Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "Who to Blame? John Frost on Operation Market Garden's Failure WW2" video.
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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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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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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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"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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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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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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@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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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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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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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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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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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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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 little 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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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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@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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Another uneducated 'Yank' who thinks Hollywood is history. Please read some books, Sir!
The airborne planning was done by USAAF officers Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier Command respectively - they were in charge, because they would not work under British commanders, and both RAF commanders and Montgomery could not change their minds.
In Aspects of Arnhem - The Battle Re-Examined by Richard Doherty and David Truesdale (2023), the authors present an excoriating analysis of Brereton's actions in planning MARKET, and end the final chapter with the following quote from Dr John J. Abbatiello, Chief, Research, Integration and Research Division, Center for Character and Leadership Development, at the United States Air Force Academy:
As a commander, Brereton was responsible for the units over which he had authority, the men he led and the missions assigned to him. He was responsible for the men and aircraft of the Far East Air Force in the Philippines, the 9th Air Force in North Africa and northwest Europe, and the First Allied Airborne Army, again in northwest Europe. He was responsible for important missions assigned to him by MacArthur, Arnold, Eisenhower, Montgomery and other Allied leaders. And as a commander of not just one, but four major Allied failures of the Second World War, he is the worst military commander in history.
(Abbatiello in Jennings and Steele, The Worst Military Leaders in History, p. 165)
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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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@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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@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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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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@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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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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@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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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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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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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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@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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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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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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@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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