Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "The BAD BOY of Operation Market Garden | General 'Boy' Browning" video.
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@nickdanger3802 - you continue to be disingenuous in your use of quotes. The full paragraph of that Pegasus Archive passage continues as follows -
'Browning also told Gavin that he was not to make any attempt to move towards Nijmegen until the Heights had been secured; Gavin agreed though he later felt confident enough in his plan to allow one battalion to head for the bridge immediately after landing. The Groesbeek Heights were certainly important as they served as the Division's main drop zone and dominated the entire area, and so there is no question that the position of the 82nd Airborne Division, not to mention the right flank of the 2nd British Army when they arrived, would have been placed under considerable pressure if the area were to remain in enemy hands. Even so, the priorities of any airborne formation has to be the capture of its ultimate objectives, i.e. the bridges, and all other concerns are entirely secondary. Browning defended his decision long after the War, but it was a great mistake not to attach a higher priority to Nijmegen Bridge as, without it, the 1st Airborne Division would be cut-off behind two large rivers and 13 miles of hostile territory. Had the bridge been taken in strength and with all speed then it is entirely possible that the Guards Armoured Division would have reached Arnhem Bridge before the British defence collapsed. This oversight, however, was not particular to the Nijmegen plan, but a further product of the blind optimism which dogged Operation Market Garden, where the assumption was that resistance would be light and so the airborne forces allowed themselves to become distracted from their main objectives by the need to make the advance of the ground forces as rapid and uncomplicated as possible.'
- But who's mistake was it? Later on the same page, Browning's analysis of the battle is revealed in a letter to Air Vice Marshal Hollinghurst on the 8th October 1944 -
"The capture of the Nijmegen bridge would have been effected just that number of hours earlier and (in view of the information we now have) we should have beaten the Boche to it quite easily."
- The answer is in Gavin's divisional plan. In a letter to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945, Gavin wrote -
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
- In his interview with Gavin, Cornelius Ryan noted the following (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967) -
'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
- As I said in my reply to Daniel, the best work on this priorities question is in September Hope: The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, by John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ -
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- As Browning himself said - "we should have beaten the Boche to it quite easily."
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It was senior involement of the American air commanders Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) that were the problem. They decided to compromise Browning's original operation SIXTEEN proposal, based on his earlier COMET plan, in order to protect their air assets for MARKET. This hamstrung the airborne troops in achieving their objectives on the ground:
1) MARKET GARDEN involved more airborne troops than Normandy - both operations involved multiple airlifts, but Normandy required much shorter flights and turnaround times.
2) Ground attack aircraft from 2nd Tactical Air Force were grounded while the airborne transports were in the air for deconfliction purposes. Bad weather was also more of a factor in September than it was in June.
3) SAS did not have the resources for large scale attacks, such as seizing bridges. The glider troops of 1st Airlanding Brigade were initially tasked with this for COMET and SIXTEEN, as they were successfully in Normandy for 'Pegasus Bridge', and these raids were removed by Brereton and Williams when they decided on all-daylight flights for MARKET taking off at dawn, or later if delayed by fog. The glider assaults could only be conducted at night during Moon periods or at dawn in no Moon periods, and to expect an Airlanding Company of 133 men in six gliders to hold a large bridge behind enemy lines all day from dawn until the likely relief near dusk is obviously not practical.
4) The armour reported in the Reichswald southeast of Nijmegen was in transit and the aerial photo of tanks in the Deelerwoud northwest of Arnhem was correctly dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles. Both would have been missed if the carpet bombing you suggest was carried out. The SS Hohenstaufen division that stopped in the Reichswald was dispersed around the Veluwe region between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Zutphen, and the training unit photographed by Spitfire on 12 September were camped at Wolfswinkel north of Son on 17 September and tried to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) across the road on Sonsche Heide, but were shot up by USAAF fighter aircraft escorting the drop. The planners would not have known this in advance, but carpet bombing whole forests in the hope of hitting a few tanks sounds like a game of 'Battleships' to me. The presence of armour was not what compromised the operation and the reason COMET was cancelled and SIXTEEN/MARKET replaced it was to enable the British Airborne with their considerable anti-tank assets to be concentrated at the point of greatest armoured threat, which was determined to be Arnhem in the north.
5) Forward air controllers were provided by a hastily formed USAAF unit called 306th Fighter Control Squadron. These teams (two per division) were the ones equipped with special VHF radios for contacting aircraft and these were the radios delivered with the wrong crystals and did not work.
6) More appropriate DZs for British Airborne? Where? The drop zones chosen were the nearest suitable locations based on terrain and Flak locations. The much discussed area south of Arnhem bridge (Malburgsche Polder) was unsuitable for mass glider landings due to the netwrok of small drainage ditches (the coup de main raids would have landed on the smaller flood plains near the bridges), and a parachute drop there was ruled out for D-Day because it was located between two of the four heavy Flak positions around Arnhem and crossed by high tension lines from the Arnhem power station. It was only deemed suitable for the Polish drop on D+2 on the assumption 1st Parachute Brigade would have control of the area and the Royal Engineers in control of the power station.
7) The diversonary tactic of dummy paratroop drops at Veedendaal and Wesel were conducted and diverted German troops in the first 24 hours. I have a German map timestamped 16.30 on 17.9.44 that shows parachute drops at Veenendaal, Tiel, and "800?" at Zaltbommel, which may be erronoeous reports or dummy drops, or reports generated by baled out aircrews. They certainly caused confusion and German troop movements to investigate.
8) Your question "shouldn't Eisenhower have addressed the Airforce issue on behalf of Monty"? - Well, it's like this: Browning could not protest the changes made to his COMET/SIXTEEN concepts, which he believed important for the success of the operation, because he had already threatened to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges), scheduled too soon to print and distribute maps to brief the troops. Brereton planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation, when it was thankfully cancelled, so Browning knew his political situation was precarious. He could appeal to Montgomery, who would then have to appeal to Eisenhower to adjudicate, and as James Daly (Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, 2024) suggests, Eisenhower would likely have consulted his air chief, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery. The most likely result would be that if Brereton was not backed, he would simply pull the plug on the operation. He had the authority to do this, as he had already rejected a Montgomery request for an airborne operation (INFATUATE) on Walcheren to help the Canadians clear the Scheldt estuary in September.
Browning had not entirely given up trying to influence the planning for MARKET. In his interview with A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan in 1967, Gavin said "the British" wanted him to drop a battalion at the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge. He toyed with the idea, but said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where troops were scattered over a wide area and he landed with just four or five men to command. He said the division was disorganised for days. Browning was able to make one last minute change to the glider schedule by advancing his Corps HQ transport to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift (now on D+1 thanks to Brereton and Williams) to the 1st, but this he gets accused of going on an ego trip, when he was clearly concerned about Nijmegen and wanated to be there. It was not soon enough to prevent the debacle of Gavin's choice for the Nijmegen mission, Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR, who failed to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing. The delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to move into the city and reinforce its bridges, fatally compromising the operation on the ground.
The air commanders needed to be reined in, not given more control, as they already had full autonomy over the air planning and could ultimately just cancel operations altogether.
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Frederick Browning - Wikipedia:
Browning fought in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October and the Battle of Cambrai in November.[12] He distinguished himself in this battle, for which he received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).[13] The order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross.[14] His citation read:
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He took command of three companies whose officers had all become casualties, reorganised them, and proceeded to consolidate. Exposing himself to very heavy machine-gun and rifle fire, in two hours he had placed the front line in a strong state of defence. The conduct of this officer, both in the assault and more especially afterwards, was beyond all praise, and the successful handing over of the front to the relieving unit as an entrenched and strongly fortified position was entirely due to his energy and skill.
[12] Mead, Richard (2010) General Boy: The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, pp. 21-22.
[13] The London Gazette (Supplement). 4 February 1918. p. 1600.
[14] "Orders and Decorations — Distinguished Service Order". Veterans Affairs Canada.
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Brereton inherited Browning's operation COMET plan for Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave and had the job of expanding it for three divisions to include the US divisions and Eindhoven as a target by grafting his LINNET/LINNET II air plan onto COMET. The deletion of COMET's double airlift and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the three main bridges (Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave) were key features of Browning's original concept and he did warn Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without them. The airborne aspect of the campaign was now taken over by the Americans, who seemed to think they knew better just because they had more resources committed to it, so you may be right that Brereton (as a former USAAF fighter pilot and not an Airborne man) just didn't get the point of MARKET GARDEN.
I am convinced Gavin understood the concept of the operation, but his divisional plan seemed to be compromised by politics, again - but this time internal to his own 82nd Airborne Division. According to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Matthew Ridgway - the Division CO in Normandy, did not trust the 508th PIR CO, Colonel Lindquist, and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Gavin said he had a problem in that he couldn't promote any other Colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin may have had the same problem, because after Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII AIrborne Corps and Gavin inherited the division, he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and spent MARKET GARDEN's planning and execution running himself ragged doing both jobs.
If Gavin didn't trust Lindquist either, it wasn't to the extent that he was prepared to assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th PIR to the Nijmegen mission, preferring to have his old regiment facing the Reichswald, which he may have perceived as the greater threat in terms of counter-attack than the possibility of mission failure at Nijmegen. Gavin also told Cornelius Ryan the British (presumably Browning) requested he drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, and although he toyed with this idea he eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily where the Troop Carriers dropped the division over a huge area and it was disorganised for days.
I think the 101st Airborne performed well, with the exception of Taylor's own decision to target the Wilhelmina canal bridge at Best as an alternative crossing to the one at Son - it was a bridge that Dempsey neither wanted nor had a use for, possibly because the Eindhoven-Hertogenbosch road was headed in the wrong direction - crossing the XXX/XII Corps boundary. The loss of both Wilhelmina canal bridges to German demolition, as well as several on the Maas-Waal canal west of Nijmegen, was not due to sluggish movement by the US Airborne units assigned to take them, but due to the fact these canals were both on prepared defence lines, with the bridges prepared for demolition and the bridge garrisons had standing orders to blow the bridges if threatened. Seizure of an intact bridge in these circumstances depends on as much luck and perhaps a mistake made by the defenders as it does with the assaulting force doing everything right. The lock bridge at Heumen failed to be demolished for reasons that are unknown, and the road bridge at Honinghutje also failed, but was part-damaged by the successful rail bridge detonation alongside it. The Grave bridge had one of the two initiator charges found to be at fault and the delay in sending a man back to Nijmegen for a replacement allowed the bridge to easily fall into American hands in the meantime.
Browning's authority, such as it was as Brereton's deputy, had been effectively neutralised during the planning for LINNET II, a Brereton inititative in case LINNET was cancelled like so many others during the rapid Summer advances in August and early September. Browning threatened to resign over the lack of time for maps to be printed and distributed to the airborne troops, but thankfully LINNET II was also cancelled by the ground forces overunning the landing zones before Brereton could put into operation his plan to accept Browning's resignation and replce him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. Both men agreed to put the incident behind them, but Browning was now aware of how precarious his position was politically and knew that protesting Brereton's MARKET planning was not going to effect any change. It would seem that Browning's response was to move the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek up to the first lift in order to try and at least influence events once on the ground, at the expense of some of Urquhart's anti-tank guns destined for Arnhem, which got bumped to the second lift instead.
Finally, the Poles were never made scapegoats, and I find this the most disgusting slur to come out of the whole operation. It is undeniable fact that Polish General Sosabowski was difficult to work with and he was insubordinate to Horrocks (XXX Corps commander) at the Valburg conference on 24 September. So far as I have read, there has never been any suggestion from British commanders that the Poles were in any way responsible for the failure of the operation, and people posting such suggestions on YouTube of course fail to provide any references when I challenge them to do so. Such a suggestion would be ridiculous, based on the fact the Poles did not arrive until D+4, and four days after the operation was already compromised by the Americans at Nijmegen - and that perhaps is the real source of the slur as a deflection. The valid criticisms of the Poles' performance, even the SS in Oosterbeek complained that the Poles fired on their medics trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield (in Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September, 1990), has been conflated with the failure of the operation - it's absurd to connect the two issues. Montgomery's initital response after the operation was to write to Sosabowski to praise him and his brigade for their efforts, and to ask for recommendations for awards. It was then he received a report from Browning on his difficulties with Sosabowski and Montgomery backed his request to have the brigade removed from his command by forwarding the report to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke.
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Some of General Urquhart's commanders were prepared to risk jump injuries by dropping onto the town, but the RAF warned of substantial flak around the town - there was a mixed Flak Abteilung with four heavy batteries located north, south, east, and west of the town.
Operation COMET had included a plan by Browning for glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave highway bridges, but these were deleted for MARKET by Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army and Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command. Browning had earlir warned 2nd Army that COMET should not proceed without the glider assaults on the bridges, but was unable to object to their removal since he tried resigning over objections to a previous operation, LINNET II, and Brereton had planned to accept the resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. That operation was cancelled anyway and both men agreed to forget the disagreement, but Browning was now powerless to object to the MARKET plan.
The critical objections to Browning taking up 38 glider tug aircraft to tow his Corps HQ to Groesbeek in the first airlift sounds fine in principle, but the logical re-allocation of those aircraft to take the second half of the South Staffordshire Airlanding Battalion to Arnhem on the first lift would not have changed the tactical situaton at Arnhem if you examine the Phase 1 and Phase 2 roles of the battalion, and its actual use by Brigadier Hicks (in temporary command of the division) in the event. The fact is, it wouldn't have made any difference at Arnhem, and the critical failure of the whole operation was at Nijmegen in Gavin's divisional plan.
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That would leave a huge gap between the British 2nd Army in Belgium and the 82nd Airborne at Grave-Nijmegen. The British had previously penetrated the first German defence line on the Albert canal at Beringen and then snatched a Meuse-Escaut canal bridge at Neerpelt on 10 September, which was a second line. The next defence line was the Wilhelmina canal at Son, and this was the bridge blown by the Germans as 1st and 2nd Battalions 506th PIR closed in on D-Day. Giving the Germans a day to prepare reinforcements or demolish the bridges all the way from Eindhoven (four bridges over the river Dommel in the city) to Veghel on the Zuid Willemsvaart canal and the parallel river Aa, would have seriously delayed the advance and made the 101st Airborne's job of capturing the bridges intact that much more difficult.
It's also worth mentioning that the delay at Son to build a Bailey bridge there was effectively zero hours, contrary to the claim made in the Hollywood film, because the armoured advance arrived at the bridge site at 1900 hrs as it was already getting dark (between 1845 and 2000 hrs in mid-September), the engineers and bridging column arrived at 1930 hrs and work began on the bridge at 2000 hrs with an estimated 10 hours construction time. It was completed just 15 minutes after the estimate at 0615 hrs, before first light, when the first armoured cars of 2nd Household Cavalry passed over, and because the 101st had secured all the bridges to Veghel, they reached 82nd Airborne at Grave in just a couple of hours, and the Grenadier Guards tanks shortly afterwards. The Bailey bridge was constructed entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to move tanks (no night vision), so they would have stopped for the night in the 101st Division area anyway, therefore the delay at Son was zero.
The fatal delay was at Nijmegen, where the tanks could not go any further for 36 hours because the Waal river bridges were still in Germans hands and heavily reinforced with SS panzer troops. An examination of the failure of MARKET GARDEN should focus on the Nijmegen bridge on the first day, because this is where the planning and execution failed the operation, and where the Germans correctly exploited the error in order to delay it.
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The film A Bridge Too Far is indeed 50% fiction and the scenes depicting the final capture of the highway bridge at Nijmegen shows how it was supposed to happen, but not the way it did happen.
The film does not include the rail bridge a mile to the west, which was the first objective of 'H' and 'I' Companies 504th PIR, and the Grenadier Guards waiting to cross the highway bridge picked up a radio message stating there was an American flag at the far end of the bridge, not realising it was from the Irish Guards supporting the assault crossing and only have seen the rail bridge. The Grenadiers decided they needed to get moving and after one attempt failed they got four tanks over the bridge at 1830 hrs, losing two at the far side and seeing no Americans the other two carried on into the village of Lent firing at everything that moved in the gathering twilight. There were no US paratroopers at the far side of the highway bridge. 'H' and 'I' Companies were still fighting their way through fortified houses on the north bank between the two bridges.
The two tanks of Sergeants Robinson and Pacey first met US paratroopers of 'G' Company from the second wave of the river crossing who had followed the railway north and established a roadblock at the rail overpass over the main highway at 1800 hrs. The tanks arrived, firing at anything that moved until they realised the troopers at the overpass were Americans. The tanks could not proceed any further because a StuG IIIG assault gun was covering the exit of the road underpass further up the highway on the far side. The paratroopers did not have any bazooka rounds to stalk the gun and deal with it themselves.
Companies 'H' and 'I' then reached the north end of the highway bridge at 1915 hrs, 45 minutes after Robinson had crossed over, but were in time to see Captain Carrington's Rear Link tank cross over and stop to provide a radio link between Robinson and his Squadron CO back in Nijmegen. He was followed over the bridge at 1930 by two Troops of M10 tank destroyers from 21st Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery, and at 2145, Nos.2 and 4 Company 3rd Battalion Irish Guards infantry to secure the bridgehead. The 504th reached their planned stop line between Fort Hof van Holland and Fort Het Laauwik at 2000 hrs. All these timings are on a contemporary sketch map that can be found online in the battle detectives case studies on Nijmegen and also published in Operation Market Garden: September 1944 by Simon Forty and Tom Timmermans (2018).
The highway bridge demolition lines had been cut by Lieutenant Tony Jones of the 14th Field Squadron Royal Engineers walking across the bridge alongside his scout car behind Sergeant Robinson's Shermans. The film incorrectly had Julian Cook leading the attack on the bridge. This is incorrect. It was his Company commanders Kappel and Burriss. Cornelius Ryan's account of this action is very sketchy and does not include any timings, and the narrative suggests Burriss was at the faar end of the highway bridge when Robinson crossed over. Obviously wrong because he inlcudes an account of Burriss passing the abandoned 7.5cm Pak gun midway between the bridges that was hit by Sergeant Pacey's tank as it crossed over earlier, and Ryan has Burriss greeting Robinson's gunner, Johnson, but that's impossible because Robinson's tank was half a mile up the road in Lent with 'G' Company at the rail overpass.
Christer Bergström, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vol 2 (2020),
Chapter II. 20 September - The Decisive Day:
The Encounter North of Nijmegen
There are many misunderstandings concerning the capture of the large road bridge at Nijmegen, but a closer study shows that it was the British that took this important object. From SS-Sturmbannführer Schwappacher's report, it is clear that the Americans took the German positions on the railway embankment, west of the road bridge, only after the British had taken the road bridge. In a report for an advanced officer's court at Fort Benning in 1948, Captain Kappel described the American advance towards the road bridge:
"At about 1830 hrs tanks were heard on the northern side and were soon identified as British... At about 1938 hrs the Second Platoon H Company, and the group under Company Commander of I Company reached the highway bridge."
Other sources:
John Sliz, Bridging The Club Route: Guards Armoured Division's Engineers (2015)
RG Poulussen, Little Sense Of Urgency: A factbook on operation Market Garden (2014, 2021)
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@Arc Anon Drum - even Julian Cook complained about Redford's performance, because it showed his character doing things he simply didn't do.
Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012):
Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013):
Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen bridge -
A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’)
The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
Phil Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men.”
This is not obfuscation. This is one of your colonels 'goofing off' in the middle of an operation to shorten the war...
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USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams were responsible for planning MARKET after throwing out key features of Browning and Montgomery's original proposal that was approved by Eisenhower on 10 September, so make sure you blame the right people. Montgomery's 21st Army Group were not informed of the changes until after it was too late to protest them. Brereton insisted that the air plan not be changed after 12 September, and Browning knew if he protested he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway after he had previously threatened to resign over Brereton's operation LINNET II plan. If Montgomery had intervened in MARKET, Brereton would have likely pulled the plug.
And yes, 36 hours would have made all the difference, because even under the fragile MARKET plan Gavin had instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen bridge, which Lindquist failed to do and imposed a 36-hour delay while the bridges were fought over, and Browning's proposed drop zones for the 101st south of Son and Eindhoven to assist taking the bridges at Son, Eindhoven, and a small bridge at Aalst, could have achieved the link-up with XXX Corps 24 hours earlier, which means getting bridging equipment to Son 24 hours earlier, which means getting XXX Corps to Nijmegen 24 hours earlier...
Are you starting to get the picture?
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@johnlucas8479 - "If Montgomery was not happy with Market Plan he should have either cancel the operation as he cancel Operation Comet or postpose the operation to enable changes to be made to the Market Plan." - with the benefit of hindsight a 24-hour delay might have benefitted 1st Airborne at Arnhem because of the movement of the Hohenstaufen division back to Germany, but that aside it was better to go sooner than later because of the increasing German build-up on the river and canal defence lines - which Allied intelligence were certainly aware of. You can't keep cancelling the Arnhem operation until Patton gets to Berlin or I'll start to suspect that's what you’d like to see by your comments.
Brereton had pulled the plug on previous airborne operations because he had the authority to do so, which only leaves Montgomery the option of passing the decision to Eisenhower for adjudication, and as James Daly argues in his book (Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, 2024) it's quite likely he would consult his air commander, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery, and he would back Brereton. Montgomery's proposal to use an American airborne division (the British were committed to COMET at the time) to land on the island of Walcheren (operation INFATUATE) was immediately rejected by Brereton on grounds of Flak and a fear his airmen would drop American paratroopers into the North Sea and drown them, but it's also suspected he just didn't want to help Montgomery (actually the Canadians) open Antwerp.
“Because Market could not proceed without Garden, but Garden could proceed without Market.” – I think you have that completely wrong. The airborne operation was necessary to seize the bridges quickly before they could be demolished. Clearly that cannot be done by ground forces alone over such unfavourable terrain.
“Remember Montgomery deferred the discussion on the 101st Landing Zones to Dempsey. It was Dempsey that approve the change in 101st Drop Zones.” – what’s your source for that? Poulussen (Little Sense of Urgency, 2014) has the cable Taylor sent to Dempsey informing him (not seeking agreement) that Williams refused any drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal (Son) because of Flak around Eindhoven. If Dempsey or Montgomery objected, we’re back to square one again (see above). You say “approved” – did Dempsey have any choice? You should remember that if an American Major General (Williams) does not want to risk his men to Flak, then a more senior British Lieutenant General (Dempsey) cannot compel him to because military discipline does not cross international lines, even in an alliance. Dempsey would have to appeal to Montgomery, and he to Eisenhower, and that’s why we’re always back to square one again.
“Browning and Montgomery proposal to Eisenhower was based on Operation Linnet because it included the 3 Divisions in the plan. Operation Linnet plan did not include a Coupe De main.” – bonkers! Proposed operation SIXTEEN was an upgrade to COMET generated by British I Airborne Corps and not Brereton’s FAAA staff (FAAA only had nine operations on its books at the time, as pointed out by Roger Cirillo in his thesis on The Market Garden Campaign, 2001 Cranfield University). COMET had glider coups de main assaults, and SIXTEEN proposed adding the two US divisions at Nijmegen and Eindhoven. It was Brereton that recycled the LINNET air plan for MARKET because it had already worked out the details for carrying three divisions, which is fair enough, but there was no reason he needed to delete the glider assaults because they were drawn from exclusively British resources – tugs, gliders, pilots, and troops.
Brereton (and/or Williams) deleted them on the grounds that it was “too risky” for broad daylight raids, but they were only broad daylight after they had decided to conduct all flights in daylight from take-off to landing, and this had also forced the deletion of two airlifts per day. This was the first time an airborne operation had all daylight flights and you have to ask why make such a decision, since it was such an arbitrary one? I suspect it was to remove the glider coups de main assaults, because Brereton did not like the idea of British glider troops seizing the 82nd Airborne’s prime targets for them. In 1944, the Nijmegen bridge was the largest single span bridge in Europe, and the Grave bridge was the longest multi-span bridge in Europe. Brereton and his air force backers wanted favourable headlines for the folks back home. In other words, the Americans let ego get the better of them, which is probably why they are always so quick to stick Montgomery with the same charge when all the evidence points the other way.
Your details on the Sun, Moon, and the weather are very nice, but they ignore the fact that COMET was taking off at night for a dawn arrival over the target, and SIXTEEN only expanded on the same basic plan. The timings would have to be altered slightly to allow for it being seven days later in the season, but these are only adjustments. The navigation for the coup de main gliders was to be achieved by releasing the gliders as they crossed each river – Maas, Waal, Rijn, as recognisable waypoints, and then the gliders turn right and follow the rivers to the targets. The map showing these tracks for COMET are in Daly (op cit 2024). This was certainly going ahead for COMET – in fact the operation was only cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft because of the intelligence picture on the ground between Nijmegen and Arnhem, and not because of the weather. The plan for the second lift was for an afternoon flight to arrive before dark, with an option to delay to the following morning:
0145 – coup de main parties emplane
0240 – glider 1st lift emplanes
0315 – parachute 1st lift emplanes
0427 – coup de main gliders RV over landing zone at 6,000ft
0430 – coup de main parties land at targets
0715 – glider 1st lift landings begin
0730 – parachute 1st lift drops
1400 – parachute 2nd lift emplanes
1745 – parachute 2nd lift drops
(Daly, op cit 2024, COMET schedule as of 6 September for 8 September D-Day)
The postponements to 9 and 10 September advised adjustments to timings, but this was still the basic plan. Making an arbitrary decision to take-off and land all flights in daylight, as Brereton and Williams did for MARKET, made this sort of delivery impossible for the perfectly reasonable reasons explained by Ritchie, which I understand, but it’s hard to understand why they made a decision they didn’t have to unless it was driven by another, non-technical, motive. The Americans wanted to fly their own planes their own way, and there was nothing British commanders could do about it. I think it has more to do with the US Airborne not having an assault glider capability, which they didn’t want to admit to, and they wanted a success with minimal casualties to demonstrate US dominance of the “air weapon” in the post-war era (certainly an objective of Brereton and his air force backers in Washington) and MARKET was seen as an opportunity to help achieve this.
Based on the current available information, I still believe MARKET GARDEN was compromised in the planning by politics within 1st Allied Airborne Army and on the ground by politics within 82nd Airborne Division, and that's where we stand today, until and unless more information becomes available that changes my view.
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It's been a long time since I read Frost's book, A Drop Too Many, but I don't recall him blaming Browning. I'm sure Frost was aware (at least after the war) that MARKET was planned by Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army and it compromised on Browning's original COMET plan. I am sure that Frost did correctly point out that the American failure to secure the unfended Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day was the unforced error that compromised the operation on the ground. Browning could not object to the planning changes because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's operation LINNET II plan (Liege-Maastricht bridges) having too short notice to print and distribute maps, but LINNET II was cancelled before Brereton could accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ. Browning could hardly threaten to resign again over MARKET because he knew what would happen, and instead moved up his British I Airborne Corps transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift to Groesbeek instead, hoping to influence events once on the ground - although he gets criticised for that as well.
The "Hitlerjugend and old men on bikes" was specific intelligence on the SS training battalion and the local security battalion at Arnhem, and it was absolutley correct:
SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, aka 'Bataillon Krafft' after the commander Sepp Krafft, was a half-battalion withdrawn from the Dutch coastal defences to their depot at Arnhem as a reserve for the river Waal defence line with just a couple of companies (2 and 4.Kompanie) finishing training some Hitler Youth recruits for 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend'. SS divisions had to share training units and the battalion had just changed its designation from '12' to '16' in preparation to receive another 1,600 new recruits from Germany for training as replacements for 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Reichsführer-SS' when the airborne attack landed. The two companies were unfortunately camped near the British landing zones at Oosterbeek to protect Model's Heeresgruppe B headquarters instead of in their bombed barracks in Arnhem, and therefore did the most to delay the movement of 1st Parachute Brigade into Arnhem on the first day.
Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908 was a security unit comprised of WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for combat duty in 1914-18, and after being displaced from its posting near Lille in northern France by the Allied advance, was transferred to Arnhem in the Netherlands and attached to Sicherungs-Regiment 26 as its fourth battalion. It had companies deployed to guard the river Ijssel bridges at Doesburg (1.Kompanie), Westervoort in eastern Arnhem (4.schwere-Kompanie), and to protect Deelen airfield (2-3.Kompanien). This unit probably also provided the 25-man bridge guard on the Arnhem highway bridge, and the only other part in contact with 1st Airborne Division seems to be the 2.Kompanie at Oosterbeek.
The II.SS-Panzerkorps refitting in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions were known to be there and was the reason Montgomery cancelled Browning's operation COMET, because he realised it would not be strong enough to deal with them, and proposed the upgraded operation to Eisenhower by adding the two American divisions to create MARKET. This allowed British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade to concentrate at Arnhem, as they had superior anti-tank gun resources capable of dealing with the armoured threat. American airborne units had more field artillery in their establishments, and were therefore suited to hold the corridor from Eindhoven to Nijmegen.
The operation did not fail because of a fault in intelligence, although the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had not been identified and was feared may be in the Nijmegen barracks and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve on the other side of the Reichswald forest in Germany. This clearly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, but he dismissed a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge and assigned the 508th PIR to the critical Nijmegen mission. The 508th's commander, Colonel Lindquist, had not performed well in Normandy, but Gavin chose to assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th to guard against the Reichswald sector of his divisional perimeter. Gavin had instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen bridge after landing. Lindquist failed to do this, believing he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives on the Groesbeek ridge first, despite receiving a personal report from the Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left just a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the bridge. This allowed elements of 10.SS-Panzer-Division from as far as Beekbergen (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 on temporary attachment) and Vorden (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 aka Kampfgruppe Reinhold) to move into Nijmegen and reinforce the bridges.
MARKET GARDEN was compromised by American politics in 1st Allied Airborne Army and 82nd Airborne Division. Blaming Browning and Montgomery is a deflection, and the blame for that probably originates in popular discourse from Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974). Gavin told Ryan he and Ridgway (82nd commander in Normandy) didn't trust Lindquist and about his instructing Lindquist to seize the Nijmegen bridge before take-off, but he didn't follow this up in his research, preferring to implicate British commanders instead. Cornelius Ryan was a newspaper journalist from Dublin and was working for the Daily Telegraph in London as a war correspondent embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army in Europe. There are no finer colleges of anti-Montgomery military philosophy than Dublin and Patton, so you can draw your own conclusions as to any bias he may have had.
I am truly sorry that American politics compromised an operation that would have liberated a more substantial area of your country in September 1944, although all the troops involved fought bravely. Browning above all was very troubled by the failure of MARKET GARDEN, but as a gentleman wouldn't blame any of the officers under his command. I don't know if you're aware of it, but the aerial photo showing German armour in the Arnhem area dismissed by Browning has been located in a Dutch government archive in 2015 (the RAF donated all their photos after the war to help with reconstruction) and the image does appear to show older obsolete models of German tanks. The unit owning the vehicles has been identified as the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' and were camped at Wolfswinkel near Son on the day of the landings, where they were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft while trying to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne Division) on Sonsche Heide. On September 12 they had been photographed by RAF Spitfire at a supply dump near Deelen airfield undergoing maintenance, after breaking down on a road march to Belgium - they never made it.
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@thevillaaston7811 - hey, I got my first Dutch langauge book! Een andere kijk op de slag om Arnhem - De snelle Duitse reactie (Another view of the battle of Arnhem - The quick German reaction) by Peter Berends (2002), as it seemed to be a source for the name Kampfgruppe Henke at Nijmegen - there's no mention of Oberst Henke (possibly meaning Hencke, Friedrich) in the US 82nd Airborne G-2 intelligence reports generated from prisoner interrogations and captured documents. It was always Hartung as the commander of the local defence in Nijmegen. There seems to be a lot of confusion and possible conflation between Fallschirm-Lehrstab 1 (aka Fallschirm-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 1), which had a few survivors from France in the Groesbeek area (confirmed by POWs) and Oberst Hartung's Lehrstabes für Offizierausbildung des Fallschirm-A.O.K., located at the NEBO monastery with the intent of establishing a parachute school (Hartung confirmed by document). According to the narrative, Henke was put in charge of the Nijmegen bridgehead south of the Waal, and Hartung relocated north to Lent and had militia and flak units under command on the north bank.
It appears Peter Berends' own source for much of his information on the Germans at Nijmegen is Heinz Harmel and a document he wrote after the war for the US Foreign Military Studies series, specifically P-163 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsberg" Jun - Nov 1944. I've made some enquiries about getting hold of a copy, but it doesn't look like it's going to be easy. I've just had a reply from one professional document provider who says he doesn't have any details on the document beside the fact it hasn't been translated (which is good, because that process can introduce errors), but without a page count can't give me an estimate on cost.
I have learned a few bits and pieces from the book about German command posts in the Arnhem area - I was always curious about the unit flags planted in the Velp area after the landings, and it appears the Hotel Beekhuizen was used initially by 9.SS-Panzer (later moved to Kussin's Feldkommandantur 642 at Villa Heselburgh in Arnhem) and 10.SS-Panzer (later Kasteel Doornenburg), and also by II.SS-Panzerkorps (later Huis Lathum). Also, the Kasteel Biljoen estate was used as a depot for the 9.SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 and other armoured units. I suspected these were prime targets for the Germans - they always snaffled the best digs, but it's nice to get specifics confirmed.
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@johnlucas8479 - is that a direct quote (‘The Groesbeek Heights. Nijmegen Bridge later.’) or Frost's interpretation based on the post-war conflation of events to explain why the Nijmegen bridge was not taken? Surely it's better to get the contemporary witness accounts, which McManus and Nordyke have done. Was Frost at the Corps briefing when the division commanders were given their instructions? I think not.
According to McManus (September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, 2012 Chapter 3):
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- I find this account and analysis of the bridge versus ridge debate to be faultless in its logic (aside the mention of Berlin, which is not appropriate since Montgomery had lost that argument on 10 September to Eisenhower's intent to envelop the Ruhr with British 2nd and US 1st Armies). I'm guessing that Browning's post-war support for Gavin was based on him not having anything in writing from Gavin that confirmed he instructed Lindquist to go for the bridge immediately with his 1st Battalion and all the witnesses were American who came forward sometime later, presumably after Gavin and Lindquist had both passed and they felt they could speak out more freely.
Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), Chapter 9:
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Nordyke (op cit), Chapter 10:
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
- This story did not come out immediately after the war when the senior commanders wrote thier books, and it seems to me that witnesses like Jack Norton and Chet Graham stayed silent until the more senior people like Gavin and Lindquist had passed on. This is the second cut at getting the history right.
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To clarify, the forest that was reported to contain German armour was the Reichswald south of Nijmegen and on the border in Germany. There was also a reconnaissance Spitfire flight that photographed a few tanks in the Deelerwoud north of Arnhem near Deelen airfield on 12 September, which was a flight to confirm Dutch resistance reports of armour near Arnhem.
The first reports of armour in the Reichswald came from Dutch resistance reports during the planning for operation COMET, set for 8 Septemeber and then postponed twice to 9 then 10 September. It started a silly rumour that 1000 tanks could be hiding in the Reichswald, but it was estimated that Model only had 50-100 operational panzers at the time, and we now know he had exactly 84 operational panzers in his Army Group B in the 5 September returns.
COMET was cancelled because of this report and the strong resistance in the immediate 2nd Army front south of Eindhoven, and Montgomery realised one airborne division landing at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave was not strong enough to deal with the opposition. It was decided to upgrade COMET by adding two more airborne divisions, so the 1st Airborne could concentrate at Arnhem, the 82nd would take Nijmegen-Grave, and the 101st would secure the corridor from Valkenswaard to Uden in order to facilitate a rapid advance from Belgium to Nijmegen and Arnhem. The drop zones near Valkenswaard and Uden were later deleted, with the 101st now landing between Son and Veghel.
Around this time, more Dutch reports were received of German SS units moving into billets in the Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Ruurlo areas, with the vehicle insignia of the 'Hohenstaufen' Division (9.SS-Panzer) positively identified, and 'Ultra' code intercepts revealed that II.SS-Panzerkorps had been ordered to refit in the eastern Netherlands. By 16 September, the day before MARKET GARDEN began, the assessment was that there was an SS panzer Division northeast of Arnhem and another possibly in the Nijmegen barracks, both reduced to regimental battlegroups in strength with few if any tanks, and that they were probably drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald, which could be used as a tank storage area.
By 1830 hours on the first day, Gavin was told there were no German troops in the Reichswald and the tree density too great for armoured operations. We also now know that resistance at Arnhem was much greater than anticipated. It was only in 1966 that Gavin realised from the papers of Dutch researcher T.A. Boeree that he forwarded to Cornelius Ryan, the author of A Bridge Too Far (1974), that Boeree had tracked the 'Hohenstaufen' SS panzer division from its crossing of the Maas at Maastricht on 4 September and concentrating near Sittard, before receiving orders on 8 September to move north to Arnhem and the Veluwe region to refit. It was now clear to him that the route was through Nijmegen after a stop in the Reichswald, and this had generated the reports, but now understood it was the 'Hohenstaufen' division in transit to Arnhem.
When COMET was cancelled on 10 September, and MARKET was proposed to replace it, Gavin was given a warning order he was assigned to Nijmegen, so he immediately went to 1st Airborne HQ to get the latest intelligence they had on the area and see the plans they had prepared for COMET. He saw the reports of German armour in the Reichswald and what 1st Airborne were doing to deal with it before COMET was cancelled, and this information informed his own divisional plan for MARKET.
The decision to refit the II.SS-Panzerkorps in the Netherlands was probably connected with Model's plans for a counter-offensive to retake Antwerp from the Netherlands, planned to take place in October or November. This explains why he refused to give permission to blow the main bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen, even after the airborne attack had begun, he still thought he would need them for his counter-offensive. Eventually the counter-offensive was delayed to December and re-routed through the Ardennes, and both 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were involved after being refitted, although only SS-Artillerie-Regiment 10 of the 'Frundsberg' was involved.
A brief word about the tanks in the Deelerwoud: these were believed by Browning's intelligence officer to confirm reports of SS panzer units near Arnhem and used in Cornelius Ryan's book, becoming an infamous scene in the film adaptation, but when the missing photos were located in a Dutch archive in 2015 it was found they showed older obsolete models of tanks as Browning had dismissed them. They had indeed broken down while ordered to Belgium and most of them did not make the journey. The unit was identified as a reserve panzer unit belonging to the training regiment of the Luftwaffe 'Hermann Göring' Panzer-Division and the tanks were camped near the 101st Airborne 506th PIR drop zone near Son on 17 September and attacked by escorting fighter aircraft. The RAF study of the found photo was published by Dr Sebastian Ritchie of the RAF Air Historical Branch in - Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story - you can find it as a free download from the RAF MoD website on their Thematic Studies page.
The papers of T.A. Boeree and Gavin's covering letter to Cornelius Ryan are in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online under A Bridge Too Far, box 101 folder 09 James Gavin (covering letter is page 48).
Hope this helps.
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25:41 - the Dutch resistance reported SS panzer troops moving into towns and villages over a wide area of the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east banks of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only positively identified vehicles bearing the 'H' insignia of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'. They had also identified (Kasteel - castle) Ruurlo as a divisional headquarters, but not which division it belonged to. So it's technically incorrect to say the resistance had located the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg', because although they had located SS troops in the Achterhoek and their HQ at Ruurlo, they didn't know it was the Frundsberg. They also didn't know the 'Hohenstaufen' Division HQ was at Beekbergen, near Apeldoorn, and that the River Ijssel was the interdivisional boundary between the two divisions.
That was the reason the intelligence picture at Nijmegen was an unknown, because the estimate was that the II.SS-Panzerkorps were refitting by drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald (it was actually near Münster), starting the silly rumour there could be 1,000 tanks hidden in the forest. Because the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' had not been identified by the Dutch resistance, Gavin was warned that Nijmegen may have "a regiment of SS" (the estimated reduced strength of both divisions) in the excellent Dutch army barracks facilities in Nijmegen, and these could obviously be alerted by the airborne landings and quickly man a defence line on the Groesbeek ridge to deny Gavin access to the bridges.
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@nickdanger3802 - so let's recap:
For operation COMET, Browning had planned for the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, to be seized by a dawn glider coup de main assault, repeating the success of operation DEADSTICK in Normandy on the Orne canal bridge, now renamed 'Pegasus Bridge'.
Browning even cabled General Miles Dempsey of British 2nd Army that COMET should not go ahead without these glider coup de main assaults to secure the bridges.
COMET is cancelled by Montgomery at 0200 hrs on 10 September, as troops were about to board their aircraft, because Montgomery had received information that II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the eastern Netherlands and COMET was not strong enough to deal with them. Later that day in a scheduled meeting with Eisenhower, Montgomery proposed an upgraded operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN) by adding the two American divisions. This would enable 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade with their superior anti-tank gun resources to be concentrated where the armoured threat was considered to be greatest, eventually determined to be at Arnhem.
Eisenhower enthusiastically endorsed the idea and planning for the airborne component of the operation was handed over to General Lewis Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army, as it now involved all of its units and not just the British and Polish. Brereton used his previous three-division air plans for LINNET and LINNET II combined with COMET's objectives to create operation MARKET. However, COMET's double airlift on D-Day is scrapped due to a shortage of night-trained navigators in General Paul Williams' US IX Troop Carrier Command, and the glider coup de main assaults were also deleted as they were considered too risky in broad daylight.
Browning is unable to object as he had already previously threatened to resign over Brereton's plan for LINNET II (Liege and Maastricht bridges) being scheduled on too short notice to allow maps to be printed and distributed to the airborne troops. The operation was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident before Brereton had a chance to put into effect his intention to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy, and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for the operation. Browning was now politically neutralised and could do nothing to influence MARKET except move the transport of his I Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek to the 1st airlift and try to influence events once he was on the ground.
Gavin makes his divisional plan, first toying with a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge, but eventually dismissing this because of his experience at the hands of the Troop Carriers in Sicily. He assigns the Nijmegen mission to the 508th, which had command problems in Normandy and was not well led, instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, which was assigned to the Reichswald sector of the divisional perimeter.
In the pre-flight divisional briefing, Gavin instructs Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing.
Lindquist fails to interpret his instructions correctly and after securing the initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge with all three battalions against zero opposition, sends only a pre-planned recon patrol based on a platoon from 'C' Company and led by the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section to the bridge, despite getting a personal briefing from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees at the initial objective, telling him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarded the highway bridge.
The patrol gets split up in the streets of Nijmegen and the crowds of jubilant Dutch civilians, and only the three-man point team from the S-2 Section under PFC Joe Atkins pushes through the crowds and reaches the southern end of the highway bridge, surprising and taking seven German prisoners without firing a shot. They wait an hour until dark, and after nobody has shown up to reinforce them, decide to release their prisoners and withdraw. As they leave, they can hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge.
Now that we know this, we know that Browning was right about the Nijmegen bridge - "we should have beaten the Boche to it quite easily." And we know that the failure was a chain of mistakes made by Brereton, Gavin, and Lindquist.
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Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR failed to "move with speed" on the virtually undefended Nijmegen bridge after landing as Gavin had instructed in the divisional briefing in England, and after being told by resistance leader Geert van Hees, the Germans had deserted the city and the bridge was guarded by an NCO and seventeen men. The blame falls on Lindquist, the responsibility as his supervisor on Gavin. Browning actually had nothing to do with any of this until the blame game started when Cornelius Ryan started researching his book in 1967, two years after Browning had already passed, but failed to unearth the true story or put it in A Bridge Too Far.
TIK didn't drill down to a regimental level history, so I refer you to 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), chapters 9 and 10 on the planning and execution of operation Market, but for context on the why it happened I refer to the earlier chapters on the 508th's first combat operation in Normandy. Lindquist was a gifted administrator and S-1 to the US Airborne forces early in the war, but he proved to be a poor combat leader. In Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan, he told Ryan that 82nd commander in Normandy Matthew Ridgway did not trust Lindquist and refused to promote him. In fact he couldn't promote any colonel in the division to XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944 because Lindquist had seniority. Gavin had inherited this problem, didn't mitigate it by assigning the more experienced and aggressive 505th to the Nijmegen mission, and also failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander (possibly because he had the same promotion dilemma as Ridgway), so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs during the planning and execution of Market Garden.
I would suggest this was not a satisfactory state of affairs, but Gavin's divisional plan was perfectly workable and would have succeeded except for the choice of regimental assignments, which was because of an internal personnel matter that I doubt Browning would have been aware of.
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I wonder if this fits with your grandfather's recollections? Pieced together from several books and the online forum discussions between the armour research experts, I established what I believe is the position on 17 September:
SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 at Saksen-Weimar kazerne in Arnhem with an alarm kompanie of 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry and the Werkstatt Kompanie.
5 tanks: 3 Panthers and 2 Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' had been removed from the barracks by Friday 15 September and hidden under trees on Heijenoordseweg. According to the Dutch resident of the house on the corner of Callunastraat, who received a knock on the door on Friday morning by SS panzer crewmen asking for spare milk, they explained they were taken out of barracks to avoid any bombing.
All other tanks in the Hohenstaufen were handed over to the Frundsberg, in preparation for the Hohenstaufen to be refitted in Germany.
Two Panthers were knocked out in the western suburbs of Arnhem by B Company of 3rd Parachute Battalion on 19 September using a Gammon bomb and a PIAT, while the third survived to participate in the siege of Oosterbeek. The Möbelwagen were well documented and photographed in action on the Dreyenscheweg in Oosterbeek against 4th Parachute Brigade.
SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Huis 't Medler, Vorden.
I.Abteilung was still in Grafenwöhr in Germany, training with just 8 Panthers until receiving all their tanks and deployed in January 1945 for the 'Nordwind' counter-offensive in Alsace-Lorraine. In 1944 they continually received new tanks, only for them to be reassigned as replacements for units fighting in Normandy, hampering training.
II.Abteilung at the Klooster (monastery) Kranenburg, near Vorden:
5.Kompanie - 16* x Panzer IV
6.Kompanie - logistics troops acting as infantry
7.Kompanie - 4 x StuG IIIG
During the battle of Arnhem, Model arranged for the next 20 Panthers to be delivered direct from the factory in a batch of 8 and another of 12. They were crewed by the 100 de-horsed Panther crewmen of the Hohenstaufen and transferred to SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 as their 8.Kompanie.
The II.Abteilung was known as Kampfgruppe Reinhold and ordered to Nijmegen, but the Arnhem bridge was blocked by 1st Parachute Brigade and the Huissen ferry scuttled by the Dutch ferryman after being used by Panzergrenadier Kampfgruppe Euling, so the ferry at Pannerden was to be used. The Mark IV panzers were too heavy for the ferry, according to Harmel the first tank slipped off the raft into the river, so only the 4 StuG managed to cross to the island and into Nijmegen. One was lost in Nijmegen and the others withdrew to the island and deployed in the Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel blocking line after the Nijmegen bridges were lost.
*I had no idea how many of the reported 16 Mark IV panzers officially on strength and concentrated in Hans Quandel's 5.Kompanie were operational to start with, but we do know that according to British prisoners taken after the Arnhem bridge was retaken, the Boulevard Heuvelink leading to the bridge had a long line of Mark IV tanks as far as the eye could see were parked under the trees lining the boulevard and were told they were going to be used against them in the morning if they had not surrendered. They were clearly destined to be used against XXX Corps and held back until the Arnhem bridge was cleared, because they were expected by Reinhold to be in Nijmegen.
If 14 were undergoing repair and 2 were running, that would add up?
Sources:
James Sims, Arnhem Spearhead: A Private Soldier's Story (1977).
Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell, Retake Arnhem Bridge: An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 (2010).
Dieter Stenger, Panzers East and West: The German 10th SS Panzer Division from the Eastern Front to Normandy (2017).
Christer Bergström, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vol 1 and 2 (2019, 2020).
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I think there's a lot of fog in your post, but there's plenty of sources to clarify what happened:
Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist of 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge in the final divisional briefing. Lindquist misinterpreted the instruction and thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives before sending any large force to the bridge, so he had pre-planned a recon patrol based on Lt Robert Weaver's 3rd Platoon of C Company to be sent by 1st Battalion instead, despite the fact he was met at the initital objective by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left just a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the bridge. When Gavin found out the battalion wasn't moving he went directly to the 508th CP and ordered Lindquist to get them moving. It took two hours to get A and B Companies out of their extended positions along the Groesbeek ridge and assemble for a move they were not expecting. The move was far too late and they bumped SS panzer troops in the city that had moved in and reinforced the bridges.
Gavin's letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover dated 17 July 1945 stating he gave this instruction in the final briefing is reproduced on page 11 of RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011).
Gavin reiterated the claim in his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), and Ryan's notes can be found in Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967.
The best analysis on the whole question of priorities between bridge and ridge is in September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), who has first hand accounts from Division G-3 (Operations) officer Jack Norton, who was present in the final briefing and confirmed Gavin's instruction.
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), has another witness to the final briefing in the 508th's liaison officer, Chester 'Chet' Graham, who recalled - "Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important... to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." It was also Chet Graham that informed Gavin the regiment was not moving on the bridge - "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
What happened to the recon patrol? They got split up in the crowds of cheering Dutch civilians and took a wrong turn, losing the three man point team from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section. The point team under PFC Joe Atkins pushed through the crowds and reached the south end of the highway bridge, surprised the seven German guards there and took them prisoner without firing a shot. They then waited an hour until it got dark for the rest of the patrol to show up before deciding they could not hold the bridge from a counter-attack and withdrew. As they left they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other side (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge). McManus (op cit 2012) also mentions Atkins' patrol to the bridge and adds that they too got lost trying to get back to the battalion. Weaver eventually found a Dutch resistance guide, too late to reach the bridge before it had been reinforced by the SS troops, and withdrew after taking casualties and received a radio message that battalion was on the way with two companies.
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@johnlucas8479 - I'm aware of it and surprised you missed the misleading part of Borough's narrative - remember this is not a first hand account as Boroughs himself was in the Demolition Platoon manning a 2nd Battalion roadblock at De Hut - where he says "Leaving C Company at De Ploeg, A and B companies began marching toward the Nijmegen Bridge. A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen Bridge during daylight hours."
Those two statements should be reversed, because the Weaver patrol that included the S-2 Section was launched immediately the 1st Battalion and Regiment HQ reached De Ploeg at 1830 hrs, and Gavin's intervention was before the order was finally given by Lindquist to Warren to move the battalion into town at 2000 hrs. It took an hour for A Company to be brought out and assembled on the road. They marched to the Initial Point (IP), which was the Krayenhoff barracks on the Groesbeek-Njmegen road, where they waited until 2200 hrs for B Company to catch up. They took even longer to come out of the line because it was extended along the ridge line where it contacted 3rd Battalion at Berg-end-Dal. They decided they couldn't wait any longer and A Company led the Battalion HQ and HQ Company into Nijmegen.
Atkins' account is fascinating in and of itself, but the overall narrative and context for his account is best constructed from a combination of McManus (September Hope, 2012) and Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012):
Nordyke, chapter 10:
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
(Nordyke, 2012)
McManus (2012) has some first hand accounts from Weaver's platoon and fills in the blanks on what happened to them after losing contact with Atkins' point team. He also has an SCR-300 radio and operator from battalion to enable him to report back on the condition of the bridge, but it appears the ranges were reduced by similar problems the British experienced at Arnhem. After dark, he managed to obtain a Dutch resistance guide and attempted to reach the bridge, but they bumped German patrols and took casualties. The timing would suggest it was after Atkins had already withdrawn from the bridge when it got dark (McManus says he then got lost as well!) and SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 had arrived. When Weaver took shelter to deal with his casualties he was finally able to make contact with battalion over the radio and was told two companies were on the way to the bridge, so he decided to withdraw and return to C Company at De Ploeg.
It seems logical to me that the reason the radio started working was because the battalion was moving into town and the range had decreased to Weaver's position and they were able to re-establish contact. It also makes sense in terms of the timings of their relative movements. The 1st Battalion's contact with opposition at the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle near the railway station was around midnight.
It all supports the logical narrative that Atkins went directly to the bridge from De Ploeg after 1830 hrs, got there, waited an hour until it got dark (2000 hrs?) and then withdrew when nobody else showed up. Warren was ordered at 2000 hrs to move the battalion after Gavin's intervention ("I told you to move with speed") and waited at the IP until 2200 hrs for B Company and then moved off without them. Weaver's guided attempt to reach the bridge failed, taking casualties, he was told two companies were moving in and decided to withdraw. At around midnight the Battalion with A and B Companies bumped opposition at Keizer Karelplein and eventually had to withdraw. Ergo, if the battalion had moved directly to the bridge as Gavin had instructed instead of just the patrol, they would have secured it an hour before Gräbner's battalion arrived. Atkins has quite conveniently proved what was possible without firing a shot, so we don't have to engage in a 'what-if' speculation, the variables are known and feasibility demonstrated.
I also have the bizarre account of British Lieutenant Eustace McNaught, the Troop commander of Z Troop, 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery, whose glider landed short of the LZ near Zetten on the 'island' and decided to take three men in his Jeep try to rendezvous with the Reconnaissance Squadron at the Arnhem bridge. As he approached the bridge he saw armoured vehicles coming towards them and realised they must be German, so he turned around and headed for Nijmegen, where he knew the Americans would be. They reached the Nijmegen bridge as it was getting dark and carefully drove over the bridge, but were surprised to be completely unchallenged until they got into town and were stopped by some civilians, who told them the Germans were coming and hid them in a monastery until the city was liberated. He was quite angry at the situation and said the bridge was "a lost opportunity."
'A Lost Opportunity' - 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem - Battery Z Troop, Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2022).
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Browning's Corps headquarters did not have clearance for 'Ultra' intelligence on II.SS-Panzerkorps, which was severely degraded by British units in Normandy and known to be regimental battelgroups in strength with few if any tanks, and his dismissal of a photograph of obsolete tanks near Arnhem has recently been proven to be the correct call when the photograph resurfaced in a Dutch government archive and studied.
He did not ignore the planning errors because the planning errors were compromises imposed by General Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command and backed by General Lewis Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army. If Browning had threatened to resign again as he had over Linnet II, his resignation would have been accepted.
The great loss of fine allied soldiers was not due to poor planning, but for an unforced blunder to not even follow the divisional plan at Nijmegen. The 508th PIR was instructed by 82nd Division commander Gavin to "move with speed" on the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as possible after landing. Despite being told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted the city and left only an NCO and seventeen men to guard the bridge, the Regiment CO chose instead to send a pre-planned recon patrol into the city. Only three Scouts on point duty reached the bridge without getting lost and took seven prisoners by surprise at the southern end of the bridge. They waited an hour until dark for the rest of the patrol that failed to arrive and then had to withdraw, hearing "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge as they left.
The 36-hour delay imposed by the Guards Armoured Division having to assist in the final capture of the Nijmegen bridges sealed the fate of the 1st Airborne Division, the bridge at Arnhem, and the entire operation.
Sources:
RG Poulussen, Lost At Nijmegen (2011).
Phil Nordyke, Put Us Down In Hell: A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012).
John McManus, September Hope: The American Side of Bridge Too Far (2012).
Zig Boroughs, The 508th Connection (2013), chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge.
Sebastian Ritchie, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019).
Christer Bergström, Arnhem: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020).
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Richard Mead wrote the first biography of Frederick Browning, but it's first published as recently as 2010. I haven't read it and should probably consider it since reviewers in the Brazillian jungle say it has a lot on Market Garden and the negative reviews come from people who still seem wedded to the conventional narrative (and they are legion) that it was all his and Montgomery's fault. Deeper investigation tends to go the other way.
In answer to another post I suggested that Gavin did not want to throw 508th PIR commander Roy Lindquist under the bus and accepted that the repsonsibility was his if one of his regimental commanders did not follow his divisional plan. The politics of it is complex and goes back to Normandy and an issue not fully resolved by then division commander Matthew Ridgway. Gavin inherited the division from Ridgway when the latter was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps. In TIK's video on whether Gavin was to blame, he cites a correspondence from Browning that seems to support Gavin's claim that he de-prioritised the bridge in favour of the high ground that and his Corps commander (Browning) approved it. So it seems Browning was willing to take some of the heat, but it's also a fact that Gavin's role in all of this is unclear and he had muddied the waters post-war.
The first step in investigating this, if you haven't already done so, is to read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). It details from first hand accounts not only the divisional briefing in which Gavin specifically instructed Lindquist to go for the bridge as soon as possible after landing, he actually pointed out to him on a map which route he wanted the 1st battalion to take to the bridge, but also what went wrong when this instruction was not followed on the ground. The book also charts the formation of the regiment, Lindquist's early Airborne career as one of the first officer volunteers and apparently a gifted S-1 admininstration and personnel officer, as well as the command problems during the regiment's first combat operation in Normandy.
I think the answers are in this area, but TIK hasn't drilled down this deep into the regiment, just Gavin and Browning.
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I haven't read Mead, so I appreciate the comment very much.
A couple of things I can help with includes the aerial reconnaissance photo referenced by Browning's Intelligence Officer (I assume the GSO 1 position for Intelligence with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel was unoccupied on Browning's staff as Major Urquhart would have been a GSO 2 and possibly out of his depth at this staff level). The story related by Cornelius Ryan in his book A Bridge Too Far (1974) rested entirely on Brian Urquhart's interview with Ryan as the photo itself was 'lost' and Browning had already passed away and could not defend himself. The photo has since emerged from a Dutch government archive when their records were digitised and put online in 2015. The RAF's aerial photos of the Netherlands were donated after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys.
The photo in question was identified as overlapping Frames 4014 and 4015 taken by an RAF Benson 541 Squadron Spitfire on 12 September over the 'Deelerwoud' near Deelen airfield. Under stereoscopic magnification, the images show a number of Mark III and older (short 7.5cm L24 gun) Mark IV tanks undergoing maintenance (turrets turned and rear engine deck hatches open) at a supply dump near the Fliegerhorst Deelen complex. SInce these older tanks would rule out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, Browning's judgement that they were obsolete and probably unserviceable seems reasonable.
We now know that the tanks belonged to the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment based in Utrecht of the Luftwaffe's only panzer division that was fighting in Poland and named after their sponsor, the Reichsmarschall of the Luftwaffe. They had been ordered south on 7 September, when reserve units were mobilised under the 'Valkyrie' Plan to fight British 2nd Army in Belgium. Most of the tanks broke down, with only three making the journey to join the regiment's II.Abteilung in Hechtel in Belgium, where they were destroyed by the Guards Armoured Division on the same day the breakdowns were photographed, 12 September. The breakdowns, after undergoing repair, had made it as far south as Wolfswinkel, just north of the Zon bridge on the Wilhelmina canal defence line. They were directly opposite the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) drop zone on Sonsche Heide and attempted to interfere with the landings, but were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft.
The RAF's study of the missing aerials is in a free pdf download from the RAF MoD site and is titled 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story' - it is written by Sebastian Ritchie of the Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force) and an abridged version of the findings are incorporated into the 2019 2nd Ed of his book Arnhem: Myth And Reality (2011, 2019).
Secondly, the intel on the Arnhem area turned out to be remarkably accurate, although the II.SS-Panzerkorp's ability to react quickly and effectively was obviously underestimated.
The one area where the intelligence picture was incomplete was the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division itself, because the Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops billeted in towns and villages all over the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only reported a Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia (an 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon), and a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo could not be identified. They had no way of knowing both divisions were there and the River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary.
So it was feared the Frundsberg Division could be located in Nijmegen and drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area, leading to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest could be hiding 1,000 panzers. Gavin was given the sanitised (removing unit identifications obtained by 'Ultra') warning of possibly "a regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the 10.SS-Panzer battlegroup) may be accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities, and the Reichswald might be a tank laager for the depot. In fact, the division was based at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek and the tank depot was near Münster deeper into Germany, but the intelligence warnings certainly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, and by assigning the problematic 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, he had inadvertently created the conditions for the failure of the operation once it was on the ground.
The Groesbeek ridge (the scarp slope, such as it is, lies on the northern side overlooking Nijmegen, and the slip slope is practically flat all the way back to the landing zones) was therefore made the initial objective of the 508th at De Hut (2nd Battalion), De Ploeg (1st) and Berg-en-Dal (3rd), with an instruction to send 1st Battalion directly to the bridge if these were secured (i.e. no resistance). The lack of resistance in Nijmegen was confimed by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who met Colonel Lindquist at De Ploeg, and that the highway bridge was guarded by an NCO and just seventeen men. Lindquist sent only a recon patrol instead of the battalion as Gavin had instructed, losing the race to the bridge to the 10.SS-Panzer-Division despite its remote location at Ruurlo.
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Yes, there was Ultra intelligence placing II.SS-Panzerkorps in the eastern Netherlands and the Luftwaffe codes were a little easier to break, so we knew that the FLIVO (Luftwaffe liaison officer) to Model's Heeresgruppe B had moved into Oosterbeek, so the inference was that Model was there too.
The Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops in various billets over a wide area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, they had identified the 'H' insignia of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' on some vehicles, and also identified Kasteel Ruurlo as hosting a divisional headquarters, but not which division. The Dutch had also established that the German headquarters that had moved into Oosterbeek was an Army Group (Heeresgruppe), but the checkerboard insignia with the border around it identified the level of headquarters, not the identitity of the commander as GenFM Model as shown dramatically in the film A Bridge Too Far.
The important consideration when assessing the inteliigence is that 'Ultra' was top secret and nobody below the rank of an Army commander could know of its existence, so Montgomery (21st Army Group), Dempsey (2nd Army) and Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) would receive Ultra information, but lower commanders at Corps level like Browning (I Airborne Corps) and Horrocks (XXX Corps) would only get a sanitised summary with no indication of the source. It was not unknown for a Corps Commander to be captured. Richard O'Connor was captured by one of Rommel's reconnaissance patrols in North Africa and spent over two years in an Italian POW camp, until the collapse of Mussolini's regime in 1943, and he then escaped. During Market Garden he was in command of XII Corps on the left flank of Horrocks' XXX Corps.
The Dutch resistance groups were very effective as intelligence agencies, because the nature of the landscape precluded partisan activities as in France or Yugoslavia, so intelligence gathering and escape and evasion for aircrews etc., were the main activities. However, the German counter-intel services has penetrated some cells and destroyed them or planted false information, so the British treated their information as unconfirmed unless there was a second source, such as aerial photo reconnaissance. The Americans were less circumspect because they hadn't suffered the bad experiences over four years.
The most up to date assessment available was the SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26 dated 16 September 1944, placing II.SS-Panzerkorps refitting in the eastern Netherlands with both divisions reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength with few if any tanks, and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area. This generated the silly rumour the Reichswald might be hiding up to 1,000 tanks and Gavin was told there might be a regiment of SS troops in the excellent Dutch army barracks in Nijmegen. Neither of these were true, but may have influenced his divisional plan to have the more experienced and aggressive 505th PIR secure his southern flank around Groesbeek and the Reichswald. This unfortunately meant tht the least experienced regiment in his division was given the Nijmegen mission, and although it could have walked into Nijmegen without barely firing a shot, they waited on the Groesbeek heights for a recon patrol to report in before receiving a visit from a very angry Gavin to get a battalion moving on the bridge, far too late.
To put the tank situation into perspective, Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front in September, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400. The 9.SS-Panzer-Regiment had three Panthers at Arnhem, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Regiment had 16* Mark IV panzers and 4 StuG IIIG assault guns at Vorden.
*Another contributor here tells me his grandfather was in the Hohenstaufen and always said they had maybe 14 tanks but only two running at the time of the landings. I think that sounds reasonable and maybe it's 14 plus 2 runners. The Hohenstaufen came out of Normandy with 10+ Mark IV tanks and had to hand them all over to the Frundsberg, who concentrated a total of 16 in their 5.Kompanie and the 4 StuGs in the 7.Kompanie, according to Dieter Stenger's Panzer East and West (2017).
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Yes and no, because the true story is always complex:
The often cited betrayal myth by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands or the Dutch double agent known as 'King Kong' have been thoroughly debunked, because the Germans were almost completely taken by surprise by the airborne attack.
The II.SS-Panzerkorps were located on both banks of the River Ijssel in an area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, with the Ijssel as the inter-divisional boundary. They were located there to reinforce a defence line being constructed along the river, which is the last distributary of the Dutch Rhine before the German border. The 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' on the west bank between Arnhem and Apeldoorn was also in the process of moving to Germany for refit after being ordered to handover vehicles and heavy weapons to the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg'. Neither of these facts would be the case if both divisions had been moved there to meet an expected airborne attack on Arnhem. When the attack did start on 17 September, the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion was being loaded onto rail flat cars at Beekbergen (near Apeldoorn) and had to be unloaded again and have their tracks and guns rerefitted to remove them from an administrative 'in repair' status to avoid handover and back to operational status again.
The only German officer who expected an airborne attack on Arnhem was Luftwaffe Generalmajor Walter Grabmann, the commander of the 3.Jagddivision, a nightfighter command at Deelen airbase just north of Arnhem. When Model moved his Heeresgruppe B headquarters to the suburbs of Oosterbeek, west of Arnhem on Friday 15 September, he was warned by Grabmann over dinner that his headquarters may be vulnerable as the fields and heathlands around Wolfheze to the west were ideal zones for airborne landings. Model dismissed this as unlikely because he felt that he was behind too many river barriers from the front lines to be in any danger.
The only officer present to take Grabmann seriously was SS-Sturmbannführer Sepp Krafft, commander of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, a training depot based in Arnhem since 1940 and recently part withdrawn from the Dutch coast defences to provide a reserve for the River Waal defence line and additional security for Model. Krafft decided that evening to move his two available training companies out of Arnhem to Wolfheze and Oosterbeek. It was this unit that caused so many problems, out of all proportion to its actual strength, to 1st Parachute Brigade in the first vital hours of the operation at Arnhem.
A similar story also involved General Kurt Student of 1.Fallschirm-armee, whose headquarters at Vught was near the crash site of a WACO glider carrying the 101st Airborne Division's liaison officer to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek, and his communications team. Everyone on board was killed, and their failure to arrive was the reason Browning could not communicate with the 101st throughout the operation. The American Captain was carrying documents, not maps and plans as ridiculously shown in the Hollywood film, but including a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne. Student had the documents translated and as the pioneer of Germany's airborne forces immediately understood the sigificance of the schedule, as he could extrapolate the timings of the subsequent airlifts for all three divisions. Model was again famously unconvinced, so Student alerted his own Luftwaffe chain of command to arrange for fighters to be over the drop zones when the airlifts were due. Fortunately, the airlifts were all delayed by weather in England and the fighters were always back in Germany being refuelled when the transports arrived.
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Browning had threatened to resign over a previous operation (Linnet II) and then withdrew the threat when he realised it was taken literally - two countries divided by a common language! He couldn't do the same thing again over Market. But I respectfully take issue with your concept of duty. Surely if your primary duty is to the mission and the men under your command, then resigning your command to be replaced by another officer would be the greatest dereliction of duty?
Browning is criticised for taking up the airlift capacity of 38 aircraft to carry his Corps headquarters to Groesbeek by glider, instead of the aircraft being used to take the second half of the 2nd Battalion South Staffords to Arnhem in the first lift. It sounds a reasonable point, but Browning clearly saw it as his 'duty' to his men to lead them by taking his own headquarters there, and a study of the battle of Arnhem reveals that the role played by the South Staffords would not have changed at all, or significantly alter the outcome of events at Arnhem. The battalion had the task of holding Landing Zone 'S' in Phase 1, which it successfuly completed even at half strength because the zone was never put under any serious pressure from the Germans. It's Phase 2 role after the second lift arrived was to take up positions in the divisional perimeter, and regardless of this mission being abandoned to move into Arnhem to relieve the bridge, the second half of the battalion had arrived in the second lift to join it anyway.
Ironically, actor Dirk Bogarde was faced with a similar situation when he played Browning in A Bridge Too Far. Bogarde was dismayed by the way the script portrayed Browning, who he said he knew personnally from having served during the war as an RAF photo interpreter on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets from aerial photographs, including during Market Garden. Supremely ironic, considering the most controverisal scene involved an aerial photograph of German tanks taken near Arnhem. Bogarde could have turned down the role, but that would mean another actor would have taken it, so Bogarde may have thought he could mitigate the scene as much as possible by playing the character as (by my observation) somewhat conflicted. Nevertheless, Browning's widow was still upset by the film.
Incidentally, that scene relied entirely on Cornelius Ryan's interview with Browning's Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (renamed 'Fuller' in the film), because Browning had already passed two years before Ryan began his research for the book and the photo itself was not available for study after the war until it finally resurfaced in a Dutch government archive when digitised in 2015. The RAF had apparently donated all of its photographs of the Netherlands to the Dutch government after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys. The photo in question was identified as frame 4015 (overlapping with 4014 for stereoscope) and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch. The tanks were determined to be Mark III and early Mark IV models with the short 7.5cm main gun, obsolete vehicles ruling out a 1944 panzer division. Browning had made the right call. The photo study is available as a free pdf document download from the RAF MoD site as 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaaissance Story' (2016, revised 2019) by Sebastian Ritchie. An abridged (excuse me) version of the story appears in the revised edition of Ritchie's book, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019).
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The intel on the Arnhem area turned out to be remarkably accurate, although the II.SS-Panzerkorp's ability to react quickly and effectively was underestimated.
The one area where the intelligence picture was incomplete was the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division itself, because the Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops billeted in towns and villages all over the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only reported a Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia (an 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon), and a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo could not be identified. They had no way of knowing both divisions were there and the River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary.
So it was feared the Frundsberg Division could be located in Nijmegen and drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area, leading to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest could be hiding 1,000 panzers. Gavin was given the sanitised (removing unit identifications obtained by 'Ultra') warning of possibly "a regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the 10.SS-Panzer battlegroup) may be accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities, and the Reichswald might be a tank laager for the depot. In fact, the division was based at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek and the tank depot was near Münster deeper into Germany, but the intelligence warnings certainly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, and by assigning the problematic 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, he had inadvertently created the conditions for the failure of the operation once it was on the ground.
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I really don't understand where all the invective against Montgomery comes from, it's totally irrational. As John says, he didn't plan Market Garden in any detail. He and Browning chose between Arnhem and Wesel for the operation Comet target, based on suitable drop zones and flak we assume, but Dempsey's diary only records that they decided overnight on 3/4 September and advised him of their decision in the morning.
It's speculated that Montgomery won any debate over this, because Browning preferred Wesel, as did Dempsey, but it's thought that after the bad blood with Bradley over (the cancelled) airborne operation Linnet, Montgomery wanted to avoid an axis towards Wesel because that would be close to the US XIX Corps boundary and he didn't fancy the propsect of having to share a Rhine crossing with Bradley! By 9 September he was advised of the V-2 rocket threat from launch sites on the Dutch coast and was asked when can he rope off that general area, so Arnhem was now fixed for a compelling reason. I believe the prospect of also cutting off the 15.Armee west of Antwerp, as well as the bulk of the 1.Fallschirm-armee and the WBN (occupation forces in the Netherlands) was a huge opportunity to kill several birds with one stone.
Also, not only was Model's Heeresgruppe B headquarters at Oosterbeek, west of Arnhem and known because the FLIVO (Luftwaffe liaison officer) known to 'Ultra' intel to be in Oosterbeek (the Luftwaffe codes were more easily broken) and therefore known to all Allied headquarters down to Army level, but I recently found out that Hans Kammler's SS-Division zV headquarters controlling V-2 rocket operations was located at Berg-en-Dal, southeast of Nijmegen on the Groesbeek heights and the initial objective of 3/508th PIR. I have no idea if this was known to Montgomery, but since both headquarters were hurriedly evacuated and almost captured by British and American paratroopers respectively, I do wonder if Montgomery was relishing those prospects as added bonuses?
The failure of Market Garden was not because it was too complicated. When you break it down to individual units, each one had a simple job to do, and there were mulitple redundant bridge targets (a total of 24+ bridges were targets, depending on how you count them), and there were engineering backup plans for each crossing for all the permutations if the bridge was blown, site held by the Allies, site held by the enemy, or the intact bridge still held by the enemy. For example, if the Nijmegen bridges were both intact and held by the enemy in strength, the plan was for a river assault by British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one or two Brigades up - the division that was supposed to lead XXX Corps on the final stage of the advance to Arnhem from Nijmegen in any case. Gavin insisted on his division conducting the river assault because he knew he had already screwed up.
So what went wrong? The 508th PIR was tasked with securing the Groesbeek heights with initial objectives at De Hut, De Ploeg, and Berg-en-Dal, with its three battalions. Gavin's divisional briefing made clear to the 508th CO that he was expected to send his 1st battalion immediately to the highway bridge in Nijmegen, and to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation. This is made clear from 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). Instead of carrying out this instruction, against zero opposition on the heights, and a Dutch resistance report made personally to the Colonel at De Ploeg that Nijmegen had been evacuated by the Germans leaving only an NCO and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge.
The 508th CO stuck to his own pre-flight plan to send a reinforced platoon to the bridge to report its condition. Only three Scouts got there without getting lost in the crowds of jubilant Dutch civilians, took seven priosners at the south end of the bridge and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, and when it got dark decided they had to withdraw. As they did so, they heard heavy equipment arriving at the other end of the bridge; SS-Panzer troops arriving from Arnhem.
If you compare the performance of 1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem to the 508th PIR, 1st Para landed 30 minutes later, had 3 Km further to march to their prime objective, had machine guns, mortars and armoured cars on their routes, but managed to secure their bridge and hold it for four days with one of their battalions. Phil Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy tell you the why of this for context. It wasn't in Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and it wasn't in the Hollywood film of course. Instead, there's an irrational hatred of Montgomery that seems to be endemic in American culture.
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What you say is very true of the original Arnhem operation - COMET - which was cancelled on the day the operation was about to take off, 10 September, by Montgomery after he received reports of the II.SS-Panzerkorps having moved into the area. He then proposed the upgraded operation (initially called SIXTEEN and then later given the official name MARKET GARDEN) adding the two American divisions, enabling 1st Airborne with all their anti-tank guns to concentrate at Arnhem instead of being split between Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave.
The planning of the expanded operation was then turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) as it no longer involved just the British I Airborne Corps (Browning). Brereton and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) removed the glider coup de main attacks on the three main bridges and the double airlift on the first day, using a previous three-division air plan Brereton had devised for LINNET II. That operation was so rushed that Browning protested there was insufficient time to print and distribute maps and wrote a letter of protest to Brereton threatening to resign over the matter. His letter arrived as the operation was cancelled (one of many cancelled as ground forces overran the objectives) and both men agreed to forget the incident.
However, since Brereton had intended to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgeway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation, Browning was now effectively neutralised in making any protests over Brereton's changes for MARKET. Browning had in fact written to 2nd Army on 5 September and warned that COMET should not go ahead without the coup de main assaults, suggesting that he felt they were essential to quickly seize the bridges. The fact he did not protest the glider assault's removal for MARKET is an indication he was now powerless to protest.
On that basis I cannot agree that the plan was solid. I also disagree about the intelligence. The intel on the Arnhem area turned out to be remarkably accurate, although the II.SS-Panzerkorp's ability to react quickly and effectively was underestimated. The fact that 9.SS-Panzer-Division had so many armoured vehicles was not a surprise to the British Airborne, who had been given sanitised (unit names withheld) warnings about this, but came as a complete surprise to the Germans because Walter Harzer has used some administrative subterfuge to withhold operational vehicles to avoid an order to hand them over to the 10.SS-Panzer.
The one area where the intelligence picture was incomplete was the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division itself, because the Dutch resistance had reported SS panzer troops billeted in towns and villages all over the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the River Ijssel respectively), but had only reported a Hohenstaufen vehicle insignia (an 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon), and a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo could not be identified. They had no way of knowing both divisions were there and the River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary.
So it was feared the Frundsberg Division could be located in Nijmegen and drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area, leading to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest could be hiding 1,000 panzers. Gavin was given the sanitised (removing unit identifications obtained by 'Ultra') warning of possibly "a regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of the 10.SS-Panzer battlegroup) may be accommodated in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities, and the Reichswald might be a tank laager for the depot. In fact, the division was based at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek and the tank depot was near Münster deeper into Germany, but the intelligence warnings certainly affected Gavin's thinking in devising his divisional plan, and by assigning the problematic 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, he had inadvertently created the conditions for the failure of the operation once it was on the ground.
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@johnlucas8479 - I can give a longer answer on these if you really want, but the short answers are:
1. I think "Kampfgruppe Henke" is probably "Kampfgruppe Hartung" - I'm currently studying the 82nd Airborne G-2 and G-3 documents purchased from the PaperlessArchives site for the princely sum of twelve dollars and change, and there's no mention of the name "Henke" at all.
2. Henke (believed to be Oberst Friedrich Hencke - with a 'c') may have commanded the remnants of Fallschirm-Jäger-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 1, which is mentioned in the 82nd G-2 documents, believed to number 120-170 men in the Nijmegen area.
3. All combat troops in the battlegroup (Henke/Hartung) were deployed along the Maas-Waal canal, and I'm sure I've explained this before - this was the MLR in the area and linked the Waal defence line running west to the North Sea, and the Maas line running south to Maastricht. These troops were gradually dispossessed of four of the six canal bridges they were defending on 17/18 September and the survivors gathered into Nijmegen to reinforce the bridges, so I think authors like McManus, Reynolds, and Kershaw had made the assumption they were in situ in Nijmegen the whole time, but they don't explain who was on the canal line - they can't be in two places at the same time! The situation was fluid and units changed positions over time as they withdrew. Best reference for this is Frank van Lunteren's The Battle Of The Bridges - The 504th PIR in Operation Market Garden (2014).
4. To be clear - the three units of Kampfgruppe Hartung known (there may be others) to be on the Maas-Waal canal line and then later withdrawn into Nijmegen as per van Lunteren (2014) were:
a. Three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs Bataillon I/6, with 5.Kompanie (Rümmele) at Malden and 4.Kompanie (Hauptmann Ernst Sieger) at Hatert, the third company ID and location I have not nailed down.
b. 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando/Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildings-Regiment ‘Hermann Göring’ at Honinghutje road and rail bridges on the main Grave-Nijmegen highway, one platoon detached to Nederasselt (Grave bridge).
c. 1./Pionier-Bau-Bataillon 434 (1.Kompanie confirmed ID from 82nd G-2) under Hauptmann Zyrus, digging trenches along the canal line and their MGs provided additional support in the line.
5. Nijmegen itself was a rear area, occupied by rear echelon troops that evacuated on 17 September (mostly the BdO and Ortskommandantur), and a few bridge/railway guards. I have an ID on the "railway guards" unhelpfully translated by Kershaw - foxed me for a long time, but the 82nd G-2 documents came through - 1./Transport-Sicherungs-Bataillon 567. The Bataillon was in Paris, then the 1.Kompanie was sent to Nijmegen and attached to "GUARD BN. TORAU" - I don't have a positive ID for the latter, but I suspect Fla-Abteilung 26 (or III./SR 26), part of Sicherungs-Regiment 26 in the Netherlands, and they had men at the Grave bridge.
6. SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 was withdrawn to Elst at 2100 hrs and the SPW Kanon-Zug (I believe it was the whole schwere-Kompanie, it amounts to the same thing but there was an SS-Hauptsturmführer killed at the Keizer Karelplein engagement) was withdrawn at midnight, presumably after the firefight engagement. This source is German - the diary of Reinhold's Adjutant - SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel in Retake Arnhem Bridge, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010).
7. I don't take Eustace McNaught's account as gospel at all, but I find it interesting. The Market Garden Then and Now volume 1 if I recall (it's in a box and not handy for reference) had Z Troop split over both 1st and 2nd lifts and I had assumed the gun delivery was split, but Nigel Simpson et al's new book based on 20 years research of the Anti-Tank Batteries has all four Z-Troop guns arriving on 2nd lift, but Z Troop CO McNaught's glider with the command Radio Jeep and ammunition trailer (no gun) may have gone ahead as originally intended on the 1st lift, which is the only explanation that makes his account even physically possible in my view, seeing as how the SS had the Nijmegen bridge reinforced overnight on the first night. His time on the main Arnhem-Nijmegen road has to coincide with Gräbner's transit time period between the two cities. He seems to have remained with the glider for a while before deciding on the action to take - it meant leaving another four of his men and the two glider pilots behind because he could only take three in the Jeep. Simpson also notes that their research was hampered by the fact the last minute change to move Browning's glider lift from 2nd to 1st lift displaced elements of 1st Anti-Tank Battery and some of the official records were not amended to reflect the changes, so this bumped most of Z troop to 2nd lift and all the second ammunition Jeep/trailer combinations were also bumped to 2nd lift. The variation from the official records would explain why Peters and Buist (Glider Pilots at Arnhem, 2009) which I also have, doesn't solve the mystery. Apparently some of the recorded chalk numbers are known to be wrong! McNaught had witnesses with him and he did find an SAS patrol to join as he said he wanted to do when he made contact with the Battery Sea Tail officer in Nijmegen and related his story. Apparently he later joined MI-6 after the war as a military liaison.
My timeline does make sense from a situational awareness point of view, the time dimension is just as important as the spacial ones. Some of your alternative suggestions are contradictory and rely on assumptions made by authors and not the first hand accounts from the participants. I take the view that people are telling the truth to the best of their ability and book author's assumptions are very low down on my scale of reliability. A lot of the nonsense I think is predicated on the notion there was a good reason the Nijmegen bridge could not be taken on the first evening and that is an assumption.
I'm still investigating Henke/Hencke by the way, so if I turn up anything it might help. Hartung's HQ was at the NEBO monastery - the intent was set up a training school there, so it looks like he had to leave in a hurry as 1st Battlion 508th approached from the east to take De Ploeg from the Berg-en-Dal direction and the drop zone. There's a translated captured document from Hartung that definitely places him in the area, while there's only a brief G-2 report on the Fallschirm training Regiment 1 with no commander's name attached to it.
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@johnlucas8479 - from the 82nd Airborne G-2 documents, I have extracted the following on Hartung and Hencke's (alleged) units respectively:
PW Interrogation Summary – 22 September 1944 [p.2658-59]:
The defense of the bridges at NIJMEGEN was under the command of Col HARTUNG. A captured document of 5 Sept 1944 indicates that said Col HARTUNG was to be made responsible for the reorganization of retreating troops in the SAARBURG area. Col HARTUNG had with him a training staff whose primary mission had been the training of parachute troops. Apparently, this group of officers were relieved of their duties in the SAARBURG area and transferred to NIJMEGEN about 15 Sept 1944, for the purpose of establishing a training school here. With the Allied airborne landings on Sunday, Col HARTUNG was put in command of the troops defending the NIJMEGEN bridgehead.
Miscellaneous PW statements [p.2659]:
b) 1st Prcht Repl Trng Regt. This unit was committed in FRANCE. After being forced to retreat in disorder, some of these troops (between 120 and 170 men) ended up in the NIMEGEN area. Of the PWs who were captured from this unit, some of them claimed that they had no weapons issued to them. Another one stated: “They give me an old Dutch rifle and expect me to fight Sherman tanks with it”.
Luftwaffe Officer Career Summaries by Henry L. deZeng IV and Douglas G. Stankey on Michael Holm's website The Luftwaffe 1933-45:
HARTUNG, Gunther. 25.07.39 Maj., temporary duty from LKS Berlin-Gatow to Stab/Hoh.Fl.Ausb.Kdo. 7.01.08.42 Kdr. II./Fl.Ausb.Rgt. 21, promo to Oberst. 14.08.42 assigned temporary duty from II./Fl.Ausb.Rgt. 21 to Flieger-Rgt. 52 (to 10.10.42). 19.09.42 appt Kdr. Fl.Rgt. 52. 22.04.43 with 18. Lw.-Feld-Div., trf to Fuhrer-Reserve Ob.d.L. (to 26.06.43). 26.06.43 trf to Erdkampfschule d.Lw. 06.44 Oberst, appt Leiter Fsch.AOK Ausbildungsstelle.
HENCKE, Friedrich (Fritz). (DOB: 02.06.95 in Rittergut Neu-Waldeck, Krs. Preußisch Eylau/E Pruss.). Prewar, had been a personal friend of Hermann Göring. 1940 set up a government office called 'Außenstelle Westen' [something like Western Exterior Office or Branch Office West] that bought large quantities of cloth and clothes in occupied Western Europe for distribution in Germany. 01.01.42 Obstlt., appt Kdr. Feld-Rgt.d.Lw. 5 (to 13.01.42?). 15.06.42 Obstlt., appt Kdr. III./Feld-Rgt.d.Lw. 1. 01.12.42 promo to Oberst. 27.10.42 appt Kdr. Feld-Rgt. d.Lw. 3. 03.43 appt Kdr. Lw.-Jäger-Rgt. 44 (to 04.43). 28.07.43 Oberst in 22. Lw.-Felddivision, trf to Führerreserve RLM/Ob.d.L. 06.08.43 trf to Erdkampfschule d.Lw. 09.44 Oberst, Kdr. Kampfgruppe Hencke. 01.10.44 Oberst, appt Kdr. Fsch.Jg.Rgt. 6. †14.08.63 in Tegernsee/Bay.
Note: the "09.44 Kampfgruppe Hencke" entry was a recent addition to Hencke's career summary and may just be based on the dubious literature, it certainly wasn't an official appointment as this is an ad hoc battlegroup formed on 17/18 September. Hartung has seniority over Hencke as Oberst by two months, if both men were present. I have found no mention of the name Hencke (or Henke) in any of the G-2 documents and this is the raw data. Hartung was north of the Waal after the bridges fell and had a militia battalion from Wesel under command that were dug in on the north bank. It's possible that Hencke had responsibility for forces on the south bank inside the bridgehead under Hartung's command, similar to the arrangement between SS officers Reinhold (Lent) and Euling (Valkhof and Hunner Park at the highway bridge).
Other points of interest, the captured document on HARTUNG also mentions Major AHLBORN as his [Edit correction] S-3 (an American designation for operations officer, probably equates to 'Staff Major' in a German formation at Regimental level) with special responsibility for interviewing stragglers and co-ordinating with 1.Fallschirm-Armee (the S-4 or 'Qm' supply officer is also assigned a role to coordinate with 1.Fs.Armee, but he is not named). Ahlborn is the parachute officer who escaped across the Waal at Haalderen with SS unit Euling, with about 60 men in both groups.
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