Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on ""Arnhem" by Antony Beevor Book Review" video.
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I believe the 82nd Airborne Reconnaissance Platoon had up to 16 Jeeps, all armored except for the two carrying the 60mm Mortar Squad. I know they were not all delivered on the first day of MARKET GARDEN, so four Jeeps sounds about right on D-Day and represents two of the four Recon Squads. Not enough for a coup de main mission on such a large objective and I only know they were first to arrive at the eastern end of the Heumen lock bridge ("Bridge 7") on the Maas-Waal canal to assist B Company 504th PIR in taking the bridge intact - German morale usually collapses once you cut their supply line and the recon patrol was effectively in the German rear of their Main Line of Resistance (MLR) along the canal.
The 504th at Heumen were due to be assisted by Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th landing on Drop Zone 'N', but due to an air traffic conflict they arrived over the zone at the same time as another 505th serial and Vandervoort instructed his pilot (who was leading their whole serial) to fly on to the 508th's DZ 'T' and drop them there. It meant that the battalion was delayed in clearing the northern half of Groesbeek and taking Hill 81.8 above the town and then send a company on to Bridge 7, but the Recon Platoon's arrival was enough to collapse resistance at the bridge.
In terms of a coup de main on the Nijmegen highway bridge, Browning's plan for Operation COMET included glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, with the Nijmegen mission to be flown by Sergeant Jim Wallwark who led the 'Pegasus Bridge' Operation DEADSTICK in Normandy - he wasn't looking forward to it and half-joked that he and his co-pilot were planning to surrender at the first chance they got! Their passengers were to be D Company of the 7th Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the D Companies of the 1st Border Regiment and 2nd South Staffords were earmarked for Grave and Arnhem, with six gliders required for each assault.
After Montgomery cancelled COMET at the last minute because of the intel situation (II.SS-Panzerkorps arriving in the Arnhem area), he proposed an upgrade with the American divisions added so that 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade could concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun resources (each Brigade effectively had a battery and totalled 83 guns, including 16 of the heavy 17-pounders). This meant that planning of the airborne operation was turned over to Brereton and his 1st Allied Airborne Army staff, and here the COMET concept was compromised by deleting the double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults because of lack of night navigation skills in the USAAF Troop Carrier Command and the risks of the glider assaults on the bridges in daylight. Browning was unable to object after being politically neutralised over the Operation LINNET II affair. He knew if he threatened resignation again he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps.
Gavin had been requested by the British (according to Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin) to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, but after toying with the idea eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily - the USAAF crews were panicked by the Flak and scattered his 505th Regiment over a wide area, and Gavin landed with just four or five men to command. Instead he instructed the CO of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing his initital objectives on the Groesbeek ridge. An instruction that Colonel Lindquist failed to carry out.
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Absolute tosh.
Browning fought in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October and the Battle of Cambrai in November. He distinguished himself in this battle, for which he received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross. His citation read:
'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He took command of three companies whose officers had all become casualties, reorganised them, and proceeded to consolidate. Exposing himself to very heavy machine-gun and rifle fire, in two hours he had placed the front line in a strong state of defence. The conduct of this officer, both in the assault and more especially afterwards, was beyond all praise, and the successful handing over of the front to the relieving unit as an entrenched and strongly fortified position was entirely due to his energy and skill.'
Montgomery had nothing to do with Crete, which is a pity because it was a disaster for the German airborne.
He used two Rolls Royce cars - from the Milwebs website on his Silver Wraith and Phantom III cars:
When Monty went to war he did it in style.
The Silver Wraith, together with the elegant Phantom 3 used by General Montgomery before D-Day, will be at this year’s War and Peace Show. It’s the first time the vehicles have appeared together since the Second World War.
“Montgomery used the Silver Wraith as his personal staff car from D+3 right through to when he took the German surrender on Luneberg Heath,” said Andrew Robertshaw, curator of the Royal Logistics Corps Museum at Deepcut, Surrey, where the vehicle occupies pride of place.
“He was determined to be seen in a better car than any German general. Despite its being highly conspicuous it survived the War unscathed, although Rommel’s camouflaged staff car was shot up by a Spitfire.”
The Phantom 3 is owned by Michael Hanson, of Preston Lancashire, an old War and Peace Show hand. He previously won “Best in Show” with his Pacific tank transporter and has carried off a variety of other trophies.
“It was built in 1936 and owned by the boss of English Talbot Motor Company, a Mr Frederick Wilcock,” said Michael. “It’s known as the ‘green car’ because it’s black and British racing green. Monty’s other Rolls Royces were just black.
“Mr Wilcock loaned it to the Ministry of War Transport on condition that it did not cross the Channel, because he did not want it blown up or shot at.
“However this backfired on him. After D-Day the Phantom was reassigned to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Carl Spaatz and an American fuel tanker backed into it causing severe damage.”
It would have been used by General Montgomery to commute between his home in Virginia Waters and London.
I suppose Eisenhower was German then...
Eisenhower was promoted to 'five-star' General in December 1944, three months after Montgomery, who had been his senior throughout their military careers, had been promoted to the equivalent Field Marshal in September 1944.
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I recently found the source of that intelligence. The number 1,000 is just a misquote of an observation there could be 1,000 tanks hidden in the forest, but Allied intelligence had already established Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his Army Group B front, or 50-100 is another figure I have seen quoted. In fact, Model's 5 September returns listed exactly 84 operational panzers, which by a bizarre coincidence matches exactly the total number of anti-tank guns in the combined establishments of 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Independent Parachute Brigade.
The source for the Reichswald armour intel is Dutch resistance reports of heavy armour in the Reichswald, but the source of the armour was unknown until after the war. In the Cornelius Ryan Collection box 101, folder 9, page 48, is a covering letter from James Gavin to Cornelius Ryan enclosing some papers written by Dutch researcher T.A. Boeree. In the letter Gavin says he had just realised (in 1966!) where the armour in the Reichswald had come from.
On 10 September Gavin says he was given a warning order from 1st Allied Airborne Army that he was assigned to operation MARKET and that Nijmegen was his target area, so he immediately went to 1st Airborne Division HQ to see their intel and planning, as they had been studying the area for operation COMET that had just been cancelled that morning.
The reports of armour in the Reichswald was part of 1st Airborne's intelligence picture and they had been making their plans accordingly to deal with them, and this presumably now affected Gavin's planning for 82nd Airborne in MARKET. It was only now after reviewing the Boeree papers on the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen's withdrawal route across the Maas at Maastricht on 4 September, concentration at Sittard, and then on 7 September ordered north to Arnhem and the Veluwe region he realised their route took them through the Nijmegen area and the reports of armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen in transit.
There are lots of hidden gems in the CRC that Ryan did not put in his book, and you may well speculate why not. He was a newspaper journalist by trade and I believe he did the usual journalistic thing of not digging any deeper once he had got his 'story'.
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The 1st Battalion of the 508th PIR was not sent immediately to the Nijmegen highway bridge as Gavin had instructed, whereas at Arnhem two battalions were tasked to move directly to the bridges (2nd Battalion via the rail and pontoon bridges that got through, and 3rd Battalion directly that was mostly blocked except for one company that got through).
The 1st Parachute Brigade (veterans of North Africa and Sicily, by the way) got the equivalent of a whole battalion and brigade HQ and support units to the Arnhem bridge and successfully carried out its mission of holding it for four days - twice as long as should have been necessary.
The 508th had a poor field commander, not trusted by either Gavin or his predecessor Matthew Ridgway, according to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University, Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967). Gavin had decided against a British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge to seize it by coup de main because of his experience in Sicily (USAAF aircrews panicked by Flak dropped Gavin's 505th over a wide area and Gavin landed with just four or five men to command), so he decided to instruct the 508th to send one battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initital objectives on the Groesbeek ridge. This instruction was not carried out and it had fatal consequences for the entire operation and the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.
Gavin was clearly more concerned with potential counter-attacks from the Reichswald forest on the German border and assigned the more experienced and aggressive 505th to that sector, and arguably his best battalion in the whole division, Ben Vandervoort's 2nd/505th (Vandervoort was played by John Wayne in The Longest Day), was in division reserve on Hill 81.8 behind the Division CP. The 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald was just a rumour and the source was the fact that the exact location of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division was unknown (it was at Ruurlo in the Achterhoek region) and could potentially be in Nijmegen's Dutch army barracks (Gavin was told "a regiment of SS" could be there - sanitised Ultra intel could not reveal the source or specific unit identities) and that they could be drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald (it was actually near Münster). The latest SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26 contained that assessment, and was dated 16 September 1944.
I recommend September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012), and Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 by Phil Nordyke (2012), for the details on Nijmegen, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also important context for the 508th's command problems on their first combat operation.
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Antwerp's port capacity was needed for advances into Germany for Eisenhower's 'broad front' policy, it was not needed for a Rhine crossing by one army. The Scheldt estauary was already fortified and the river and canal defence lines in the interior of the Netherlands was only just forming, so it was logic that dictated the advance to Arnhem first before opening up Antwerp. Even Eisenhower, not a tactician, saw the logic:
Eisenhower was similarly unapologetic when he declared after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account, A Bridge Too Far, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015)
As for the rest of your strategy for Germany, it sounds like something a Sith Lord would think up! Germany certainly has always had ambitions to dominate the continent of Europe ever since the German states were unified by Bismarck in 1871, but the best defence is strong alliances between independent nation states like Britain, France, Italy, and Poland, not "Wipe them out! All of them!"
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- Beevor is clearly not a meticulous historian as TIK has proven in this video. His book published in 2018 offered no new information I wasn't already aware of, apart from a joke (literally), so what was the point of the book? Aimed at the lucrative American market I think, just as A Bridge Too Far (book and film) was, and that's why the debacle at Nijmegen on the first day is missing in all of these accounts.
You say - "Browning, Gavin's superior, claims that he instructed that top priority was seizing the Heights, and the Waal bridge secondary to that." - and yet your quote doesn't contradict that, so you haven't made your disingenuously worded point. American historian John C McManus in chapter 3 of September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) quotes Browning's instruction to Gavin: -
“Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
- McManus then goes on to say: -
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge.
- This corroborates Gavin's own 17 July 1945 letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover: -
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
- And again, in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, where Ryan notes: -
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
- But Gavin is not without some blame in the compromised planning process. Ryan's notes also state: -
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
- I think we agree that Browning and Gavin were on the same page as far as the plan was concerned, they both expected that both the Groesbeek heights were to be secured as well as the bridge, because as McManus says: -
High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
Cont.--
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-- So why didn’t Colonel Lindquist move promptly on the bridge? McManus says:
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- 82nd Airborne historian in his combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 – Put Us Down In Hell (2012), published the same year as McManus, also has a key witness to the final briefing -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
- I also don’t know what the intelligence source for the tanks in the Reichswald was, but I would be surprised if it was the Dutch resistance since the forest and the alleged tank depot near Kleve were in Germany, across the border. The figure of “1,000” seems to be a rumour started by someone pointing out that the forest could be hiding 1,000 tanks. Allied intelligence already assessed Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front from Aachen to the North Sea coast, and we now know from the 5 September monthly returns he had 84 panzers listed as operational.
For context, Model faced Montgomery with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen with about another 1,500. By a bizarre coincidence, British 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Parachute Brigade also had exactly 84 anti-tank guns in their combined establishments, as if the universe were trying to tell the MARKET GARDEN critics something. Perhaps Montgomery had a point in cancelling operation COMET and then ordering MARKET with the American divisions added, to enable the British and Poles to concentrate at Arnhem where the armoured threat was actually greatest – based on Dutch reports. The American units did not have as many anti-tank guns in their establishments, although they were better equipped in field artillery.
After landing on the afternoon of 17 September, the parachute units of the 82nd Airborne moved to their initial objectives and it was about 1730 hrs when the first reports started coming in, one of which was a 505th report that the Reichswald was unoccupied and the trees too dense for armoured operations. Nordyke takes up the story of the 508th: -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
- For all of these reasons, RG Poulussen and TIK are right to focus on Gavin and the 508th PIR. Although published the year after Poulussen and TIK doesn’t have them on his booklist, American historians McManus and Nordyke have provided more firsthand witness evidence they are on the right track.
Browning only rejected Gavin’s second attempt to try for the bridge after the first was too late to beat 10.SS-Panzer Division to the bridge, which they secured with Gräbner’s attached SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at about 8 pm (it was after dark, because that was when PFC Joe Atkins decided to withdraw his recon patrol – his account is in chapter 6 of Zig Boroughs’ The 508th Connection, 2013). Browning correctly realised they would now need armoured support to take the bridges, so it was best to wait for XXX Corps to arrive with the tanks.
Cont.—
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-- You said – “The idea that the 82nd just waltzes onto the bridge had it rushed there immediately is nonsensical.” – why? The three-man point team from Lt Weaver’s recon patrol did exactly that and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that didn’t arrive.
The Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for demolition on 17 September, as you seem to assume. Most accounts state that this work was done only after the engineers from the 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived overnight.
Explosive charges were stored inside the bridge pier storage spaces and a volunteer militia NSDAP ‘Shutzgruppe’ of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands were drilled to place the custom made cutting charges in numbered boxes designed to fit in the bridge superstructure in corresponding numbered locations, under the supervision of German engineer officer, Oberleutnant Gerhard Brettschneider of von Tettau’s WBN (military command Netherlands) staff. The Schutzgruppe were drilled every month since the Normandy invasion and the last drill had been mid-August. On 17 September, they failed to show up at the bridge, either because they deserted or in many cases the Dutch resistance knew who they were and made arrests after the landings.
You also say – “The idea that there were almost no German troops at the bridge is a prevailing myth. It is based on Dutch resistance again, and is as reliable as armor in the Reichswald. The 82nd encountered more troops than that just trying to get to the bridge (read the action reports).” – I did read the action reports and it’s because they tried to get to the bridge too late! They wasted several hours from 17:30, when they reached the initial objective at De Ploeg, digging-in along the Groesbeek ridge, and then after Gavin’s intervention at 20:00, it took two hours to get A and B Companies out of the line and to the Krayenhoff barracks Initial Point (IP). The clash with elements of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle was sometime between A Company leaving the IP at 22:00 and midnight, when the SS unit was withdrawn to Elst. Nordyke has the American side of the story: -
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
Cont. –
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-- The German side is provided by Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014), Chapter 4: Betuwe, which has input from SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting as adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, and later 'Kampfgruppe Reinhold' in charge of the Nijmegen defence). He says they crossed the Arnhem bridge before it was closed to traffic (by Frost at about 9 pm) and then crossed the bridge at Nijmegen to get an idea of the defences: -
"To get a clearer picture about the troops in Nijmegen which were available for the defence, I crossed the Waal bridge on 17 September 1944. There were only a handful of administrative troops which were under command of some older high-ranking Army Officers. There were men (between thirty-five and forty years old) from all types of units and they were equipped with old rifles. In addition there was a Luftwaffe Flak Battery defending the bridge. All these men came under our command. To my complete surprise I came across the complete SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner. Never before had I seen so many armoured vehicles; there were maybe thirty or more. From Gräbner I learned that many American troops had landed west of the Reichswald. Gräbner had received orders to go back to Arnhem. As the Nijmegen bridge was very short of the troops required to defend it, I asked him to leave one Zug (five Panzerspähwagen) for the defences. He agreed and left for Arnhem around nine o'clock in the evening. Feeling better about the situation I went back to our Headquarters in Lent and took a nap. Around midnight the officer in command of the Zug of Panzerspähwagen arrived at the Headquarters and told me that he had received orders to join the rest of his unit at Elst."
"After he left I went across the bridge again to visit the troops located around the bridge in Nijmegen. Another thirty to forty men had arrived which belonged to a military police band and had been incorporated into the defence. I was still waiting for Quandel [5./SS-Pz.Rgt 10] and his tanks [16 x Mark IV] and had no information on why they had not arrived. Early in the morning of 18 September I was surprised to see the first arrival was SS-Obersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel with about ten men from his Pionier Kompanie [1./SS-Pz.Pi.Abt 10]. Reinhold and I then learned what had happened at the Arnhem bridge and on hearing this information made me adjutant of the Kampfgruppe. In the early afternoon SS-Hauptsturmführer Euling arrived with elements of his Battalion [former II./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21]. Both units crossed the Nijmegen bridge to strengthen the bridgehead on the southern side of the Waal."
- It should be clear from this that there was only a bridge guard on the bridge until the SS units started arriving, which corresponds with PFC Atkins’ account, some administrative troops with some “high ranking Army Officers” seen by Traupel (I have no further information on them but suspect may be the Rüstungsinspektion Niederlande), and the nearest Flak battery was a heavy battery down on the polder to the east, and these four 8.8cm guns were repositioned during the night as anti-tank defence for the bridge. There were no Flak defences on the bridge itself.
Frost had easily outperformed Lindquist, despite landing 30 minutes later, having 3 km further to march to the prime objective, and unlike Atkins’ point team, which did move promptly, Frost had MGs, mortars, and armoured cars on his route to the Arnhem bridge (and only his A Company with him when he took the highway bridge). You seem to think that TIK is biased because he’s British, but he’s actually just following the evidence, and you’ve made some serious errors and assumptions in your narrative, and that’s why it’s incorrect. I don’t have to rely on any British accounts, since the American, Dutch, and German accounts fit together into a cohesive narrative that makes sense.
- You said “Frost never controlled the Arnhem bridge. He was just blocking the north end. The British cannot drive across the bridge to liberate Frost without more fierce fighting. The Arnhem bridge is also blown in that circumstance.” – absolute nonsense! Frost interdicted enemy traffic across the bridge for 80 hours, starting at 9 pm on Sunday, about an hour after arriving at the bridge. He is unable to secure the southern approach, the area is open and an effective kill-zone. The Germans cannot place explosive charges, they only attempted at the northern ramp supports and were beaten off.
You said – “XXXth Corps was significantly delayed by the time that it got to Nijmegen.” – really? They were supposed to be in Arnhem in two to three days. They were stopped at Nijmegen with 45 hours elapsed for the tanks (43 for the armoured cars) – less than two days, and only because the Nijmegen bridges were still in German hands, instead of having a straight run through to Arnhem as expected. Seems to me they would have had a full day in hand if the 508th had done their job. Instead, the 36-hour delay was imposed by having to fight for the bridges at Nijmegen, doing the Airborne’s job for them.
You also said – “The one exception seems to have been Brian Urquhart, who correctly deduced that the plan was flawed, and that it would fail because the Germans were strong enough in the area to wreck the plan.” – you cannot blame the plan if the operation fails because the plan wasn’t followed. It was a command failure in an airborne unit, not the Germans doing anything unexpected. Brian Urquhart was thoroughly discredited when the infamous aerial photo was located in a Dutch government archive in 2014 and analysed, if not before when he was instrumental in setting up the useless United Nations organisation after the war.
The Germans were gifted the Nijmegen highway bridge. So, thank you very much Lewis Brereton, Paul Williams, James Gavin, and Roy Lindquist. The Germans would probably not have been able to defeat MARKET GARDEN without them.
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I think the story is complex. The idea that Gavin and Browning de-prioritised the Nijmegen highway bridge in favour of the Groesbeek heights was a post-war and even a post-D-Day conflation that was forced on them by events on the first day. Gavin had instructed the 508th to send one battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initital objectives (on the ridge) in the final divisional briefing before the operation, but the 508th CO failed to interpret the instruction correctly and sent only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge to report on its condition.
Gavin had made the claim in a letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
Gavin later confirmed this in his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler.” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), chapter 9:
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Cont...
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Nordyke (op cit), chapter 10:
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 - Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge:
A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’)
The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
Phil Nordyke (op cit), chapter 10:
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
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American historian John C. McManus would disagree with you (and the field manual):
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
(September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’)
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@johnburns4017 - first statement: not to my knowledge he didn't.
Second paragraph: correct.
Third paragraph: Geert van Hees said the bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men, I have no confirmation they were elderly, but it would be consistent if they were from 1./Transport-Sicherungs-Bataillon 567 as 82nd Airborne G-2 data suggests. Their report on this unit dated 17 September is as follows:
'1. Co. Transp. Bn 567. Unit left PARIS on Aug. 10 and moved to NIJMWEGEN where it was attached to the “GUARD BN. TORAU” which was responsible for the security in and around NIJMWEGEN.
STRENGTH of 1. Co. Transp. Bn 567: 110 men (old men between ages 40 and 50). At time of attack, 65 men were on guard duty at bridges and RRs, the rest were sent to the southern approaches of NIJMWEGEN to stem the advance of our troops.'
(World War II United States Army 82nd Airborne Division Action & After-Action Reports - pdf download, PaperlessArchives)
Fourth paragraph: Lindquist failed to send Warren's battalion as Gavin had instructed, thinking he had to clear the DZ and secure his other objectives first. Warren was not expecting the movement order at 2000 hours he received from Lindquist after Gavin's intervention, as the battalion was strung out all along the ridge and it took about two hours to get them out and assembled. In fact, A Company was assembled and at the Initial Point (Krayenhoff barracks) waiting for B Company until 2200 hours when Adams was ordered to move off without them. B Company caught up with A and HQ Companies at the Keizer Karelplein after the enemy contact.
I estimate the arrival of Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at the Nijmegen bridge as about 2000 hours, since it was dark by this time and dark was the time PFC Joe Atkins (1st Battalion S-2 Scout) decided they should withdraw and heard the armour arriving at the other end of the bridge as they were leaving.
(The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge)
Gräbner was recalled to Elst at 2100 hours, but was persuaded by Reinhold's adjutant Gernot Traupel to leave a platoon of half-tracks behind as there were no combat troops to secure the bridge. I believe he left the entire schwere (heavy) 5.Kompanie, which consisted of the one platoon of five SPW half-tracks with close support 7.5cm guns (SdKfz 251/9 known as 'Stummel' or stumps), and a couple of supply trucks and a command half-track SdKfz 251/3. My reasoning for the company commander being there was that an SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) was killed during the Keizer Karelplein engagement and this rank was a company not platoon commander. Traupel later records in his diary that the SPW platoon commander reported to him at midnight that he too was also recalled to Elst, so that places the engagement between 2200 hours at the IP (Krayenhoff barracks) and midnight when the halftracks were recalled.
(Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell 2010, Chapter 4: Betuwe)
Final paragraph: this was only the first attempt on the bridge by the 508th and Browning rejected Gavin's proposal for a second attempt on the 18 September, preferring to wait until armoured support was available when XXX Corps arrived.
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@gandydancer9710 - it is "juggler" in the original typed notes, but someone had scrawled what looks like "jugular" just above it, so I suppose I could have used the correction when quoting from it, or [sic].
The part that reads "He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days" is exactly as it says in the Ryan notes and is not a quote from Gavin. My impression is that Gavin was very much aware he needed to grab the bridge quickly or it would likely be reinforced or prepared for demolition, so this appears to be Ryan's own view. Gavin would have been right about the demolition of the bridge.
I have information that the explosives were stored in the bridge piers and an NSDAP 'Schutzkommando' (Dutch civilians of German ethnic origin volunteered as a militia) were drilled every month since the Normandy invasion to place the charges in numbered boxes into corresponding numbered locations in the bridge superstructure and wire the charges up to detonation circuits under the supervision of an engineer officer, Oberleutnent Gerhard Bretschneider of von Tettau's Pionier staff, who was also responsible for the Nijmegen rail and Grave road bridges. The last drill was mid-August and when the landings started on 17 September, the Nijmegen Schutzgruppe failed to show up. Bretschneider had to wait until engineers from the 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived in the early hours of 18 September before the work could be started.
On Lindquist, there's a lot that can be learned about him from Nordyke's book on the 508th (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012). He was an early officer volunteer to the US Airborne and was a gifted administration (S-1) officer in the early formations. As the Airborne forces were expanded they needed officers to fill command positions and Lindquist was given command of the 508th Battalion and promoted to Colonel when it was expanded to a regiment. In Normandy, the 508th's first combat operation, there were a number of command problems.
The regiment XO was court-martialled by Ridgway for being combat ineffective after the jump, but Lindquist had not even relieved the man of duty until the regiment medical officer had escaped from German captivity and crossed the lines to find the 508th CP and make his report of what he observed after the jump, despite the fact the man was sitting on a chair in the CP with his M1 between his legs just staring down at the floor. Ridgway then transferred the 505th XO, the very able Lt Col Mark James Alexander, over to the 508th to "shake things up over there", but unfortunately he was severely wounded and had to be evacuated after he had taken over 2nd Battalion and was conducting a personal reconnaissance. Captain Chet Graham (CO of 2/508th HQ Company) then found himself in command of the battalion for an attack on Hill 95 (Sainte Catherine near La Haye) on 4 July. Ordered by Lindquist to attack over open ground, Graham asked about Alexander's plan to use a covered approach and he was told "You have your orders."
Chet Graham: "F Company was hugging the hill with open ground on its right and being cut up. I pulled them back and planned to move E Company to the right. (Hill 95 had been a Roman outpost. It had a sheltered moat inside the perimeter circling the hill, about ten feet wide. So, we were able to move under cover from side to side.)
"During this time, I was being called back to our big radio to converse with Colonel Lindquist. He told me not to move F Company back. ('We don't give up ground we have taken - get them back.') I explained my troubles and my plan, and told him he should come and see for himself, instead of second guessing from a mile away. I was relieved of command on the spot. Royal Taylor came down and followed the plan."
Maybe Lindquist thought he was going for the jugular, but he actually got a lot of his own men killed and wounded unnecessarily. Going back to Cornelius Ryan's notes in the same Box 101, Folder 10 meeting notes with Gavin, he records:
'It's interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant to jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him.'
It's a pity Ridgway didn't take Lindquist with him to XVIII Airborne Corps in August as his S-1 officer, it would have solved a number of problems and created some promotion prospects for Gavin within the 82nd, so he wouldn't be running around doing both jobs of division commander and assistant division commander during MARKET GARDEN.
Ridgway had no role in the operation but 'borrowed' a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and drove up the corridor to visit his divisions - I understand from George Koskimaki's book Hell's Highway on the 101st Airborne that Ridgway was following Brereton's more official tour that was further up the road, because Koskimaki was Taylor's personal radio man and Ridgway asked him if he could reach Brereton's car on his radio (they both climbed on top of a chicken shack to get a signal). When Ridgway got to the 82nd at Nijmegen, Gavin returned to his CP after dealing with a problem on the front lines to find Ridgway in the CP studying a map on the wall, but before either man could acknowledge the other, Gavin was handed a message about another urgent problem and left immediately to deal with it.
It's a dog's breakfast...
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It's not inexplicable. It just requires a bit of digging.
It was because Operation COMET was originally due to land British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, and was then cancelled by Montgomery at the last minute after he received intel on II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem area. So, expanding the operation into three divisions with the American divisions holding the corridor as far as Nijmegen would allow 1st Airborne and the Poles to concentrate at Arnhem with their superior anti-tank gun resources.
The US Airborne divisions were better equipped with field artillery, comprising four battalions of pack howitzers compared with a single regiment having half the number of guns, but were weaker on anti-tank artillery, having fewer guns and all at 57mm calibre (actually British 6-pounder Mark III modified for Airborne use and not the version made under licence as 57mm M1) with no 17-pounders capable of dealing with Panthers and Tigers.
There was some concern Nijmegen may have hosted the 10.SS-Panzer-Division, their exact location was not identified, and possibly drawing tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve behind the Reichswald, but all the available intel indicated German armour was north of Arnhem, so 1st Airborne going to Arnhem made the most sense.
6th Airborne had been used for the Normandy campaign with 1st Airborne in reserve if required. 1st Airborne had the most experienced 1st Parachute Brigade, veterans of North Africa and Sicily, and Montgomery had exercised with 1st Airborne in England to take bridges to facilitate an armoured advance, so this was an idea he first implemented in Sicily with 1st Parachute Brigade for Operation FUSTIAN and then again with COMET/MARKET GARDEN.
It was actually the US divisions that were less experienced in this type of operation and the first thing that Brereton did to the COMET plan to expand it into MARKET was to delete the double airlift on D-Day, because the USAAF aircrews lacked the necessary night navigation skills, and that had the knock-on effect of deleting the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmgen, and Grave bridges, over concerns they would be suicidal in broad daylight. Frankly, it was the lack of capability in the US Airborne that meant the whole concept of the operation was compromised, and after first toying with the idea Gavin eventually dismissed a British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge because of his experience in Sicily - the USAAF crews got panicked by the Flak and scattered his 505th Regiment over a huge area, and Gavin found himself in command of just four or five men after landing.
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@roycharlesparker - McManus doesn't footnote his sources, he lists them at the back of his book, but the quotes are from the officers present at the briefings. His analysis on the bridge versus ridge priorities refutes your point, as does the British action at Arnhem: they may have eventually lost their supply dropping zones, but at least they held onto the bridge prime objective for four days. If the 82nd had done the same at Nijmegen, XXX Corps would have crossed that bridge on their way to Arnhem in good time, with 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division planned to lead the advance, while the Guards could have been assisting 82nd Airborne in recovering any ground lost on the Groesbeek heights.
I have some issues with McManus' book, but I think this analysis on the high ground very good. You should also consider that the British Airborne had similar terrain at Arnhem that the 82nd had at Nijmegen, but oriented in reverse in the north/south axis. The British solution was to send two parachute battalions by different routes to the bridge (and one got through), while the third was tasked to secure the high ground to interdict the expected axes of German counterattacks from the north. The 508th at Nijmegen reversed that by Lindquist instructing all three of his battalions to secure a line along the ridge, while Gavin expected him to send one battalion directly to the bridge without delay.
The operation was compromised because the Nijmegen battle was botched, while the Arnhem battle was compromised it was not fatal to the operation since the bridge objective was secured.
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@roycharlesparker - yes, absolutely use them in YouTube comments. A single block of text looks like brain damage.
Nordyke's works are combat histories, not theses on military doctrine. You sound like an academic! Now I understand why you side with Lindquist:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler.” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
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@tavar1017 - neither the Arnhem or Nijmegen highway bridges were prepared for demolition on 17 September (D-Day of the operation), but the rail bridges were. The main defence line was along the river Waal to the Maas-Waal canal at Nijmegen, and then south along the river Maas. All bridges along the defence lines were prepared for demolition, but the Nijmegen bridge was effectively behind the main line and did not have substantial defences. The Maas bridges at Grave (highway) and Ravenstein (rail) were also prepared as part of the outpost line to the main defence line.
On D-Day, the Maas bridge at Grave had a faulty initiator charge and a man was sent back to Nijmegen for a replacement, meanwhile the bridge was quickly captured. At Nijmegen there was an NSDAP Schutzgruppe of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands formed into a volunteer militia to guard military facilities and the like. They were trained to prepare the Nijmegen highway bridge for demolition using custom made cutting charges in shaped numbered boxes stored inside the bridge pier storage spaces, and designed to fit into the bridge superstructure in corresponding numbered locations, and even painted the same shade of green to blend in with the bridge. They were drilled every month since the Normandy invasion under the surpervision of an engineer officer from von Tettau's WBN (military command Netherlands) engineer staff, Oberleutnant Gerhard Brettschneider. He was also responsible for the Nijmegen rail bridge and the Grave highway bridge. The last drill was mid-August and on 17 September the Schutzgruppe failed to report. Brettschneider had to wait for the SS panzer troops to arrive and on the morning of 18 September a company from SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 arrived and Brettschneider was able to direct them in preparing the bridge for demolition.
The situation Arnhem is less clear from the German point of view, but Royal Engineers at the bridge found no explosive charges or suspicious wires. Arnhem was an important communications centre behind the Waal line and not part of a planned defence line itself, but the river Ijssel was, and those bridges were probably prepared. I believe the Arnhem bridge garrison was 25 WW1 veterans, which means they were probably from Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, which had companies at Doesburg and Westervoort on the Ijssel and two companies defending Deelen airfield. They were WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for combat duties even in 1914-18, and the source for the "old men on bicycles" intel you hear so much about.
The Nijmegen bridge garrison identification has troubled me for some time, but after purchasing a copy of the G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Operations) documents for 82nd Airborne and studying them, I think the 18 (not 14) men stationed on the highway bridge were from 1./Transport-Sicherungs-Bataillon 567. Interrogation of prisoners indicated it was a security battalion stationed in Paris and then the 1st company was sent to Nijmegen, where they had just 110 men in total, 65 men guarding bridges and the rail station, and the remainder formed outposts around the city to delay the 82nd's advance.
The forces in the often quoted Kampfgruppe Henke (Fallschirm-Ausbildungs-Regiment 1) in many sources, but only the name Hartung (Fallschirm.AOK Lehrstab) is found in the 82nd Division G-2 documents, commanded forces manning the Maas-Waal canal sector of the main line to the west of the city, until they were displaced by the 82nd and withdrew into Nijmegen on 18 September, where they were incorporated into the defence of the Waal bridges. It's important to understand the city was evacuated of rear echelon forces, mainly the BdO (HQ of the German Ordnungspolizei for the Netherlands - equivalent to a division HQ) and local Ortskommandantur (military HQ - battalion echelon), by 1830 hours.
A three-man point team from the S-2 Section 1st/508th PIR did reach the southern end of the highway bridge, took seven prisoners without firing a shot and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that didn't show up. The SS panzer recon battalion 9 could be heard arriving at the other end as they withdrew, which puts the window of opportunity between 1830 and approximately 2000 hrs (full dark).
This is when the 1st Battalion 508th should have grabbed the bridge, but unfortunately were not ordered into the city until after Gavin's intervention at 2000 hrs, after he was told they were dug-in on the Groesbeek ridge and not moving. It took a long time to get A and B Companies out of their extended positions along the ridge and were at the Initial point (IP) at the Krayenhoff barracks at 2200 hrs, and sometime between then and midnight when the SS recon unit was withdrawn to Elst, there was a contact firefight at the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle near the rail station, a kilometer from the highway bridge.
Most useful book sources:
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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