask you... will you stop crying!!? I haven't even told you what it is yet!"
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  597.  @lyndoncmp5751  - I also appreciate the attention to detail. Dare I say it's because the writer was British? Troy Kennedy Martin (actually from the Isle of Bute in Scotland) was a veteran of early British TV, wrote film The Italian Job (1969), and would later return to TV in the UK for Colditz, The Sweeney and film Sweeney 2 (1978), Z-Cars, Reilly: Ace Of Spies, Edge Of Darkness, Hollywood film Red Heat (1988), and BBC film adaptation of Andy McNab's Bravo Two Zero (1999). I think he does his research before he puts pen to paper! The setting for Kelly's Heroes was during the halt outside Nancy in September 1944, and the uniforms have the correct divisional patch for US 35th Infantry Division. I'm not sure the vehicles are right for the Mechanized Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop of a standard 1944 Infantry Division. The recon elements used M8 Armored Cars and Jeep Sections, with half-tracks and trucks (including 1/4 ton trucks - i.e. Jeeps) in the HQ, AMS (Administration, Mess, and Supply), and Maintenance Sections of the Troop HQ. Kelly's Jeep I noticed had 'RCN 4' on the front fender, indicating the 4th Jeep in the company/troop, so I think it suggests it's in the AMS Section. The 35th Infantry were a National Guard unit from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and were nicknamed the "Santa Fe Division", they were 'federalized' (became part of the United States Army) in 1940 and 'triangularized' in 1942 to the WW2 establishment. It's possible they did not have regularised reconnaissance vehicles available and had to use old hand-me-downs. The platoon's half-track with the 105mm howitzer gun (not an anti-tank weapon) looks like the T19 based on the White M3 half-track, although the half-tracks themselves are International Harvester M5 models, which were usually exported to allies like the UK, while M3 production was rationalised to US Army service. So it's an odd collection of vehicles. The German Tiger tanks are well known fakes built in Yugoslavia (where the film was made) based on Russian T34 chassis for a Yugoslav film production. The markings include the 'key' Leibstandarte symbol for the schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 serving under I.SS-Panzerkorps, and turret numbers 112, 113, and 115 indicate tanks 2, 3, and 5, from 1.Zug, 1.Kompanie. The whole movie plot seems to be inspired by a combination of Patton's Hammelburg raid behind enemy lines by Task Force Baum of 4th Armored Division to rescue American POWs (including Patton's son-in-law aviator John K. Waters), and a missing haul of gold from the German Operation Tannenbaum shipments to Swiss banks at the end of the war, both in 1945. It's a great comedy caper (like The Italian Job), but a really fascinating production as well. If you haven't seen it, check out the YouTube video of Don Rickles' hilarious roasting of Clint Eastwood at an awards dinner event.
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  598.  @lyndoncmp5751  - I'm sure you're right about the Kelly's Heroes Tigers and their turret numbers - very similar patterns and other variations used in different units. I haven't read much on the I.SS-Panzerkorps, being all over the II.SS-Panzerkorps, obviously. The story of their Tiger unit is shrouded in mystery, got a few tantalising details from Dieter Stenger's book Panzers East And West (2017), which is a history of 10.SS-Panzer-Divisison. He's a USMC veteran but had a family member on his mother's side serving in 6./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and had access to a family photo album. In Holland the Regiment had 16 Mark IV tanks at Vorden, most handed over from 9.SS-Panzer after arrival from Normandy and concentrated in the 5.Kompanie under an officer named Quandel (must do some research to find his full name), and their 4 surviving StuG IIIG assault guns (a hangover from the division originally being raised as a panzergrenadier division in 1943) were concentrated in the 7.Kompanie. The 6.Kompanie was made up of unhorsed crews and logistics troops acting as infantry. When Model supplied 20 new Panthers to the division during the battle of Arnhem (a batch of 8 and another of 12 vehicles), they had no Panther battalion yet, it was still training in Germany with just 5 or 10 tanks between HQ and four companies, new deliveries kept getting diverted to Normandy as replacements to other units, but SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 had 100 unhorsed Panther crewmen formed into an 'Alarm Kompanie' acting as infantry, so they were transferred to the other division and crewed the new Panthers as 8./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10. Several got knocked out in the Elst area on the 'island'. Interesting photos show them finished in plain desert yellow from the factory as the crews had no time to apply green/brown camouflage paint or turret numbers. Another interesting factoid: while the two divisions of the II.SS-Panzerkorps were stationed in towns and villages around the Ijssel River north and east of Arnhem, did you know that SS-Flak-Abteilung 10 was in Ede to the west of the British Airborne landings? It clears up a mystery of which unit owned the Flak wagons that showed up at Drop Zone 'Y' held by the 7th KOSB. Haven't seen that reported anywhere else, although the marketgarden dot com web site order of battle alluded to an SS Flak unit in the area without revealing what they knew about its identity or where it originated from. Didn't realise Clint had inserted the Don Rickles tribute in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot - that was a nice touch. Reminds me of Ross Kemp in Ultimate Force asking his SAS Troop "who shot the TV?" after the Killing House exercise - the TV was showing his soap opera Eastenders at the time!
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  599.  @lyndoncmp5751  - Hey, I got this one! Thanks for the effort - it's a topic right up my street! As I'm sure you know, the 9.SS were entraining for refit in Germany (Siegen) and ordered to hand over their armoured vehicles and heavy weapons to the 10.SS, which would refit in Holland. Most of the Mark IV tanks belonged to 9.SS in Normandy and were initially camped on the Rozendaal golf links (there was a RAD labour camp there with barrack accommodations), just up the road from SS-Panzer-Regiment's staff and workshop companies in the Saksen-Weimarkazerne in north Arnhem. When ordered to hand over equipment, the Mark IV tanks (I think they had about 10 offhand but don't quote me) went to SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Vorden, bringing their total to 16 concentrated in 5./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 under the command of an officer named Quandel. I just looked him up in Dieter Stenger's Panzers East And West (2017) and he was SS-Obersturmführer Hans Quandel, who was commander of 6.Kompanie in Normandy in a Mark IV with turret number 601. Stenger's family connection was to SS-Oberscharführer Westerhoff in tank number 622, who at Arnhem was still in 6.Kompanie, but they had no tanks and acted as an infantry 'alarm kompanie'. One of the things I got from Dieter Stenger's book is that the two divisions were originally raised as panzergrenadier divisions, so only had a StuG Abteilung with StuG IIIG assault guns. When the man with the small mustache ordered several SS divisions to be converted to panzer divisions, the Panzer-Regiment had to be formed from new. I don't know the history of 17.SS, but it may be the same story, the II.Abteilung only had two Kompanies of Mark IV tanks and the other two had the StuGs reorganised from the StuG Abteilung into the 7 and 8.Kompanies of the Regiment. In Holland, the 10.SS had 4 surviving StuGs concentrated in 7.Kompanie. When Model sent 20 new Panthers straight from the factory, they formed 8.Kompanie and crewed by the 100 unhorsed Panther crewmen from the 9.SS-Panzer-Regiment 'alarm kompanie'. 9.SS-Panzer-Regiment did have three surviving Panthers from Normandy, which they kept at Arnhem. I expect they either didn't have to hand them over to the 10.SS because the other division did not yet have their own Panther Abteilung and its logistical support - they were still in training, a slow process because their new deliveries of tanks kept getting diverted to Normandy as replacements, so they only had 5 or 10 tanks to train on until January 1945. I have some information that the three Panthers and possibly the two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' belonging to SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 were in the Saksen-Weimar barracks, possibly in the workshops to declare them out of service and avoid handover, until 15 September, when a Dutch resident in a house at the end of Callunastraat on the junction with Heijenoordseweg, received a knock on the door from an SS tank crew asking for milk. They explained they were camped with their vehicles under trees on Heijenoordseweg to avoid the possibility the barracks might be bombed. They went into action on 17 September, losing two Panthers in western Arnhem to 3rd Parachute Battalion (a Gammon bomb and a PIAT), and the two Möbelwagen were very active with Kampfgruppe Spindler on the Dreyenscheweg against 4th Parachute Brigade. Also on 17 September, Quandel's 5.Kompanie with 16 Mark IV tanks officially on the books (I don't know if all of them were operational, but I refer to James Sims later) were expected in Nijmegen as part of Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), and Reinhold's adjutant could not understand why they hadn't arrived (Retake Arnhem Bridge, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell, 2014). The reason was because the Arnhem bridge was now in British hands and the alternative route via the ferry at Pannerden could not take the weight of the Mark IVs. According to Harmel, the first tank onto the raft slid off and into the river, so the tanks had to be held back. Cont...
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  600.  @lyndoncmp5751  - on SS-Flak-Abteilung 10 at Ede, only the 4.Batterie (3.7cm) remained completely intact after Falaise and the withdrawal across the Seine. The Batterie had 3.7cm self-propelled Sd.Kfz.6/2 half-tracks. They were attached to a unit on the Albert canal blocking line at Hasselt - a mysterious 'Kampfgruppe Weiss' under SS-Sturmbannführer Weiss [the schwere.SS-Panzer-Abteilung 102 commander?] with a new battalion of Panthers [really?] and provided defence for a commando operation by Skorzeny [?]. The Flak guns expended their last ammunition shooting up a suspected church tower observation post and three remaining vehicles were sent back to Arnhem [Ede?], while most of the men remained acting as infantry. After the Albert canal line was breached, the surviving men started the long march north to rejoin the division [and the group known as Gruppe Buttlar at Arnhem were a group of 'Frundsbergers' mostly from the 4.Batterie - isn't it nice when some of the dots start to join up?] There were some elements from the 5.Batterie (2cm) that had also returned from Normandy and were collected in the Ede barracks, while survivors of the 8.8cm batteries were collected in Elten (German border east of Pannerden) to reorganize and receive new guns). The 4.Batterie commander was SS-Obersturmführer Gottlob Ellwanger, and the staff [Kompanie?] officer SS-Obersturmführer Karl Rüdele assumed command of the 5.Batterie, which was rebuilt by concentrating the remaining 2cm autocannon from the 8.8cm batteries and from each 14.Kompanie of the Panzergrenadier-Regiments, with many of the guns coming from the Hohenstaufen Division. They were deployed on the Rhine to protect the ferry crossings, which is also a nice bit of information. However, the main problem I have with Stenger's book (Panzers East And West, 2017) is that the timelines are not clear. I can't be sure of exactly what equipment the Flak unit had at Ede after this deployment on the Albert canal, which I had not heard of before, but I am sure they are the source for the equipment that reconnoitred the 7th KOSB positions on the night of 17 September, consisting of SP Flak guns and a vehicle with a searchlight. The good thing about the book is that it is an English language history of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division (so how many of those are there?), and has a lot of interesting photos from the family of Bernhard Westerhoff of 6./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10. The book's cover picture on Amazon is confusingly a post-war picture of an American M60 tank (!), which is not the picture on the cover of my copy - it has a Panzer IV photo from the Westerhoff Archive! Any books by Bob Gerritsen and or Scott Revell on German units at Arnhem are superb and have a wealth of well-researched detail, but they are limited print run books, so you may have to hunt for them. I rely a lot on Paul Meekins Books, a specialist military bookshop - they are very good and often come through with rare books, even old ones in unsold 'new' condition, and their order/despatch is very efficient.
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  601.  @lyndoncmp5751  - sorry, another post!!! Dieter Stenger's narrative on the deployment of 4./SS-Flak-Abteilung 10 was bothering me because I couldn't see in his book how they had an intact batterie after Falaise and the Seine, and then after Belgium only had three 37cm SP guns, so I did some digging to find out what KStN (war establishments) they used in panzergrenadier/panzer divisions in 43/44 and I think it looks like KStN 1712 (fG) 1.6.44 or possibly the earlier 1.5.44 version, and I only have the earlier version anyway (the main difference would be the later 'frei Gliederung' version having the batterie supply trains taken out and concentrated into a battalion supply company, but the weapons platoons should be similar). The structure seems to be 1 platoon of 3.7cm SP, 2 platoons of towed 3.7cm, and 1 platoon of 2cm vierling SP. So that would explain Stenger's narrative of the Albert canal mission, because they sent all the "vehicles" back to Arnhem but he says they left the "guns" behind. That would explain why only 3 x 3.7cm SP guns came back to Arnhem/Ede, and presumably the flakvierling SP wagons as well, so they left the towed 3.7cm guns behind.
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  602.  @lyndoncmp5751  - Hi Lyndon, it's my pleasure. I've already fallen quite a long way down the Market Garden rabbit hole since originally tripping over a schoolfriend's paperback 'film tie-in' edition of Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, before the film came out a few months later in cinemas during the Summer holidays. I think the deployment by II.SS-Panzerkorps was probably the most logical, professional steps they could take based on the information available to them and their later orders (Model confirmed Bittrich's initial moves made on his own intitiative). I believe the logic was that 10.SS-Panzer had most of the armour and heavy equipment, so they were assigned the Korps' "schwerpunkt" (point of main effort) at Nijmegen. The Germans (Bittrich and Model) immediately recognised that holding the British advance on the Waal (which is Dutch for "wall" for a reason - it's the main channel of the Dutch Rhine and the Waalbrug at Nijmegen was the largest single span bridge in Europe in 1944) was their best chance and also recognised the reality that the canal defence lines (Wilhelmina and Maas-Waal canals) were lightly held with poor quality troops, and the canals were easily bridged by engineers. It was probably not realistic for II.SS-Panzerkorps to be concerned with operations further south, apart from their own Kampfgruppe on the Belgian border - Kampfgruppe Heinke under command of Division Kampfgruppe Walther (1.Fallschirm-Armee). Situational awareness with reinforcements? I think Model just promised Bittrich reinforcements wherever he could get them (Reserve Army!) and they would be attached as they arrived. They were obviously divided between the twin priorities of the heaviest equipment attached to 10.SS-Panzer at Nijmegen (and Arnhem bridge on their supply line) to counter the British 2nd Army advance, and lighter infantry/security elements could be attached to 9.SS-Panzer with the job of containing the 1st Airborne lodgement, and once isolated, destroyed at leisure. The logical division of forces apparently included Artillerie-Regiment 191 (from 91.Luftlande-Infanterie-Division, the 6.Batterie was famously destroyed at Brecourt Manor by E/506th in Normandy on D-Day), was refitted and stationed on the River Ijssel defence line under construction in Holland, so they were allocated to the 9.SS-Panzer because they had no guns and SS-Artillerie-Regiment 10 was 'over-establishment' after finding an abandoned train carrying 40 brand new 10.5cm leFH 18/40 guns at Arras railway station during the retreat! The armour was also divided between competing priorities, but obviously they wanted the main concentration for the Nijmegen 'schwerpunkt'. Schwere.Panzer-Abteilung 506 was split between 2.Kompanie to 10.SS-Panzer, 3.Kompanie to 9.SS-Panzer, and the staff and 1.Kompanie either held in reserve at Elten (German border) or sent immediately to Aachen to stop the American advance there. In the later stages of operation Garden, Model withdrew 9.Panzer (army not SS) and 116.Panzer-Divisions (both somewhat depleted) from Aachen and attached them to II.SS-Panzerkorps on the Nijmegen 'island'. After 1st Airborne were withdrawn, the 9.SS-Panzer-Division could continue their delayed withdrawal to Germany for refit. Mielke was a training unit, Hummel's kompanie was a 'fire brigade' probably going to the Eastern Front but diverted to Arnhem. All the Panzer-Brigades were designed and outfitted for action on the Eastern Front and (at least) several were diverted to the West instead (111 and 113 faced Patton at Arracourt, I believe). Panzer-Brigade 107 was already heading for Aachen on 15/16 September, but diverted to detrain at Venlo on 18 September and then road-marched to the Nuenen area for operations against the 101st Airborne at Zon. Best online reference for this unit is the 'axishistory' website - they have a detailed breakdown for all you armour enthusiasts! Panzer-Brigade 108 was also diverted and sent to Kleve to fight 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen. They were eventually integrated into 116.Panzer-Division at Arnhem to refit that Division - not as much information on this unit's history, but the equipment would probably be the same as the breakdown on 107, formed at the same time. cont...
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  603.  @lyndoncmp5751  - just looking at Autumn Gale for an answer to your question about schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 in the period up to 23/24 September. The Jadgpanther (1.Kompanie) were in LXXXVIII.Armeekorps reserve at Turnhout until the planned attack on the Market Garden corridor by 59.Infanterie-Division, aimed at seizing the bridge at Veghel and blowing it up. P.242 - "In addition the Jagdpanther of 559 were to be involved. Once again they were to be deployed in a role for which they were not really designed. At 1830 hours Reinhard ordered Chill to send the three operational Jadgpanther via Tilburg to the southeast of Vught for the planned attack of 22 September. Later 559 reported back that it had four operational Jadgpanther. The order prompted the acting kommandeur of 1.Kompanie, Oberleutnant Seitz, to send in an urgent request to LXXXVIII.Armeekorps that day. He informed Reinhard (LXXXVIII.Armeekorps Kdr] that his company with the forward workshop and a small staff had been deployed at the Ten Aard bridgehead with four operational Jadgpanther while five others were in workshops near Zutphen. He asked to be reunited with the rest of 559 both for tactical and technical reasons. Seitz pointed out that the Belgian-Dutch terrain with its limited visibility was completely unsuitable for the heavy Jagdpanther unless they could operate alongside the more mobile Sturmgeschütze. The Jadgpanther could protect the lighter vehicles from enemy armour while the Sturmgeschütze could provide flank cover. Technically it also made sense, Seitz argued, because the forward workshops could only carry out minor repairs. Effectively this meant that most of the Jadgpanther which were in repair might never make it back to the front because of Allied air superiority. Finally, Seitz said he was out of touch with headquarters which had moved back to Well, a village on the Maas [east side of the river from Venray in the Venlo pocket] almost 100 kilometres to the east of Turnhout. Seitz certainly had a point and 559 would indeed be reunited, just not in the way he had asked for. Since the start of Operation Market Garden the remnants of schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 had been scattered to the four winds. For a couple of days it seemed as if the unit had gone. Heeresgruppe B reported that '559 has apparently slipped away from Fallschirm.AOK. 1 and the bulk is now concentrated around Wesel'. Thereupon the Heeresgruppe decided to order it in reserve. However, it was soon discovered that this only applied to the two Sturmgeschütz Kompanien which were in Germany and that the Jagdpanther were still with LXXXVIII.Armeekorps west of the Corridor. One measure which Oberst Eichert-Wiersdorff [LXXXVIII.Armeekorps Chef des Generalstabes] took right away was to order the major workshops in Zutphen to move close to the front and set up shop in Baarle-Nassau. They were to take the Jadgpanther and Sturmgeschütze which were under repair along with them and report to LXXXVIII.Armeekorps. Around this time Kopka [Oberleutnant Franz Kopka, 559 Kdr] went to fetch orders from Heeresgruppe B (Generalfeldmarschall Model) in Garath castle near Düsseldorf. There he learned that 559 would be assigned to 15.Armee (Von Zangen) who had his headquarters near Dordrecht. Before seeing von Zangen in Dordrecht Kopka and his staff company travelled back to de Bilt, near Utrecht, where some of the workshops had been located since the unit had arrived in the Netherlands on 2 September." It's complicated! Hope you enjoyed.
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  604.  @lyndoncmp5751  - thanks, my pleasure, as always. Yes, I was trying to make the point that any StuGs or Jadgpanther seen in the Valkenswaard area belonged to 559 and any references to Röstel’s unit in the area is an error. In the 2nd Bn Irish Guards’ War Diary there’s a few interesting entries we can attribute to 559, mostly StuGs: 17 September 1944 - During the breakout - "L/Sjt COWAN, No. 2 Sqn, saw a Self-Propelled gun and knocked it out, made the crew climb on the back of his tank and point out their friends positions, which they did gladly in return, as they thought, for their lives." - Valkenswaard - "A German half-track later drove in - a welcome addition to the 3rd Bn’s transport." - this was the Sdkfz 251/8 Krankenpanzerwagon and Medical Officer belonging to 559 Abteilung Staff Kompanie - they got lost and ran smack into the Guards laager in Valkenswaard with the half-track and a truck and surrendered. 18 September 1944 "The Bns were ready to move behind HOUSEHOLD CAVALRY Sqn, but were delayed until 10.00hrs by the report of one JAGD PANTHER and 2 Self Propelled guns covering the road to AALST. We rang up the Station Master there and he confirmed their presence by the church. The leading Sqn (No. 2) pushed on and saw a Self-Propelled gun just S of AALST which L/Sjt COWAN immediately knocked out." - I believe it was already abandoned. A sketch map of the breakout indicates an SP gun on both sides of the road just north of the Dutch border, so that's probably two StuGs from 559. The later group of Jadpanther and SP guns was a sighting by the leading 2nd HHC unit. I recall from reading (somewhere?) they saw the vehicles pull off the main road into a side road heading East. When the Guards were brought up to deal with them, they only found the one StuG parked on the main road, abandoned. I think that's basically it. These books by Didden and Swarts are excellent - I'm just coming to the end of their new one, The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022). It's effectively the prequel to Autumn Gale. A free alternative to buying Autumn Gale, if you haven't already come across it, is Jack Didden's 2012 university thesis on Kampfgruppe Chill that he later expanded into the book. Search for 'Fighting Spirit. Kampfgruppe Chill and the German recovery in the West' and you should find the pdf on the Radboud University Nijmegen repository - you can download it onto your new-fangled personal computer! Take a look at pages 104-105 and the footnote on 105 - this is the 'HG' training Regiment reserve panzer kompanie famously, or infamously, photographed by RAF Spitfire on 12 September north of Arnhem in the Deelerwoud, as they were sent south to Hechtel in Belgium. The Belgium action is described here in this paper, and the aerial photo story is in another free pdf (not sure if I've mentioned it to you before) called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story - Royal Air Force' on the RAF MoD website, and authored by Sebastian Ritchie. Most of the tanks did break down (Browning was right!) and never made it to Belgium, and most were laagered at Wolfswinkel, near Zon, on 17 September, and after they fired on the 506th PIR's parachute drop across the road from their orchard laager, they were pounced on by escorting USAAF Mustangs or Thunderbolts. I think one of their five StuGs was also abandoned, broken down, on the corridor main road somewhere, an early model Ausf.E if I recall, I'm sure it's photographed somewhere in one of Karel Margry's Then And Now volumes. 9 and 116.Panzer-Divisions' attachment to II.SS-Panzerkorps is mentioned in the final chapter of Gerritsen and Revell's Retake Arnhem Bridge (2010), but there's not much information on their makeup. I think I found more details on the interweb. Like the 10.SS-Panzer they fought alongside, they were reduced to kampfgruppen. I see on a quick search that Browns Books (never heard of them before, so don't know if this is reliable) claim to have a copy for £35 - I think that's a bargain if you're up for snapping it up - it's only available for silly money elsewhere. Browns also have Scott Revell's A Few Vital Hours (2013) on SS-Pz.Gren.A-u-E.Btl.16 for £27.50, which looks like the original edition and cover price, also a bargain. I'll leave you to cogitate over those for the weekend!
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  605. He was in overall charge in North Africa and in Market Garden he was let down at Nijmegen.
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  606. Insufficient resources! Responsibility for capture of the Nijmegen bridges was given to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and their commander did not insist on a drop zone North of the bridges in the same way Col. Reuben Tucker demanded a drop zone west of the Grave bridge for Easy Company 504th PIR to capture both ends at once. One of the reasons why the 508th's failure to capture the Nijmegen bridges on Day 1 of the operation, and the failure of the whole operation. At Arnhem, the Polish Parachute Brigade were to be dropped South of Arnhem bridge, but only on the third day, when it was assumed the area would be under the control of British 1st Parachute Brigade and the electricity transmission lines crossing the drop zone (!) had been cut and removed. In the event, this did not happen and the Poles were dropped two days late and further west near Driel. In order to capture the Arnhem bridge from both ends at once, it was planned that 'C' Company of 2nd Parachute Battalion would capture the railway bridge at Oosterbeek and use it to cross to the South bank of the Rijn, and assist 'A' Company in their task of attacking the highway bridge. Unfortunately, the Germans blew up the rail bridge when paratroopers had just got onto it and 'C' Company then switched to a secondary objective of the Ortskommandantur (German military headquarters) in Arnhem. They never reached it, got surrounded in a house at 55 Utrechtstraat and forced to surrender. In the orders for 1st Airborne Division, there are specific instructions not to attempt to link South with 82nd Airborne because there was a Southern bomb-line for air operations in that area. However, there was also some orders for the Reconnaissance Squadron to recon main roads leading out of Arnhem when the main objective had been secured, and this included the road South to Nijmegen. Bizarrely, according to the excellent book Glider Pilots At Arnhem by Mike Peters and Luuk Buist, 20 Flight (a platoon of about 40 men) of the Glider Pilot Regiment landing gliders at Arnhem were designated to be protection for Airborne Corps Headquarters landing at Groesbeek, South of Nijmegen! Presumably because the one Flight flying the Corps HQ gliders there were deemed insufficient protection. Nobody in 20 Flight was looking forward to making that journey or even expected it to be possible. After arriving on the LZ at Arnhem, the orders were conveniently forgotton and they remained attached to the 2nd South Staffordshire Air Landing Battalion they had flown in. Remarkably, a small group under a junior officer from the HQ 1st Airborne Division CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) actually crossed the river by vehicle ferry with a Jeep and drove part way to Nijmegen to make contact with the Americans and XXX Corps, to brief them on the situation at Arnhem. They had to evade German patrols and abandon the Jeep along the way, but got through on foot. This was before the ferry was destroyed and the CRE himself, Lt.Col. Myers, had to swim the Rijn in order to convey the same information to the Polish Brigade at Driel, and that episode actually made it into the film version of A Bridge Too Far.
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  607. You might be interested in reading a couple of documents in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online under A Bridge Too Far: box 101 folder 10 - pages 3-9: notes on meeting with James Gavin, re Lindquist and objectives. box 101 folder 09 - page 48: cover letter for TA Boeree papers, re armour in the Reichswald. Gavin realised only then, in 1966, that based on Boeree's research it was the Hohenstaufen division in transit making a stop in the Reichswald that generated the reports of armoured units in the Reichswald.
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  608. American historian John C. McManus would disagree with you (and the field manual): As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." (September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’)
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  609.  @roycharlesparker  - no I haven't ever been in command of a battalion of paratroopers, or ever been tasked with seizing multiple objectives when the enemy strength and disposition was unclear, at best. But John Dutton Frost has. His military record is his testimony. Nordyke is a trained systems analyst who allowed the veterans in the 82nd Airborne to speak for themselves and hasn't made the mistake of offering his own opinions, I'm sure because he knows they would be worth a lot less than these first hand testimonies. Scholarship is open to anyone who has learned how to think, rather than what to think. With all due respect to McDonald, whose work I have read online, he hasn't gone into the forensic detail of specialist authors on MARKET GARDEN. The fact that you cite an author with such shallow coverage of MARKET GARDEN is itself an attempt at concealing the truth. Is your only book by Nordyke the divisional history? I have the same volume, so I know that doesn't go as deep as Put Us Down In Hell. I'm insulted that you thought you could get away with that, so what does that say about your intelligence? And didn't anybody train you to use paragraphs?
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  610.  @johnburns4017  - first statement: not to my knowledge he didn't. Second paragraph: correct. Third paragraph: Geert van Hees said the bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men, I have no confirmation they were elderly, but it would be consistent if they were from 1./Transport-Sicherungs-Bataillon 567 as 82nd Airborne G-2 data suggests. Their report on this unit dated 17 September is as follows: '1. Co. Transp. Bn 567. Unit left PARIS on Aug. 10 and moved to NIJMWEGEN where it was attached to the “GUARD BN. TORAU” which was responsible for the security in and around NIJMWEGEN. STRENGTH of 1. Co. Transp. Bn 567: 110 men (old men between ages 40 and 50). At time of attack, 65 men were on guard duty at bridges and RRs, the rest were sent to the southern approaches of NIJMWEGEN to stem the advance of our troops.' (World War II United States Army 82nd Airborne Division Action & After-Action Reports - pdf download, PaperlessArchives) Fourth paragraph: Lindquist failed to send Warren's battalion as Gavin had instructed, thinking he had to clear the DZ and secure his other objectives first. Warren was not expecting the movement order at 2000 hours he received from Lindquist after Gavin's intervention, as the battalion was strung out all along the ridge and it took about two hours to get them out and assembled. In fact, A Company was assembled and at the Initial Point (Krayenhoff barracks) waiting for B Company until 2200 hours when Adams was ordered to move off without them. B Company caught up with A and HQ Companies at the Keizer Karelplein after the enemy contact. I estimate the arrival of Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at the Nijmegen bridge as about 2000 hours, since it was dark by this time and dark was the time PFC Joe Atkins (1st Battalion S-2 Scout) decided they should withdraw and heard the armour arriving at the other end of the bridge as they were leaving. (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge) Gräbner was recalled to Elst at 2100 hours, but was persuaded by Reinhold's adjutant Gernot Traupel to leave a platoon of half-tracks behind as there were no combat troops to secure the bridge. I believe he left the entire schwere (heavy) 5.Kompanie, which consisted of the one platoon of five SPW half-tracks with close support 7.5cm guns (SdKfz 251/9 known as 'Stummel' or stumps), and a couple of supply trucks and a command half-track SdKfz 251/3. My reasoning for the company commander being there was that an SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) was killed during the Keizer Karelplein engagement and this rank was a company not platoon commander. Traupel later records in his diary that the SPW platoon commander reported to him at midnight that he too was also recalled to Elst, so that places the engagement between 2200 hours at the IP (Krayenhoff barracks) and midnight when the halftracks were recalled. (Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell 2010, Chapter 4: Betuwe) Final paragraph: this was only the first attempt on the bridge by the 508th and Browning rejected Gavin's proposal for a second attempt on the 18 September, preferring to wait until armoured support was available when XXX Corps arrived.
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  611. The British radios at Arnhem did work, but suffered reduced ranges because of the high iron content in the glacial moraine of the Veluwe region around Arnhem. I believe it still affects police radios to this day. The Royal Artillery sets were more powerful, but still had sufficient range to enable artillery support for the bridge from the gun positions in Oosterbeek. The 'wrong crystals' problem only affected two special VHF sets sent to Arnhem belonging to the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron teams that were supposed to contact aircraft - these teams were set up in a hurry with no training or time to work out the bugs. The double agent Christiaan 'King Kong' Lindemans betrayal myth was debunked way back in 1963 by Cornelius Bauer's book The Battle of Arnhem, written with Colonel Theodoor A. Boeree, who had been researching the battle since the end of the war. A number of things simply do not make sense if you believe the Germans knew there were going to be airborne landings at Arnhem, not least was the withdrawal of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' to Germany for refit. The division's logistics units had already gone by Sunday 17 September and only a few 'alarm companies' from the remaining combat units were still there and preparing to leave as well. The reconnaissance battalion was in the process of having their vehicles loaded onto rail flat cars at Beekbergen station with their tracks and guns removed, to render them administratively non-operational, when the landings began. They had to be hurriedly unloaded and refitted to bring them back into operation again. Lindemans had only told the Germans there were going to be landings north of Eindhoven, which was an intelligent guess on his part, but his journey across the Allied and German lines before he was captured began too soon before the operation for him to have any actual knowledge of it. The information that fell into German hands were a number of documents, not plans for the operation as the Hollywood films suggests, and the most significant was a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne - it was their liaison officer and comms team for Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek that had crashed in a glider near General Kurt Student's HQ at Vught. Student, an airborne commander himself, was able to interpret the document and extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions from it, guessing the final objective was Arnhem. According to his interview after the war he was not able to communicate the information for two days, and when he could, he found that Model, Bittrich, Harzer and Harmel already knew all of the objectives. Student did alert his own Luftwaffe chain of command and had fighter aircraft over the drop zones when the subsequent airlifts were due, but they were delayed by bad weather in England and the fighters were back at bases in Germany being refuelled when the transports finally arrived. German tanks were sent Arnhem from all over Germany (not Walcheren), and even a StuG Brigade (one company detached) being sent to Aachen from Denmark was diverted, but this was always the likely response. The only tanks already in Arnhem were three Panthers and two Flakpanzers belonging to 9.SS-Panzer-Division, and the 16 tanks and 4 StuGs belonging to 10.SS-Panzer-Division at Kranenburg near Vorden, which were 34 km (21 miles) away from Arnhem. There was effectively zero delay at the Son (not Best) bridge, which required replacement with a Bailey bridge, because it was constructed entirely at night when tanks were not advanced in WW2. A delay the previous day at a small bridge near Aalst by two 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG could have been avoided if Browning had got his way and had the 101st drop south of Eindhoven, but General Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command was afraid of losing any aircraft to Flak and objected to the idea. The drop zones west of Arnhem were the nearest suitable ones to the bridge, so there wasn't much option. This is another contrived excuse to blame the failure of the operation on the British, but it should be noted that Frost's battalion landed 30 minutes later than the 508th PIR south of Nijmegen, had 4 km further road march to the Arnhem bridge (11km) than the 508th had to the Nijmegen bridge (7km), had machine-guns, mortars and armoured cars on Frost's route compared to zero opposition to the 508th on the Groesbeek ridge, yet Frost managed to reach his objective and held it for four days. Colonel Lindquist's 508th PIR sat on the Groesbeek ridge initial objective, digging-in against zero opposition, instead of following Gavin's pre-flight instruction to send the 1st Battlion directly to the bridge, a blunder that allowed the 9.SS-Panzer-Division's reconnaissance battalion travelling all the way from Beekbergen near Apeldoorn to reinforce the bridge and occupy the city. This was also in spite of Lindquist receiving a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted the city and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge, and yet in spite of his instructions from Gavin, Lindquist chose to send a recon patrol based on a rifle platoon and the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section to check on the condition of the bridge, and all but three scouts lost their way. The three men who got to the bridge secured the southern end and seven prisoners without firing a shot, waited an hour until dark for the others and then decided they had to withdraw when they faailed to show up, hearing "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge as they left. Much of the true story was ignored by Cornelius Ryan for his book A Brdge Too Far (1974), because he didn't appear to be interested in finding American officers at fault, so all the other problems in the operation were exaggerated to explain away its failure. Ryan's interview notes with James Gavin include Gavin's recollection that the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, but after toying with the idea he eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. The only antidote to ignorance is more research and not reliance on a Hollywood film and out of date books. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016) September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Arnhem Bridge Target Mike One: An Illustrated History of the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment RA 1942-1945 North Africa-Italy-Arnhem-Norway, David Truesdale, Martijn Cornelissen, Bob Gerritsen (2015) Panzers East and West – The German 10th SS Panzer Division from the Eastern Front to Normandy, Dieter Stenger (2017) Arnhem 1944 – An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  612.  @kevinsharkey1336  - Not true. I actually only referred to one last century publication - the Gavin interview by Cornelius Ryan in 1967, in which he confirmed his 1945 letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover for the official history, but more importantly the recent books by McManus and Nordyke, both published in 2012, cited two different witnesses to Gavin's final divisional briefing and confirmed Gavin's instruction to Lindquist to move immediately on the bridge after landing, so they are all part of the 21st Century research frontier now. TIK is very much on the right track, he just hasn't drilled down to the regimental history of the 508th - Nordyke is not on his book list he's read for MARKET GARDEN. Minor faults don't compromise the entire operation. The blunder at Nijmegen did, because it created a 36-hour delay that enabled the German recapture of the Arnhem bridge and destruction of 1st Airborne Division, and this was on top of the major planning compromises to Montgomery and Browning's outline proposal (called operation SIXTEEN) that was approved by Eisenhower on 10 September, before it became Brereton and Williams' final MARKET plan. Gavin's compromise on rejecting a coup de main assault of the Nijmegen bridge in his divisional plan I've already mentioned. The chain of command responsible for the failures is therefore Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist, and because they served in a different army, there was little Browning or even Montgomery could do except perhaps resign or cancel the operation respectively.
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  613. The terrain was easier to defend and unsuited to armoured warfare. Most of the German forces brought to bear against Market Garden were the training and replacement units of the Reserve Army in the Netherlands and western Germany mobilised by the 'Valkyrie Plan' in the first week of September. In using these troops on the front lines in the Autumn of 1944, it further weakened the Field Army in 1945 by starving it of much needed trained replacements.
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  614.  @phillipnagle9651  - and that's exactly why Market Garden was an airborne operation. It was working (at least until it got to Nijmegen) because airborne infantry had secured the choke points (bridges) to allow the tanks to cross the numerous water barriers. It failed when one airborne unit (the 508th PIR at Nijmegen) did not "move with speed" (Gavin's instructions) on its bridge objective. That was an unforced error that had its origins in a command failure that had nothing to do with the terrain, or the route, or any opposition, and had previously manifested in Normandy and not corrected in the meantime before the Holland operation. I refer to Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), or Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's two books - Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and Little Sense Of Urgency (2014).
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  615. When were the Dutch underground ignored? Montgomery cancelled operation COMET (British 1st Airborne and Poles to land at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave) on 10 September after receiving confirmation II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area and proposed the upgraded operation SIXTEEN by adding the American divisions that became operation MARKET. The Nijmegen-Grave area was then assigned to 82nd Airborne and Gavin went to 1st Airborne HQ after getting this assignment, because the British had already been studying this area for COMET. He said in a letter to Cornelius Ryan that the British had intelligence from the Dutch there were heavy armoured units in the Reichswald forest and they had been preparing to deal with them in their plans. It now occurred to him (in 1966), in reviewing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree that he was sending to Ryan, that these heavy armoured units were the Hohenstaufen division in transit on their withdrawal route to Arnhem. For MARKET, the British 1st Airborne were making their plans in expectation these armoured units were now to the northeast of Arnhem, where the Dutch resistance had more recently reported SS troops to have moved into billets in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions. The reason British 1st Airborne Division was not relieved was not because of II.SS-Panzerkorps, but because Gavin failed to ensure the Nijmegen highway bridge was secured on D-Day of the operation. Montgomery and Browning's proposed operation SIXTEEN outline, approved by Eisenhower on 10 September, was handed over to USAAF Generals Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army and Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command, for detailed planning to create the final air plan called MARKET. They removed the proposed double airlift on D-Day that would have delivered most of the airborne troops on the first day, and they also removed the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. In making his divisional plan, Gavin discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge and instead assigned his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the Nijmegen mission, instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st battalion directly to the bridge as soon as practical after landing. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and now delayed at Nijmegen, thinking he had to clear the DZ and secure his other objectives first before sending a large force to the bridge. Lindquist had even ignored a report he received in person at the initial De Ploeg objective on the Groesbeek ridge, from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. He sent a platoon recon patrol under Lt. Weaver instead, which got lost after losing contact with the three-man point team, so that team under PFC Joe Atkins reached the bridge alone, took seven prisoners at the southern end without firing a shot, and then waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. This delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy the city overnight and reinforce the bridges, imposing a fatal delay to the advance of XXX Corps to Arnhem. "An American led army would have have moved forward to rescue the Brits" - ha! The British never needed rescuing. They just needed not to be stabbed in the back... repeatedly, by their so-called 'allies'. It beggars belief that Americans still think they know better in the comments on YouTube 80 years later. Sources: Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State Univerisity - box 101, folder 9, page 48, Gavin covering letter to Ryan re T.A. Boeree papers and Reichswald armour. Cornelius Ryan Colllection, Ohio State University - box 101, folder 10, pages 3-9, notes on meeting with James Gavin, January 20, 1967 re Lindquist and objectves. September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), bridge versus ridge objectives, Gavin's instructions to Lindquist and Lt. Weaver's patrol to the bridge. Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Normandy, command problems in the regiment, Nijmegen objectives and Gavin's instructions. The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge, Joe Atkins story.
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  616.  @georgesenda1952  - Cornelius Ryan's 1967 interview with Major Brian Urquhart was totally one-sided, Browning had already passed away in 1965 and couldn't defend himself, and the aerial photograph in question could not be located until it emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2014. [Spoiler alert] When the photo was analysed, it was found to indeed show obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. The photo did not confirm the II.SS-Panzerkorps were near the British landing zones and in fact we now know who they belonged to and where they were on 17 September when the landings took place. Browning was right to dismiss the photo - although it is a wonderful view of the Dutch countryside as Browning said, and I have a poster-sized copy of the photo, frame 4015, taken 12 Sep '44 by a 541 Sqn Spitfire over the Deelerwoud hanging on the wall over my desk as I type this on my PC. It could not be more different to the oblique shot created for the Hollywood film and a real let down for all the Patton fans across the Atlantic. [End spoiler] I'm not impressed with Brian Urquhart as a witness. As you may recall, he was sent on medical leave and did not rejoin the Airborne Corps HQ until 22 September in the field. If you research the British Airborne Corps war establishment (equivalent to the US Army tables of organisation and equipment), the senior Corps intelligence officer would normally be a GSO I (General Staff Officer grade 1 - Lieutenant Colonel), with a GSO II (Major) as his assistant, and a couple of GSO III (Captains) on the staff, one of which would be a German speaker for prisoner interrogations. SOme of the top posts in Browning's staff were not filled and Urquhart appears to have been out of his depth. After the war, he was in the Civil Service and was instrumental in setting up the useless and corrupt United Nations organisation, serving as the first Under-Secretary-General for 'Special Political Affairs' - apparently a euphemism for peacekeeping operations. Impressed, George, I am not! Cornelius Ryan hailed from Dublin and was embedded as a newspaper journalist with Patton's US 3rd Army during the campaign. I cannot think of two finer colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of military philosophy than Dublin and Patton. He emigrated to the United States after the war, where he wrote his three books. A Bridge Too Far was his final book, rushed to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer. The biggest problem with his book is what he left out of it, particularly any research material he had collected that showed US officers in a bad light, but the Brits were fair game of course. He was biased George, as was the Hollywood film version of the book. You need to do a lot of reading from as many sources as possible to get a more rounded view of this operation, and TIK does an excellent job of research for his videos. If you want to read all about the photo analysis you can find the study online as a free pdf download (the RAF seem to have removed their 2nd edition download while a lunchtime lecture on the topic scheduled for 17 September 2024 is being advertised, but the original 1st edition is still on the Dutch Vrienden Airborne Museum site), and there's an abridged version of the study in author Sebastian Ritchie's revised version of his book: Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019) Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie (2011, revised 2019)
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  617.  @georgesenda1952  - from Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021): The bridging operations required would depend entirely on the number of bridges that the airborne troops failed to capture intact. Bridging columns, including the necessary troops and equipment, were pre-arranged for each possible crossing in the advance as far as the Ijssel River, and these columns could be called forward from Leopoldsbourg as required. No bridging equipment was put in the order of march except an amount allotted to Guards Armoured Division; this was sufficient to bridge small obstacles on the route and to provide assault boats and rafts... ... columns could be provided at the same time for bridging all obstacles as follows: Maas River = 878 vehicles (500 RE and 378 RASC) Maas-Waal Canal = 483 vehicles (300 RE and 183 RASC) Waal River = 380 vehicles (200 RE and 180 RASC) Neder Rijn = 536 vehicles (250 RE and 286 RASC) In the event of assault crossings being required over major river obstacles, columns would be provided at the same time for all crossings: Maas River with one brigade = 300 vehicles (100 RE and 200 RASC) with two brigades = 419 vehicles (160 RE and 259 RASC) Waal River with one brigade = 209 vehicles (100 RE and 99 RASC) with two brigades = 316 vehicles (160 RE and 156 RASC) Neder Rijn with one brigade = 300 vehicles (100 RE and 200 RASC) with two brigades = 419 vehicles (160 RE and 259 RASC) In the event of all bridges being captured intact, a column for the crossing of the Ijssel River would consist 766 vehicles (400 RE and 366 RASC) In addition, each plan consisted of different scenarios, that considerd if the bridges had been blown or not and if the enemy was holding the far bank or not. A series of code names was established and they were: - if the bridges were blown and no opposition: HARRY - for the Maas with 878 vehicles JIM - for the Maas-Waal Canal with 843 vehicles MICHAEL - for the Waal with 380 vehicles PETER - for the Neder Rijn with 536 vehicles - if all went well and the column required for the Ijssel River: RICHARD - for the Ijssel with 766 vehicles - if a single bridge was blown and no opposition: MAURICE - for the Maas with 1110 vehicles GEORGE - for the Maas-Waal Canal with 566 vehicles SPIKE - for the Waal with 1486 vehicles JOHN - for the Neder Rijn with 1146 vehicles - if bridges were held by the enemy and a single brigade crossing required: TOM - for the Maas with 300 vehicles FRED - for the Neder Rijn with 300 vehicles BESSIE - for the Waal with 309 vehicles - if bridges held by the enemy and two brigades crossing required: BILL - for the Maas with 419 vehicles BERTRAM - for the Neder Rijn with 419 vehicles BASIL - for the Waal with 316 vehicles So when the Waal bridges were found to be still in German hands when XXX Corps arrived on 19 September, the default plan for an assault crossing of the Waal was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make the assault with one brigade up (operation BESSIE) or two brigades up (operation BASIL), and the necessary units would be ordered up to carry out the operation. Gavin threw a spanner into the works of these carefully laid plans by twice insisting his own troops be used (504th PIR were in division reserve since the Welsh Guards took over defence of the Grave bridge) for the crossing, no doubt to make up for his blunder in assigning his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to take the Nijmegen highway bridge on D-Day, and on the second occasion this was agreed. The result was confusion over where the assault boats were to be found, because none were allocated to the 82nd Division and it was not appreciated by the commanders in the conference that the Guards actually had 26 boats in Nijmegen already because there was no representative from the Royal Engineers in the meeting. It was a mess - everyone can agree on that - but it's not appreciated in the US that it was caused by failures in the US Airborne units, and American commanders insisting that they should fix them, because Cornelius Ryan did not research or explain any of this in his book to protect American commanders from any criticism. I'll leave it to others to write essays on your other nonsense - I'm done with you for now!
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  618. Further to John's reply, you're right that it's ridiculous to say Gavin wouldn't carry out his primary objective and it's clear from the books John cited, which I also have, that Gavin specifically instructed Lindquist to send 1st Battalion to the bridge as soon as the Groesbeek heights were secured. The main source is 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), but further details are in American historian John McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012). These are American histories using primary sources, but just dug a little deeper than TIK's references. The evidence of a three man point team from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section reaching the bridge and taking seven prisoners without firing a shot (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge) proves that the whole battalion could have done it, just as Frost's 2nd Battalion at Arnhem had secured their primary objective at about the same time, trapping Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 between the two bridges. The fact that Gräbner's unit was badly shot up trying to force Frost's position at Arnhem the following morning suggest's Warren's 1st Battalion 508th could have done the same thing if Gräbner had tried to force the issue at Nijmegen. Instead, Gräbner's unit was able to reinforce Nijmegen uncontested that evening because Lindquist only sent a patrol into the city, which got lost, and only three men reached the bridge an hour before Gräbner arrived. Your assertion that the 82nd could not have held the Nijmegen bridge against German armour is most likely false, because it was demonstrated to be false at Arnhem by Frost, who held out for 3-4 days. Ample time for XXX Corps to reach Arnhem if only they had not been blocked at Nijmegen. The intel about "old men and kids" (actually old men on bicycles and some Hitler Youth) related specifically to Arnhem and not Nijmegen, and proved to be very accurate. The local security unit was Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, a unit of WW1 veteran logistics troops deemed unfit for combat in 1914-18, and its companies located as follows: 1.Kompanie at Doesburg bridge on the River Ijssel. 2 and 3.Kompanie defending Deelen airfield. 4.Kompanie at the (Fort) Westervoort bridges on the River Ijssel. A detachment of 25 men formed the Arnhem bridge garrison. The Hitler Youth recruits were being trained as replacements for 12.SS-Panzer-Division by SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 (aka 'Bataillon Krafft') with just the 2 and 4.Ausbildungs (training) companies near the British landing zones, and a 9.Marsch (march) company was formed during the battle by combining the depot 7.Stamm (reception) Kompanie in the Arnhem barracks and the 8.Genesenden (convalescent) Kompanie in Velp. Total of 435 men. This unit did the most to delay 1st Parachute Brigade's advance to Arnhem bridge, not the exaggerated influence of II.SS-Panzerkorps. Nijmegen only contained rear echelon troops before the operation, and they evacuated as soon as the landings began. The only combat troops in the Nijmegen area were weak forces along the Maas-Waal canal defence line. Unlike Arnhem, Nijmegen was an open city and only a few guards were on the bridges. Gavin is not a scapegoat, but he was the man responsisble for his divisional plan not being carried out, and as Lindquist's supervisor (the man actually to blame for not following Gavin's instructions) he has to bear responsibility for what happened at Nijmegen. Other units involved in this operation were making it work, but the unforced error at Nijmegen compromised the entire operation. When Gavin found out Lindquist was on the heights and not moving a battalion into the city, he was as mad as the regiment's liaison officer had ever seen him, and ordered the officer into a Jeep - "come with me - let's get him moving." Gavin's subsequent behaviour makes more sense as a result. He knew the entire operation was potentially blown by his division and tried to make amends after the 508th's failure. When XXX Corps arrived, he insisted his own 504th Regiment be used to conduct the river assault, despite the fact that the pre-planned backup for this scenario of the Nijmegen bridges being held in strength by the enemy was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make the assault crossings with either one or two Brigades up. My source for this is John Sliz's volume on the Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Market Garden (2021). Gavin was trying to fix his own mistake, not some perceived failure of planning that happened in Montgomery's caravan - that's an American trope and a prejudice that's not based on any of the established facts.
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  619. No wonder socialism appeals to people who don't want to get a job - it was led by the same kind of people, or as the classic British sitcom character Shelley (1979-83) put it: "I have a medical condition that prevents me from working - I'm bone idle."
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  620. Nonsense. The 508th Regiment was dropped complete on D-Day of the operation. The Regiment CO failed to follow Gavin's clear pre-flight instruction to send the 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge, while it was reported by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the city was deserted of German troops and the bridge guarded by just an NCO and seventeen men. It was a command failure, not a lack of resources. Much of the "poor planning" were compromises made to Browning's original Operation COMET concept by American General Brereton at 1st Allied Airborne Army for MARKET. Brereton deleted COMET's double airlift on the first day and also the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges. Much of the pressure to change the concept came from General Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command, who didn't want to lose a single aircraft from Flak. The British requested that Gavin dropped a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main instead, and although he toyed with this idea he eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily. On that operation the inexperienced USAAF Troop Carrier crews got spooked by the Flak and dispersed their formation, dropping Gavin's 505th Regiment over a huge area. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. The intelligence was not ignored at all. Montgomery cancelled COMET at the last minute when he received reports of II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem area and then proposed the upgraded airborne operation that became MARKET. Because the upgrade added the two US airborne divisions, the planning was then turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army, and that's when the compromises started.
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  621. 'Crapgame' (Don Rickles) in Kelly's Heroes was just the Sergeant!
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  622. That's funny because I think the exact opposite. In 1999, a British Captain in the Life Guards, now more famous for a pop song ("You're Beautiful") in his second career, questioned the orders of an American General to seize an airport from Russian troops during the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (former Yugoslavia). His own General Mike Jackson, the American commander's deputy, took up the objection and flatly refused the commander's orders, telling him point blank that he would not have British troops responsible for starting World War III. We love our American cousins as family, but they can be bloody exasperating at times.
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  623. What you say is very true of the original Arnhem operation - COMET - which was cancelled on the day the operation was about to take off, 10 September, by Montgomery after he received reports of the II.SS-Panzerkorps having moved into the area. He then proposed the upgraded operation (initially called SIXTEEN and then later given the official name MARKET GARDEN) adding the two American divisions, enabling 1st Airborne with all their anti-tank guns to concentrate at Arnhem instead of being split between Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave. The planning of the expanded operation was then turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) as it no longer involved just the British I Airborne Corps (Browning). Brereton and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) removed the glider coup de main attacks on the three main bridges and the double airlift on the first day, using a previous three-division air plan Brereton had devised for LINNET II. That operation was so rushed that Browning protested there was insufficient time to print and distribute maps and wrote a letter of protest to Brereton threatening to resign over the matter. His letter arrived as the operation was cancelled (one of many cancelled as ground forces overran the objectives) and both men agreed to forget the incident. However, since Brereton had intended to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgeway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation, Browning was now effectively neutralised in making any protests over Brereton's changes for MARKET. Browning had in fact written to 2nd Army on 5 September and warned that COMET should not go ahead without the coup de main assaults, suggesting that he felt they were essential to quickly seize the bridges. The fact he did not protest the glider assault's removal for MARKET is an indication he was now powerless to protest. On that basis I cannot agree that the plan was solid. I also disagree about the intelligence. The intel on the Arnhem area turned out to be remarkably accurate, although the II.SS-Panzerkorp's ability to react quickly and effectively was underestimated. The fact that 9.SS-Panzer-Division had so many armoured vehicles was not a surprise to the British Airborne, who had been given sanitised (unit names withheld) warnings about this, but came as a complete surprise to the Germans because Walter Harzer has used some administrative subterfuge to withhold operational vehicles to avoid an order to hand them over to the 10.SS-Panzer. The one area where the intelligence picture was incomplete was the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division itself, because the Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops billeted in towns and villages all over the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only reported a Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia (an 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon), and a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo could not be identified. They had no way of knowing both divisions were there and the River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary. So it was feared the Frundsberg Division could be located in Nijmegen and drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area, leading to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest could be hiding 1,000 panzers. Gavin was given the sanitised (removing unit identifications obtained by 'Ultra') warning of possibly "a regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the 10.SS-Panzer battlegroup) may be accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities, and the Reichswald might be a tank laager for the depot. In fact, the division was based at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek and the tank depot was near Münster deeper into Germany, but the intelligence warnings certainly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, and by assigning the problematic 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, he had inadvertently created the conditions for the failure of the operation once it was on the ground.
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  624. I think there's a lot of fog in your post, but there's plenty of sources to clarify what happened: Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist of 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge in the final divisional briefing. Lindquist misinterpreted the instruction and thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives before sending any large force to the bridge, so he had pre-planned a recon patrol based on Lt Robert Weaver's 3rd Platoon of C Company to be sent by 1st Battalion instead, despite the fact he was met at the initital objective by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left just a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the bridge. When Gavin found out the battalion wasn't moving he went directly to the 508th CP and ordered Lindquist to get them moving. It took two hours to get A and B Companies out of their extended positions along the Groesbeek ridge and assemble for a move they were not expecting. The move was far too late and they bumped SS panzer troops in the city that had moved in and reinforced the bridges. Gavin's letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover dated 17 July 1945 stating he gave this instruction in the final briefing is reproduced on page 11 of RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011). Gavin reiterated the claim in his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), and Ryan's notes can be found in Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967. The best analysis on the whole question of priorities between bridge and ridge is in September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), who has first hand accounts from Division G-3 (Operations) officer Jack Norton, who was present in the final briefing and confirmed Gavin's instruction. Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), has another witness to the final briefing in the 508th's liaison officer, Chester 'Chet' Graham, who recalled - "Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important... to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." It was also Chet Graham that informed Gavin the regiment was not moving on the bridge - "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " What happened to the recon patrol? They got split up in the crowds of cheering Dutch civilians and took a wrong turn, losing the three man point team from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section. The point team under PFC Joe Atkins pushed through the crowds and reached the south end of the highway bridge, surprised the seven German guards there and took them prisoner without firing a shot. They then waited an hour until it got dark for the rest of the patrol to show up before deciding they could not hold the bridge from a counter-attack and withdrew. As they left they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other side (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge). McManus (op cit 2012) also mentions Atkins' patrol to the bridge and adds that they too got lost trying to get back to the battalion. Weaver eventually found a Dutch resistance guide, too late to reach the bridge before it had been reinforced by the SS troops, and withdrew after taking casualties and received a radio message that battalion was on the way with two companies.
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  625. ​ @johnlucas8479  - I'm aware of it and surprised you missed the misleading part of Borough's narrative - remember this is not a first hand account as Boroughs himself was in the Demolition Platoon manning a 2nd Battalion roadblock at De Hut - where he says "Leaving C Company at De Ploeg, A and B companies began marching toward the Nijmegen Bridge. A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen Bridge during daylight hours." Those two statements should be reversed, because the Weaver patrol that included the S-2 Section was launched immediately the 1st Battalion and Regiment HQ reached De Ploeg at 1830 hrs, and Gavin's intervention was before the order was finally given by Lindquist to Warren to move the battalion into town at 2000 hrs. It took an hour for A Company to be brought out and assembled on the road. They marched to the Initial Point (IP), which was the Krayenhoff barracks on the Groesbeek-Njmegen road, where they waited until 2200 hrs for B Company to catch up. They took even longer to come out of the line because it was extended along the ridge line where it contacted 3rd Battalion at Berg-end-Dal. They decided they couldn't wait any longer and A Company led the Battalion HQ and HQ Company into Nijmegen. Atkins' account is fascinating in and of itself, but the overall narrative and context for his account is best constructed from a combination of McManus (September Hope, 2012) and Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012): Nordyke, chapter 10: Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” “A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.” (Nordyke, 2012) McManus (2012) has some first hand accounts from Weaver's platoon and fills in the blanks on what happened to them after losing contact with Atkins' point team. He also has an SCR-300 radio and operator from battalion to enable him to report back on the condition of the bridge, but it appears the ranges were reduced by similar problems the British experienced at Arnhem. After dark, he managed to obtain a Dutch resistance guide and attempted to reach the bridge, but they bumped German patrols and took casualties. The timing would suggest it was after Atkins had already withdrawn from the bridge when it got dark (McManus says he then got lost as well!) and SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 had arrived. When Weaver took shelter to deal with his casualties he was finally able to make contact with battalion over the radio and was told two companies were on the way to the bridge, so he decided to withdraw and return to C Company at De Ploeg. It seems logical to me that the reason the radio started working was because the battalion was moving into town and the range had decreased to Weaver's position and they were able to re-establish contact. It also makes sense in terms of the timings of their relative movements. The 1st Battalion's contact with opposition at the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle near the railway station was around midnight. It all supports the logical narrative that Atkins went directly to the bridge from De Ploeg after 1830 hrs, got there, waited an hour until it got dark (2000 hrs?) and then withdrew when nobody else showed up. Warren was ordered at 2000 hrs to move the battalion after Gavin's intervention ("I told you to move with speed") and waited at the IP until 2200 hrs for B Company and then moved off without them. Weaver's guided attempt to reach the bridge failed, taking casualties, he was told two companies were moving in and decided to withdraw. At around midnight the Battalion with A and B Companies bumped opposition at Keizer Karelplein and eventually had to withdraw. Ergo, if the battalion had moved directly to the bridge as Gavin had instructed instead of just the patrol, they would have secured it an hour before Gräbner's battalion arrived. Atkins has quite conveniently proved what was possible without firing a shot, so we don't have to engage in a 'what-if' speculation, the variables are known and feasibility demonstrated. I also have the bizarre account of British Lieutenant Eustace McNaught, the Troop commander of Z Troop, 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery, whose glider landed short of the LZ near Zetten on the 'island' and decided to take three men in his Jeep try to rendezvous with the Reconnaissance Squadron at the Arnhem bridge. As he approached the bridge he saw armoured vehicles coming towards them and realised they must be German, so he turned around and headed for Nijmegen, where he knew the Americans would be. They reached the Nijmegen bridge as it was getting dark and carefully drove over the bridge, but were surprised to be completely unchallenged until they got into town and were stopped by some civilians, who told them the Germans were coming and hid them in a monastery until the city was liberated. He was quite angry at the situation and said the bridge was "a lost opportunity." 'A Lost Opportunity' - 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem - Battery Z Troop, Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2022).
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  626.  @johnlucas8479 - I can give a longer answer on these if you really want, but the short answers are: 1. I think "Kampfgruppe Henke" is probably "Kampfgruppe Hartung" - I'm currently studying the 82nd Airborne G-2 and G-3 documents purchased from the PaperlessArchives site for the princely sum of twelve dollars and change, and there's no mention of the name "Henke" at all. 2. Henke (believed to be Oberst Friedrich Hencke - with a 'c') may have commanded the remnants of Fallschirm-Jäger-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 1, which is mentioned in the 82nd G-2 documents, believed to number 120-170 men in the Nijmegen area. 3. All combat troops in the battlegroup (Henke/Hartung) were deployed along the Maas-Waal canal, and I'm sure I've explained this before - this was the MLR in the area and linked the Waal defence line running west to the North Sea, and the Maas line running south to Maastricht. These troops were gradually dispossessed of four of the six canal bridges they were defending on 17/18 September and the survivors gathered into Nijmegen to reinforce the bridges, so I think authors like McManus, Reynolds, and Kershaw had made the assumption they were in situ in Nijmegen the whole time, but they don't explain who was on the canal line - they can't be in two places at the same time! The situation was fluid and units changed positions over time as they withdrew. Best reference for this is Frank van Lunteren's The Battle Of The Bridges - The 504th PIR in Operation Market Garden (2014). 4. To be clear - the three units of Kampfgruppe Hartung known (there may be others) to be on the Maas-Waal canal line and then later withdrawn into Nijmegen as per van Lunteren (2014) were: a. Three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs Bataillon I/6, with 5.Kompanie (Rümmele) at Malden and 4.Kompanie (Hauptmann Ernst Sieger) at Hatert, the third company ID and location I have not nailed down. b. 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando/Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildings-Regiment ‘Hermann Göring’ at Honinghutje road and rail bridges on the main Grave-Nijmegen highway, one platoon detached to Nederasselt (Grave bridge). c. 1./Pionier-Bau-Bataillon 434 (1.Kompanie confirmed ID from 82nd G-2) under Hauptmann Zyrus, digging trenches along the canal line and their MGs provided additional support in the line. 5. Nijmegen itself was a rear area, occupied by rear echelon troops that evacuated on 17 September (mostly the BdO and Ortskommandantur), and a few bridge/railway guards. I have an ID on the "railway guards" unhelpfully translated by Kershaw - foxed me for a long time, but the 82nd G-2 documents came through - 1./Transport-Sicherungs-Bataillon 567. The Bataillon was in Paris, then the 1.Kompanie was sent to Nijmegen and attached to "GUARD BN. TORAU" - I don't have a positive ID for the latter, but I suspect Fla-Abteilung 26 (or III./SR 26), part of Sicherungs-Regiment 26 in the Netherlands, and they had men at the Grave bridge. 6. SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 was withdrawn to Elst at 2100 hrs and the SPW Kanon-Zug (I believe it was the whole schwere-Kompanie, it amounts to the same thing but there was an SS-Hauptsturmführer killed at the Keizer Karelplein engagement) was withdrawn at midnight, presumably after the firefight engagement. This source is German - the diary of Reinhold's Adjutant - SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel in Retake Arnhem Bridge, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). 7. I don't take Eustace McNaught's account as gospel at all, but I find it interesting. The Market Garden Then and Now volume 1 if I recall (it's in a box and not handy for reference) had Z Troop split over both 1st and 2nd lifts and I had assumed the gun delivery was split, but Nigel Simpson et al's new book based on 20 years research of the Anti-Tank Batteries has all four Z-Troop guns arriving on 2nd lift, but Z Troop CO McNaught's glider with the command Radio Jeep and ammunition trailer (no gun) may have gone ahead as originally intended on the 1st lift, which is the only explanation that makes his account even physically possible in my view, seeing as how the SS had the Nijmegen bridge reinforced overnight on the first night. His time on the main Arnhem-Nijmegen road has to coincide with Gräbner's transit time period between the two cities. He seems to have remained with the glider for a while before deciding on the action to take - it meant leaving another four of his men and the two glider pilots behind because he could only take three in the Jeep. Simpson also notes that their research was hampered by the fact the last minute change to move Browning's glider lift from 2nd to 1st lift displaced elements of 1st Anti-Tank Battery and some of the official records were not amended to reflect the changes, so this bumped most of Z troop to 2nd lift and all the second ammunition Jeep/trailer combinations were also bumped to 2nd lift. The variation from the official records would explain why Peters and Buist (Glider Pilots at Arnhem, 2009) which I also have, doesn't solve the mystery. Apparently some of the recorded chalk numbers are known to be wrong! McNaught had witnesses with him and he did find an SAS patrol to join as he said he wanted to do when he made contact with the Battery Sea Tail officer in Nijmegen and related his story. Apparently he later joined MI-6 after the war as a military liaison. My timeline does make sense from a situational awareness point of view, the time dimension is just as important as the spacial ones. Some of your alternative suggestions are contradictory and rely on assumptions made by authors and not the first hand accounts from the participants. I take the view that people are telling the truth to the best of their ability and book author's assumptions are very low down on my scale of reliability. A lot of the nonsense I think is predicated on the notion there was a good reason the Nijmegen bridge could not be taken on the first evening and that is an assumption. I'm still investigating Henke/Hencke by the way, so if I turn up anything it might help. Hartung's HQ was at the NEBO monastery - the intent was set up a training school there, so it looks like he had to leave in a hurry as 1st Battlion 508th approached from the east to take De Ploeg from the Berg-en-Dal direction and the drop zone. There's a translated captured document from Hartung that definitely places him in the area, while there's only a brief G-2 report on the Fallschirm training Regiment 1 with no commander's name attached to it.
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  627.  @johnlucas8479  - from the 82nd Airborne G-2 documents, I have extracted the following on Hartung and Hencke's (alleged) units respectively: PW Interrogation Summary – 22 September 1944 [p.2658-59]: The defense of the bridges at NIJMEGEN was under the command of Col HARTUNG. A captured document of 5 Sept 1944 indicates that said Col HARTUNG was to be made responsible for the reorganization of retreating troops in the SAARBURG area. Col HARTUNG had with him a training staff whose primary mission had been the training of parachute troops. Apparently, this group of officers were relieved of their duties in the SAARBURG area and transferred to NIJMEGEN about 15 Sept 1944, for the purpose of establishing a training school here. With the Allied airborne landings on Sunday, Col HARTUNG was put in command of the troops defending the NIJMEGEN bridgehead. Miscellaneous PW statements [p.2659]: b) 1st Prcht Repl Trng Regt. This unit was committed in FRANCE. After being forced to retreat in disorder, some of these troops (between 120 and 170 men) ended up in the NIMEGEN area. Of the PWs who were captured from this unit, some of them claimed that they had no weapons issued to them. Another one stated: “They give me an old Dutch rifle and expect me to fight Sherman tanks with it”. Luftwaffe Officer Career Summaries by Henry L. deZeng IV and Douglas G. Stankey on Michael Holm's website The Luftwaffe 1933-45: HARTUNG, Gunther. 25.07.39 Maj., temporary duty from LKS Berlin-Gatow to Stab/Hoh.Fl.Ausb.Kdo. 7.01.08.42 Kdr. II./Fl.Ausb.Rgt. 21, promo to Oberst. 14.08.42 assigned temporary duty from II./Fl.Ausb.Rgt. 21 to Flieger-Rgt. 52 (to 10.10.42). 19.09.42 appt Kdr. Fl.Rgt. 52. 22.04.43 with 18. Lw.-Feld-Div., trf to Fuhrer-Reserve Ob.d.L. (to 26.06.43). 26.06.43 trf to Erdkampfschule d.Lw. 06.44 Oberst, appt Leiter Fsch.AOK Ausbildungsstelle. HENCKE, Friedrich (Fritz). (DOB: 02.06.95 in Rittergut Neu-Waldeck, Krs. Preußisch Eylau/E Pruss.). Prewar, had been a personal friend of Hermann Göring. 1940 set up a government office called 'Außenstelle Westen' [something like Western Exterior Office or Branch Office West] that bought large quantities of cloth and clothes in occupied Western Europe for distribution in Germany. 01.01.42 Obstlt., appt Kdr. Feld-Rgt.d.Lw. 5 (to 13.01.42?). 15.06.42 Obstlt., appt Kdr. III./Feld-Rgt.d.Lw. 1. 01.12.42 promo to Oberst. 27.10.42 appt Kdr. Feld-Rgt. d.Lw. 3. 03.43 appt Kdr. Lw.-Jäger-Rgt. 44 (to 04.43). 28.07.43 Oberst in 22. Lw.-Felddivision, trf to Führerreserve RLM/Ob.d.L. 06.08.43 trf to Erdkampfschule d.Lw. 09.44 Oberst, Kdr. Kampfgruppe Hencke. 01.10.44 Oberst, appt Kdr. Fsch.Jg.Rgt. 6. †14.08.63 in Tegernsee/Bay. Note: the "09.44 Kampfgruppe Hencke" entry was a recent addition to Hencke's career summary and may just be based on the dubious literature, it certainly wasn't an official appointment as this is an ad hoc battlegroup formed on 17/18 September. Hartung has seniority over Hencke as Oberst by two months, if both men were present. I have found no mention of the name Hencke (or Henke) in any of the G-2 documents and this is the raw data. Hartung was north of the Waal after the bridges fell and had a militia battalion from Wesel under command that were dug in on the north bank. It's possible that Hencke had responsibility for forces on the south bank inside the bridgehead under Hartung's command, similar to the arrangement between SS officers Reinhold (Lent) and Euling (Valkhof and Hunner Park at the highway bridge). Other points of interest, the captured document on HARTUNG also mentions Major AHLBORN as his [Edit correction] S-3 (an American designation for operations officer, probably equates to 'Staff Major' in a German formation at Regimental level) with special responsibility for interviewing stragglers and co-ordinating with 1.Fallschirm-Armee (the S-4 or 'Qm' supply officer is also assigned a role to coordinate with 1.Fs.Armee, but he is not named). Ahlborn is the parachute officer who escaped across the Waal at Haalderen with SS unit Euling, with about 60 men in both groups.
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  628. The issue with the Nijmegen bridge was that it was only guarded by a handful of elderly security guards until the SS panzer troops started arriving in the evening of D-Day, having travelled from Beekbergen railway station near Apeldoorn, 35 km (22 miles) to the north. Gavin had instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge immediately after landing, and this he failed to do, sending a reinforced platoon reconnaissance patrol instead to check on the condition of the bridge, even after getting a first hand report from Dutch reistance leader Geert van Hees. The patrol mostly got lost, apart from three men from the battalion S-2 Section that were on point duty and got separated from the patrol, and they secured the southern end of the bridge and seven prisoners without firing a shot. They waited an hour until dark for reinforcements to arrive, but nobody showed up. By the time Gavin learned the battalion had not been sent it was too late. He ordered Lindquist to get them moving and aftwer taking two hours to get out their defensive positions on the groesbeek ridge and assemlbled on the road, the battalion met stiff opposition from SS troops in armoured half-tracks in the city centre a kilometer from the bridge.
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  629.  @ghostinthemachine8243  - I see a pdf called Supply Front the 16th Port Story - about Le Havre and a US Army Transportation Corps unit called the 16th Major Port. It's funny because I'm currently researching the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Railways) - based off a vague reference to a company of "railway guards" in Nijmegen mentioned in Robert Kershaw's It Never Snows In September (1990) and in some of Hans Den Brok's volumes on the Market Flights (2016-2020) of IX Troop Carrier Command which has photos of US glider pilots guarding DR personnel in the POW cage at Groesbeek. Because the DR were actually classified as combatants under the rules of war, they were treated as prisoners when captured. Anyway, I've been trying to identify these odd rear echelon units in Nijmegen on 17 September when the landings took place and I believe Nijmegen hosted the Lehr-Abteilung (training battalion) for the Chef der Transportwesen Kommando that was based in Venlo. I'm trying to determine how this unit was structured (unable to find a KStN - table of organisation - document) to determine some numbers and weapons, so it's still a work in progress. I'm guessing the Abteilung staff were able to put together a 'company' of army troops to add to Kampfgruppe Hencke, but there were a couple of trains that left Nijmegen, the first escaped unmolested but the second was bazooka'd and the Germans scrambling off the train were rounded up and put in the bag. Seems they were DR personnel they were trying to evacuate to Germany.
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  630. Correct. 2:07 - buttons in threes indicates the third regiment in the Foot Guards = Scots Guards.
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  631.  @paultucker530  - thanks for the appreciation. I've just seen the other comments in the thread and I think they're also helpful.
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  632.  @stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85  - an airborne component to INFAUATE in September was requested at the time the British I Airborne Corps was committed to COMET, so it would have to be done by one or both of the US airborne divisions. I think this is why Brereton rejected it - he didn't want to see his Air Corps dropping American paratroopers into the North Sea or flooded areas of Walcheren, for the sake of helping Montgomery open Antwerp. The request was first made on 4 September, the same date that COMET planning started. It's not actually why Wesel was rejected in favour of Arnhem since the decision was made by Montgomery and Browning overnight 3/4 September after Dempsey had retired for the night and his diary only records that he was informed in the morning the final decision was Arnhem. I don't think Brereton was involved at all at this point. Since both Browning and Dempsey both favoured Wesel, it must have been Montgomery's final decision and Sebasian Ritchie (Arnhem: Myth and Reality 2011, 2019) speculates that it may be because the Venlo-Wesel axis was close to the US XIX Corps (US 1st Army and US 12th Army Group) boundary, and he feared he would end up sharing a Rhine crossing at Wesel with the Americans. The most likely factor in deciding on Arnhem over Wesel, and this is only my own speculation, is that the choice of a northwards advance to the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) coast presented an opportunity of a wide envelopment - which is a classic Montgomery response to the failure of a smaller envelopment. He did this after the Poles and Canadians met strong resistance at Falaise (from our old friends II.SS-Panzerkorps holding open the gap) and ordered an advance to the Seine in response. He also ordered Patton takes the coast road around Sicily to envelop German forces that were blocking 8th Army on the east coast, although naturally the Americans saw it as a race. Now at Antwerp, it had not been possible to cross the Albert canal in force and exploit the bridgehead at Merksem, so he was going for Arnhem and the Zuider Zee coast instead. This is just another example of strategic thinking influencing operational decisions. On either Antwerp or Rhine crossing, Eisenhower made it clear after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's misleading book A Bridge Too Far in 1974 that “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) So, Eisenhower also saw the logic in striking for the Rhine before the Germans could fortify the river and canal defence lines, which were still forming, while the defences around the Scheldt estuary was already part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall coast defences for years. In fact, the Germans were combing out units from the coast defences in order to man the inland defence lines. The decision to go for Arnhem with COMET for the primary objective of a Rhine crossing and secondary objective of envelopment of German forces in the western Netherlands, became a triple imperative on 9 September when the first V-2 rockets fell on London and the launch sites were determined to be on the Dutch coast, so the tertiary objective became the cutting of the V-2 supply lines to the Dutch coast. The decision to cancel COMET on 10 September was made because it was determined one airborne division was too weak to deal with the increasing opposition in the target area and MARKET was the replacement upgrade, now with the same primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives carried over from COMET. Apart from my own speculative comments, I think that's a fair summary.
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  633.  @johnburns4017  - if you Google "Twee Airborne Parachutisten en hun laatste reis naar Arnhem" and find a hit on a website called heijenoord, and use the translate option, you'll find my Dutch source for the five tanks the Hohenstaufen removed from the barracks on Friday 15 September, according to a local resident in Callunastraat on the corner of Heijenoordeseweg. I would guess they had only spent a few days in the (Saksen-Weimarkazerne) barracks workshop occupied by SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 having their tracks and guns removed to render them non-operational to avoid handing them over to the Frundsberg, and then refitted to get them out of the barracks and hidden under trees in a residential area to avoid possible bombing.
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  634.  @johnburns4017  - since we're on this topic again, I thought I would take another look at it in the light of one or two books I have acquired since I found the Dutch Heijenoord nugget. I have a copy of Cornelius Bauer's The Battle of Arnhem (1963) based on the research of Dutch Colonel TA Boeree, he did a lot of work studying the Hohenstaufen's movements to debunk the betrayal myths after the war (why would the division be in the process of being entrained for Germany to refit if it was placed at Arnhem to expect an airborne attack). On pages 102-103 (bearing in mind this is the 2012 paperback edition of the 1966 English translation of the 1963 Dutch book) : During lunch news came from Beekbergen that Bittrich had put the division in a state of alert. Harzer was able to take measures immediately. He ordered the 'tanks' of Gräbner's reconnaissance squadron to be got ready for action. The 'tanks' which, contrary to all expectations, were to thwart Dobie's and Fitch's battalions. The 'tanks' whose existence came as a surprise even to Rundstedt, the German supreme commander in the west. The 'tanks' whose presence was later to be cleared up by Harzer himself. I had assumed when reading this the 'tanks' were a translation of 'panzers' from the SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 (SS armoured reconnaissance battalion 9), since the German word panzer means armoured, but also translates to the English word 'tank'. I still think this refers to the armoured vehicles of Gräbner's unit, but I think arrangements must have been made to transport the three Panthers and two Möbelwagen to Germany as well, so their exact whereabouts at the time of the landings has to be an open question. Harzer's orders before the airlanding alert was to move the Hohenstaufen division to Siegen in Germany by 23 September, but since six trains left for Germany daily he thought the move could be completed by Sunday 17 September. He had kept the remains of his comabt units, formed into 'alarm' companies in case needed for emergencies, until last, so these would be entrained on the Sunday. However, due to the Dutch railway strike organised by the resistance at the request of the Dutch Government-in-Exile in London to coincide with the MARKET GARDEN operation, many German troops and the equipment of the Hohenstaufen division were being loaded onto trains with no locomotives available to move them. Men from various units were waiting at the Arnhem and Nijmegen stations, and the armoured cars and half-tracks of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 were being loaded onto flat cars at Beekbergen station, with tracks and guns removed to render them administratively 'non-operational' to avoid the order to hand them over to the Frundsberg. I had always assumed from Dobie's war diary that the five tanks and approximately fifteen half-tracks seen on the Amsterdam road on Sunday afternoon was the five tanks from Heijenoordeseweg and half-tracks from Beekbergen respectively, but it occurs to me that the tanks may have been at Beekbergen being loaded onto the same train as Gräbner's Abteilung. The point is that they were certainly seen together with the half-tracks (fifteen would be about right for Gräbner's 3.Kompanie) in the 1st Parachute Battalion war diary: 17th September 1944 1600 - Moved from RV to Rly Sta 665806 - met OC Recce who stated enemy were to East down Rly (infantry only) and tanks up rd to North. As we could not get tpt along Rly any further - moved North up road. Tanks withdrew. 1700 - R Coy attacked infantry posns astride road at 673816. Enemy withdrew with casualties. R Coy reached rd junc 675820 after more fighting - were heavily engaged at that point by tanks and infantry. R Coy took up posn facing East then attacked again. 1900 - About to advance N to main rd when tanks approached from S.E. along main rd. Altogether 5 tanks and approx 15-half-tracks passes X-rds 691811 (400 yds N of our posn in woods). 2000 - Armd car and some infantry approached our lying up posn. Engaged enemy - they withdrew, we had 6 casualties. Note the distinction between "_Tanks_" and "_Armd car_" in the diary, so the vehicles seen with the half-tracks on the main road were not the five wheeled armoured cars (SdKfz 231 and 222 series) in Gräbner's 1.Kompanie or the five half-tracked 'armoured cars' (SdKfz 250/9 with a 2cm kanon turret) originally from 2.Kompanie but rolled into 1.Kompanie in the reduced battalion. So as things stand, the Hohenstaufen had five tanks in Arnhem on Friday morning 15 September hidden on Heijenoordseweg and previously were in the (Saksen-Weimar) barracks, and they were on the main Amsterdam road by 1600 hours on the afternoon of 17 September. I cannot account for their location or movement between those points in time. They could have still been on Heijenoordseweg, loaded on a train at Arnhem, or loaded on a train at Beekbergen would be the possible options.
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  635. The officer was his Dutch advisor and head of the Jedburgh Dutch Commando Team 'Claude' mission (to contact Dutch resistance on the ground) attached to 82nd Airborne, Captain Arie Bestebreurtje, known as "Captain Harry" to the Americans as they had trouble with his last name. Gavin did indeed crack his spine when he made a hard landing, I think on a dirt road, but I don't find much fault in Gavin's decision-making after he landed. The decisions that contributed to the failure of the operation were taken before landing, and this included Gavin dismissing a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge to seize it by coup de main after toying with the idea for a while, and this was because of his experience in Sicily where the Troop Carriers were spooked by Flak and dropped his 505th Regiment over a huge area. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan he had landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days, so for MARKET he planned to land his three patachute regiments in the centre of his area of operations and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The one exception was that the very experienced Colonel Tucker of the 504th insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the Grave bridge, and this was granted. In place of a coup de main on the Nijmegen bridge, Gavin instructed the commander of the 508th Regiment to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and seizing the initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge, but Colonel Lindquist was not a good field commander and failed to interpret his instructions correctly. By the time Gavin found out the battalion wasn't on the bridge and went to the 508th CP to get them moving, it was too late to prevent the Germans from reinforcing the city and its bridges. Why he chose the 508th for this critical mission seems to be because his best regiment, the 504th - still recovering from the Anzio operation in Italy - he chose to secure the Grave bridge, because it was on his division supply line to XXX Corps. The 505th were also more aggressive and experienced, and he chose to assign them to the southern sector facing the Reichswald, where he anticipated the strongest counter-attacks. It seems he thought that giving Lindquist a clear instruction, and also showing him on a map the exact route he wanted the 1st Battalion to take to the bridge, would be enough. Another point worth making was that both Gavin and his predecessor Matthew Ridgway (82nd Airborne CO in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist in a fight - this was in Gavin's 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974). He said Ridgway wouldn't promote him and actually had a problem in that he couldn't promote any other Colonel in the division because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. It may be for this reason that when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944 and Gavin inherited the division, Gavin also did not replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so for MARKET GARDEN he was running himself ragged doing both jobs while carrying the spinal injury. The irony is that Ridgway had no role to play in the operation being conducted under Browning's British I Airborne Corps, the staff in US XVIII Airborne Corps back in England were being used to organise the resupply logistics, so Ridgway 'borrowed' a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and travelled up the MARKET GARDEN corridor to visit his divisions in an unofficial capacity. Gavin returned to his CP after dealing with a crisis on the front lines and found Ridgway in the CP studying a map on the wall, and before either man could acknowledge the other's presence Gavin was given a message about another problem and immediately left to deal with it. These would all have made interesting and dramatic scenes in the film, making good use of Ryan O'Neal's scenery chewing acting, but you can always rely on Hollywood to avoid the true story when no one would believe it and would rather pay their $5 to see a British officer get blamed for the disaster or go and see Star Wars for the 19th time.
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  636. I believe Gavin cracked his spine when he landed on a dirt road after his jump, but he was certainly already stressed in running the division he inherited from Matthew Ridgway. In his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Ryan made the following notes [my own added in square brackets]: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats [polder] to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Gavin went on to explain that Ridgway had a problem in that because he wouldn't promote Lindquist, he couldn't promote any other colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. It also explains why Gavin had not replaced himself as Assistant Division Commander when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps and Gavin moved up to Division CO - he would have had the same problem - so throughout the planning and execution of MARKET GARDEN Gavin was doing both jobs. Gavin's claim he instructed Lindquist to send a battalion directly to the bridge was not followed up in further digging by Cornelius Ryan, who seemed to prefer the narrative the British were at fault in his book, and this was further emphasised by anti-establishment British director Richard Attenborough in the Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far (1977), which also benefitted from having an American screenwriter in William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) to write the highly entertaining script. The claim is backed by more recent research using first hand accounts from Division G-3 (Operations) officer Jack Norton in McManus (September Hope - The American Side of A Bridge Too Far, 2012) and 508th liaison officer to Division HQ Chester 'Chet' Graham in Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, 2012), both officers sat in on the final divisional briefing before the operation. Chet Graham also describes in Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy that Lindquist had not performed well during the regiment's first combat operation, which links back to Gavin's comment to Cornelius Ryan about neither divisional commander trusting Lindquist in a fight. The MARKET GARDEN plan certainly was compromised. Brereton compromised Browning's original Operation COMET concept and had already politically neutralised him during the LINNET II affair, so Browning could not make any strong objections. Montgomery's role was to order the operation, not plan it, and he wrote after the war that he regretted not intervening to insist on troops being landed closer to the bridges - can you imagine the drama with the Americans if he had? Eisenhower's only criticism from British quarters was the lack of support for the operation, support which Montgomery had been assured after (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff) Bedell Smith's visit on 12 September - but "absolute" priority in supplies apparently means different things in English and American. Gavin was responsible for his divisional plan, and he must take responsibility for his decision to dismiss the British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, which probably came from Browning to compensate for Brereton's removal of the dawn glider coup de main assaults planned by Browning for the three big bridges in COMET. The highly experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR (still recovering from detachment for the Anzio operation in Italy) rightly insisted on a special drop zone for a company to land south of the River Maas bridge at Grave, and this was granted by Gavin. Lindquist was the weak link in the division and Gavin's decision to assign the Reichswald sector of his front to his old regiment, the 505th, reflected his concern of an armoured threat from the Reichswald being greater than the possibility of mission failure at Nijmegen. The fact that the division reserve after Groesbeek was cleared was Ben Vandervoort's (John Wayne in The Longest Day, 1962) 2nd Battalion 505th, sitting on Hill 81.8 behind Groesbeek, would seem to support the idea Gavin was concerned primarily about the Reichswald.
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  637.  @johnlucas8479  - The 43rd (Wessex) Division were waiting to be called forward when required, they were not due at a specific time until they were called up. According to John Sliz in Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden (2021), General Thomas of the 43rd was in contact with 1 CAGRE (1st Canadian Army Group Royal Engineers), who were responsible for any bridging operations in the sector covering the Maas-Waal canal and the River Waal, warning that Operation BASIL (crossing of the Waal by the 43rd west of Nijmegen with one or two brigades) may be required, as it was learned that the Waal bridges were intact but still held by the enemy - one of the scenarios that BASIL was designed for. This was early on 19 September, when the link-up was first made with 82nd Airborne. Late on the same day, after two unsuccessful attemts to force the bridges with the Guards and the 505th PIR, there was another conference in which Gavin had persuaded Browning and Horrocks to put his own troops in assault boats, if the boats could be found in Horrocks' engineer column. According to Cornelius Ryan, Gavin had first suggested his plan at the link-up, but Browning had rejected it. Browning and Horrocks were now persuaded to go with Gavin's idea, but one of the gaps in Cornelius Ryan's research and filled in by John Sliz is that the Wessex and 1 CAGRE plan was ready to be implemented if called upon.
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  638. That didn't help. The 'plans' were no more than a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne (it was their liaison officer that crashed on his way to Browning's HQ at Groesbeek). Student, an airborne commander himself with his headquarters nearby, had the documents translated and realised he could extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions. Model was not convinced (the Hollywood film got that bit right), but Student went ahead and alerted his own Luftwaffe chain of command and had fighter aircraft over the drop zones at the right time. Fortunately the weather in England delayed the airlifts and the fighters were back at their bases in Germany being refuelled when the transports arrived.
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  639. Montgomery didn't create it, he ordered it. Blaming the customer for bad delivery feels like deflection to me. Browning's outline plan was also hacked to death by Brereton and Williams once they got their hands on it, so you can't blame him either. Browning was continaully frustrated in his attenpts to get troops landed closer to their objectives and whole drop zones were simply removed by the air commanders. Blame the horrible debacle jockeys, not the people they let down.
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  640.  @Duke-i3u  - "monty created market garden. he said so himself and all records say so" - then quote the sources so I can fact check them, because I think you are wrong. He had ordered the operation, which is not the same thing as drawing up the plans. James Daly has done a lot of research on the UK Public Records held at Kew in London for his book Poposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Euorpe (2024): Early on 10 September Montgomery met with Dempsey at 21st Army Group. They agreed that given the increasing German strength in the Arnhem-Nijmegen area that one division would not be adequate for the proposed operation [Comet]. Dempsey recorded in his diary that he obtained Montgomery's agreement to instead use three airborne divisions to achieve these same objectives. This again suggests that Dempsey played a more active role in the evolution of Comet into Market Garden than had previously been thought. In 1978 Belchem told Noble Frankland, the then Director of the Imperial War Museum, that although he was standing in for De Guingand who was ill in hospital, the planning for Comet and Market Garden was not done at 21st Army Group and had been delegated to Dempsey, Browning and Horrocks. This marks a striking departure from Montgomery's normal way of running the battale, which was much more hands-on from 21st Army Group. Belchem also said that he personally would not have accepted the 'restrictive conditions' imposed by the air commanders to the extent that he would have referred it to Eisenhower for adjudication, as had happened with the American airborne operation in Normandy. Belchem was at a loss to explain why Browning had not appealed to Montgomery, if necessary via Dempsey, as he was certain that Montgomery would have referred the problem to Eisenhower. It was possible, Belchem thought, that Browning was being loyal to his superior Brereton - although Belchem may not have known at the time about Browning's threat to resign over Linnet II, which had certainly used up much of his influence. Another problem Belchem foresaw was that Eisenhower might have referred the problem to Tedder, an airman, who would not have been predisposed to support Montgomery given their previous enmity. Browning and Dempsey's role in planning MARKET was restricted to drawing up the outline for the proposed operation provisionally called SIXTEEN. This was the outline plan presented by Montgomery to Eisenhower for approval at their scheduled 10 September meeting at Brussels airport. THis was the meeting that had Logistics, Strategy, and Current Operations on the agenda, but Cornelius Ryan conflated the strategy and current operations parts of the meeting into one argument about narrow thrust versus broad front and Eisenhower won out on the strategy but endorsed the Arnhem operation. The outline was taken back to England and Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning as it now involved all of its assets, including the two US airborne divisions. Brereton was not "at the mercy of the air forces" as he and his air transport commander, Major General Paul Williams, were both USAAF officers and in command of all the airborne forces and air transport forces in the 1st AAA - these included William's own US IX Troop Carrier Command and the attached RAF Nos.38 and 46 Groups under Air Vice Marshall Leslie Hollinghurst of 38 Group. Brereton and Williams were the air forces! There's an earlier chapter on Browning's objection to Brereton's operation LINNET II in which he threatened to resign over the operation being scheduled on 36 hours notice with insufficient time to print and distribute maps to brief the troops. Brereton offered to pass his letter on to Eisenhower (who had technically appointed him) with his own comments attached and had already arranged for Matthew Ridgway as his US XVIII Airborne Corps to replace Browning for the operation. Browning withdrew his letter after the operation was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning knew it woud be useless to object to Brereton's changes to the SIXTEEN outline for his own MARKET plan, and as Belchem explained the matter would had to have gone ultimately to Eisenhower for adjudication. Brereton would still have the authority to cancel the operation, as he had rejected Montgomery's 4 September order for an airborne operation on Walcheren (INFATUATE) to help the Canadians clear the Scheldt estuary and open Antwerp. Brereton thought the idea was suicide, as ironically he feared his own airmen would be dropping American paratroops (the British Airborne Corps was committed to COMET at the time) into the North Sea or flooded areas of the island and it would be a disaster. The point is that only Eisenhower could overrule Brereton and if Brereton still refused then Eisenhower would have to remove him. There was nothing that Browning, Dempsey, or Montgomery, could have done without support from Eisenhower.
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  641. Absolute nonsense! 1. On 8 September Operation Comet was still active and Market Garden did not yet exist until Montgomery proposed it to Eisenhower on 10 September, the day he cancelled Comet. I've never heard of this intercept, and FW Winterbotham's book, the Ultra Secret, that first revealed 'Ultra' had broken Enigma was also first published in 1974. I think I still have my copy of the 1975 paperback edition somewhere. 2. Ryan started researching A Bridge Too Far in 1967 and it was rushed to publication unfinished in 1974 because of his terminal cancer. He most certainly did not make up the story of the crashed glider. The glider was an American WACO carrying the 101st Airborne's liaison officer to Browning's HQ at Groesbeek, and the loss of this Captain and his comms team was the reason Browning had no contact with 101st Division during the operation. The crash occured near General Kurt Student's 1.Fallschirm-armee headquarters at Vught and once they were translated he realised they contained a resupply schedule for the 101st that could be used to extrapolate the airlift timings for all three airborne divisions. Model was famously not convinced, but Student was a pioneer of the German airborne and understood their significance. He alerted his own Luftwaffe chain of command to the timings and had fighter aircraft over the drop zones when the airlifts were due. Fortunately, every lift was delayed after D-Day and the German fighters were on the ground being refuelled when the transports arrived. 3. Moffatt Burriss was CO of 'I' Company 504th PIR and Carrington denied being threatened with a Tommy gun. One of Burriss' Lieutenants also claims to be the officer confronting Carrington, so at least two people were not telling the truth. The fact is that Carrington's tank was the radio Rear Link between Sergeant Robinson's Troop of tanks half a mile up the road in Lent, and his squadron commander back in Nijmegen a mile away, does not seem to be understood by the Americans. Robinson was blocked from going any further by the StuG III that had the exit from the railway underpass covered and the Americans from 'G' Company at that location seemed reluctant to hunt it down - I believe they were out of bazooka rounds was the reason given. It was also dark by this time and operating armour was not possible after dark in WW2. 4. The advance to Arnhem was not possible without forces that were still fighting in Nijmegen, or the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, who were the unit planned to lead this part of the advance, could be brought up the corridor. The whole debacle at Nijmegen was caused by the failure of the 508th PIR to seize the highway bridge on the first afternoon when it was guarded by a single NCO and seventeen men, and the city was evacuated of German rear echelon troops. They allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reinforce the bridges that evening and it took two days with armoured support from the Guards to remove them. The backup plan for this situation was a river assault by one or two brigades of 43rd Division, but it was Gavin who insisted on the 504th using the boats to conduct the assault crossing. Gavin knew he had blundered with the 508th and was clearly trying to make amends for his division, but the reality was that Market Garden was already fatally compromised. 5. Your link is broken: "Video unavailable - This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been closed."
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  642. Browning planned a glider coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge, and then after that was deleted by Brereton and Williams he asked Gavin to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge. Gavin toyed with the idea but eventually discarded it because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. Can't blame Browning because he did try.
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  643. I think most of the story can be extracted from 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). He relies on Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the commander of the 508th HQ Company and liaison officer to Division HQ, who sat in on the divisional briefing and was witness to Gavin giving Lindquist clear instructions to send a battalion to the highway bridge as soon as he could if he was able to secure his initital objectives on the Groesbeek ridge overlooking the city. I think it's important to point out that the Germans could have used the ridge as a blocking line if they had a substantial garrison in the city and could quickly occupy the ridge line after being alerted by the landings. Gavin was told there may be "a regiment of SS" troops in the city because the exact location of the reduced 10.SS-Panzer-Division had not been identified. In the event the city was evacuated of rear echelon units and the ridge easily occupied by the 508th with no opposition. When Chet Graham relayed a message back to Gavin that Lindquist was not sending a battalion until the drop zone was cleared (D Company was left behind with the regiment S-4 to do this task), Gavin was as angry as Chet Graham had ever seen him and immediately told Graham "come with me, let's get him moving". Gavin's first words to Lindquist at the 508th CP were "I told you to move with speed." This story is supported by a parallel book also published in 2012 (notably after Lindquist in 1986 and Gavin in 1990 had both long passed away) by American historian John C McManus, September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far. His witness at the divisional briefing was Lieutenant Colonel Jack Norton, the Division G-3 (Operations) Officer, who also witnessed Gavin's instruction to Lindquist, and he also dated the briefing as the day before the operation, and also says that Gavin made a point of showing Lindquist on a map the exact route he wanted the 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. My thoughts about Gavin's post war statements are that he was reluctant to throw a subordinate officer under the bus and accepted he was responsible for his divisional plan not being carried out - both honourable sentiments, but unfortunately it didn't inform historians. He was apparently assisted by Browning in this and they are perhaps both responsible for muddying the waters regarding the priorities over the Groesbeek heights versus the bridge. None of this came out in Gavin's 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974), except that Gavin told Ryan that Matthew Ridgway (the Division CO in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist and refused to promote him. In fact he had a problem in that he couldn't promote another Colonel in the Division over Lindquist because Lindquist had seniority. That may also explain why Gavin, who inherited the Division after Ridgway was promoted in August 1944 to command US XVIII Airborne Corps, did not replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and was running himself ragged during Market Garden doing both jobs. The lack of trust in Lindquist as a field commander was probably based on his poor performance in Normandy, and Ridgway had only partially dealt with the command problems in the regiment in Normandy by replacing the Regiment Executive Officer, an interesting story in itself related in Nordyke's earlier chapters on the Normandy operation. This calls into question why Gavin had not assigned the Nijmegen mission to the more experienced and aggressive 505th PIR, but this may be because he was more worried about the potential armoured threat from the Reichswald and wanted the 505th covering that sector.
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  644. Because it would have been bombarded from southern side of the estuary. A unit had to be left behind on the south side to ensure both banks were held and the waterway itself was well behind their own lines.
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  645. I'll have a go at answering. Firstly, one correction: the Poles did not suffer significant casualties on their parachute drop at Driel. It was contested at a distance from the Germans firing in Elden and Elst, but the zone itself was clear. The myth about the high casualty rate was because the Polish Brigade was actually sent a recall message due to bad weather reports, but only the plane leading the 1st Battalion serial received the message and turned around. They dropped days later on the 82nd Airborne's zone at Overasselt and then marched north to join the Brigade. The rest of the Brigade arrived at Driel with only two battalions and had no idea why the 1st Battalion were missing. Why the whole division didn't land there was because it was unsuitable for the gliders. The polder land consisted of small fields bordered by deep drainage ditches, which would also inhibit vehicles from unloading. All the gliders had to land on the north bank of the river, and since these carried support units, the bulk of the division they supported also had to land on the north side of the river. It also makes sense that you cross the river by air and form a bridgehead on the north side. The original panned drop zone for the Poles south of the Arnhem bridge had two disadvantages: proximity to two of the four heavy Flak positions surrounding Arnhem - each battery had 6 captured French7.5cm Schneider M.36 guns, plus a platoon of 3 x 2cm auto cannon. In addition, if that's not hairy enough, the zone was crossed by high tension lines (!) from the Arnhem power station. It was assumed that by the time the Poles were due to arrive on D+2, the area would under the control of 1st Parachute Brigade, so the Flak would be cleared and the lines cut. This was why the zone had to be rearranged for Driel to help the division in Oosterbeek, because their original mission to cross the Arnhem bridge and occupy the eastern sector of Arnhem was no longer possible. In the Operation Comet plan, cancelled and then replaced by Market, it was planned that all three main bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, would be seized by small glider coup de main attacks carrying an airlanding company each, just as Pegasus Bridge was captured in Normandy. A small glider force carrying only infantry and no vehicles was deemed possible on the polder. This idea was deleted from the upgraded Market plan because the American Troop Carrier Commander (Williams) objected to the possible aircraft losses towing gliders within range of the Flak at the bridges. I hope that's helped. Sebastian Ricthie's book, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2019) goes into great detail about all these planning considerations, and after reading it I realised that all the armchair alternatives proposed for the operation with the benefit of hindsight is just pie in the sky that doesn't really work. The failure that compromised the entire operation was the failure to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon, when it could have been done without hardly firing a shot. For that story you have to read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012).
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  646. If you mean the thumbnail image for the video - that's Major General R.E. 'Roy' Urquhart, photographed outside his 1st Airborne Division HQ at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek. You're thinking of Major Robert Cain VC, commander of B Company 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment at Arnhem.
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  647. The location of II.SS-Panzerkorps was not known by 'Ultra' Engima decrypts, and Dutch reports had to be treated as suspect until confirmed, due to recent German counter-intelligence successes. The latest assessment available to Eisenhower's headquarters before the operation was SHAEF Intel Summary #26, dated 16 September 1944. It listed II.SS-Panzerkorps as known to be refitting somewhere in the eastern Netherlands, presumably drawing new tanks from a depot in the Cleve area. This would pose a threat to the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen rather than the 1st Airborne at Arnhem, and led to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest between Cleve and the 82nd's landing zones could hide up to 1,000 panzers. The actual locations were Bittrich's Korps HQ at Doetinchem, 9.SS-Panzer-Division dispersed at locations in the triangle formed by Apeldoorn-Zutphen-Arnhem, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division between Ruurlo-Arnhem-Zutphen. The River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary and they formed a reserve supporting the construction of a defence line along the Ijssel, which was a distributary of the Rhine. The British Airborne did not land "on top of" these divisions, but they were within striking distance, which is actually more dangerous in terms of counter-attacks as they would be able to organise and assemble before being committed to action. However, these units were severely depleted by the fighting in Normandy and reduced to regimental battlegroups in size, mostly of logistics and support units. The 9.SS was in the process of being withdrawn to Germany for refit, and only a few 'alarm' companies remained, mostly panzer and artillery crews without tanks and guns, acting as infantry. The 10.SS received most of the available heavy equipment handed over by 9.SS and was to be refitted in Holland. However, it had to deploy the combat ready units it had to the Belgian border, and only some reserves were available to combat the Airborne attack. Market Garden was defeated mostly by training and reserve units scraped together from all over Holland and Germany, at great cost to the Reserve Army and its ability to feed replacements to the Field Army. This would have a detrimental impact on the German Army in the closing stages of the war. Intelligence on German units in Arnhem itself was known, and was remarkably accurate. The SS training battalion 'Germania' (the name was out of date) was based at Arnhem, and known to be training Hitler Youth recruits for 12.SS-Panzer-Division. The local defence force was Landesschützen-Bataillon 908, a home guard unit of WW1 veterens defending the bridges and nearby Deelen airfield. It was even known that the psychiatric institute at Wolfheze was being used as an artillery collection centre for survivors of units shattered in Normandy, and the estimate of 400 turned out to be accurate. It was the reason the hospital was bombed in the morning of the operation. They were without guns, and few had even personal weapons. They were more of a headache for the 1st Airborne Division Intelligence Section that had to catalogue the fantastic number of different units they came from, after they had been captured. The location and reaction of the SS battalion was more unfortunate. Their commander (Sepp Krafft) had moved them out of Arnhem into Oosterbeek to avoid bombing of the barracks and deployed a blocking line that stopped the Reconnaissance Squadron and two of the Parachute Battalions (1st and 3rd) moving into Arnhem, leaving only the 2nd Battalion and 1st Parachute Brigade headquarters and support units to slip past and secure the Arnhem highway bridge. The planners underestimated the speed of the German reaction, but the intelligence picture was remarkably accurate.
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  648. Excellent video. Keep fighting the good fight!
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  649.  @steviewondek  - conservatism and fascism are quite different things, so you seem to be just as confused as the people who think the Nazis were right wing. ELO were never political and I saw them get called out in a concert by a support band called the Blow Monkeys in 1986 for touring in South Africa (where they actually had a lot of fans). I'd never heard of the Blow Monkeys, I didn't appreciate their political ignorance, and they were a crap band musically anyway.
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  650. It was the RAF and Montgomery that wanted a double airlift on D-Day and Brereton would not change his plan for a single daylight flight each day. The Canadian 1st Army were repositioning around Antwerp during MARKET GARDEN and were not yet ready to begin their operations to clear the Scheldt, and British 2nd Army had to have priority on supplies in the meantime. It was not possible to do both at the same time. Only two divisions from 15.Armee attacked the corridor, 59.Infanterie-Division at Best against 101st Airborne, and 712.Infanterie-Division at 's-Hertogenbosch attempted to move on Grave against Guards Armoured Division. Both attacks failed.
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  651.  @raymondbristow4007  - by take it upstairs I presume you mean Montgomery should have appealed to Eisenhower? He had sent his GSO 1 (Ops) David Belchem by air to England to impress upon Brereton the need for the double airlift on D-Day, but Brereton would not change his mind, and 21st Army Group had not even been notified of the changes until after the air plan was fixed on the morning of 11 September and the 12 September cut-off date Brereton decreed for any further adjustments. Montgomery wrote after the war in his memoirs he regretted not intervening personally, which would mean appealing to Eisenhower, but can you imagine the crisis it would have prompted? James Daly (Proposed Airborne Assaults During the Liberation of Europe, 2024) makes a point that Eisenhower would probably consult his Air Chief (and Deputy Supreme Commander) Air Marshal Arthur Tedder (RAF), and he was not well disposed towards Montgomery. Assuming Eisenhower backed Montgomery and overruled Brereton, Brereton could simply cancel the operation - he had that authority and had already rejected an order in early September from Montgomery for an airborne operation (INFATUATE) on Walcheren to assist the Canadians clear the Scheldt (it was later resurrected in November as an amphibious assault). If Eisenhower pressed for MARKET to go ahead with a double airlift on D-Day, Brereton would have to comply, or resign, or be relieved. Frankly I don't see Eisenhower having that much 'grip' - he generally agreed with the last person who lobbied him. Eisenhower appointed Brereton (not the Air Force's first choice - in fact, he wasn't even on the shortlist) and Williams to their positions within the new Allied Airborne Army charged with improving the Troop Carrier Group's poor record on navigation and drop accuracy. Brereton and Williams made the decisions they did for MARKET with the clear aim to help improve that record and minimise casualties to their own air assets at the expense of the requirements of the airborne troops they were delivering. Browning was prepared to accept 33% casualties getting in, if it meant the troops were delivered directly to their targets and as rapidly as possible - hence the double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the three main bridges in both operation COMET and the proposed upgrade provisionally called SIXTEEN. The SAS were not structured for large scale assaults - this is why the airborne forces were raised and the Airlanding units were trained as assault troops. Browning's intended coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges were modelled on the successful 'Pegasus Bridge' raid in Normandy, which were Airlanding infantry Company-sized assaults, each Company landing in six Horsa gliders. In fact, all British glider operations were officially recorded as 'raids' regardless of scale in WW2 - their main role at Arnhem being to quickly deploy (with anti-tank artillery) to secure the landing zones before the paratroops arrived. The US Airborne doctrine was reversed with Paratroop Infantry Regiments dropped first and move to strike/hold their primary objectives, and the Glider Infantry Regiments landed later as a reinforcement force. There are advantages and disadvantages with both doctrines, but Brereton's decisions favoured the American units and put Urquhart at a severe disadvantage at Arnhem. Gavin had an opportunity for an alternative coup de main at Nijmegen - he told Cornelius Ryan the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, and while he said he toyed with the idea, he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop and the division being disorganised for days. He decided to drop his parachute regiments close together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The highly experienced Colonel Tucker, charged with taking the Grave bridge with his 504th PIR, insisted on a special drop zone for one company to land south of the bridge so he could assault it from both ends, and he got it. It didn't require a change to Brereton's air plan as all the 82nd's drop zones were on the same track to the single pathfinder radio beacon established on DZ 'O' at Overasselt for the 504th(-), and the others would pick up the landmarks along this track and jump early (for the special zone), onto the beacon (for DZ 'O'), or late (for DZs 'N', and 'T'), as appropriate. As for bombing the woods - anything extensive enough to actually likely hit anything in such large wooded areas is going to telegraph intent to the enemy that the area is most important to the Allies. The preliminary bombing campaign was aimed at point defences identified from aerial photography, such as Flak positons and barracks, and these were conducted all over the Netherlands to avoid telepgraphing a specific axis of advance, and it was successful in confirming the German assessment that a ground operation was imminent, but still maintained complete surprise for an airborne operation. The Germans speculated a main thrust towards Wesel via Venlo (actually Browning and Dempsey's preference), and a flanking Corps attack northwards towards Nijmegen to turn the flank of the Westwall and swing southeast to support the main attack at Wesel. The opening attacks seemed to confirm that expectation (some reinforcements were sent to Wesel where a dummy parachute drop was conducted), but airborne landings at Nijmegen and as far north as Arnhem were a complete shock. The Reichswald was a concern to Gavin, because after COMET was cancelled and he was given a warning order he was now assigned to Nijmegen for MARKET, he went to 1st Airborne Division HQ to see their plans and intelligence for their own drop at Nijmegen for COMET. It was here he saw the Dutch resistence reports of heavy German armour in the Reichswald and a steer that Nijmegen might contain a "regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the divisions in II.SS-Panzerkorps), but it was only when forwarding the research papers of Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree to Cornelius Ryan in 1966 did he realise from Boeree's study of the Hohenstaufen Division's movements that it must have been this unit in transit to Arnhem that generated the reports. Someone at SHAEF had speculated that a division in Nijmegen was drawing new tanks from a depot near Kleve, in Germany behind the Reichswald, and were using the forest as a tank storage area. The operation actually involved more than 20 bridges in the airborne assault, although only 4 are seen in the very simplified Hollywood film. Sources: Research papers of T.A. Boeree and Gavin correspondence (box 101 folder 09: James M. Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James M. Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, James Daly (2024)
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  652.  @raymondbristow4007  - one additional thing in not having the material; Montgomery was advised on 11 September by his Administration (logistics) Officer that they would not have the required supplies built up for the operation until 23 September at the earliest. Montgomery immediately cabled Eisenhower this information and received a visit from Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff) the next day promising everything Montgomery wanted and the operation was back on schedule for 17 September. The arrangement involved using the transport from 3 US divisions in Bradley's 12th Army Group diverted to 21st Army Group, but when Bradley heard about this he objected and conspired with Bedell Smith to cancel the transport without notifying Montgomery. MARKET GARDEN therefore went ahead without receiving sufficient supplies for the flanking VIII and XII Corps to properly support the advance of XXX Corps on the centreline, which necessarily had to have priority on the available supplies within 21st Army Group. Sources: Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014) Aspects of Arnhem – The Battle Re-Examined, Richard Doherty and David Truesdale (2023)
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  653. Do you mean the Arnhem bridge, and which Dutch SS unit? Interested in your source(s).
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  654. Source? I always found that photo of Brereton receiving Urquhart (getting off the plane) on his return from Arnhem to be really interesting. That was the moment to punch someone out, but Urquhart was a British officer and not prone to "slappenings", unlike Patton.
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  655.  @AnthonyBrown12324  - Patton wasn't really an issue during Market Garden. Eisenhower was. Montgomery had his measure on their first meeting - 'Nice chap. No soldier.'
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  656. 1. *32 gliders for the Corps HQ, plus 6 Wacos carrying American fighter control and divisional liaison teams. Since the operation was compromised by a regiment already landed by parachute at Nijmegen, sending more troops by glider wouldn't have made any difference. 2. Only after the 508th failed to move on the bridge while it was undefended. He was right to wait for armoured support as even that failed at first on 19 September and the second attempt with a river assault on the next day finally succeeded. If it was a race against time to get to Arnhem, the Nijmegen bridge should have been taken on the first evening when it had a garrison of 18 men before it was reinforced by the SS.
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  657. My guess would be that Antony dictates his books using a dictaphone and then an audio typist types them up?
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  658. You must be a lawyer, because there's not a single punctuation character in that ramble, and not much sense in it either. The Airborne troops sent to Arnhem had exactly the same number of anti-tank guns (84) as the Germans had operational tanks in the September returns for Model's entire Heeresgruppe B from Aachen to the North Sea coast. The responsibility for the worst casualties in the US Airborne divisions were the division commander's - Gavin for insisting on using his own troops for the Waal river crossing, when the default plan was for British 43rd (Wessex) Division to make river assaults, and Taylor for the battle at Best for a bridge Dempsey's 2nd Army neither needed or asked for, and the Germans had already blown on the first day. Americans make their own meat grinders - they were not forced into it, and against British advice.
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  659. I don't see Britain as "Russophobic". Historically, Britain has not been afraid of anyone, and has defeated everyone seeking to cause trouble for itself and her allies. Britain objects to what Russia is doing in Ukraine because it violates the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukrainian independence in return for giving up its inherited Soviet era nuclear weapons, an agreement to which Britain is a signatory along with the United States and... Ruzzia! The definition of Zionism, according to my search online - is the movement to form an independent Jewish state in the Middle East within the historical boundaries of Israel. I don't think that meets any definition of fascism. It's totally unrelated. I think you have a Monty Pythonesque view of fascism, where everyone you disagree with is labelled a "fascist", as if that makes them automatically wrong. That scene in Monty Python And The Holy Grail ("witness the violence inherent in the system! Help - I'm being oppressed!") was mocking the idiots who try this nonsense, who rather insultingly think that everyone else is even more stupid than they are and will somehow just swallow their nonsense. It doesn't always work! Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are elected as MPs by their parliamentary constituents and were elected as leader of the Conservative Party by it's MPs and wider membership, so they were both elected by two constituencies. The office of Prime Minister is an appointed one, not elected, and the convention is that the appointee is the leader of the party that can form a government in the elected House of Commons. People in Britain who think they elect the Prime Minister, or should, do not understand the British system, and for that I blame the British media, because of their envy of the American media feeding frenzy with leadership TV debates etc., during American presidential elections. Britain does not have a presidential system (despite Tony Blair thinking he was) and it should not be thought as such. Voters should vote for their preferred candidate in their parliamentary constituency and not have a millennial meltdown when the party of government changes their leader mid-term. If they want to influence that change, then they should join the party. Democracy does work, but only if the people particpate.
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  660.  @jonrettich4579  - thank you for the kind words. I'm more interested in the what and why rather than personalities, but the research frontier is constantly advancing with new books coming out all the time and my book budget has a hard time just trying to keep up! The one recommendation I have for the most up to date overview of the whole operation is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which uses unpublished documents and interviews held in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University and also debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film.
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  661.  @jonrettich4579  - just spotted this on Browning's Wiki page: Browning sent his most experienced airborne commander, Major-General Ernest Down, to India as GOC of the 44th Division. Formerly the commander of the 2nd Parachute Brigade, Down had succeeded Hopkinson as GOC 1st Airborne Division after Hopkinson had been killed in Italy. Down's replacement as GOC 1st Airborne Division was Montgomery's selection, Major-General Roy Urquhart, an officer with no airborne experience, rather than Browning's choice, Brigadier Gerald Lathbury of the 1st Parachute Brigade. The decision was to become controversial. (source: Arnhem 1944, William Buckingham 2002) I knew that Urquhart was recommended by Montgomery, but didn't know that Browning wanted Lathbury to take the position. If Lathbury had moved up to 1st Airborne Division GOC, I expect Frost would have been promoted to Brigade as the most senior and experienced battalion CO. I wonder what difference that might have made in the divisional planning and execution of the operation at Arnhem. A really interesting question!
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  662. The drop zone south of the bridge was not suitable for use on D-Day because of the two heavy and one and a half light Flak batteries in the area, and the zone was crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station near the bridge. It was not deemed suitable for gliders for the additonal reason the polder was divided up into small fields bounded by drainage ditches, making landings too difficult and vehicle/trailer/artillery extrication difficult. The zone was deemed suitable for the Polish brigade on D+2, by which time it was assumed the area would be under 1st Parachute Brigade's control, 1st Battalion was due to clear the zone after their Phase 1 task of holding the high ground north of Arnhem was handed over to 4th Parachute Brigade in Phase 2. The Division's Royal Engineers were due to rendezvous at the power station and take control after completing their own Phase 1 tasks. The only way to take the bridge quickly on D-Day was the proposed dawn glider coup de main assault by D Company of the 2nd South Staffords Airlanding Battalion, along with similar raids conducted by the 1st Border and 7th KOSB on the Grave and Nijmegen bridges respectively. These assaults were not deemed feasible after Brereton had decided the MARKET flights would be conducted entirely in daylight with a midday delivery.
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  663.  @davidfindlay878  - no problem. Best wishes.
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  664.  @gandydancer9710  - it is "juggler" in the original typed notes, but someone had scrawled what looks like "jugular" just above it, so I suppose I could have used the correction when quoting from it, or [sic]. The part that reads "He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days" is exactly as it says in the Ryan notes and is not a quote from Gavin. My impression is that Gavin was very much aware he needed to grab the bridge quickly or it would likely be reinforced or prepared for demolition, so this appears to be Ryan's own view. Gavin would have been right about the demolition of the bridge. I have information that the explosives were stored in the bridge piers and an NSDAP 'Schutzkommando' (Dutch civilians of German ethnic origin volunteered as a militia) were drilled every month since the Normandy invasion to place the charges in numbered boxes into corresponding numbered locations in the bridge superstructure and wire the charges up to detonation circuits under the supervision of an engineer officer, Oberleutnent Gerhard Bretschneider of von Tettau's Pionier staff, who was also responsible for the Nijmegen rail and Grave road bridges. The last drill was mid-August and when the landings started on 17 September, the Nijmegen Schutzgruppe failed to show up. Bretschneider had to wait until engineers from the 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived in the early hours of 18 September before the work could be started. On Lindquist, there's a lot that can be learned about him from Nordyke's book on the 508th (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012). He was an early officer volunteer to the US Airborne and was a gifted administration (S-1) officer in the early formations. As the Airborne forces were expanded they needed officers to fill command positions and Lindquist was given command of the 508th Battalion and promoted to Colonel when it was expanded to a regiment. In Normandy, the 508th's first combat operation, there were a number of command problems. The regiment XO was court-martialled by Ridgway for being combat ineffective after the jump, but Lindquist had not even relieved the man of duty until the regiment medical officer had escaped from German captivity and crossed the lines to find the 508th CP and make his report of what he observed after the jump, despite the fact the man was sitting on a chair in the CP with his M1 between his legs just staring down at the floor. Ridgway then transferred the 505th XO, the very able Lt Col Mark James Alexander, over to the 508th to "shake things up over there", but unfortunately he was severely wounded and had to be evacuated after he had taken over 2nd Battalion and was conducting a personal reconnaissance. Captain Chet Graham (CO of 2/508th HQ Company) then found himself in command of the battalion for an attack on Hill 95 (Sainte Catherine near La Haye) on 4 July. Ordered by Lindquist to attack over open ground, Graham asked about Alexander's plan to use a covered approach and he was told "You have your orders." Chet Graham: "F Company was hugging the hill with open ground on its right and being cut up. I pulled them back and planned to move E Company to the right. (Hill 95 had been a Roman outpost. It had a sheltered moat inside the perimeter circling the hill, about ten feet wide. So, we were able to move under cover from side to side.) "During this time, I was being called back to our big radio to converse with Colonel Lindquist. He told me not to move F Company back. ('We don't give up ground we have taken - get them back.') I explained my troubles and my plan, and told him he should come and see for himself, instead of second guessing from a mile away. I was relieved of command on the spot. Royal Taylor came down and followed the plan." Maybe Lindquist thought he was going for the jugular, but he actually got a lot of his own men killed and wounded unnecessarily. Going back to Cornelius Ryan's notes in the same Box 101, Folder 10 meeting notes with Gavin, he records: 'It's interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant to jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him.' It's a pity Ridgway didn't take Lindquist with him to XVIII Airborne Corps in August as his S-1 officer, it would have solved a number of problems and created some promotion prospects for Gavin within the 82nd, so he wouldn't be running around doing both jobs of division commander and assistant division commander during MARKET GARDEN. Ridgway had no role in the operation but 'borrowed' a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and drove up the corridor to visit his divisions - I understand from George Koskimaki's book Hell's Highway on the 101st Airborne that Ridgway was following Brereton's more official tour that was further up the road, because Koskimaki was Taylor's personal radio man and Ridgway asked him if he could reach Brereton's car on his radio (they both climbed on top of a chicken shack to get a signal). When Ridgway got to the 82nd at Nijmegen, Gavin returned to his CP after dealing with a problem on the front lines to find Ridgway in the CP studying a map on the wall, but before either man could acknowledge the other, Gavin was handed a message about another urgent problem and left immediately to deal with it. It's a dog's breakfast...
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  665. There's no evidence Market Garden was betrayed to the Germans. All German sources are clear it was a complete surprise and the evidence that the key bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen were undefended in the first vital hours is really proof of that.
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  666.  @richardjansen3317  - those divisions were reduced to no more than regimental battlegroups in need of complete refit, and the 9.SS-Panzer were in the process of entraining for refit in Germany with just 'alarm' companies left behnd, another day and they would have been gone as well. The 10.SS-Panzer received most of the available heavy equipment left behind by the 9.SS, and to Bittrich's annoyance were constantly being asked to send combat ready units to the front line in Belgium. The SS units in the eastern Netherlands were billeted in villages and towns between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo (reported by the Dutch but only the 9.SS were identified), and that area was chosen because the Germans were building an additional defence line along the Ijssel River, and the SS units were on both sides of the river with the river itself marking the inter-divisional boundary. They were not deployed to defend the Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges, so they were in a race to get there as soon as reports of the Airborne landings reached II.SS-Panzerkorps HQ at Doetinchem. Most of the troops used to defeat Market Garden were the various patchwork of training and replacement units from all over Holland and Germany mobilised under the 'Valkyrie Plan' in the first week of September - there just weren't any frontline combat troops available to meet the inevitable advance of 2nd Army after the Albert canal line had been breached. As I said, no evidence that the Airborne attack was anything but a complete surprise.
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  667.  @richardjansen3317  - just noticed your post about "Carrington-doctrine" - I've never heard of that. We have a Labour opposition that insists on Government ministers resigning if they get a parking ticket. The Ukranians, who are fighting for their lives, cannot understand why we forced Boris Johnson to resign over attending his own birthday party (not really a party - someone brought a cake into the cabinet room) during the Covid lockdown. We don't understand it either. Our politics has completely gone to hell in a handbasket.
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  668.  @richardjansen3317  - no worries.
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  669. I don't see how. You have to get to the Zuider Zee (now called Ijsselmeer) to cut the German supply lines.
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  670.  @Mulberry2000  - the MARKET drops were all delivered accurately with only a few exceptions. A navigation error led to 2nd Battalion 505th (Ben Vandervoort's battalion, Vandervoort was played by John Wayne in The Longest Day) arriving over DZ 'N' at the same time as 1st Battalion, so Vandervoort ordered the pilot of his plane leading their serial to fly on to DZ 'T', the 508th's DZ, and they landed near Kamp. This meant they took longer to reach their objectives - clearing the northern half of Groesbeek and Hill 81.8 above the town, where they went into Division Reserve. 1st Battalion of the 501st (101st Airborne) dropped at the wrong place - Kasteel Heeswijk instead of near their objective at Veghel. The 508th dropped on time around 1330 hours and only the 3rd Battalion missed DZ 'T', but landed together a short distance to the southeast near Wyler where there were a few light Flak guns and some isolated labour troops - they were digging an anti-tank ditch around Wyler. All three Battalions reached their initial objectives at De Ploeg, De Hut, and Berg-en-Dal by early evening, with only 2nd Battalion experiencing any major opposition as they neared the defended Maas-Waal canal area. According to Nordyke's regimental history, Put Us Down In Hell (2012): Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.” Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” “The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south." This was the point where Lindquist stuck to his original plan to dig-in on the Groesbeek ridge and send only a recon patrol to the bridge, instead of sending the battalion as Gavin has instructed in the final briefing.
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  671.  @Mulberry2000  - "secure the landing zone and take the bridge with less than a battalion" - no, the orders are for Lindquist, who commands a whole regiment, he was to secure the landing zone (tasked to D Company of 2nd Battalion), take the Groesbeek ridge at Berg-en-Dal (with 3rd Battalion) and take the Nijmegen highway bridge with not more than a battalion (1st Battalion). The remainder of 2nd Battalion (E and F Companies) roadblocked the main highways southwest out of Nijmegen to Grave and south to Gennep. Where Lindquist went wrong was to have the whole 1st Battalion dig-in on the ridge at De Ploeg, apart from Lt Weaver's 3rd Platoon of C Company, the Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section, and a two LMG Squads from HQ Company. This patrol was detached and sent into Nijmegen, where they got split up, Weaver and most of the patrol got lost and never reached the bridge. The only account of what happened to the three troopers that did reach the bridge is in Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge: A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’) The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
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  672.  @Mulberry2000  - you're right that the 1945 report is not to be trusted as it was written after the fact, and this is the point TIK makes in the video, but it is primary source because it was generated by Lt Col Jack Norton, the Division G-3 (Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations). I don't think there's any misunderstanding with the tasking. The orders are for a regiment and no regimental commander, not even Lindquist, would misunderstand that Gavin wanted him to do all three tasks with less than one battalion. What was he supposed to do with the other two battalions?
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  673.  @Mulberry2000  - 1966 was when Gavin started assisting Conrelius Ryan with his book. It was also when he realised the reports of German armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen Division in transit to Arnhem. That is in a cover letter he wrote to Ryan (box 101, folder 09, page 48) to enclose some research by Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree, who researched the movements of the Hohenstaufen to debunk the betrayal myths. Boeree's book, De Slag By Arnhem, was published in Dutch in 1963 and translated into English with journalist Cornelius Bauer as The Battle of Arnhem in 1966. I don't post links on YouTube because many channels don't allow it - it depends on the settings the YouTuber uses on his channel. I find it more convenient to post the reference, or if I already have it transcribed into a document I can easily paste it into a comment, like many of these quotes from Nordyke and McManus. I use them all the time, because most people don't have these books and even TIK has not drilled down to regimental history level on MARKET GARDEN because he studies other campaigns as well. I don't. I specialise in studying MARKET GARDEN, so I have done so in greater depth.
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  674.  @Mulberry2000  - Lindquist did not deny receiving orders before the drop, he denied receiving them immediately on landing, which is a disingenuous answer as I said. I find it incredible you misread Norton's account of the orders Lindquist received - do you honestly think he was instructed to execute three major tasks with less than one battalion? That's a ridiculous interpretation. The report definitely does not state he had one battalion available. Even Lindquist himself, a poor field commander based on his performance in Normandy and at Nijmegen, did not make that interpretation given he deployed all three of his battalions to their individual tasks on D-Day. What Lindquist failed to understand was the urgency of sending the 1st Battalion immediately to the bridge before the Germans could react and send reinforcements. It appears he was still expecting the "Div order" mentioned in his written Field Order No.1 dated 13 September, and had not realised the order he was expecting to receive had already been given by Gavin verbally on 15 September in the final divisional briefing. My interpretation of his behaviour is that he knew he had screwed up, but there was no written order before the jump to prove he had disobeyed orders, so he plays dumb and relies on the theory that Gavin had made up the claim after the fact to cover his own 'ass' and this seems to be the way historians have gone until Norton and Graham's testimony came to light in McManus (September Hope, 2012) and Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012), by which time Roy Lindquist (1907-1986) and James Gavin (1907-1990) had both passed away. We know from hindsight that the 508th had a window of about one and half hours from 1830 to 2000 hours between the evacuation of rear echelon units from Nijmegen and the arrival of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9. This was the timscale in which Weaver's patrol was sent to the bridge, and all but three men led by PFC Joseph Atkins on point duty got lost and never found found it, when Gavin intended it should have been the whole battalion. Lindquist was even told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees at De Ploeg (1st Battalion initial objective) that the Germans had evacuated the city and only a non-commissoned officer with seventeen men were guarding the highway bridge. Lindquist still only sent Weaver's recon patrol in spite of this information. As I have said, there is scope to believe that Gavin thought he had not made himself clear enough in the final divisional briefing and may blame himself for that, but Norton and Graham both seem to think he had and Graham was certainly of the opinion Lindquist was not a good field officer in Normandy having had problems with his orders during the Hill 95 attack on 4 July. Gavin certainly made a couple of crucial mistakes in not providing for a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge and in assigning the Nijmegen mission to Lindquist, but Lindquist is also at fault for not following Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge. If Ekman's 505th 2nd Battalion (Vandervoort) had been tasked on the bridge, I have little doubt it would have been secured on D-Day. I thought you would have understood that the drop patterns for MARKET were very accurate with few misdrops, and that many troopers in all three divisions remarked that it was like an exercise. This is recorded in even the most general histories of MARKET GARDEN, so I don't understand why you would dispute this. And the WW2 parachutes did have directional control, but the need or opportunity to use this was often reduced by jumping at a minimal height. This helped to reduce the drop pattern and in broad daylight that accuracy was more easily achieved. The drop pattern maps of the 82nd Airborne are available if you have a look around. There's a map shown on the Battle Detectives page on George Roth's visit to Grave, I'll post the link in a separate comment in case it is blocked. The 508th sticks landing outside DZ 'T' were the 3rd Battalion, but otherwise the division drop was very tight and on target.
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  675.  @Mulberry2000  - where does Lindquist deny receiving orders before the drop? If you're not referring to Norton's report, what are you referring to? And don't "lol" me. I am not 9 years old.
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  676.  @Mulberry2000  - what you wrote was incorrect, so of course I will call it out. What do you expect? If you claim to be following historical methodology, why aren't you familiar with all these sources and read up on the current literature? How on earth did you get your alleged history degree if you haven't read the recommended book list? You're very closed-minded in believing only Gavin was to blame for the failure of the operation, so I wonder what historical methodology teaches that approach?
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  677.  @Mulberry2000  - you tell me. You seem to have invented it.
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  678.  @Mulberry2000  - familiar video. What about it?
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  679.  @Mulberry2000  - pretty much seen of all of these and commented on many of them. Most follow the conventional narrative ignoring the literature of the last 25 years - so I wouldn't pay much attention to them, but all of the TIK videos are very good as far as he goes - as I said, he has not drilled down to regimental history level so he hasn't read as much on Lindquist as he has on Gavin. Al Murray is very knowledgeable and I've only picked him up on one mistake so far in the videos and just read another in his book I'm currently reading.
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  680.  @Mulberry2000  - you still haven't come up with a "historical methology", are you still inventing it? You do realise that is called an 'argument from authority', which is not as good as an argument based on the data. If an argument based on authority was a valid argument, then a Prime Minister or President of the United States or General Secretary of the United Nations, would all be right all of the time. Obviously nonsense.
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  681.  @Mulberry2000  - I haven't told you how historical methodology works, so how can you tell that isn't how it works? I haven't told you what my two degrees are, so you don't know that I don't have a History degree - it's typical of your whole mentality that you make a statement without any evidence to back it up. The reason that none of our degrees are relevant is because relying on them to make an argument is an 'argument from authority', which is not an argument based on data. If you have no data, you don't have an argument. Time for you to take a break, because you are trolling. Not what YouTube comments are supposed to be for.
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  682. Interesting to see someone from Arnhem commenting here. I found your points interesting, and while agreeing with much of what you say, I think I know what the answer would have been from the people planning the operation in considering your points. 1. The area to the east of Arnhem, as well as south of the bridge, is polder, and that was deemed unsuitable for large scale glider operations, particularly for vehicles brought in by glider. The Drop Zone ('K') originally planned for the Polish Brigade on the Malburgsche Polder was planned for the 3rd lift, when it was expected the area would be in the hands of the British 1st Parachute Brigade, the electricity lines crossing the Drop Zone (!) would have been cut and no longer pose a danger, and all flak units in the area destroyed. I think drop and landing zones in the polder south of Velp or the open ground north of the Saksenweimar-kazerne were rejected because the aircraft would have to fly through the flak situated around Arnhem. The zones to the west around Wolfheze could be approached from the south and aircraft turn to the west away from Arnhem and Deelen flak. I have copies of defence overprint maps showing the locations of the Arnhem flak positions, as well as the Deelen flak positions, but there is some question that the Deelen heavy flak guns were still in position on 17 September due to the Luftwaffe air units being removed. If you have any knowledge of the flak situation at Deelen after 11 September, when the intel maps were prepared, and 17 September, I would be grateful. Yes, the plan was for Deelen to be secured after XXX Corps crossed the Arnhem bridge and fly in an American Engineer Construction Battalion to bring the airfield into operation (it was bombed on 3 and 17 September) and then fly in the 52nd (Lowland) Division, an air transportable infantry division that was part of the Allied Airborne Army. My personal view is that the landing and drop zones selected were probably the best ones in view of all the problems with other areas. Where I do agree with alternative proposals is the suggestion of a glider coup de main, perhaps risking one company (just 6 gliders) of airlanding troops, landing south of the main bridge. This worked at Pegasus bridge in Normandy (Operation) on D-Day, but that was at night during Moon-lit period. The use of the Reconnaissance Squadron for a coup de main was not liked by its commander, who would rather have deployed each Troop of the Squadron ahead of the three Parachute Battalions as they advanced into Arnhem. The plan for 1st Parachute Brigade involved the 3rd Parachute Battalion taking the Ijssel bridges at Westervoort and holding the eastern side of Arnhem until the eastern perimeter could be occupied by the Polish Brigade. In the event, the 3rd Parachute Battalion got stuck in Oosterbeek. It would have been better to drop the 1st Parachute Brigade on Landing Zone 'Z' first and get them moving towards their objectives while the gliders came in afterwards. The objectives of the Airlanding Battalions were the Drop and Landing Zones themselves. The Divisional unit gliders could have landed on Landing Zone 'X', and the anti-tank and other support for the Parachute Brigade could assemble and follow on as soon as they could. The British doctrine of gliders first and parachutes second, worked against us at Arnhem. The American doctrine makes more sense to me in terms of quicker assembly of the whole Division. 2. The land operation starting before the Airborne operation I completely agree with. I noted from Horrock's book Corps Commander that he said he wanted visual confirmation the Airborne attack was going in (and not cancelled) before giving the order for the ground forces to start their advance. In my opinion, the Germans were expecting an advance from the Neerpelt bridgehead anyway, so it would have been an advantage for the ground forces if the Germans were distracted at a crucial time by the Airborne armada passing overhead. It would still have been a surprise at any time, and British tanks would have been well on their way to Valkenswaard when the Airborne operation was launched. So on this point I completely agree. This lesson was learned for the Rhine crossings in 1945, and it worked then. 3. I also agree on this point, and the main reason for the failure of the whole operation was the American failure to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day. I know TIK has blamed this on Gavin, and I agree it was his responsibility to devise his divisional plan and see that it was carried out. The cause of the command failure, I believe, was that the commander of the US 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment was not the aggressive leader the job requires. Roy Lindquist was a gifted administrator. I think he was simply the wrong man for the job, and his less experienced Regiment was the wrong one to be assigned to taking Nijmegen. I agree with Gavin's logic that Grave was a priority because it was on his Division's supply line to XXX Corps and assigned his best Regiment, the 504th, but I think the 508th and 505th should have been switched. The 505th was almost as experienced as the 504th and would have made a much more aggressive advance into Nijmegen by at least two routes, east and west, while the 508th would have been suited to the defensive role of securing the landing zones. I don't understand why the defence perimeter here was established on the open farmland. I would have pushed into the Reichswald to deny the enemy positions from which to fire onto the landing zones. This was the British doctrine, for example around Drop Zone 'Y' at Ginkelse Heide, and that plan worked. I agree also with your concluding comments about how history could have been very different if the plan had succeeded. I think it was worth the risks, and German accounts of the battle researched by Robert Kershaw revealed how narrow the margin of their success was in defeating Market Garden. The Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far has not only whitewashed the American failure at Nijmegen, but also perpetrated the myth that the operation was ill-conceived and doomed to failure. The planning was indeed rushed, that is not unusual, and the weather is notoriously unreliable in the Autumn. The intelligence, on the other hand, was surprisingly accurate. What was underestimated was the speed of the German reaction, and it was the fact that the Germans won the race of reinforcements that led to the defeat of Market Garden. Very interesting comment and thanks for posting. My regards to all our friends in the Netherlands from Birmingham, England.
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  683.  @geitenkampsejos  - Hi, I assume from your Googe handle that your name is Jos and you're based in the Geitenkamp area of Arnhem? Thanks for your reply. A lot of points I agree on. After Market Garden was "90% successful", Montgomery planned Operation Gatwick to move towards Emmerich/Wesel from Nijmegen and clear the Reichswald. It was cancelled because of the Venlo pocket still being occupied by the Germans and it was deemed that clearing the Scheldt and all areas up to the Waal was more urgent. I read that when things started to go wrong after Nijmegen for XXX Corps, Horrocks wanted to go for the Rhenen railway bridge, but Montgomery denied him permission. I believe the reason for that was that Rhenen, and areas further south like Zaltbommel and s'Hertogenbosch were in the XII Corps area of operations, should they get that far in their advance. The VIII Corps were directed on to Helmond and a crossing of the Maas at Gennep, possibly to exploit towards Kleve and Emmerich. Market Garden also delayed Model's plans for a counter-attack through Holland, which is why he denied permission to demolish the Nijmegen bridges. That counter-attack eventually became the Ardennes offensive, so Market Garden not only delayed the offensive but also forced it out of Holland into Belgium/Luxembourg. The late-1944 counter-offensive certainly shortened the war, whenever it happened, because it used up valuable reserves that could have been used in a more sensible defence of Germany. On my specific interest, the battle of Arnhem, I think the polder landing areas were indeed incorrectly judged to be too soft for glider landings - that is absolutely right. But I do think they are unsuitable for a number of other reasons. The many drainage ditches would make glider landings difficult, but they would also make it difficult to get wheeled vehicles (mostly Jeeps towing trailers and anti-tank guns) off the landing zones quickly. These areas also tend to be very open with no surrounding woodland to offer defensive positions, unlike the ideal zones selected around Wolfheze. I think the main objection came from the RAF with regard to the flak positions around Arnhem. In fact, the Southwest, Southeast and East flak positions are located on the polder areas around the town and had good fields of fire in most directions. The heavy SW flak position on the Meinerswijk Polder was even firing into British occupied buildings near the highway bridge, but there was also the SE heavy flak position, which was on the Malburgsche Polder, where there is now a housing estate called Immerloo. That is even closer to the bridge than Meinerswijk and may have also been firing on the bridge area. So I can well understand the desirability of the Wolfheze landing zones, and I would also point out that despite their distance from the main bridge, the US 82nd Airborne had a similar distance from their landing zones around Groesbeek to the Njmegen bridges. The key thing in my opinion is to get your paratroops on the ground first, as was American doctrine, and get them moving into the town as fast as possible. If Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion had arrived at Arnhem bridge one hour earlier, he would have blocked Grabner's 9.SS recon battalion from crossing over to patrol down to Nijmegen, and that would have assisted the Americans, if the 504th or 505th PIR had been given the job, of securing the Nijmegen bridges. Whichever way you cut it, the speed of the German reaction was the main factor in defeating Market Garden. At Arnhem, everyone except Frost was too slow, and at Nijmegen the Americans were too slow. I don't know if you can answer them but I have a few questions about the German situation in Arnhem on 17 September that I have had trouble trying to find the answers to in the 44 years I have been studying the battle. Maybe with your local knowledge you can help? 1. As I said in my previous reply, I don't know if the four heavy flak positions around Deelen still had their guns, or had they been removed after the airfield was bombed on 3 September and the German air units evacuated to German airfields? I only know that the 11 September Intel maps had heavy flak guns indicated, but 17 September is open to question. 2. Generalmajor Friedrich Kussin was the Feldkommandant, which is a regional military command equivalent to a Brigade level headquarters, and I understand his (Feldkommandantur) staff occupied the Villa Heselburgh, previously a monastery or nunnery? And I undertstand the nearby Heselburgerweg Central ULO School was also occupied by German staff, possibly Luftwaffe signals staff. In addition to this, there was British intel that there was an Ortskommandantur (a local military command equivalent to a battalion headquarters in major towns) located in a building on Nieuwe Plein that I believe is now called Willemsplein, and the building it occupied is now the Hotel Restaurant Arnhem Centraal? According to the Battledetectives website, this staff immediately relocated to Dieren ( https://www.battledetective.com/Kussin_Junction.html ). Do you know who the Ortskommandant was? I've never heard anything about this officer or his staff. The story goes that this Ortskommandantur was the secondary objective of 'C' Company of 2nd Parachute Battalion after the railway bridge at Oosterbeek was demolished, but the Company got cut off and surrendered at 55 Utrechtestraat. 3. When the II.SS-Panzerkorps mobilised against the Airborne landings, they first seemed to move their headquarters from Doetinchem to the Velp area, but I have no idea which building they occupied. The 9.SS-Division then moved from Beekbergen to the Villa Heselburg and took over Kussin's Feldkommandantur staff. The 10.SS-Division then moved from Ruurlo to the Velp headquarters used by the II.SS-Korps, but I wonder where Bittrich took his Korps headquarters? I suspect they occupied the ULO School in Heselbergherweg or somewhere in that area close to 9.SS. I believe there was a military telephone switchboard, possibly in the ULO School, which aided the communications of the 9.SS and possibly II.SS-Korps as well. Any local knowledge you have on these or other German occupied buildings in the Arnhem area would be of great interest. Hope you are having a good day in Arnhem. We have a little bit of rain here in Birmingham today, so you'll probably get that tomorrow! Cheers.
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  684.  @geitenkampsejos  - no problem, thank you. I thought it would be worth asking because you never know if there is a Dutch language book about local history that we may not be aware of in the English-speaking world because it has never been translated. Occasionally I find things by Google searches on Dutch websites that is nothing more than local knowledge. In this way I found out that the handful of panzer tanks the 9.SS had before the Airborne landings (probably 3 Mark V 'Panther' and 2 Flakpanzer 'Mobelwagen') were hidden under trees off Heijenoordseweg near the junction with Callunastraat on 15 September, after being removed from the workshops in the Saksenweimar-kazerne. They were probably in the workshops only to have their tracks and guns removed to declare them 'under repair' so they didn't have to be handed over to the 10.SS, and then after audit had been refitted and dispersed to a civilian area in case the barracks were bombed. The source was someone who lived in the house on the corner of Callunastraat, and remembers the SS panzer troops visiting their house to ask for water. These small pieces of information really help to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
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  685.  @geitenkampsejos  - thanks for that. I don't have a Facebook account, but I managed to copy the cached Google page in the few seconds before the Login panel appeared and paste into Google Translate to convert into English. I think Hauptmann Döderlein must be a battery commander for Flak Abteilung 591 that was deployed around Arnhem. The Abteilung commander was Major Alfred Majewski. It's my understanding that this Major was on a Sunday afternoon bicycle ride in the Arnhem area when the Airborne landings began and noted that the bridge battery, the worst in his battalion, didn't hit anything! I don't see a listing for Döderlein in the Luftwaffe Officer Career Summaries on the ww2.dk website, so I can't confirm his appointment as part of this unit. Interesting information though. Thanks very much.
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  686. ​ @bigwoody4704  - simply untrue on every point. 1. British XXX Corps were on schedule until they reached Nijmegen on the morning of the 19th September, where the AMERICANS had FAILED to secure the bridges in the first 24 hours. If they had the Nijmegen bridges in their hands, the tanks would have been in Arnhem by the afternoon - precisely 2 days after the operation started, AS PLANNED. 2. Montgomery was unable to leave his 21st Army Group headquarters during the initial phases of the operation as his Chief of Staff was absent due to illness, and Montgomery was doing both jobs. Commander of British 2nd Army, General Miles Dempsey, visited the corridor during the operation to meet Maj.Gen. Maxwell Taylor of US 101st Airborne and Lt.Gen. Brian Horrocks of XXX Corps at St. Oedenrode. Both Montgomery and King George VI later visited the headquarters of the Guards Armoured Division at the Generaal de Bons barracks outside Grave, I think it was late September, when the Airborne Operation Market was already over but Operation Garden was still ongoing. Not many Allied participants can claim their King paid the troops a visit - I don't recall Roosevelt or even General of the Army George Marshall setting foot in Europe at any time during the European campaign, so this criticism is a bit rich. Also, Montgomery didn't actually plan the operation in detail. That was done by First Allied Airborne Army (1st AAA), and the two decisions that most compromised the air plan (one lift per day and aircraft taking off in daylight) were insisted on by the American commanders of 1st AAA and US 9th Troop Carrier Command, Lt.Gen. Lewis Brereton and Maj.Gen. Paul Williams respectively. 3. Tanks maneuvered off the 'Club Route' at many points, including during the breakout - the portrayal of this action in the movie version of A Bridge Too Far is incorrect for a number of reasons, and not just this one. The only significant section where this was not possible was on the Betuwe (the polder 'island' between Nijmegen and Arnhem), and this was part of the reason they were stopped south of Elst on 21st September, the main reason being the two day DELAY at NIJMEGEN taking the bridges, allowing the Germans to reinforce the Betuwe. The Germans did NOT flood ANY area along the Market Garden corridor until 2nd December, when they flooded the Betuwe just south of Arnhem, AFTER Operation Garden was officially over on 7th October with the aerial bombing of the Arnhem bridge in preparation for Operation Gatwick. In point of fact, the river is not high enough to allow the Betuwe to be flooded by blowing a hole in the Rijn's Winter dijk until... the Winter. The only areas flooded by the Germans before Market Garden were along the Dutch coast, which was prepared for the invasion that actually happened in Normandy. 4. The people you call idiots were already fighting the war before America was 'surprised' by an attack TWO YEARS into a GLOBAL conflict. So who are the real idiots? I know that's a bit harsh, but people in glass houses... 5. The only time the XXX Corps advance was stopped by Panzerfausts was during the initial breakout by the anti-tank platoon of Fallschirmjäger-Battalion 'Kerutt' (I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 18) - another point on which the movie is inaccurate - the PaK 40 anti-tank guns had all been deployed in the open due to lack of prime movers and subsequently destroyed by the opening artillery barrage. If you know of any other instances when Panzerfausts stopped XXX Corps, please let me know. I'm always interested in new information! I wish you would do some proper reading instead of peddling the same old prejudiced mythology based on an American produced movie. It does make you look really silly, and people who are genuinely interested in history might be misled. The most up to date book on the subject is Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019), in two volumes by Swedish historian Christer Bergström. His primary source is the Cornelius Ryan Collection of documents and interviews at Ohio State University, and contains much information that did not make it into Ryan's original book A Bridge Too Far, including the first detailed account of what went wrong at Nijmegen.
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  687. ​ @bigwoody4704  - Again, wrong on every point: 1. “Monty wasn’t there to direct”. First, he was doing two jobs and couldn’t leave his headquarters. Second, Generalfeldmarschall Model’s command style was very abrasive and according to many of his Generals it caused as many problems as he solved. No wonder he was one of Hitler’s favourites. Many of the German losses suffered were due to units being committed to attacks on the Market Garden corridor before they were really ready to do so. This applied to Panzer-Brigade 107, II.Fallschirm-korps, and 59.Infanterie-Division. All suffered unnecessary losses due to Model’s insistence on immediate commitment piecemeal, and all for no gain against Allied positions. I know two of the better co-ordinated attacks cut the corridor for many hours, but by then the operation was already in serious trouble through no fault of XXX Corps. 2. If Market Garden had succeeded in reaching the Ijsselmeer as planned, the V2 launch sites in western Holland would have been cut off, along with the German 15.Armee, much of the Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Niederlande (German Armed Forces Netherlands), including the whole of the 88.Armeekorps defending the Dutch coast, and the 1.Fallschirm-armee (under Student) west of the corridor. All of your angst over the Allied losses and Dutch suffering is the result of the American failure at Nijmegen and the subsequent myth that it must have been all Monty’s fault because it was his idea in the first place. 3. The Germans had the same problems with manoeuvring around the Dutch countryside as the Allies - the Panzer Brigade 107 attack on the Son bridge being just one example. XXX Corps were making it work until they got to Nijmegen, as I’ve already explained. 4. Your point about Winter closing in completely undermines your criticism of further progress not being made in the rest of 1944. You can always rely on trolls to trip over their own nonsense. Like Judge Judy says – “you don’t have to have a good memory if you tell the truth”. The point is not entirely true anyway. Progress was made in 1944 to widen the corridor and liberate much of southern Holland up to the Waal in operations around Woensdrecht and Overloon. In clearing the Venlo pocket around Overloon, Simpson’s US 9th Army had arrived to deploy between British 2nd Army and US 1st Army, and had taken over responsibility for the German pocket around Overloon, but the US 7th Armored Division couldn’t reduce the pocket and the area had to be given back to British 2nd Army so that 11th Armoured could finish the job. These delays meant that Montgomery's planned attack into the Rhineland through the Reichswald (Operation Gatwick) had to be postponed until February 1945 (Operation Veritable). 5. 2nd Household Cavalry reached the 82nd Airborne’s Area of Operations at 0820 on 19th September, and the Grenadier Guards at 1000 hours. By my calculation that is 45 hours into Operation Market Garden, and not 3 days. At that point they were still on schedule to reach Arnhem in two days, but they were unable to do that because the 82nd Airborne DID NOT have the Nijmegen bridges in their possession, as I have previously and very patiently explained. 6. Viktor Gräbner’s 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arrived in Nijmegen at dusk on the first day, when the three American paratroopers from the first patrol to reach the Nijmegen highway bridge had to withdraw and give up their nine prisoners, because nobody came to reinforce them at any time that afternoon. This failure is detailed in Swedish historian Christer Bergström’s book Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, using material researched by Cornelius Ryan but not published in A Bridge Too Far. You only have to review what happened to Gräbner’s unit when it attempted to rush the British positions at Arnhem bridge on the following morning to realise what would have happened if the Americans had got just one Parachute Battalion onto the Nijmegen bridge at the same time Frost took up positions at Arnhem bridge. This fact makes a complete mockery of the criticism that the British landing zones were too far from their objectives at Arnhem. Frost’s Battalion had about 11 kilometres to march to Arnhem Bridge, the 508th landed about 8 km from the Nijmegen bridges, and the American doctrine was paratroops landed before gliders, while the British used the reverse. The American performance at Nijmegen on the first day was disappointing (I’ve chosen to use a lover’s word rather than a troll’s) to say the least. 7. The 82nd Airborne did NOT have the most objectives over a larger area to secure. That honour went to the US 101st Airborne, who had to secure 4 bridges in Eindhoven, 2 over the Wilhelmina Kanaal at Son and Best, 2 over the River Dommel at St.Oedenrode, and 4 road and rail bridges over the Zuid Willemsvaart Kanaal and River Aa at Veghel - 12 bridges over a 20 kilometre sector of the corridor. The 82nd had to secure 1 bridge over the River Maas at Grave, 1 rail bridge over the Maas at Mook, at least 1 of 4 bridges over the Maas-Waal Kanaal at Heumen, Malden, Hatert and Honinghutje, and the 2 road and rail bridges over the Waal at Nijmegen – 8 bridges over a 16 kilometres sector. Both Divisions had to secure their landing zones from counter-attack. 8. The Germans had great difficulty ferrying tanks across rivers and canals because they did not have the engineering resources of the Allies. The ferrying operation at Pannerden to reinforce the Betuwe (the ‘island’ between Arnhem and Njmegen) was hampered by a lack of bridging material AND Allied air interdiction. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division could not get anything heavier than their last four StuG III assault guns across the canalised section of the Rijn known as the Pannerden Kanaal. They reportedly had up to 16 Panzer IV tanks on hand, but the first one they tried to ferry across the canal slipped off the makeshift ferry into the river. The vehicle ferry further downstream at Huissen had already been scuttled by the Dutch ferryman. By contrast, XXX Corps constructed a class 40 Bailey Bridge capable of carrying 30-ton Sherman tanks over the Wilhelmina Kanaal at Son in just 10 hours overnight, one of the scenes in the movie A Bridge Too Far that was actually well done, but they were NOT “36 hours behind schedule” as Elliot Gould (Colonel Stout) claimed. XXX Corps then travelled the 40 kilometres (25 miles) to Grave in two and half hours. THEN, they were delayed by 36 hours because of the 82nd's failure to secure the Nijmegen bridges. 9. Montgomery was an actual Field Marshall. His promotion was effective on 1st September 1944. I see no reason to be offensive to historical figures decades after their passing, and unable to defend themselves. Your whole attitude is one of belligerent ignorance. You do yourself a great disservice in refusing to learn anything.
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  688.  @bigwoody4704  - Not drugs, just more up to date information. Many of your prejudices about Montgomery date back to the war for god’s sake. You provide a link to a thesis on Ultra intelligence I am already aware of, thank you. It actually makes the point that intelligence failures were not the reason for the failure of Market Garden, nor was the intelligence “ignored”. It was evaluated. The truth is that as late as the 16th September SHAEF’s Summary report (No.26 if memory serves) did NOT know where in Holland the II.SS-Panzerkorps (9. And 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions) were actually located. Sub-units were distributed over a wide area and only some units from the Hohenstaufen (9.SS) were identified by Dutch resistance sources to be in the area Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Zutphen. The Dutch reports could not be verified and because of German counter-intel successes in the past they could not be relied on, and the Summary report speculated that they may be drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area and possibly hidden in the Reichswald near the 82nd Airborne’s landing zones. The thesis was written after Ultra was declassified, but before the Dutch digital archive of donated RAF aerial photos was made public. The aerial photo showing tanks in the Arnhem area I have already discussed before, and the 2016 analysis by Sebastian Ritchie (Air Historical Branch RAF) exonerates Browning’s judgement that they were no major threat. He was right, they did not belong to a Panzer Division and the obsolete tanks were near the 101st Airborne’s landing zones on 17th September and no longer near Arnhem in any case. You also cite authors like Hastings and Buckingham. Their books are also out of date and recycle old myths. Your argument is like the “pre-911 thinking” about OBL. I’ve been studying this subject for 44 years and still reading new books on it now. Of the authors you cited, only Kershaw, as far as I am aware, did primary research on the German records, and his work for It Never Snows In September I regard very highly as a pioneering work in that area. However, even his book is now out of date, contains many errors, and he’s not a German armour expert, so he gets his assault guns and tank destroyers mixed up, which leads to misidentification of the units they belong to. Almost every other author since has replicated his errors, unfortunately. Beevor’s book is a shameful money for old rope tome – I only learned one new thing from it, and that was a joke (“the reason it’s called Market Garden is because we’ve all bought it”). Anthony Tucker-Jones’ recent book The Devil’s Bridge is exactly the same kind of wasted space – I only learned one thing from that, and that was a reference to Jacob Moll’s unit in Mook, something I later found was an interview listed in Cornelius Ryan’s bibliography but not used in his text, so apart from that miniscule tidbit Tucker-Jones is also recycled wood pulp. If you don’t have any new information to contribute, then you are recycling old prejudices and myths, and many of them have already been proven to be wrong. The four Grenadier Guards tanks that crossed the Nijmegen bridge were stopped in one case by an anti-tank gun (actually an 8.8cm Flak gun) at the North end of the bridge, Captain Carrington’s tank was the radio relay link back to his Squadron commander in Nijmegen and had to stop at the far end of the bridge, so only Sergeant Robinson’s surviving two tanks passed through Lent and were stopped by an anti-tank gun (probably a StuG III) when they tried to pass under the railway overpass. The American paratroopers they met at that location (G/504th PIR) did not seem interested in dealing with the anti-tank gun, but it was clear that infantry were needed to continue the advance, and it was doctrine that tanks did not operate at night. Your list of Airborne Divisional objectives is obviously designed to be deceptive, and you’ll have to be far smarter than that. I listed the individual bridge objectives, many of them at separate locations around a single named location, for example the four bridges around Veghel. Clearly the 101st had more to do over a larger area, that is correctly stated in many text histories on Market Garden. You cannot escape the fact that the 101st did their job, despite two bridge demolitions, and Market Garden was still on schedule when XXX Corps passed from their AO to that of the 82nd Airborne on 19th September. Perhaps the best contemporary authority on the subject are the German commanders themselves. They correctly identified Nijmegen as the keystone to Market Garden, and as with Caen in Normandy, they made Nijmegen their “schwerpunkt” (point of main effort) in defeating the operation. Their analysis was correct. Interesting that you cite an article on RT (Russia Today) written by a conspiracy theorist. It repeats the myth that Market Garden was behind schedule when the Guards reached Nijmegen after 40 hours. They were not expected to be in Arnhem in 40 hours unless the operation was going better than expected - it was 48 hours. At Nijmegen, they were less than 8 hours’ drive from Arnhem, but ONLY IF the 82nd Airborne had done their job and taken the Nijmegen bridges, or a bridge. Had they done so, there is little doubt they would have reached Arnhem in 48 hours, as planned, because the Germans had very little on the Betuwe (‘island’) with which to stop them. Only the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion were on the Betuwe, and it had been virtually destroyed and their commander killed at Arnhem bridge on the morning of Day 2. The fact remains that Cornelius Ryan, and the film based on his book, left out the critical narrative: what happened in Nijmegen in the first 40 hours? Ryan’s research, not published in his book, but in Christer Bergström’s 2019 revision, reveals the inaction of the 508th PIR on the first day. That failure, and not Montgomery’s underestimation of II.SS-Panzerkorp’s capabilities, was the reason Market Garden failed, subsequent Allied operations in Holland were compromised, and possibly the early ending of the war delayed. If just one Parachute Battalion had secured the Nijmegen highway bridge on Day 1, there was very little that 10.SS-Panzer-Division could have done to stop XXX Corps reaching Arnhem in 48 hours. I’ll happily take your personal abuse as a subconscious admission that you’ve already lost the argument, just as your choice of handle is a subconscious admission that you were always going to be a troll on this channel with nothing in the way of new information to contribute. I think you’ve got some growing up to do as well as some reading, and I wish you the best of luck.
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  689.  @bigwoody4704  - learned men of academia can usually learn from new information (or in this case, old research buried in the Cornelius Ryan Collection). I don't think you're academic or capable of learning.
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  690.  @bigwoody4704  - what's condescending? You behave like a child so I tell you to grow up. I pass on information from more recent books and you ignore them. You're incapable of learning because you are prejudiced and bigoted. That's not name-calling, that's an observation. You can't conduct yourself politely, so you're a troll. You really are a big woody.
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  691.  @bigwoody4704  - you keep regurgitating the same old recycled mythologies. You haven't learned anything new at all. History is supposed to be revised as new information comes to light. I was schooled in the conventional wisdom a long time ago, but you seem to want to stay living in the past because it suits your bigoted world view.
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  692.  @bigwoody4704  - you keep contradicting yourself. You criticise Montgomery for devising a plan to drive up one road to Arnhem, unsuitable for tanks in parts, particularly on the Betuwe between Nijmegen and Arnhem, and then criticise the tanks for stopping to wait for their infantry to catch up. And it was night time, when tanks cannot fight, and it was dangerous to move them if there was a probability of ambush. None of this would be a major issue at all if they had rolled over a Nijmegen bridge in American hands 30 hours earlier in broad daylight when the Guards first arrived in Nijmegen on schedule. I think all of this anger and angst was precisely because the 82nd Airborne knew they had dropped the ball at Nijmegen on the very first afternoon of the operation. As I have said before, XXX Corps and 101st Airborne were making the plan work, but they were let down at Nijmegen. You cite sources that have not addressed this. Again.
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  693.  @johnburns4017  - I think Gavin understood the geography of the terrain and the fact the Groesbeek ridge-line lies between the drop zones and the city of Nijmegen with its bridges. The ridge presents both a potential defence line for Nijmegen and a base for a counter-attack threat to the landing zones, IF... it was occupied by the Germans - and that question was an intelligence unknown before landing. So he directed Lindquist to move immediately on the highway bridge with one of his three battalions as soon as his initial objectives on the ridge were secure. Because the 82nd would be landing on D-Day of the operation with a limited number of troops to carry out its numerous tasks, it could not cover off the potential threat from the Groesbeek ridge AND attack the Nijmegen bridges in parallel - it was a serial problem allocated to one regiment, and the ridge would naturally be encountered first. Where the blunder occurred was Lindquist not directing a battalion onto the highway bridge, as Gavin had instructed in his divisional briefing, as soon as he knew the Groesbeek ridge was unoccupied and Dutch resistance contacts he met at de Ploeg had told him the city was evacuated and the bridge guarded by just an NCO with seventeen men. Instead, he proceeded with his pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge consisting of the 1st Battalion's S-2 (Intel) Section under Lt. Lee Frigo and followed or reinforced with Lt. Robert Weaver's 3rd Platoon of 'C' Company, plus an LMG Section (two squads) and an SCR-300 radio from HQ Company on the battalion net in order to report the situation at the bridge 4.3 Km (2.67 miles) away. Weaver was expected to seize the bridge and radio for reinforcements, but in the event only three leading Scouts from Frigo's Section secured the southern end of the bridge and had to withdraw when Weaver failed to show up with the radio. Weaver had got lost and then run into trouble in the back streets in running battles with the handful of German rear echelon troops still in the city. Gavin's instructions and Lindquist's interpretation of them are both sequential. The problem was that Lindquist thought he was to wait for a divisional order (from Gavin) before moving in force on the highway bridge, and Gavin was angry when he received the report from (the 508th's liaison officer to Division) Chet Graham that Lindquist wasn't moving in battalion force.
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  694.  @johnburns4017  - the 508th jumped at around 1330 hrs and 1st Battalion got to de Ploeg at about 1730 hrs, so I think that's plenty of time for a regiment of SS troops based at the Krayenhof and Prins Hendrikkazerne to deploy to those woods and oppose the 508th's movement to the north. I think the concern was that kampfgruppe 10.SS-Panzer-Division possibly occupied the barracks and might even be training in the area. It so happens they weren't, and were located miles to the northeast of Arnhem, but a similar scenario did play out at Arnhem where the wooded ridge between the landing zones at Wolfheze and the Arnhem bridge was occupied by two companies of SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, which their commander had moved out of the Willem III and Menno van Coehoorn kazerne in Arnhem for fear of them being bombed, and one of those companies was actually on training manoeuvres around the Hotel Wolfheze when gliders started landing practically in their laps. Frost still got to his bridge, though. The story of S-2 Scout Trooper Joe Atkins (in Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection, 2013) reaching the Nijmegen bridge an hour before dark, with just two other men, and occupying the southern end of the bridge without firing a shot before SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 get there at dusk, is proof that Warren's battalion could have done the same. The only combat troops in the area were three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I/6 (a home guard training battalion) deployed along the canal guarding the bridges, and the 29.(Unter-Lehr-Kommando), the NCO training company of the Luftwaffe's Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', with 240 men at the Honinghutje canal bridge and forward deployed at Nederasselt (Grave bridge). When these two bridges came under attack on 17 and 18 September, they withdrew to the Villa Belvoir near the Nijmegen bridge to make their last stand with Euling's SS battalion. Survivors of the Landesschützen companies were incorporated into the Nijmegen rail bridge defence. The barracks in Nijmegen were actually completely unoccupied as a precaution against air raids. Even the training battalion normally based there, Grenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 365, had moved their companies into various schools and monasteries in the city until the 'Valkyrie' mobilisation of the Reserve Army in the first week of September had them sent to Aachen to fight the Americans.
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  695. In your following comment you said "I appreciate your efforts, but the information is innacurate and so it's annoying to watch." - and here you say "Urquhart was stuck with Mackenzie in the attic at 14 Zwarteweg." Problem is that Mackenzie was Urquhart's operations officer and he was still at Division HQ. Urquhart's companions in the Zwarteweg 14 attic were Captain William Taylor of the Brigade's headquarters staff and Captain James Cleminson of the 3rd Battalion. Your comments are inaccurate and annoying to read.
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  696. The Germans were completely unaware the PGEM power company had an advanced internal telephone network using its power lines, so it wasn't a case of them not taking any notice of it, they didn't know it even existed. The decision to go for the Rhine crossing at Arnhem before clearing the approaches to Antwerp was logical while the Germans were still off balance after their withdrawal from Normandy, because to wait until after the port of Antwerp was open would give the Germans time to consolidate their Rhine defences. Eisenhower accepted the logic of this and enthusiastically endorsed Market Garden because it fitted in with his policy of a broad advance of all armies to the Rhine and multiple crossings before advancing into Germany. The port of Antwerp would be needed to build up the supplies necessary for advances into Germany, but supplies needed for Market Garden were already available, although not prioritised to British 2nd Army as much as Montgomery had wished.
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  697. It was hoped the Netherlands would be able to remain neutral as they were during WW1. That was why the young Audrey Hepburn was removed from her school in England and brought back to her home in Arnhem at the outbreak of war in 1939. When the Germans invaded the low countries in May 1940, their family home at Kasteel Zypendaal was confiscated by the German town commandant and the family had to stay with friends in nearby Velp. Hepburn was offered the role of Kate ter Horst in A Bridge Too Far, but turned it down as it was "too close to home."
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  698.  @Splodge542  - further to my original reply, I have since come across a letter in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online that Gavin wrote to Ryan enclosing some papers by Dutch researcher T.A. Boeree. Boeree had researched the Hohenstaufen's withdrawal route into the Netherlands across the river Maas at Maastricht on 4 September, concentrated at Sittard, then received orders on 7 September to move to an area north of Arnhem. Their route took them through Nijmegen, with a stop in the Reichswald. It had only just dawned on Gavin in 1966 (the date of the letter) that the Dutch resistance reports of heavy armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen division in transit. Gavin recalls receiving his warning order for MARKET from Brereton's HQ on 10 September that he was to jump on Nijmegen and immediatey went to 1st Airborne HQ to see their intelligence and plans for their own operation (COMET) in the same area. They had been making their plans to deal with the armour, presumably in the placement of their anti-tank guns, as part of their own preparations, and it seems obvious now that Gavin was influenced by this in making his own divisional plan for MARKET, unaware that the armour had already moved on. The Hohenstaufen was not apparently identified in the Reichswald, but were identified later north of Arnhem, however, the location of the Frundsberg had not been determined and this was probably the force suspected in the Nijmegen/Reichswald area. Source: James Gavin letter November 18, 1966, box 101 folder 9 p48, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University.
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  699. There's no unit identifications or locations in this, so there's no context. Nearest guys to the Nijmegen bridge were the three scouts from the 1/508th S-2 Section that got to the south end of the highway bridge, captured 6 or 7 Germans and a "small artillery weapon", and then waited for reinforcements that never came. After an hour at dusk they heard "heavy equipment" (9.SS-Panzer recon battalion) arriving at the north end of the bridge, so they released their prisoners and withdrew. Sources: - Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, by Phil Nordyke, 2012 - The 508th Connection, by Zig Boroughs, 2013
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  700. Every war is finished by Christmas. Just maybe not the one they first hoped for.
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  701.  @sean640307  - I don't think it was a question of priorities but logical steps. First, Allied Intel knew that II.SS-Panzerkorps with 9., and presumably 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions, were located in the eastern Netherlands to refit. The Dutch resistance had identified panzer troops from the 9.SS and a divisional HQ at Ruurlo, but not which one (it was the 10.SS). The assessment was that they were drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area (it was actually near Münster) just across the border from Nijmegen, and it even started a silly rumour the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks (Model had less than 100 operational tanks in the whole of Heeresgruppe B). So, the possible threat to 82nd Airborne was that Nijmegen could be hosting a regiment of SS troops (the depleted 10.SS-Panzer-Division was no more than a regimental battlegroup) and there may be panzers laagered in the Reichswald. The Groesbeek ridge, running from a high point behind Groesbeek to another at Berg-en-Dal, was a natural defensive feature, and if it was occupied by German troops it would be a barrier to quickly taking the city of Nijmegen and its bridges. So, Gavin's divisional plan set the Maasbrug at Grave as his first priority because it was on his supply line, so he assigned it to his best regiment - the 504th. The next priorities are where I have problems with Gavin's decisions. The 505th were as experienced as the 504th, and they were given a more defensive role of taking the hill behind Groesbeek (and Ben Vandervoort's battalion went into divisional reserve as soon as they seized it), the alternate rail bridge crossing over the Maas at Mook, clearing the town of Groesbeek itself, and establish part of the divisional perimeter against attacks from the Reichswald. His least experienced regiment, the 508th, were assigned Nijmegen, but their initial objectives had to be points on the intervening Groesbeek ridge at de Hut (2nd Bn), de Ploeg (1st Bn), and Berg-en-Dal (3rd Bn). It's clear from Nordyke's combat history of the 508th (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) that Gavin stressed speed was important, and if the intial objectives were seized without problems, then the 508th were to send at least one battalion to the highway bridge as soon as possible.The Groessbeek ridge was not more important than the Waal bridges, but it had to be dealt with first, and it could have been a major threat to the success of the operation if it was occupied by the Germans. That mission required aggressive leadership, and the 508th's history in Normandy informs us that was not the case with the 508th. Leadership of the division had also passed from Ridgway to Gavin in the intervening period between Normandy and Market Garden, and Gavin had not replaced himself as Assistant Division Commander either, so I think the correct decision making process for Market Garden fell between a couple of stools.
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  702.  @craftingpeople7097  - appreciate the distances, but I'm sure they knew what they were expecting of themselves. The problem with the Poles was that they were only attached operationally to the British Army but remained the responsibility of the Polish Government-in-exile, so pensions etc., were not the responsibility of the British government. That's not a very satisfactory arrangement on either side, but the real fault was on the other side of the Iron Curtain after the war. There's a principle in government that you don't change the rules for one or two people, you would have to change the rules for everyone in similar circumstances, and that would bankrupt the country. Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski after Market Garden to thank him and his Brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. It was then he received reports from Browning and Horrocks about Sosabowski being difficult to work with and insubordinate at Valburg. It prompted Montgomery to write to Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to ask for the Polish Brigade to be removed from his command and suggest it be transferred to Italy to serve alongside other Polish units there. It seems Montgomery changed his attitude and did not regard the Poles and Sosabowski as great fighters and a commander. Even the Germans complained that their medics were being fired on by the Poles, contrary to the Geneva Conventions and a surprise to them, because they first thought the Brigade was another British unit and their experience was that the British usually allowed them to remove their dead and wounded from the battlefield. If you examine the history of the Polish Parachute Brigade, you'll see that it was formed as a regular infantry rifle brigade, and it was a conceit of Sosabowski's that an airborne unit would be more likely to be employed in an operation to liberate Poland, and indeed they hoped they would be used in the Warsaw uprising. Looking at Browning's role in all of this, I find the criticisms of him to be unfounded. His dismissal of the aerial photo showing German tanks near Arnhem has been proven to be the correct decision since the photo itself came to light in a Dutch government archive in 2015 and analysed by the RAF. Cornelius Ryan's story of this episode rested entirely on his interview with Brian Urquhart (Browning's Corps Intelligence Officer), and since the photo was 'lost' at the time and Browning passed away two years before Ryan began his research, he was unable to defend his decision. Browning's also implicated in the decision to prioritise the Groesbeek heights over the Nijmegen highway bridge, but it seems that decision was made by Gavin after the war and supported by Browning because Gavin did not wish to throw a subordinate officer under the bus. The 508th PIR failed to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon after it is now known the CO was instructed at the divisional briefing to do exactly that as quickly as possible with his 1st Battalion. Finally, the other main charge against Browning was the decision to take his own headquarters to Groesbeek, using glider tugs that could have been used to take the remainder of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment to Arnhem on the first lift. If you examine the Staffords' Phase 1 task, it was to hold Landing Zone 'S' until the second lift arrived on D+1, and for Phase 2 they were the Brigade reserve. The zone was not put under any serious German pressure during the Phase 1 period and indeed Brigadier Hicks released them from that task early on D+1 to move into Arnhem to reinforce 1st Parachute Brigade. By the time they reached the western suburbs of Arnhem, the second lift had arrived and the second half of the battalion had caught up with the leading companies. So, the question would be: what difference would it have made if the whole battalion had gone to Arnhem on D-Day and the Corps HQ to Groesbeek on D+1, except for Browning opening himself up to a charge of not leading his own command into action? The idea that Montgomery and Browning messed up seems to be an American invention to cover their own problems. That's not acceptable behaviour from an ally, but one we've got used to from the Americans. It seems that classes at West Point are taught that the war of independence is still ongoing...
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  703.  @craftingpeople7097  - thank you for the appreciation. I'll take each of your points in turn: 1. I can't pretend to know what was in Montgomery's mind when he changed his attitude to the Poles after receiving reports on their conduct, but I would imagine he would think (and I certainly take the view) that ignoring the Geneva Conventions by not respecting red cross insignia does make for bad fighters and would not be acceptable behaviour in the British Army. The German troops involved in this complaint presumably came from those facing the Poles at Driel, and these were units in 'Sperrverband Harzer' ('blocking line Harzer' named after the commander of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division Walther Harzer), but the units were mixed Heer, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe, under the Heer's Oberst Egon Gerhard of Panzergrenadier-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 57 that supplied the Bataillon 'Schörken' at the northern end of the sperrverband at the demolished Oosterbeek rail bridge. The other units in the line were Kriegsmarine (2 and 3./Schiffsstammabteilung 14) and Luftwaffe (4./Werftabteilung 119/XI), and the unit at the southern end of the line at Elst were Dutch SS (III./SS-Grenadier Regiment 1 'Landstorm Nederland'), which blocked the main road to XXX Corps with the tanks of Kampfgruppe Knaust. 2. Browning's dismissal of the armour in the aerial photo was correct, because the tanks were obsolete and mostly unserviceable, just as he assessed. I didn't go into much detail, but when the photo eventually emerged from the Dutch government archives in 2015 and subjected to analysis, they were found to show the older Mark IV models with the short 7.5cm L24 gun and obsolete Mark III tanks. This rules out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, so it was clearly a training unit using older tanks. On D-Day, they were laagered at Wolfswinkel just north of Son and directly across the road from the 506th PIR's drop zone. They attempted to fire on the zone but were immediately attacked by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft, destroying two tanks and the other two escaped to the north. One ran the gauntlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode, who could only score hits with unprimed bazooka rounds in their haste, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel to bump the 504th roadblock at Grave. After causing a few casualties to troopers coming out of their foxholes, thinking they were British tanks arriving early, they turned around and were not seen again. The unit has since been identified - the Reserve Panzer Kompanie from the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division currently fighting in Poland, while the training regiment based at Utrecht in the Netherlands had sent its three battalions to the Albert canal line in Belgium, after the 'Valkyrie’ Plan mobilisation of the Reserve Armee in the first week of September 1944. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie based at Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast was ordered on 7 September to move south to join the II.Abteilung at Eindhoven, but only three tanks (one Mark III and two Mark IV) made the journey without breaking down, and were all destroyed along with most of the II.Abteilung, by the Guards Armoured Division at Hechtel in Belgium on 12 September. That was the same day the breakdowns were photographed by RAF Spitfire while undergoing maintenance at a supply dump near Deelen airfield north of Arnhem. Browning's Intelligence Officer was trying to find evidence to support the Dutch resistance reports of SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions, but Browning was correctly not convinced this photo was confirmation of that at all. Montgomery (21st Army Group) and Dempsey (British 2nd Army) were aware of the II.SS-Panzerkorps in the Netherlands from 'Ultra' code intercepts the day before Montgomery cancelled Operation Comet on 10 September, and replaced it with Market by adding the American divisions. The existence of 'Ultra' could not be made known to Corps or Division commanders for security reasons, but I'm currently reading a book on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem and they were briefed to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks and even Panther and Tiger tanks. The people who needed to know, were told, and those people were not given unit identifications, but rather 'sanitised' intel that did not reveal the source.
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  704.  @craftingpeople7097  3. The story of the Nijmegen bridge and Groesbeek heights on the first day is the contentious one at the heart of why the operation failed. The conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan’s research for his 1974 book A Bridge Too Far was based on his 1967 interview with James Gavin, but Browning had already passed two years earlier and could not give his view. Gavin did not tell the whole story and only gave a clue there were political problems within the 508th PIR by saying Ridgway (82nd Division CO in Normandy) did not trust Colonel Lindquist (508th CO) and wouldn’t promote him. In fact, Gavin said Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn’t promote any other Colonel in the Division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the rank. The interview is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of documents and interviews held at Ohio State University and accessible online. I think Gavin was talking about Ridgway’s promotion to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944, because he could have taken Lindquist with him as his G-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, since Lindquist had shown a talent as an S-1 in the early US Airborne organisation (he was one of the first officer volunteers). Gavin told Cornelius Ryan that Lindquist produced documentation like you wouldn’t believe, but more recent books have shown he had since performed badly as a field commander during the 508th’s first combat operation in Normandy. I also think Gavin inherited the same problem as Division Commander succeeding Ridgway, because he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, and was running himself ragged doing both jobs during Market Garden. Since Gavin and Lindquist have now passed, it seems more junior officers at the time now feel able to speak out and have informed both Phil Nordyke’s combat history of the 508th – Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and John C McManus’ September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), as witnesses to the final divisional briefing on the eve on the operation, in which Gavin clearly instructed Lindquist to move on the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initial objectives (on the Groesbeek ridge). Captain Chester ‘Chet’ Graham, the 508th liaison officer to Division HQ, said Lindquist was told to “get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" (Nordyke, 2012). Lt Col Jack Norton, the Division G-3 (Operations), recorded Gavin's clear instructions to "seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion" (McManus, 2012). McManus has an extensive analysis on why both bridge and ridge had priority, but the bridge was ultimately more important, and I agree wholeheartedly with it and the reasons he gives. It’s interesting that McManus says Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him the exact route he wanted 1st battalion to take to the bridge. The bridge could be demolished in German hands, but the Groesbeek ridge wasn’t going anywhere and could be retaken by the Guards Armoured Division if lost to a German counter-attack. Browning seems to have had the same nuanced appreciation of this, but it seemed to be beyond Lindquist’s tactical ability. It should also be noted here that the Market Garden plan was for the Guards to lead XXX Corps as far as Nijmegen and then pass 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division across the bridges to Arnhem. Once over the Arnhem bridge, the 43rd would go on to Apeldoorn, giving the attached Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade the honour of liberating the Royal Palace Het Loo, while the Guards took a left hook to Deelen airfield and then on to Nunspeet on the Zuider Zee coast. Because the Guards would pause at Nijmegen while 43rd Division passed over the Nijmegen bridges to Arnhem, they would be available to assist 82nd Airborne in securing their position on the Groesbeek heights, if necessary. They would be relieved of that task by the arrival of 8th Armoured Brigade, with the Sherwood Rangers battlegroup being assigned to 82nd Airborne for armoured support. Why didn’t the 508th take the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon? Hard to answer that, but it was not Gavin’s decision, it was contrary to Gavin’s instructions, at least until after the war. Lindquist seemed to be waiting to be told when to move, and in the meantime was securing his initial objectives. When Chet Graham asked Lindquist when he intended to send a battalion to the bridge “his answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed' " (Nordyke, 2012). Proof that a battalion could have reached the bridge and secured it before SS panzer troops arrived is a recon patrol sent from 1st Battalion under Lt Weaver and led by the S-2 (Intel) Section. The patrol got separated from the three-man point team under PFC Joe Atkins (1st Battalion S-2 Scout) and got lost in the back streets, but the point team made it to the bridge, surprising seven guards at the southern end, taking them prisoner. They waited an hour for reinforcements until it got dark and then decided to withdraw. As they did so, they could hear “heavy equipment” arriving at the other end of the bridge (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs, 2013). McManus also confirms Joe Atkins’ story and has details on Weaver’s problems and eventual withdrawal, when he couldn’t get to the bridge after dark. This, I am convinced, is where Market Garden was fatally compromised, and Browning had no part in it, but Gavin was responsible as Lindquist’s supervisor to see his divisional plan was carried out. It also explains why Gavin was so insistent on his own troops (504th PIR) being used for the river assault crossing, when the default plan for this scenario of the bridges being held by the Germans was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make an assault crossing to the west with either one or two brigades up. Gavin was clearly trying to make amends for his division’s blunder. The 43rd had one battalion in two of its brigades fully mobilised with DUKW amphibious trucks and the other battalions would follow in assault boats provided by the Royal Engineers for this precise eventuality (Special Bridging Force – Royal Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz, 2021).
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  705. It's my observation - and I may be misinterpreting the relationship here - that a senior officer in one Army (British or American) does not have the authority to order a junior officer in another Army (American or British) to put his men in potential harm's way. I have a couple of examples of how this worked between Browning and Gavin: 1) There was a British "request" (I think probably came from Browning or conceivably Dempsey or even Montgomery) for Gavin to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge. He told Cornelius Ryan he toyed with the idea and eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily (where troops were widely scattered and disorganised for days). 2) On D+1, Gavin proposed a second attempt to take the bridge after the previous night's late attempt had failed, but Browning rejected the plan, preferring to wait until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived so that they had armoured support (this is the source of the de-prioritising of the bridge as a pre-flight order myth). Browning also rejected Gavin's first suggestion of putting his own troops (the 504th PIR) across the river in assault boats on 19 September, when XXX Corps first arrived, but then accepted the proposal made a second time after a frontal assault with the 505th and Guards' tanks had failed. There was a prepared British fallback plan to put 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division across in boats for this type of scenario with one or two brigades (operations BESSIE or BASIL respectively), but Gavin's proposal was accepted as more expedient than bringing the 43rd up the corridor. So Browning was able to overrule Gavin in rejecting a proposed operation involving American troops in harm's way, but he could only "request" a battalion be dropped on the bridge and Gavin was able to dismiss it. It would probably take an American senior officer such as Brereton or Eisenhower to intervene to make this an order. I see a lot of people in YouTube video comments trying to absolve Gavin of any responsibility by saying that Browning or Montgomery should have intervened because it was a British operation, but when it suits them they don't like the idea of American troops being under British command at all. You can't have it both ways.
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  706. You're a classic Hollywood educated armchair tactician. If only you had done some proper research before posting... 1st error: "the slowness in taking Caen"? - As if anyone else could have done it quicker. OTD Military History, no fan of Montgomery, has done a video debunking the idiotic claim made in Saving Private Ryan that Montgomery was overrated and took too long to take Caen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-0AxubQEWM 2nd error: "the slowness of the capture of the city of Antwerp AND THE PORT"? - Two days earlier the British 2nd Army was still in France! German resistance in the centre of Antwerp ended at 2230 hours on 4 September, so there was no opportunity for moving further north on the same day. 11th Armoured Division was exhausted (one battalion commander had to order his command post surrounded by barbed wire just so he could think) and potentially over-extended. The next day, they attempted to push two infantry battalions across the Albert canal (without proper planning and reconnaissance) and they were met by heavy resistance from a regiment of 712 Division and the arrival of the newly refitted Heeres schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559. The bridgehead was so untenable that the Corps commander, Horrocks, immediately ordered the troops back when he saw the situation for himself from the roof of the Sport Palais. It was another 25 kilometers to cut off the Zuid-Beveland peninsula. Montgomery did order an airborne operation for Walcheren (operation INFATUATE) on 4 September to help the Canadians open Antwerp, but it was refused by Brereton. Clearing the Scheldt had to wait until after MARKET GARDEN and the plan was resurrected as an amphibious operation in November instead of airborne. The Rhine crossing could not be delayed, as the Germans were hurriedly creating river and canal defence lines inland in the Netherlands, while the coastal defences had been in place for years. Even Eisenhower saw the sense in it and said so in as many words: “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) 3rd error: "entrusted such a VITAL mission at this time (September 1944) while the error explained in point 2 above IS IN PROGRESS (until the end of October 1944) to a general so inexperienced, but so "so British "is unforgivable" - this is pure bigotry and does not belong in the comments. Shame on you. 4th error: "having let this general (Browning) plan AND set up his HQ in the middle of the battle at Groosbeek and, therefore, subtract so many forces and means for HIS security" - completely ignorant of the fact his security was provided by the Glider Pilot Regiment HQ and members of A Flight that flew his HQ into Groesbeek. Browning's plans were frustrated by Brereton and Williams who deleted drop zones close to objectives, scheduled the flights in daylight and thereby eliminated the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, and Gavin discarded a suggestion to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, assigning the critical Nijmegen mission to his least reliable regimental commander. Browning was concerned about the Nijmegen bridge and after being twice frustrated at trying to have it taken quickly by coup de main, he decided at the last minute (late in the evening of D-1) to advance the airlift of his Corps HQ from D+1 to D-Day in an attempt to have some influence on the battle once on the ground. 5th error: "when preparing the operation, having neglected the logistical aspect" - "the lack of air resources AND the poor choice of DZs" - Brereton was inflexible on aircraft resourcing and he removed drop zones close to the objectives. "lack of transport vehicles" - really? For who? Most people complain about the traffic congestion on the MSR. "the impossibility of deploying armored resources on the SINGLE road used AND the impassable surroundings!" - the single road is a myth - the MSR had many alternatives and 2nd Army was advancing three Corps on three main axes in MARKET GARDEN in a similar way since the breakout from Normandy and the advance into Germany. The 'Club Route' terminated in Bremen, Germany in 1945, not Arnhem. If the surrounding terrain is impossible, then it can't be used by the Germans to attack the flanks either. The truth is that parts of the route were restricted, and parts were not. What is true for one army on any part of the route is also true for the opposing side as well on the same terrain. This was carefully mapped for the entire corridor and notes on movement were avaiable. Any good book on MARKET GARDEN includes this sketch map - offhand I have it in at least two books in my collection. 6th error: "having completely neglected the information from the Dutch Resistance concerning the presence of at least one armored division resting in the vicinity of Arnhem" - is another myth perpetrated by A Bridge Too Far. The SS units were known to be in the eastern Netherlands to refit from the Ultra code intercepts, but this was not made public until the publication of FW Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret in 1974, the same year Cornelius Ryan rushed his unfinished book to publication and passed from his terminal cancer. Montgomery cancelled operation COMET because of the intelligence and ordered an upgrade with three airborne divisions instead of one. That is not neglecting the information from Dutch sources, which had to be confirmed by a secondary source after the Dutch resistance had previously been penetrated by German counter-intelligence and fed false information back to the British, but Ultra's existence could not be disclosed to people not cleared to receive it and the impression the Dutch information was unconfirmed had to be maintained.
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  707. How could he be responsible when the plan he put forward for approval by Eisenhower was then passed to 1st Allied Airborne Army and changed by USAAF commanders Brereton and Williams, with 21st Army Group notified only after it was too late to object? If someone else compromised your plan, is it your fault it fails? I mean, at all?
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  708.  @brentinnes5151  - your view is shaped by A Bridge Too Far, which is misleading and incomplete - it was rushed to publication because of Ryan's terminal cancer. The Hollywood film adapted from it is even worse. Montgomery was expected to cross the Rhine between Arnhem and Wesel with British 2nd Army, followed by US 1st Army between Bonn and Cologne. Eisenhower then wanted a pincer operation on the Ruhr using both armies after Antwerp was opened to supply it. Irish journalist Cornelius Ryan's biased book was published in 1974, and Eisenhower felt that he had to make a public statement to set the record straight: 'Eisenhower was similarly unapologetic when he declared after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account, A Bridge Too Far, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” ' (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) I don't think repeating Hollywood propaganda on a history YouTube channel is providing a service to anyone, and as I said - it wasn't his baby any more when the planning was taken over by two USAAF officers who thought they knew better and changed the plan.
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  709. There is only the word of two American officers, T. Moffatt Burriss (commander I Company 504th PIR) and one of his Lieutenants (LaRiviere?) that this confrontation even took place, and both claim to have been the officer that confronted Captain Carrington in his tank (he was hardly the XXX Corps commander but second in command of No.1 Squadron 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Grenadier Guards. When asked about the incident, Carrington denied it even happened and called the story "extraordinary". These are the known facts (timestamps are the date in September and 24-hour clock from an 82nd Airborne sketch map of the operation): 1. The bridge was crossed by a Troop of Grenadier Guards tanks led by Sergeant Peter Robinson at 201830. 2. While crossing the bridge, Lance-Sergeant Pacey's tank knocked out a German 7.5cm Pak 40 anti-tank gun situated on the north bank between the rail and highway bridges. 3. The two surviving tanks of Sergeants Robinson and Pacey carried on into the village of Lent, machine-gunning German troops who were "running about like rabbits" silhouetted against a backdrop of burning buildings as the light was failing. 4. Robinson and Pacey reached the rail overpass where Robinson's tank was stopped by an American Hawkins anti-tank mine and the troops surrounding them were from 'G' Company 504th. The paratroopers had reasoned that resistance on the riverbank between the two bridges was too strong and elected to move inland following the rail embankment until it crossed the road, and then proposed to double back down the road to take the highway bridge from the rear. After establishing the roadblock in the underpass tunnel, two tanks came up the road from Lent that turned out to be British. 5. A German StuG IIIG assault gun further up the road had an enfilade position on the underpass exit and shot at anything that moved out of the tunnel. The Americans had no bazooka rounds left with which to stalk the vehicle. 6. Captain Burriss in his account says he passed an abandoned German anti-tank gun on the riverbank between the two bridges, proving that his movement was after Sergeant Pacey's gunner had put the gun out of operation as they crossed the bridge. 7. Elements of 'H' Company and Burriss' 'I' Company 504th reached the far end of the highway bridge at 201915, where Burriss claimed he arrived in time to see Sergeant Robinson's tanks cross over the bridge. This is obviously incorrect. He did arrive at the same time Captain Carrington crossed over the bridge in his tank, and the reason he stopped at the far end (as a Troop of four Achilles tank destroyers passed him to reinforce the bridgehead) was to maintain the radio 'rear link' between Robinson half a mile away in Lent and his squadron commander, Major Trotter, half a mile away back in Nijmegen. 8. The planned stop line for the 504th between Fort Benedon-Lent (aka Fort Hof van Holland) and Fort Lent (Fort Het Lauuwik) was achieved at 202000, which is full dark in September. The alleged confrontation was filmed in broad daylight for A Bridge Too Far, where the British were accused by Robert Redford's Major Julian Cook of stopping to drink tea. Obviously a contrived situation and remark written by screenwriter William Goldman, and Julian Cook was embarrased by Redford's entire fictional performance after the river crossing. Battalion commanders commanded their battalions, not led company or platoon assaults (see Winters vs Sink during the attack on Foy in Band of Brothers episode 9, which is much more accurate). 9. The British Army drinks tea when it has to stop, not has to stop to drink tea. There's a difference. 10. Tanks could not fight at night in WW2 (apart from some experimental Panther equipment used by I./Panzer-Regiment 24) and were rarely even advanced at night, so it was normal procedure to laager for the hours of darkness behind the infantry line. XXX Corps commander Brian Horrocks in his book Corps Commander (1977) wrote that he advanced tanks at night on only two occasions, and both times it paid off. He felt during MARKET GARDEN that gambling a third time would be pushing his luck, and he was already unnerved by the fact the operation started on a Sunday, because in his experience operations starting on a Sunday usually didn't go well. 11. German tanks had already started forcing a crossing of the Arnhem bridge about midday on 20 September and the Germans were constructing a defence line between the villages of Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel, which were also formed into 'hedgehog' positions. After the line was breached on the main road between Oosterhout and Ressen, there were 11 ex-French Schneider M.36 7.5cm Flak guns repositioned in the anti-tank role, and evidence of tracks and spent 8.8cm shell casings that two Tiger tanks had been present in the line, as well as the StuG IIIG - the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had four StuGs at Nijmegen and lost only one in the city. The defence line was confirmed by reconnaissance conducted overnight by 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment, so XXX Corps knew there could be no quick advance to Arnhem in those circumstances, either during the night or the next day, as events later proved. 12. If Carrington's denial the confrontation at gunpoint took place was false, it would only be motivated by unwillingness to expose the American officer's unprofessional conduct, no doubt emotive after losing many of his men in the assault crossing, but his alleged anger did not alter the facts on the ground. 13. The assault crossing of the Waal by the 504th PIR was only done at the insistence of Gavin, no doubt to make amends for his blunder in assigning the 508th to take the bridge on the first day. Colonel Lindquist failed to interpret his instructions correctly, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives before sending a large force to the bridge. This mistake allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to feed elements into Nijmegen and delay XXX Corps for 36 hours, in what should have been a clear run through Nijmegen to Arnhem on 19 September. The default plan for this scenario of the bridges remaining in enemy hands was an assault crossing to be conducted by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with one or two brigades up (operations BESSIE or BASIL respectively). The insults about tea breaks and not moving quickly are American in origin and designed only to cover their own "asses".
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  710.  @flyoptimum  - "The intention wasn't for a single battalion to make a mad dash to get to the bridge. The intention was for the entire 1st Airborne to get there." - Wrong! Only Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion was tasked with taking the three bridges over the Rijn with his three rifles companies - rail, pontoon, and highway - in that order of march, and occupy the western half of the town. 3rd Battalion would support him by going directly to the highway bridge and then occupying the eastern half of the town. 1st Battalion was to head for high ground north of Arnhem to interdict the most likely approaches of enemy reinforcements. The 1st Airlanding Brigade - half of the division's strength on D-Day, would remain on the landing zones to protect them for the 2nd lift. Frost succeeded in carrying out his task with 50% of the expected strength sent to the bridge, not 10%.
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  711.  @alex_zetsu  - I agree with your main point, but operation MARKET targeted at least 24 bridges (depending on how they are counted) for multiple redundancy, and a minimum of 9 or 10 are needed to provide a route for XXX Corps to reach Arnhem. The critical crossings are the Maas and the Waal, which both have only two bridges available (road and rail) for many miles in either direction, so it was important that at least one of these bridges on each river were seized quickly before the Germans could react. Browning's original operation COMET plan and his outline upgraded plan provisionally called SIXTEEN both had dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, to replicate the successful raids on the Orne river and canal bridges in Normandy (operation DEADSTICK). When SIXTEEN was approved by Eisenhower and handed over to 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning (because the upgrade now involved the American divisions and all assets from the 1st AAA), Brereton deleted two key features of the COMET/SIXTEEN plans for MARKET - the double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider assaults, ostensibly because of inadequate night navigation skills in IX Troop Carrier Command and flak concerns. Browning was unable to object to the changes because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's previous LINNET II operation, scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps, but it was fortunately cancelled and the two men agreed to forget the incident. However, Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for the operation, so Browning knew that threateneing to resign again over MARKET would not result in the operational decisions being changed. Gavin then received "a British request" (according to his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, 1974) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main. Gavin said he toyed with the idea, but eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. Instead, he planned to drop his three parachute regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The one exception was Reuben Tucker of the 504th, who insisted on a special drop zone for one company to land south of the Grave bridge so it could be attacked from both ends, and he got it. Urquhart's solution to the coup de main problem for the Arnhem bridge was to assign the 1st Airlanding Reconnaissance Squadron to seize it quickly ahead of the parachute battalions marching on foot - a job for which they were not suited, trained, or properly equipped. Tucker got his way by attacking the Grave bridge from both ends, but Gavin made no provision for the quick seizure of the Nijmegen highway bridge. Instead, he instructed the 508th's CO, Colonel Lindquist, to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as practical after landing, and this he failed to do, which can only be understood if you read about his performance during the 508th's first combat operation in Normandy.
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  712.  @flyoptimum  - that's just nonsense. Just because 1st Airborne was not able to complete its planned divisional perimeter around the whole town did not mean that it failed in its prime objective of taking the Arnhem highway bridge and holding it for the four days Browning had promised Montgomery. 1st Parachute Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert (who was at the bridge), is on record as saying they could still have received XXX Corps at a late date - I think it was by midday on 21 September if I recall. If he was still alive today I would love to have you debate this with him. He was there - I bet you weren't. You don't need a deep bridgehead already formed for you to cross a bridge - just the enemy unable to demolish it is required - obviously demonstrated by the Grenadier Guards at the Nijmegen highway bridge on 20 September, forcing a crossing of the bridge 45 minutes before troopers from the 504th Regiment had got to the far end of it.
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  713.  @flyoptimum  - you can argue with me all you like, but you'd also be arguing with Tony Hibbert, the 1st Parachute Brigade Major, who was at the bridge and on record as saying they could have still received XXX Corps as late as the morning of 21st September. They had lost their hold on the bridge the previous day, but still held a small perimeter around the brigade headquarters building. He was there, and was an experienced and trained paratrooper, since passed away in 2014. Who am I to argue with him? The whole point of the operation was to secure the bridges and prevent the Germans from demolishing them. 1st Airborne succeeded in their mission, thanks to Frost and Hibbert.
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  714.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  that's bizarre - even for YouTube! I can see all four replies on that thread, but YouTube says there's "2 replies". I'll copy and paste it here as well...
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  715. If, as you suggest in your thought experiment, everyone had done their job as planned, then XXX Corps would have found the Nijmegen bridges in American Airborne hands and just rolled straight through to Arnhem, which they probably would have reached on schedule, in 48 hours. When Gavin found out that the 508th were digging-in on the Groesbeek ridge instead of moving into Nijmegen to secure the bridges, he was absolutely furious. The 508th's Liaison Officer (who had delivered the news) said Gavin was the most angry he had ever seen him. By the time he got them moving, it was too late. They were beaten to the bridge by the recon battalion of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division moving down from Arnhem. The fault was a command failure at the top of the 508th, detailed in Phil Nordyke's combat history of the unit - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). It first manifested in Normandy, when the Executive Officer was relieved by Division commander Matthew Ridgway and sent home. His replacement was killed shortly thereafter. The real problem was the Regiment commander, an excellent administrator, but not a combat leader. Gavin inherited this problem and may not have been aware of it, but clearly he should. I would also question if the assignments of the 508th and 505th should have been swapped, if the 508th Regiment was a formation more suited to a defensive role than the more experienced and aggressive 505th. I think ultimately this was an American problem, and not one that Browning, a British officer, had much authority over. The ultimate reponsibility, as TIK also beilives, is James Gavin's, and I think he knew that when the 508th LO delivered his bad news. I think he knew the operation was screwed, right there.
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  716.  @nickdanger3802  - 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion was on its way to Nijmegen after crossing the Arnhem highway bridge, not Arnhem. It had already passed through Arnhem to get to the bridge. The 508th landed 30 minutes earlier than Frost and had 3 km less to march to their primary objective, yet they didn't, because they were digging-in on the Groesbeek ridge when they should have been moving on their primary objective. This was a failure of command in the Regiment. The Grave bridge is on the River Maas, not the Maas-Waal canal.
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  717.  @nickdanger3802  - I don't know what point you're trying to make.
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  718.  @nickdanger3802  - 1st Airborne Division had captured its primary objective and held it for four days, fulfilling its mission. 82nd Airborne needed to capture at least one bridge over its three water courses: River Maas - highway bridge at Grave (captured) or rail bridge at Mook (blown). Maas-Waal-Canal - a bridge at Honinghutje (damaged), Hatert (blown), Malden (blown), or Heumen (captured). River Waal - highway bridge (no) or rail bridge (no) at Nijmegen ---> this is where Market Garden failed, and sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. It was covering up this failure where all the BS started.
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  719. Very good question. I would recommend Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, by Canadian author John Sliz (2021) in his speciality series of books on engineers in MARKET GARDEN. It contains details on all the engineering preparations and contingency plans for scenarios in which a bridge crossing was lost, with all the permutations: bridge intact and in Germans hands, bridge demolished and site in Allied hands, or demolished and site in German hands, etc.. The responsibility for bridging up to the river Maas exclusive was with the Royal Engineers in Guards Armoured Division (covered by John Sliz in his volume Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, 2015, 2016), which is why they conducted the Son bridge replacement with their own Bailey bridge column. For the river Waal and Maas-Waal canal sector, the responsibility was with 1st Canadian AGRE (Army Group Royal Engineers). The default plan for an opposed crossing of the Waal if the Nijmegen rail and road bridges were still in enemy hands, as was the case, was for an assault crossing to be conducted to the west by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one brigade (operation BESSIE) or two brigades (operation BASIL). Each operation had an engineering column of allocated vehicles with the required assault boats and rafts as well as bridging equipment needed to make the assault crossing and replace demolished bridge(s) as required. 43rd Division (and this answers your question) was equipped with sufficient DUKW amphibious trucks to fully mobilise one infantry battalion in each of two brigades. The idea being that if an assault crossing was required with one or two brigades making the crossing, the DUKW battalion(s) would make the initial assault(s) and the two other battalions in the brigade would follow on in assault boats. If suitable launching and landing ramps for the DUKWs were not available at the site, the initial assault battalions would also have to make their crossing in assault boats. Why neither of these plans (BESSIE or BASIL) were implemented was down to politics, which frankly plagued the entire operation and compromised it at Nijmegen for reasons outside the scope of your question, but Royal Engineers in 43rd Division were put on a warning order for operation BASIL, but the division was not called up to undertake it because General Gavin had persuaded I Airborne and XXX Corps commanders to use his own troops (504th PIR) instead, if the assault boats could be provided for them. The story about the assault boats used by the Americans is also another interesting one, and it's also covered in John Sliz's Guards Armoured Engineers volume, since their boats were already in Nijmegen, but an engineer officer was not present at the conference (a mistake as it turned out) where Gavin's proposal was accepted, and it was assumed by commanders incorrectly the boats would have to be brought up the corridor from the engineer supply dumps in Belgium. As I said, the best laid plans were compromised by politics.
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  720. I think the "1000 tanks" was a rumour started by an observation that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks. The report in question was SHAEF Intelligence Weekly Summary #26 dated 16 September 1944, which was a more guarded assessment than the previous week's more optimistic report, but it included: "9 SS Panzer Division, and with it presumably 10, has been reported withdrawing altogether to the ARNEHM area of HOLLAND: there they will probably collect some new tanks from the depot reported in the area of CLEVES." Cleves (Kleve) in Germany is right behind the Reichswald forest on the German border, which accounts for the concern and the supposition that the extensive forest area could potentially hide a large number of tanks, but even two fully equipped 1944 panzer divisions have no more than 320 tanks (158 Panther and 162 Panzer IV). The depot believed to be there was actually later identified in the area of Münster, the main base for Wehrkreis VI (Military District 6). Patrols from the 505th PIR on the first afternoon of the operation reported no tanks and empty trenches in the Reichswald, and the tree density was judged unsuitable for armoured operations. I don't know how deep the patrols penetrated the forest but it seems unlikely they went as far as the Grünewald-Frasselt road (8248-8153), which is the line of the Westwall through the Reichswald. There were bunker complexes at Grünewald (8248) and Nütterden (8455), but in between the Westwall was nothing but trenches and some dugouts built from logs. As for the troops that were in the area, there were two battalions present, part of the defence line along the rivers Maas and Waal and the inter-connecting canal: First, Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I/6 (a Home Guard type training unit belonging to Wehrkreis VI) under Major Ahlemeyer and normally based at Grave, was headquartered at Haus Kreuzfuhrt (7954) with five kompanien, three (3?, 4., and 5.) were detached to defend the bridges on the Maas-Waal Kanaal, and the 1.Kompanie, and presumably the 2.Kompanie, were probably in the Reichswald area - 1.Kompanie was reported at Grafwegen (7751) the next day. Second, the next sector in the Maas defence line between the kanaal and Gennep (incclusive) was defended by Füsilier-Ersatz-Bataillon 39 (an infantry replacement unit) under Hauptmann Grüneklee with just three kompanien normally based at Kleve, it was headquartered at Grünewald (8248). The Genesenden (convalescent) Kompanie (usually the 8.Kompanie) was stationed in Mook, where the rail bridge (7152) over the River Maas was blown up as 505th troopers attempted to seize it. I don't have information on the other kompanie locations or identifications, but I think Gennep and the bunkers around Grünewald would be a reasonable assumption. The general dispositions/sectors are from a Korps Feldt map I have from an online source of their records (I don't have a note on the website), which also seems to be the source for Robert Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September (1990), and I was able to correct his misidentifications caused by his annoying habit of translating the German names into an English equivalent, making further study very difficult. By the second day, 18 September, these two battalions were combined into a single battalion under a Hauptmann Stargard after Grüneklee was dismissed as combat ineffective during the counter-attack that day and I believe Ahlemeyer was missing after being ordered to make a reconnaissance patrol in the direction of Nijmegen. That's about it as far as I know.
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  721. Browning's misjudgements? Considering his judgements were overruled or proven correct, I wonder how exactly you thought he was responsible for the failure of the operation?
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  722.  @gl2773  - "the air plan was flawed" - yes it was, but it was made flawed by Brereton and Williams, changing Browning's original proposed schedule and deleted landing zones selected by Browning near to the objectives. So that's not Browning's decision, it was Brereton and/or Williams. "Browning’s traditional approach to fighting" - you would have to explain that, I don't know what you're talking about. "and desire to feather his own HQ first" - is not English - try again. "led to an unacceptable and catastrophic delay" - how? "using valuable assets and interfering where it wasn’t necessary" - what assets and what unnecessary interference?
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  723.  @gl2773  - I understand "feather your own nest" - it was the context that seemed confused - how was Browning's HQ ever "feathered" - it was an administrative unit that was converted to a field HQ and was not really fully equipped as such. If he didn't need to be in theatre then, why was he threatened with replacement by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for operation LINNET II? As I understand it, Dempsey wanted him to be in theatre as the airborne forces were not under his command until they had linked up with XXX Corps. Browning's decision to advance his Corps transport in 32 gliders on the first lift was a last minute change - late in the evening of D-1 (16 September) and not an ego trip he was planning from the start. The change displaced glider loads for 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery (second line ammunition Jeeps and trailers and the guns of Z-Troop for Division HQ protection) and 1st Para Brigade and 1st Para Squadron Royal Engineers Jeeps. Not troops, as many speculate, and the loads bumped to second lift were not needed in the first 24 hours. Sources: glider schedule in Glider Pilots at Arnhem by Peters and Buist (2009) and the series of books on the 1st Anti-tank Battery by Nigel Simpson et al (2020-2022). Browning was clearly concerned about the Nijmegen bridge, having been frustrated in ensuring it was taken by glider coup de main by Brereton's decision to fly daylight only flights, and then again by Gavin's decision to discard a suggestion to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge. Browning's disagreement with Brereton over the LINNET II affair showed that he had no power in the planning and could only hope to influence events once on the ground, making it necessary to advance his transport to first lift, especially since Brereton's second lift schedule was now on the second day instead of the afternoon of D-Day as Browning proposed. "You’ll have to do your own research about Browning’s traditional attitude to war fighting" - that's a cop-out that tells me you have nothing. Browning was pioneering airborne warfare in the British Army since 1941 when he was appointed commander of 1st Airborne Division. He was awarded his DSO for his actions in the 1917 battle of Cambrai when young Jimmy Gavin was 10 years old and still in short trousers. Gavin made two fatal errors when he failed to provide a coup de main assault on the Nijemegn bridge and by entrusting the critical Nijmegen mission to Colonel Lindquist, an officer he told Cornelius Ryan neither he nor Ridgway could trust in a fight (Cornelius Ryan Collection: box 101 folder 10). "The effect of the delays attributed to Browning" - what delays attributed to Browning? His drop zones between Valkenswaard and Son would have effected a linkup between XXX Corps and 101st Airborne 24 hours earlier. Worst case scenario of the Son bridge still being blown, the bridge could have been replaced 24 hours earlier, and therefore Nijmegen reached 24 hours earlier. Browning had also proposed a third brigade of 1st Airborne be dropped at Elst to assist the passage of XXX Corps between Nijmegen and Arnhem. Browning's intent was more speed, not delay. Brereton insisted the Elst drop was not possible because of insufficient aircraft, yet Taylor and Gavin both had battalions in reserve delivered on D-Day. Williams (and not Taylor) objected to drop zones south of Son on the grounds of the Flak around Eindhoven. Browning was willing to accept 33% casualties going in, if it meant they could land close to objectives, Brereton and Williams would not accept those casualties to protect their aircraft, compromising the requirements of the airborne troops and the whole operation. "The plans were flawed" - no disagreement there, but the plans were not Browning's - that's the point. Browning was following the correct principles of delivering the airborne troops as close to the targets as possible and as quickly as possible with a double airlift on D-Day. Brereton, Williams and Gavin all thought they knew better, and Lindquist was unfortunately not a good field officer.
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  724.  @gl2773  - that's an ad hominem attack on Browning's personality. I'm not really interested in people's personal opinions and prefer to establish the facts of the matter. None of this proves Browning made "repeated misjudgements". Events actually proved him right, as I have demonstrated.
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  725.  @gl2773  "Regarding General Frederick Browning, Stirling reportedly criticized him for being overly focused on appearances and lacking a practical grasp of wartime realities" - that's his opinion. "Stirling allegedly viewed Browning as someone who prioritized prestige and image, sometimes at the expense of operational success" - so that's an allegation of an opinion. "While Stirling admired strong, pragmatic leadership and innovation in warfare, his criticism of Browning reflects a broader sentiment among some contemporaries who felt that Browning’s aristocratic background and polished demeanor may have influenced his strategic approach" - more opinion, either yours or whoever it was you were reading. Some of that sounds a lot like class prejudice and I would like to think we were beyond that in this day and age. Perhaps it should belong in the past. I prefer to focus on the facts and the facts are that Browning was edged out of the planning for operation MARKET and the key decisions made were made against his advice. It was not his plan that was put into operation, so the responsibility for its failures are not his.
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  726.  @stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85  - first lift was 36 guns (8 were 17-pounders), second lift 37 guns (8 were 17-pounders again), third was 10 guns, and the Poles had a spare gun after reorganising their anti-tank squadron from four squads of four guns to three squads of five guns, but it's not confirmed if the spare gun went with their seaborne echelon.
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  727.  @tonyolivari2480  - they were the only other survivors of the 1917 battle of Cambrai for which Browning was awarded the DSO, narrowly missing out on a VC, when young Jimmy Gavin would have been only 10 years old and still in short trousers ;-)
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  728. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division only had a small bridgehead in Nijmegen formed after the 508th PIR should have taken the brudge with 1st Battalion,and was formed with Euling's panzergrenadier battalion (about 250 men), a company from the division engineer battalion (100 men), and four StuG IIIG assault guns from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 divided between the two bridges. Other forces in Nijmegen were from the Maas-Waal canal defence line, and after trying to defend the canal bridges or demolishing some of them, filtered back into Nijmegen to be organised into the German bridgeheads. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division were in a precarious position themselves, because Frost had captured the bridge (at Arnhem) on their supply line, making them totally dependent on a ferry crossing at Pannerden that was harassed by the air forces, after another ferry at Huissen had been used by Euling and then scuppered by the Dutch ferryman.
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  729. Just to clarify the Arnhem reference at 18:49, the Reich Arbeits Dienst (State Labour Service) or RAD, was a paramilitary organisation designed to solve the mass unemployment problem before the war and got young people digging ditches and other public works. It was used as a precursor to full military service. Originally trained to drill with spades, they became armed with rifles during the war years and many RAD units were attached to the expanded Luftwaffe Flak branch of service to man Flak guns. The RAD were organised into Gruppen, which were battalion sized units, and the Gruppe would contain a number of Abteilung which were company (or in Flak service - Battery) sized units. The word 'Abteilung' is uniquely German with no English equivalent, meaning department or division of a larger formation - it contains the word 'teil', which anyone with a German car will know means 'part' in English. In the army or Lufwaffe they are usually battalion-sized sub units of regiments or divisions, but in the RAD they are the sub-units of a RAD Gruppe. A number of RAD units were involved in the battle of Arnhem, being as they were making up a large number of Flak crews in the area, but there were also some RAD troops used as infantry, such as Kampfgruppe Petersen - a RAD Flak zug (platoon) from a heavy battery based in Antwerp that happened to be waiting for a train to Germany at Arnhem station on 17 September, when the airborne operation began. I believe they were the 2.Zug of RAD 3./271 which had been 1./gemishte Flak-Abteilung 295 (2nd platoon, 3rd Abteilung, of RAD Gruppe 271, serving as 1st battery of mixed Flak battalion 295). When troops from II.SS-Panzerkorps started arriving in Arnhem to counter-attack the British Airborne at the Arnhem bridge, Emil Petersen's RAD platoon was incorporated into an SS unit, given weapons ("ancient carbines. To break open mine, I had to bang it against a table") and sent to fight at the bridge. I'm not sure that they were directly attached to Kampfgruppe Möller, which was a much reduced SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 9 (the engineer battalion of 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'), but it was one of the first respondents to Arnhem arriving from Brummen on the first evening, so it's possible, but I don't know where TIK got that information. According to Cornelius Ryan (A Bridge Too Far, 1974) Petersen's men were taken to an SS-barracks to be issued weapons, possibly the Saksen-Weimar kazerne, which was the base for SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 consisting of a couple of 'alarm' companies acting as infantry under the name Kampfgruppe Harder - I think that's the more likely SS unit involved. There were other RAD units fighting at Arnhem - the other RAD unit given awards, including the armband 'Arnheim' for fighting as infantry, was RAD Abteilung 4./310 located in the area of Bemmel just north of Nijmegen, and had previously been serving as another Flak battery in Antwerp - 4./gem.Flak-Abt.295. A number of RAD troops in the area were later officially incorporated into the SS in order to refresh their ranks. Both the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were raised in France in 1943 from an officer cadre of the older SS divisions and RAD troops from eastern Europe - mostly Romania and Hungary, so recruiting from the RAD was not unusual at this stage of the war.
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  730.  @johnburns4017  - did we bill them for the boats?
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  731.  @johnburns4017  - oh we did. We finished paying the Americans for their help in WW2 with the final instalment paid in 2006.
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  732. It's not inexplicable. It just requires a bit of digging. It was because Operation COMET was originally due to land British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, and was then cancelled by Montgomery at the last minute after he received intel on II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem area. So, expanding the operation into three divisions with the American divisions holding the corridor as far as Nijmegen would allow 1st Airborne and the Poles to concentrate at Arnhem with their superior anti-tank gun resources. The US Airborne divisions were better equipped with field artillery, comprising four battalions of pack howitzers compared with a single regiment having half the number of guns, but were weaker on anti-tank artillery, having fewer guns and all at 57mm calibre (actually British 6-pounder Mark III modified for Airborne use and not the version made under licence as 57mm M1) with no 17-pounders capable of dealing with Panthers and Tigers. There was some concern Nijmegen may have hosted the 10.SS-Panzer-Division, their exact location was not identified, and possibly drawing tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve behind the Reichswald, but all the available intel indicated German armour was north of Arnhem, so 1st Airborne going to Arnhem made the most sense. 6th Airborne had been used for the Normandy campaign with 1st Airborne in reserve if required. 1st Airborne had the most experienced 1st Parachute Brigade, veterans of North Africa and Sicily, and Montgomery had exercised with 1st Airborne in England to take bridges to facilitate an armoured advance, so this was an idea he first implemented in Sicily with 1st Parachute Brigade for Operation FUSTIAN and then again with COMET/MARKET GARDEN. It was actually the US divisions that were less experienced in this type of operation and the first thing that Brereton did to the COMET plan to expand it into MARKET was to delete the double airlift on D-Day, because the USAAF aircrews lacked the necessary night navigation skills, and that had the knock-on effect of deleting the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmgen, and Grave bridges, over concerns they would be suicidal in broad daylight. Frankly, it was the lack of capability in the US Airborne that meant the whole concept of the operation was compromised, and after first toying with the idea Gavin eventually dismissed a British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge because of his experience in Sicily - the USAAF crews got panicked by the Flak and scattered his 505th Regiment over a huge area, and Gavin found himself in command of just four or five men after landing.
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  733. To clarify, the forest that was reported to contain German armour was the Reichswald south of Nijmegen and on the border in Germany. There was also a reconnaissance Spitfire flight that photographed a few tanks in the Deelerwoud north of Arnhem near Deelen airfield on 12 September, which was a flight to confirm Dutch resistance reports of armour near Arnhem. The first reports of armour in the Reichswald came from Dutch resistance reports during the planning for operation COMET, set for 8 Septemeber and then postponed twice to 9 then 10 September. It started a silly rumour that 1000 tanks could be hiding in the Reichswald, but it was estimated that Model only had 50-100 operational panzers at the time, and we now know he had exactly 84 operational panzers in his Army Group B in the 5 September returns. COMET was cancelled because of this report and the strong resistance in the immediate 2nd Army front south of Eindhoven, and Montgomery realised one airborne division landing at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave was not strong enough to deal with the opposition. It was decided to upgrade COMET by adding two more airborne divisions, so the 1st Airborne could concentrate at Arnhem, the 82nd would take Nijmegen-Grave, and the 101st would secure the corridor from Valkenswaard to Uden in order to facilitate a rapid advance from Belgium to Nijmegen and Arnhem. The drop zones near Valkenswaard and Uden were later deleted, with the 101st now landing between Son and Veghel. Around this time, more Dutch reports were received of German SS units moving into billets in the Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Ruurlo areas, with the vehicle insignia of the 'Hohenstaufen' Division (9.SS-Panzer) positively identified, and 'Ultra' code intercepts revealed that II.SS-Panzerkorps had been ordered to refit in the eastern Netherlands. By 16 September, the day before MARKET GARDEN began, the assessment was that there was an SS panzer Division northeast of Arnhem and another possibly in the Nijmegen barracks, both reduced to regimental battlegroups in strength with few if any tanks, and that they were probably drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald, which could be used as a tank storage area. By 1830 hours on the first day, Gavin was told there were no German troops in the Reichswald and the tree density too great for armoured operations. We also now know that resistance at Arnhem was much greater than anticipated. It was only in 1966 that Gavin realised from the papers of Dutch researcher T.A. Boeree that he forwarded to Cornelius Ryan, the author of A Bridge Too Far (1974), that Boeree had tracked the 'Hohenstaufen' SS panzer division from its crossing of the Maas at Maastricht on 4 September and concentrating near Sittard, before receiving orders on 8 September to move north to Arnhem and the Veluwe region to refit. It was now clear to him that the route was through Nijmegen after a stop in the Reichswald, and this had generated the reports, but now understood it was the 'Hohenstaufen' division in transit to Arnhem. When COMET was cancelled on 10 September, and MARKET was proposed to replace it, Gavin was given a warning order he was assigned to Nijmegen, so he immediately went to 1st Airborne HQ to get the latest intelligence they had on the area and see the plans they had prepared for COMET. He saw the reports of German armour in the Reichswald and what 1st Airborne were doing to deal with it before COMET was cancelled, and this information informed his own divisional plan for MARKET. The decision to refit the II.SS-Panzerkorps in the Netherlands was probably connected with Model's plans for a counter-offensive to retake Antwerp from the Netherlands, planned to take place in October or November. This explains why he refused to give permission to blow the main bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen, even after the airborne attack had begun, he still thought he would need them for his counter-offensive. Eventually the counter-offensive was delayed to December and re-routed through the Ardennes, and both 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were involved after being refitted, although only SS-Artillerie-Regiment 10 of the 'Frundsberg' was involved. A brief word about the tanks in the Deelerwoud: these were believed by Browning's intelligence officer to confirm reports of SS panzer units near Arnhem and used in Cornelius Ryan's book, becoming an infamous scene in the film adaptation, but when the missing photos were located in a Dutch archive in 2015 it was found they showed older obsolete models of tanks as Browning had dismissed them. They had indeed broken down while ordered to Belgium and most of them did not make the journey. The unit was identified as a reserve panzer unit belonging to the training regiment of the Luftwaffe 'Hermann Göring' Panzer-Division and the tanks were camped near the 101st Airborne 506th PIR drop zone near Son on 17 September and attacked by escorting fighter aircraft. The RAF study of the found photo was published by Dr Sebastian Ritchie of the RAF Air Historical Branch in - Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story - you can find it as a free download from the RAF MoD website on their Thematic Studies page. The papers of T.A. Boeree and Gavin's covering letter to Cornelius Ryan are in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online under A Bridge Too Far, box 101 folder 09 James Gavin (covering letter is page 48). Hope this helps.
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  734.  @TheImperatorKnight  - that quote was from Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham's interview with Phil Nordyke for his combat history of the 508th, Put Us Down In Hell (2012). My entire comment was lifted directly from the book and the parts in quote marks are quoting Chet Graham, who was witness to the divisional briefing and was the unfortunate messenger who had to tell Gavin Lindquist wasn't moving on the bridge, Jonathan Adams of 'A' Company, and Ben Delamater the XO of 1st Battalion. Graham went with Gavin in his Jeep to the 508th CP at the NEBO monastery near de Ploeg and recorded Gavin's words to Lindquist "I told you to move with speed". Why would Gavin be so angry if he expected Lindquist to be dug-in on the ridge? It's clear from Lindquist's interview with Captain Westover after the war and recorded in Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen that he didn't mention the divisional briefing instructions at all, and only said he was told to move after they were in position on the Groesbeek ridge initial objectives. Captain Ben Delamater, the 1st Battalion XO, in his interview with Nordyke, confirms the briefing instructions with his understanding that, quote "The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” Nordyke does not give any opinions in his book, he tells the story as he finds it, and even records the fact that Ben Delamater and Shields Warren (XO and CO of 1/508th) don't agree on the patrol sent into Nijmegen - Warren says it was Lt. Lee Frigo's S-2 (Intel) Section that went first, followed later by Lt. Weaver's 3rd Platoon of 'C' Company with an LMG Section and an SCR-300 (backpack) radio on the battalion net, while Delamater says Weaver's patrol comprised the S-2 Section as well. There's no doubt the S-2 Scouts led the way, because three of them got to the bridge, while the rest of the patrol got lost in the back streets! Chet Graham's testimony does not start in Market Garden, he was also witness in Normandy to problems with the Regiment's command in their first combat operation. I think this book is the key to understanding the Nijmegen story, but it starts in Normandy! There's also a short passage in Zig Borough's book The 508th Connection (2013) from Trooper Joe Atkins, one of the three Scouts from the S-2 Section that made it to the bridge, proof that the entire Battalion could have grabbed it without a shot being fired if Warren had gone straight to the bridge as Frost had done at Arnhem. The passage is also referenced in Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which is how I became aware of it.
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  735.  @alexkalish8288  - appreciate your service to your country, but your country ignored the advice offered by British experience in successfully rolling back the communist insurgency in Vietnam in 1945 (unfortunately cut short by the repossession of Indo-China by the French, who then screwed it up) and a successfully completed counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya in the 1950s. You would have been better off attending Sandhurst.
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  736.  @sean640307  - appreciate your very reasonable reply - that's unusual on YouTube! My own conclusions are only based on the balance of evidence and I only quoted from two sources in my comment here, McManus and Nordyke (both 2012). Overall, I draw from several, so I'll go through them. The other aspect that many people forget is that things change over time, so the initial written orders are dated 13 September, and we have Lindquist's Field Order No.1 of that date, but not Gavin's - one has to ask why - but the verbal orders date from the final divisional briefing (Gavin says "48 hours before take-off"), which would be 15 September, and Browning's final Corps briefing on 16 September, when he told Gavin “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” (McManus, 2012). So the oldest piece of evidence is Lindquist's Field Order No.1 dated 13 September, which should reflect Gavin's Field Order No.1 of the same or earlier date that we don't have. Lindquist's reads in part: '2. a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ "T", seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589).' (source: ANNEXES p.67, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011) The next piece we have is Gavin's letter to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." (source: p.11, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011) This was the final divisional briefing on 15 September, and I think the important thing is that it does constitute the "Div order" that Lindquist was expecting in paragraph 2. a. of his own Field Order No.1 of 13 September. The divisional briefing was attended by Division G-3 (Operations) officer Lieutenant Colonel Jack Norton, whose testimony that Lindquist was given the order is quoted in McManus (2012), and by 508th liaison officer to Division HQ Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, who also confirmed the order and is quoted by Nordyke (2012). I find Westover's 14 September 1945 interview with Lindquist unsatisfactory (I was trained as a systems analyst, so I'm a trained 'interviewer' in the business world) in the inprecise nature of his Question 2, and the answer Lindquist gives I find disingenuous to the point that MRD applies, and unfortunately Westover had given him enough wiggle room with his loose question to do this: "2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you ordrs [sic] to move directly into NIJMEGEN? As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on." (Source: ANNEXES p.66, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011) 'MRDA' is a legal term you may not be familiar with if you're not a British lawyer or old enough to remember the 1960s and the Profumo scandal. While giving evidence at the trial of Stephen Ward, charged with living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, Rice-Davies (18 years old at that time) made the quip for which she is now best remembered: when the defence counsel, James Burge, pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or having even met her, she retorted "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" (often misquoted as "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?"). This became immortalised as "Mandy Rice-Davies applies" or MRDA. It's used to point out that the subject of an accusation has essentially no credibility when denying the accusation, because it's obviously in their own interests to deny it regardless of whether that denial is true. The next point of interest is Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan for his book A Bridge Too Far (1974), which was conducted in Boston, January 20, 1967. Ryan's notes read in part [my square brackets]: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.” It’s interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant t jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him. (Source: James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) - continued...
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  737. Actually, it was Don Rickles (as 'Crap Game') in Kelly's Heroes, and Telly Savalas in Battle Of The Bulge (1965) as the tank commander with the black market business on the side.
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  738.  @johnwelsh699  - not that Enigma was broken but aware that analysis of signals traffic volume in itself can indicate a build-up of forces, but yes, they were successful on keeping things quiet.
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  739.  @igorscot4971  - I think you might have misunderstood me - I meant the Allied intel on Arnhem was not ignored, but in the Bulge we were not aware of the German preparations at all, because as John said, the Germans maintained normal levels of signals traffic and achieved total surprise. But they hadn't suspected we had broken Enigma (and Lorenz) codes. Whiting's book is on the Bulge and I haven't read it, so I don't have a view on it.
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  740.  @jamesmorris956  - thanks James. Much appreciated. I don't blame the American people, they're victims of their own school system, which is still fighting the War of Independence exactly 240 years after the 1783 Treaty of Paris ended it, but it's the legitimate revisionism in historical research that helps to set the record straight. TIK has actually done a video on revisionism and why it's a good thing, and his video on Gavin being to blame for the failure of Market Garden is also on point, but didn't quite go deep enough without reading American 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), or Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011). These books fill in a huge gap in Cornelius Ryan's research for A Bridge Too Far (1974), a book rushed to publication unfinished because Ryan knew he had terminal cancer. Cheers.
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  741.  @robertszota1210  - range was too great from the UK and the Russians wouldn't allow their airfields to be used.
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  742.  @werrkowalski2985  - (Shhh! Whisper it very quietly - it was the third attempt to create the EU, or a nation called 'Europe' as Michel Barnier still insists)
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  743. SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 initially arrived at Arnhem on 7/8 September and moved into the Saksen-Weimarkazerne at the northern edge of the town, while the tanks laagered under the trees on the nearby Rozendaalsche Golf Links course (there was also a RAD camp there for accommodations). When the 9.SS-Panzer-Division were ordered to hand over heavy weapons and operational vehicles to the 10.SS-Panzer-Division prior to a planned refit in Germany, they handed over all their surviving Mark IV tanks (I believe they had around 10) but kept back their 3 Mark V 'Panther' and 2 Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' by moving them into the barracks workshop and removing the tracks and guns to list them them as under repair to avoid handover. On 15 September, two days before the airborne attack, these 5 tanks were moved out of the barracks to avoid possible bombing (the Germans used Dutch army barracks facilities as little as possible for this reason) and hidden under trees on the Heijenoordseweg in the western outskirts of Arnhem, right across the road from civilian houses on Callunastraat. Tanks can't be bombed unless the air force know they are there and can see them.
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  744. I believe he moved to Versailles on the 15th, but that's not much better. I think he found a nicer house there.
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  745.  @lyndoncmp5751  - aww, that's a 'feature' of YouTube and I have seen it many times before. Despite being a moderator on a music reaction channel, YouTube still didn't appreciate my British sense of humour sometimes, yet it happily allows people to troll the YouTuber, so my fellow moderators and I had to regularly remove some very iffy comments manually for review by the YouTuber's father, who was the man behind the curtain on his daughter's channel. I didn't get an email copy of your reply so it looks like something got caught in their filters. Try avoiding saying things like "Mr H;t1er was a very silly man" and it might get through! With long posts (and being on a PC) I usually 'copy' it and be prepared to 'paste' it again if it fails to stay in the thread, and then edit to change anything that might get caught in the filter and try again. The other trick I use is to write the post in Word first, so the spell checker is helping me with my typos before I paste it on YouTube, and if it doesn't take, I still have the original in Word to try again. Perhaps E10n Mu5k can be persuaded to take over YouTube as well and get that sorted!
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  746.  @lyndoncmp5751  - if it was about the armour... probably Ruzzian hackers in the Kr3m1;n! I think there's a delay after posting before an email copy gets sent, and that doesn't happen if the filter decides to remove the post first, so that's probably what happened. It's probably something quite innocent - I got caught out with a perfectly innocent word in English that turned out to be a derogatory racial slang naughty word in American, so... yeah... go figure!?
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  747.  @lyndoncmp5751  - thank you. I think the answer to your question is that the tanks were needed further south where Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks needed to be stopped. The Germans couldn't afford the attrition of losing some valuable tanks just getting there, and even after the training company Mielke arrived, they just didn't want to commit too much armour to clearing the Arnhem bridge, and it was clear that Frost was well dug-in with anti-tank weapons. Frost fended off the first armoured elements of Euling's battalion, which had a reduced company in SPWs, so they diverted to the Huissen ferry crossing (I believe only Euling used this crossing because after his battalion passed over it the Dutch ferryman scuttled his vessel). Next up were Brinkmann's armoured cars of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 10 from Borculo (near the Division HQ at Ruurlo), and they couldn't dislodge Frost, so they were reinforced with infantry from Knaust, supported with half of Kompanie Mielke (mostly Mark III tanks). The best equipment in Mielke's unit I would guess would be the 6 Mark IV tanks I'm guessing were added to Quandel's 5./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 to bring it up to a full strength unit of 22, because of James Sim's impressive sighting, and I would bet that long line of tanks had the 14 Tiger I tanks of Kompanie Hummel added to the end of it as well - that would have been a sight to behold at that stage of the war! By the way, only two Tigers of Hummel's unit reached the Arnhem bridge at first, shot up a few buildings in the perimeter and then got a bit shy of the anti-tank rounds coming in and withdrew. All the others all broke down on the road march from the rail head at Bocholt. I believe they were all assembled in Arnhem by the time the seige at the bridge ended and passed over the bridge on 21 September to reinforce the blocking line on the 'island' around Elst. So, I think it was down to orders and priorities. 10-SS-Panzer-Division had the job of stopping XXX Corps, and needed as much armour as possible to do the job, but they also had the responsibility of clearing their own supply line over Arnhem bridge and didn't want to lose any armour to an isolated light infantry unit doing it. That would be my sense of their thinking and I think that would be boxing clever. I do find all the internal politics in these SS Divisions very interesting, and seeing how they managed the situation with the losses and organising the refits is fascinating. I'm absolutely stunned that committing just 14 Challenger II tanks to Ukraine is causing our own Army a logistical problem - we seem to be in the same position as the 10.SS-Panzer, albeit due to Defence Dept cuts and not combat attrition - we can only deploy one company of tanks for Ukraine? I mean... really?
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  748.  @lyndoncmp5751  - Hi there, happy weekend! There are some good discussions on web forums about armour and people do post information they have researched directly from German records, so I always take copies for myself. If you search "9., 116. und 10. ss panzer division" in quotes, you should hit the discussion on Axis History Forum about those divisions in the 'island' counter-attack on 5 October (not: Op 'Market' ended 26 September, Op 'Garden' ended 7 October). Ron Klages posted some returns info for the armoured vehicles the three divisions had on hand, usually dated the first of each month. For the benefit of readers, they include: 9. Panzer-Division on 1 October 1944 Panzer IV = 0 Panzer V=53 Jagdpanzer IV=17 116. Panzer-Division on 1 October 1944 Panzer IV = 16 [includes 3 with I./PR24 attached] Panzer V=56 [includes 28 with I.PR24 attached] Jagdpanzer IV=0 StuG III=11 10. SS Panzer-Division on 5 September 1944 Panzer IV = 16 Panzer V=0 Jagdpanzer IV=21 StuG III=4 10. SS Panzer-Division on 12 October 1944 Panzer IV = 6 Panzer V=15 Jagdpanzer IV=19 StuG III=3 Note the 16 Panzer IV 10.SS-Panzer reported on 5 September, but lost 10 by 12 October, and Röstel had all 21 of his new Jagdpanzer IV vehicles attached to 7.Armee in Limburg and was NOT anywhere near VALKENSWAARD in Brabant. The 15 Panzer V are the survivors of the 20 factory new vehicles Model sent to Arnhem during Market Garden, so circa 5 wrecks in Elst would be about right. By the way, the forum member called 'Revellations' with the Australian flag profile pic is none other than Scott Revell, the Arnhem expert who wrote books Retake Arnhem Bridge and A Few Vital Hours on Knaust and Krafft's units respectively, so these are all serious researchers and not teenage wargamers (like myself in the 1970s). The OP I believe is an Arnhem resident they were trying to help out with a query. I'm not on these forums, they're quite old now, and I know that Ron Klages has since passed. Scott and I have corresponded by email a few times, when his work, reserve army, and family commitments allow. The StuG III caption in Margry is wrong on all counts because Röstel had Jagdpanzer IV, following 1944 Panzer Division Panzerjäger-Abteilung KStN 1106 (fG) and 1149 (fG), not StuG IV, and I think this vehicle was an early model and not the up to date Ausf.G that equipped 2 and 3./schwere.Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559. Margry hadn't taken into account that the 'Hermann Göring' Panzer Kompanie would have used this road on 12 September to get to Hechtel in Belgium, and that was the owner of this older StuG. The only other error I'm aware of in Margry's volumes is another vehicle I believe should NOT be attributed to the 'Hermann Göring' Regiment and that's the Panzer II Ausf.b wreck in Nijmegen. The Regiment never claimed to own such a vehicle as far as I'm aware (I have July and August gliederungen for the unit from the LXXXVIII Korps records, the records for 1.Fallschirm-Armee in September don't exist - the Luftwaffe did too good a job destroying their them at the end of the war), but there was a "Pz II" on the Wehrkreis VI roster for Panzer Kompanie Mielke sent to Arnhem. Autumn Gale leaves me in no doubt that apart from the StuG III (Ausf.E ?) from the HG Regiment, all StuGs in this area are from 559. They attacked or tried to contain the Neerpelt bridgehead ('Joe's Bridge') from both sides of the canal before and after the breakout of XXX Corps on 17 September.
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  749. Air support was not denied. Communications to supporting aircraft failed.
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  750. Try 8 September for the first V-2 attacks on London. On 9 September Montgomery was asked by the war ministry when he expected to have the western Netherlands roped off to isolate the launch sites, so it became a tertiary objective of MARKET GARDEN to cut the V-2 supply lines and one of the reasons he authorised an upgrade to operation COMET when it was cancelled on 10 September and that upgrade became MARKET.
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  751.  @roycharlesparker  - McManus doesn't footnote his sources, he lists them at the back of his book, but the quotes are from the officers present at the briefings. His analysis on the bridge versus ridge priorities refutes your point, as does the British action at Arnhem: they may have eventually lost their supply dropping zones, but at least they held onto the bridge prime objective for four days. If the 82nd had done the same at Nijmegen, XXX Corps would have crossed that bridge on their way to Arnhem in good time, with 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division planned to lead the advance, while the Guards could have been assisting 82nd Airborne in recovering any ground lost on the Groesbeek heights. I have some issues with McManus' book, but I think this analysis on the high ground very good. You should also consider that the British Airborne had similar terrain at Arnhem that the 82nd had at Nijmegen, but oriented in reverse in the north/south axis. The British solution was to send two parachute battalions by different routes to the bridge (and one got through), while the third was tasked to secure the high ground to interdict the expected axes of German counterattacks from the north. The 508th at Nijmegen reversed that by Lindquist instructing all three of his battalions to secure a line along the ridge, while Gavin expected him to send one battalion directly to the bridge without delay. The operation was compromised because the Nijmegen battle was botched, while the Arnhem battle was compromised it was not fatal to the operation since the bridge objective was secured.
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  752.  @roycharlesparker  - Lindquist failed to follow Gavin's instructions and also performed badly in Normandy, so you'd be contradicting Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th in Put Us Down In Hell (2012) as well as McManus. The two books together fill in the missing story that Cornelius Ryan had no interest in pursuing. You're arguing with me, but I'm only standing on the shoulders of American historians of American and 82nd Airborne history. Lindquist had the unoccupied ridge under his control as soon as he reached the 1st Battalion objective at De Ploeg. He should have sent 1st Battalion directly to the bridge instead of allowing them get strung out along the ridge line digging-in, and if he had done that he would have had a battalion on the bridge by 8pm.
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  753.  @roycharlesparker  - yes, absolutely use them in YouTube comments. A single block of text looks like brain damage. Nordyke's works are combat histories, not theses on military doctrine. You sound like an academic! Now I understand why you side with Lindquist: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler.” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
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  754.  @johnburns4017  - thank you. I don't think @roy has even considered the possibility that US Army doctrine may be at fault here. It certainly hasn't served them very well, historically. I didn't have the heart to post him the link to Mark Felton's video on the British success in Vietnam, 1945. D'oh!
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  755.  @tavar1017  - neither the Arnhem or Nijmegen highway bridges were prepared for demolition on 17 September (D-Day of the operation), but the rail bridges were. The main defence line was along the river Waal to the Maas-Waal canal at Nijmegen, and then south along the river Maas. All bridges along the defence lines were prepared for demolition, but the Nijmegen bridge was effectively behind the main line and did not have substantial defences. The Maas bridges at Grave (highway) and Ravenstein (rail) were also prepared as part of the outpost line to the main defence line. On D-Day, the Maas bridge at Grave had a faulty initiator charge and a man was sent back to Nijmegen for a replacement, meanwhile the bridge was quickly captured. At Nijmegen there was an NSDAP Schutzgruppe of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands formed into a volunteer militia to guard military facilities and the like. They were trained to prepare the Nijmegen highway bridge for demolition using custom made cutting charges in shaped numbered boxes stored inside the bridge pier storage spaces, and designed to fit into the bridge superstructure in corresponding numbered locations, and even painted the same shade of green to blend in with the bridge. They were drilled every month since the Normandy invasion under the surpervision of an engineer officer from von Tettau's WBN (military command Netherlands) engineer staff, Oberleutnant Gerhard Brettschneider. He was also responsible for the Nijmegen rail bridge and the Grave highway bridge. The last drill was mid-August and on 17 September the Schutzgruppe failed to report. Brettschneider had to wait for the SS panzer troops to arrive and on the morning of 18 September a company from SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 arrived and Brettschneider was able to direct them in preparing the bridge for demolition. The situation Arnhem is less clear from the German point of view, but Royal Engineers at the bridge found no explosive charges or suspicious wires. Arnhem was an important communications centre behind the Waal line and not part of a planned defence line itself, but the river Ijssel was, and those bridges were probably prepared. I believe the Arnhem bridge garrison was 25 WW1 veterans, which means they were probably from Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, which had companies at Doesburg and Westervoort on the Ijssel and two companies defending Deelen airfield. They were WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for combat duties even in 1914-18, and the source for the "old men on bicycles" intel you hear so much about. The Nijmegen bridge garrison identification has troubled me for some time, but after purchasing a copy of the G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Operations) documents for 82nd Airborne and studying them, I think the 18 (not 14) men stationed on the highway bridge were from 1./Transport-Sicherungs-Bataillon 567. Interrogation of prisoners indicated it was a security battalion stationed in Paris and then the 1st company was sent to Nijmegen, where they had just 110 men in total, 65 men guarding bridges and the rail station, and the remainder formed outposts around the city to delay the 82nd's advance. The forces in the often quoted Kampfgruppe Henke (Fallschirm-Ausbildungs-Regiment 1) in many sources, but only the name Hartung (Fallschirm.AOK Lehrstab) is found in the 82nd Division G-2 documents, commanded forces manning the Maas-Waal canal sector of the main line to the west of the city, until they were displaced by the 82nd and withdrew into Nijmegen on 18 September, where they were incorporated into the defence of the Waal bridges. It's important to understand the city was evacuated of rear echelon forces, mainly the BdO (HQ of the German Ordnungspolizei for the Netherlands - equivalent to a division HQ) and local Ortskommandantur (military HQ - battalion echelon), by 1830 hours. A three-man point team from the S-2 Section 1st/508th PIR did reach the southern end of the highway bridge, took seven prisoners without firing a shot and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that didn't show up. The SS panzer recon battalion 9 could be heard arriving at the other end as they withdrew, which puts the window of opportunity between 1830 and approximately 2000 hrs (full dark). This is when the 1st Battalion 508th should have grabbed the bridge, but unfortunately were not ordered into the city until after Gavin's intervention at 2000 hrs, after he was told they were dug-in on the Groesbeek ridge and not moving. It took a long time to get A and B Companies out of their extended positions along the ridge and were at the Initial point (IP) at the Krayenhoff barracks at 2200 hrs, and sometime between then and midnight when the SS recon unit was withdrawn to Elst, there was a contact firefight at the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle near the rail station, a kilometer from the highway bridge. Most useful book sources: September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  756. Another excellent analysis. It's not you, it's them - is absolutely correct.
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  757. You can't attract "far right thugs" (if there is such a thing) to join your party if you give it a leftist name, like the National Socialist German Workers Party. As for countries like the DRK and the GDR, you can call the country anything you like after your revolution has taken control of the country. You could call it La-La-Land and nobody living there could do a thing about it if they are living in an authoritarian police state. Your problem is that you're a leftie who doesn't want to face the fact he's on the same side of the political spectrum as Hitler and Kim Jong Un, and you support a tart who panders to the American market - or at least that part of the American market that would gleefully invest in property off the coast of Nebraska without doing their due diligence. There's not much you can do about the DRK on your own, but you can educate yourself and change your own attitude.
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  758. Dirk Bogarde played Browning. Connery played General Urquhart.
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  759. Like the 6.Armee, you have to get the hell out of Stalingrad or be destroyed by it...
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  760.  @ukaszgrzesik7231  - not at all. Did you know the screenwriter for that film was British? Troy Kennedy Martin. As well as the film The Italian Job (1969), he also wrote for British TV series, notably WW2 POW series Colditz, police series The Sweeney and Z-Cars, the Gulf War SAS TV film Bravo Two Zero (1999), and nuclear conspiracy thriller Edge Of Darkness (2010). You might be forgiven for thinking Kelly's Heroes was merely the British view of corruption in the US Army and not true to life at all.
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  761. Love the counter-argument that Hitler was a Jewish or British secret agent on a mission to create the state of Israel. It's almost as funny (if it wasn't so sick) as my favourite conspiracy theory that Ted Heath was on a secret mission to get us into the Fourth Reich so that we could wreck it later by leaving - an idea I think Sir Humphrey credited to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in an episode of Yes, Minister!
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  762. There were no suitable closer alternatives for the landing and drop zones (or they would have been used), Gavin instructed the 508th to send 1st Battalion straight for the bridge, but the CO failed to follow the briefing instruction and Gavin had to go to the 508th CP to get him moving (see Nordyke, Put Us Down In Hell, 2012 chapters 9 and 10, and chapters on Normandy for previous problems in the 508th), and XXX Corps had to stop at night because you can't advance tanks in the dark (otherwise they wouldn't have stopped). Armchair tactics again.
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  763.  @waynes.3380  - the operation involved 24 bridges for multiple redundancy and many of them were captured on the first day, including the Arnhem highway bridge. The RAF did not object to any landing zones for Operation Market because they were due to fly to them for Operation Comet. The scene with the RAF officer is a fictional scene put into the film, but Wiliams of US IX TCC objected to the glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges in the Comet plan and Brereton of 1st AAA removed them for Market. They also removed the two airlifts on the first day for reasons that would not have impressed the RAF. There were no better landing options at Arnhem. Drop Zone 'K' south of the bridge could not be used until the third lift, by which time it was assumed the heavy Flak positions on either side of the zone were neutralised and the high tension lines crossing the zone from the Arnhem power station were cut. The Polish drop at Driel was on a re-arranged zone precisely because these conditions were not met and the area was controlled by the Germans and not the British 1st Parachute Brigade.
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  764. Yup! He was still in command of the Regiment during the Bulge. He retired in 1960 as a Major-General.
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  765.  @stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85  - correct, but Lelystad didn't exist in 1944 - it was Nunspeet on the old Ijsselmeer coast that was the final destination for the Guards Armoured Division. Flevoland was reclaimed from the Ijsselmeer and established as the twelfth and newest Dutch province in 1986, merging with the Noordoostpolder established in 1962. You had me going for a minute, Stephen.
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  766. That was correct, but they didn't start V-2 operations until Market Garden was already being planned, but it added to the need to go north to Arnhem instead of east to Wesel, Montgomery's original target for a Rhine crossing.
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