Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "The REAL Operation Market Garden | BATTLESTORM Documentary | All Episodes" video.
-
8
-
3,300 was Model's estimate for German casualties in Market Garden, according to Robert Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September (1990), which has a note on German casualties in Appendix C (page 339 in the downloadable pdf version).
As a British Army liasion officer to the West German Bundeswehr with access to their records, Kershaw's study of the Arnhem-Oosterbeek casualties alone comes to 2,565 with the note: "(understatement as unit records incomplete)". Most of the units listed in his Arnhem-Oosterbeek tally suffered an estimated 50% casualties quite consistently.
The biggest problem with German records is that the Luftwaffe in particular were very efficient at destroying their records at the end of the war, so there are no complete 'official' figures possible and much of the Market Garden corridor was in Student's 1.Fallschirm-Armee (from which no records survived), and only from the Waal defence line northwards involved von Tettau's forces and II.SS-Panzerkorps, from which Kershaw was able to draw his Arnhem-Oosterbeek figures. 6,000-9,000 for the whole of Market Garden may still be a conservative figure. Some historians suggest it may be over 13,000 if you have a brief look on the internet.
Swedish historian, Christer Bergström, is probably the most neutral author on the subject in his two volume book Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019, 2020), which researched Cornelius Ryan's documents and interviews and debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film version of his book A Bridge Too Far. In volume 2 chapter VII: Results and Conclusions, he has this to say on German casualties:
'On the German side, there is no reliable compilation of losses. According to the war diary for OB West, the battle of Arnhem cost the Germans a loss of 3,300 men, about one third of whom, that is, about 1,100, were killed. However, counting soldier's graves shows that 1,725 Germans were killed in the Arnhem area between 17 and 26 September 1944. If we take a 1:3 ratio between killed and all casualties (killed, wounded and missing) as our starting point, that means that the real German losses would amount to somewhere in the region of 5,000 men.
However, "Market Garden" comprised much more than just the battle of Arnhem. Cornelius Ryan estimated the German losses at Nijmegen and around "Club Route" during the same period at another 7,000 to 10,000 men, perhaps one fourth of whom were killed. This - which is of course based on very deep knowledge of the battle - still seems to hold up. 59.Infanterie-Division alone lost, on 19 September at Best - out of a force of 2,500 men - 300 killed and 1,400 captured as well as a non specified number of wounded.'
So to me, a figure of 6,000 to 9,000 "in the heads of the British" would be a very conservative estimate indeed. It strikes me that you don't really understand how fair-minded the British people really are. I recall a scene in the film Battle of Britain (1969) in which Air Chief Marshal Dowding (Laurence Olivier) receives a phone call from the government minister complaining that he's having trouble with their people in Washington, they don't believe Dowding's claims on casualties, are they reliable? Dowding replies that he doesn't care about figures. If the figures are right, they (the Germans) will give up. If they're wrong, they'll be in Whitehall within a week, and he hangs up the phone.
People in the UK get fed up with the continual anti-British crap in YouTube comments. If you continue with the crap, you'll continue to get pushback.
8
-
@thevillaaston7811 - I was reading Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis on the Market Garden Campaign (available online) on the shenanigans going on with Operation Linnet II. Brereton was trying to get Browning fired so he could replace him with Ridgway. I was actually trying to find some information on the falling out between Montgomery and Bradley over Linnet II but never got to the bottom of that (I suppose you could read their memoirs and decide for yourself, but I thought it would be nice to get some objective research on it). So because Browning had already threatened to resign over Linnet II (because the timescale was too short to print and distribute maps for the troops involved) he realised Brereton would gladly accept his resignation and withdrew the threat.
Thankfully, the ground troops reached the drop zones around Liege and Maastricht before the operation could be launched, so it was cancelled. Linnet II was a creation by Brereton purely on his own initiative, it was not requested by 21st Army Group (to which 1st AAA was attached and supposed to be supporting), but the Liege-Maastricht area of operations was within the US XIX Corps area of US 1st Army, and according to Roger Cirillo, Bradley didn't request it either (maybe Montgomery thought he had and that's the source of the falling out, I don't know).
So within this context, I'm not really surprised that Brereton readily backed Williams' objections to certain aspects of the Comet plan being carried over into Market (glider coup de main on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, and the double airlift on D-Day). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Brereton actually put Williams up to making the objections, because although Comet was ostensibly an all-British operation planned by Browning's British I Airborne Corps staff, it did require one of William's Troop Carrier Groups and it doesn't make any sense to me why Williams would object to the glider coup de main (tugs flown by RAF bombers and release points on the same track as for the main landings zones) for Market when he hadn't objected to it for Comet. The only difference was that Market required all 14 of William's TCGs and not just one, and his argument was that he couldn't afford to lose a single aircraft. Perhaps because the 82nd Division took over the Nijmegen and Grave objectives, they were expected to provide the troops for their own coup de main, I don't know. We only know that Reuben Tucker, the highly experienced 504th PIR commander and a man you don't want to to say 'no' to, insisted on a company landing south of the Grave bridge, so he was given a special drop zone for one company of his 2nd Battalion.
Market Garden was a fuster-cluck, but it was American politics and not British planning that was at fault.
7
-
They did provide flanking forces, and if you're under the impression they didn't because of Hollywood, then episode 4 of Band of Brothers 'Replacements' actually shows them doing exactly this, but not explained explicitly. The 11th Armoured Division's advance to Nuenen from Eindhoven on 19/20 September with support from the US 506th PIR was a reconnaissance in force to help open up the advance of the flanking British VIII Corps, which had a dedicated MSR (Main Supply Route) called 'Spade Route'. The XII Corps was also on the left flank, with their own MSR called 'Diamond Route'.
The VIII Corps consissted of 11th Armoured and 3rd Infantry Divisions, but their start in Market Garden was delayed by the fact they had no captured bridge over the Meuse-Escaut canal in Belgium, like the central XXX Corps on the 'Club Route'. While the 3rd Infantry Division were constructing a Bailey bridge at Sint Huibrechts-Lille over the canal, 11th Armoured got permission to use the 'Club Route' bridge at Neerpelt and their MSR as far as Eindhoven in order to strike right towards Nuenen, into the rear area of German units holding the Meuse-Escaut line in the Sint Huibrechts-Lille area. They bumped Panzerbrigade 107, which was based at Nuenen for strikes against the Market Garden corridor at the Son bridge on the Wilhelmina canal, and the 11th Armoured/506th PIR patrol helped dislodge them and persuade them to withdraw. This is protrayed in Band of Brothers as a failure or retreat on the main MARKET GARADEN axis, but it's simply nonsense. Stephen Ambrose got many of his facts wrong on this episode in his book.
VIII Corps' axis of advance ('Spade Route') was towards Helmond and Gennep on the river Maas. They eventually made contact with 82nd Airborne patrols in the area of Mill and Haps, if I recall, which was an area not strongly occupied by the Germans and the 82nd's Reconnaissance Platoon (using armored Jeeps) made contact with VIII Corps units - probably Inns of Court Reconnaissance Regiment (armoured cars) in this area.
XII Corps' axis of advance ('Diamond Route') was from the Meuse-Escaut canal at Lommel, also having to construct a Bailey bridge, with 7th Armoured, 53rd (Welsh) and 15th (Scottish) Infantry Divisions, and was aimed at 's-Hertogenbosch.
The flanking Corps' progress was also slower than XXX Corps because Montgomery did not receive the "absolute" priority of supplies promised by Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Bedell Smith, during his 12 September visit - there seems to be a language barrier on the meaning of the word "absolute", so the priority of supplies obviously went to XXX Corps on the centre line. 11th Armoured Division also started a day late due to having to relocate from Antwerp, which it had captured on 4 September while under XXX Corps command and was switched from the 2nd Army's left flank to the right for MARKET GARDEN.
Descriptions like "deep thin rapier thrust" is misleading, and it comes from some of the histories - Cornelius Ryan was the most responsible, only mentioning XII and VIII Corps just once in his book when Model struck at Veghel five days into the operation, and said the flanking Corps had only reached Son - not true - they had advanced further than that when the corridor was cut north of Veghel and the 506th were already free to have moved up to Uden at the time and helped the 501st at Veghel reopen the corridor by striking south to meet them.
I've never heard the RAF said they couldn't fly twice a day (do you have a source?) - they were doing if for operation COMET, which was only cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft at 0200 hrs on 10 September for the dawn first airlift. Montgomery and Browning's proposed upgrade operation SIXTEEN (approved by Eisenhower) retained the double airlift and dawn glider coup de main raids on the three main bridges from COMET, but because the upgrade added the two US Airborne divisions, the detailed planning was handed over to USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier Command respectively. It was Williams who decided his troop carriers could not fly twice a day, and the glider coup de main raids (RAF tugs and British glider troops) were also cancelled by Williams because he determined the raids would be too risky in broad daylight. The main reasons seem to be a lack of night-trained navigators in the USAAF Troop Carrier units, the available turnaround time between lifts required for aircraft maintenance was deemed insufficient, and concerns over flak near the bridges.
The RAF had been bombing Germany at night for years, so they had night-trained navigators on every plane, including the obsolete Stirlings they were using as glider tugs in 1944. I have Dutch researcher Hans Den Brok's Market Flights volumes that cover the Arnhem and Nijmegen airlifts, and the crew rosters show that only a small number of C-47s even had five-man crews including a navigator (the four man crew is a pilot, co-pilot, radio operator and crew chief), and these were leading the serials while the other aircraft followed behind. The USAAF had far greater numbers than the RAF in 1944, but they were less capable in comparison. This was a common theme throughout the war - the US achieved a rapid expansion of its forces in order to bully its way into becoming the 'senior partner' in the alliance, but it had sacrified quality in order to achieve quantity. The US Troop Carriers were often criticised for being insufficiently trained, and Gavin lamented the fact the USAAF glider pilots were a liability once on the ground and advocated for combat training and equipment to match the doctrine of the British Army's Glider Pilot Regiment, which provided two Wings (battalions) of light infantry fighting at Arnhem.
7
-
I've just watched the first part of this video again and TIK's information is out of date, but I know his later videos on Market Garden was clearer on some of these points, particluarly his videos on Browning and Gavin at Nijmegen:
17:15 - the reason the Son and Best bridges were quickly blown by the Germans was because the Wilhelmina canal was a prepared defence line, manned by the Luftwaffe training unit, Flieger-Regiment 53 in this sector, and at the bridges were batteries of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 repositioned from Deelen airfield. The bridges had 'sprengkommando' (demolition teams), which could blow their bridges on short notice or standing orders, so it's hardly surprising both of these bridges at Best and Son were demolished as soon as they were threatened. The bridge at Son was supported by 4 x 8.8cm guns and 3 x 2cm autocannon from 4./s.Flak.Abt 428. There was one 8.8cm each on the north canal bank west and east of the bridge, and the west gun held up 1st Battalion 506th moving through the forest, and two more 8.8cm on the main street north of the bridge that could fire directly down the street, so they turned their barrels around to fire north at the 2nd Battalion 506th troopers (I believe Dog Company was leading and Easy were at the rear of the column on this occasion, which would have made Perconte happy at least). The other two 8.8cm guns, 'E' and 'F' guns from the battery, had been detached to Klooster Dreef and Woenselsche Straat in the northern suburbs of Eindhoven, and were captured the next day by Fox Company 506th in a flanking move using the back streets.
17:45 - XXX Corps being delayed by having to build a replacement for the Son bridge is a very common perception, but John Sliz in his book, Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers During Market Garden (2015, 2016) and part of his excellent and informative Market Garden Engineers series, makes a good point that because the Irish Guards reached the Son bridge site at 1900 hrs, and the advance party of Royal Engineers at 1930 hrs as it was getting dark, the bridging equipment arrived at 2000 hrs to begin work immediately and the Bailey bridge was built in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to operate tanks, so the delay was effectively zero at Son. The tanks would have stopped in the Eindhoven/Son area anyway that night. The first armoured cars of the Household Cavalry moved over the bridge at 0615 hrs on the 19 September before first light and the Grenadier Guards' tanks crossed at Dawn. Horrocks had ordered that tanks were not to advance at night, as was standard procedure. In his book Corps Commander (1977), he said he had twice risked an advance into enemy territory during his career and both times it had paid off. He thought that during Market Garden he would be pushing his luck if he risked it a third time and he was already irked by the fact the operation had started on a Sunday. In his experience, no major operation starting on a Sunday had gone well.
17:52 - the glider crash near General Kurt Student's headquarters did not carry the full operational plans for Market Garden, this was a prop used in the film A Bridge Too Far in the earlier briefing scene, giving a false impression. The glider was a US WACO (not a British Horsa - another prop built for the film for other scenes and reused for this one) carrying the US 101st Airborne's liaison officer and Comms team to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek. It was the main reason Browning had no radio communications with the 101st during the operation. The officer was carrying a number of documents that Student had translated and he realised the significance of a resupply schedule for the 101st Division, as his airborne experience told him he could extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions. Model was unconvinced, so Student used his own Luftwaffe chain of command to alert fighter aircraft to be over the drop zones when the airlifts were due. Fortunately, they were all delayed by weather and the fighters were back at base being refuelled when the transports finally arrived.
18:45 - the real priority was the Nijmegen bridge, but it's not correct that the 1st Battalion 508th were ordered to take the bridge, not until Gavin found out the regiment were dug-in on the heights and not moving. He had specifically ordered the regiment commander, Colonel Roy Lindquist, to "move with speed" on the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing their initial objectives on the heights. When Gavin went to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving, Lindquist then ordered the 1st Battalion to be prepared to move, and this came as a total surprise to battalion commander Shields Warren. This is essentially why Market Garden failed, and only recently published books have exposed the true story and overturned the conventional narrative of Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, published in 1974, who had failed to pick this up in his research.
Sources:
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
7
-
7
-
@ErikExeu -Best is an interesting example because it was not a bridge Dempsey requested or had a use for, probably because the road it carried was headed toward the XII Corps boundary and would cause more problems than it would solve for both Corps if XXX Corps used it as an alternative crossing. The bridge was selected by Taylor on his own initiative in case the Son bridge was blown, but in the event both were on a prepared defence line along the Wilhelmina canal and both bridges were blown on D-Day, resulting in a wasteful battle at Best for a bridge that was already lost and eventually drew in most of the 502nd Regiment with high casualties.
I still don't know what you mean by the flanking Corps "not properly integrated in the fighting" - I think not properly integrated in the public consciousness would be a more accurate statement, despite appearing (although not explained) in an episode of Band of Brothers.
A Better 'Heart Route' example that was actually used would be the Heumen lift bridge on the Maas-Waal canal, also on a prepared defence line and the only intact alternative to the damaged Honinghutje road bridge on the main 'Club Route' - the demolition charges failed to detonate, but the bridge was damaged by the successfully demolished rail spans directly next to it, and engineers deemed the structure too weak for the tanks and only suitable for light traffic.
On the terrain aspects, it did vary over the length of the corridor - there were areas where armoured operations off the roads were possible and some sections where it was not. One of the problems with public perception is the opening breakout scene in the Hollywood film, which is almost completely wrong in creating the impression the tanks could not leave the road in that (or any) section of the advance - they could, and did. (That scene also completely misrepresented the positioning of the German anti-tank guns and the part they played). I have at least one publication showing Irish Guards Shermans moving across the fields to attack German forces in farms and woodlands on the flanks - the After The Battle magazine publication of Operation Market Garden - Then And Now edited by Karel Margry (2002) definitely has those photographs. That publication also has a sketch map showing the corridor broken down into sections with notes on the terrain - the section between Nijmegen and Arnhem being the worst, and it was planned that the advance would be led by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division for that section and unexpected events at Nijmegen impacted that plan adversely - they were committed to mopping up operations in Nijmegen and the Irish Guards (again) had to continue the advance in terrain they were not expected to have to deal with.
As for Guderian advising against using tanks in terrain which was not suitable - I'm sure his advice was not as simple as that. Model was planning his counter-offensive to recapture Antwerp from the Netherlands - the reason he didn't want to authorise demolition of the main bridges. The Germans were not averse to using armour in "unsuitable" terrain, regardless of whether it's in the Netherlands or th Ardennes. It may be difficult, but it's certainly not impossible, and having armoured support for the infantry is advantageous in any terrain. The Germans used tanks on the Nijmegen 'island' (the Betuwe) quite effectively - the blocking line based on the hedgehog positions at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel involved the three StuGs from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, the tanks from Panzer Kompanie Mielke attached to Kampfgruppe Knaust, and at least two Tiger I tanks from Panzer Kompanie Hummel (based on tracks and 8.8cm shell casings found later on the line). They also later fed in at least some of the 20 Panthers Model sent directly from the factory and crewed by the SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 'alarm kompanie' - photographs of several Panther wrecks in the Elst area are testament to their deployment. The rapid advance of XXX Corps from Son to Nijmegen in just a few hours is evidence that the route and the terrain were not a total impediment, and the operation was still broadly on schedule until they reached Nijmegen, where the delay fatal to the operation occurred. The failure of MARKET to secure some bridges was the major impediment, and the cumulative compromises in the airborne planning process were the cause, not the ground advance.
Criticising "the plan" is a bit moot when the fatal compromise was the failure to carry out a critical part of the plan - namely the capture of the Waal highway bridge at Nijmegen on D-Day, but the nice thing about that story is that we know the 'what-if' scenario of the 1st Battalion 508th going straight to the bridge as instructed would have worked, because three men from the battalion S-2 Section did in fact do that and captured the southern end of the bridge and seven prisoners without even firing a shot. They graphically demonstrated what the battalion could have done if they had moved "with speed" as Gavin had intended, and would in fact have replicated the position that Frost had established at the highway bridge at Arnhem.
7
-
Obviously, Sir, you're an expert on these matters, with all your medals and successful campaigns...
TIK has done an excellent job of research and critical thinking, but he could have gone further and found more evidence against Gavin in his own words to the official US Army historian, his interview with Cornelius Ryan, and from other first hand witness accounts in books by American historians:
Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
7
-
7
-
I think Browning and Gavin both need to be given more credit for the Nijmegen highway bridge being a primary objective and too much emphasis has been given to Browning's warning to Gavin that the Groesbeek heights also needed to be secured. Because the bridge was not seized on the first day, I think people assume this was intended by the bridge not being given high enough priority. There is an argment that the bridge should have been given more consideration with a coup de main operation, but it was not de-prioritised in favour of the high ground until after the first failed attempt to seize the bridge. The fact is that the officer charged with the capture of the bridge failed to carry out Gavin's instruction, and there's plenty of evidence in the literature, some of it going back to the officer's previous performance in Normandy, to support it.
First, Gavin wrote in his report to US Army Historical Officer, Captain Westover, on 17 July 1945:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
In his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Ryan notes [with my square brackets]:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats [polder or farm land] to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
(James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967)
The British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge for a coup de main was a legacy of Browning's original operation COMET plan to use dawn glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges - Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave - to repeat the success of operation DEADSTICK on the Orne canal and river bridges in Normandy. These elements had been removed by Brereton for the planning of operation MARKET, because he thought it too risky for a daylight assault, having already deleted COMET's double airlift for D-Day. Despite Browning having advised Dempsey (British 2nd Army) that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults, he could not protest their removal by Brereton for MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II plan (Liege and Maastricht bridges), scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps. LINNET II was thankfully cancelled and the two men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning was now aware Brereton had intended to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for the operation. Browning was now politically neutralised and it seems his only influence on the planning for MARKET was to bring forward the delivery of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift, where he could at least influence events after the troops had landed, but at the expense of some anti-tank guns going to Urquhart's 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.
(The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 - Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University)
So everything now rested on Gavin's instruction to Colonel Lindquist and the battalion assigned to secure the Nijmegen bridge, but Lindquist failed to appreciate the urgency and importance of the primary objective and sent only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge. By the time Gavin found out and ordered Lindquist to get the 1st Battalion moving, it was too late, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had won the race to reinforce the city and its bridges. Cornelius Ryan did not explore this aspect of the operation and most historians have also followed Ryan's established narrative. Only more recent books have explored what Gavin had already indicated in 1945 letter and 1967 interview, and if you want to read in detail the drama that followed and is completely absent in A Bridge Too Far, you would have to consult some books written about 12 years ago, although I have posted extracts from these books elsewhere in the comments:
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012).
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012).
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge.
6
-
@valiskuk - I'm glad you didn't delete the comment, I think you're on the right track - and too few people are because the conventional narrative has become so widely accepted for so long.
Antwerp is a common diversion - a lot of people think it should have been the priority over a Rhine crossing, but mostly they're the people who think Patton should have crossed the Rhine first. The logic was that a Rhine crossing at Arnhem would be easier sooner rather than later, before the Germans had reinforced their river and canal defence lines. Eisenhower saw that logic and that's why he endorsed the operation. Montgomery was already going to Arnhem with COMET, he only needed Eisenhower's endorsement to expand the operation into MARKET to include the American divisions. Antwerp was needed for Eisenhower's broad front advances into Germany, not for getting to the Rhine, so the argument that Antwerp should have come first is completely beside the point. Opening Antwerp doesn't cut the V-2 supply lines, it doesn't even trap the 15.Armee at Antwerp (only one of Montgomery's wider encirclements could do that after a smaller one fails), and it certainly wouldn't make a later Rhine crossing any easier. So Antwerp is a diversion from the real debate.
The thing about Browning is that his judgement seems to have been spot on. He was right about holding the Arnhem bridge for four days (and perhaps it being "a bridge too far"). He was right to dismiss the aerial photo of German tanks in the Arnhem area - now that the photo has been found it does indeed show obsolete vehicles and not a 1944 panzer division. And he took his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift at the expense of not more infantry as I had first assumed (38 glider tugs could have taken the second half of the South Staffords battalion) but actually disrupted the original anti-tank gun delivery schedule. I've recently finished reading a new series of books on the Anti-Tank Batteries at Arnhem by Nigel Simpson et al (2019-2023). It's clear from them that heavy armoured counter-attacks were expected and briefed to the AT units, but the fact the German armoured response took several days to build up is a question of judgement, so the guns were not all needed on the first lift, and indeed some that were delivered on the 1st lift barely fired any rounds throughout the whole battle, such was German wariness of British AT guns. His attitude towards the Americans has one of being totally supportive - he won't hear a word against them. I think he took the view of "by their deeds shall they be known" (which is a biblical expression and I've probably butchered it). Maybe he didn't anticipate Cornelius Ryan and Hollywood, I don't know.
I think Gavin does bear a great deal of responsibility for the failure of the operation, but not because he didn't try to get the Nijmegen bridge. Clearly he did, but he was let down by a subordinate and when he found out it was a scene that would have been truly worthy of Ryan O'Neal's soap opera scenery chewing acting, but of course America would never accept the true circumstances being filmed. The internal politics within 82nd Airborne were hinted at by Gavin in his interview with Cornelius Ryan, but how much he appreciated the problems at the time is an open question. In 1967 he told Ryan that Ridgway didn't trust Lindquist and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn't promote another colonel from the division over him because Lindquist had seniority. Gavin may have had the same problem because he didn't replace himself as Assistant Division Commander when he inherited the division from Ridgway, so throughout MARKET GARDEN's planning and execution Gavin was running himself ragged doing both jobs (and carrying a jump injury sustained on 17 September).
Best book on the overall operation is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020). They use unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection and specifically debunk the myths in the Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far.
Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and his factbook on the whole operation, Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), are also recommended.
A free download on the aerial photo story is an interesting read and can be found on the RAF's MoD site, called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story', Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019), it's written by Sebastian Ritchie, whose book Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) is a study of the air planning aspects if you want to go further into that side of it.
Best wishes and happy reading.
6
-
6
-
I have the same reaction when people ask this question: do you expect an Army Group commander to be in the lead tank? Seriously? The other aspect is that as 21st Army Group commander, Montgomery was responsible for strategic planning, not tactical, so once the target of Arnhem for the Rhine crossing was selected over Wesel by Montgomery with Browning's assistance for Operation Comet, Miles Dempsey (British 2nd Army) was informed of the decision and then his staff would carry the detailed planning for the 2nd Army ground forces and Browning's (British I Airborne Corps) staff for the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Brigade element..
When Comet was cancelled by Montgomery, because he became aware of the increased German build-up in the Netherlands (from 'Ultra' and other sources), he proposed an upgraded operation with three divisions by adding the two American units, and with Eisenhower's approval, it was turned over to Brereton's (1st Allied Airborne Army) staff to adapt the cancelled three division Linnet II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) air plan to the Comet drop zones at Arnhem-Nijmegen), and it was there that some of the compromises were made on the air plan, such as removing the glider coup de main attacks on the big bridges and the double airlifts on D-Day.
None of these details are "Monty's plan". They are Brereton's and Dempsey's plans at Army Level. Browning and Horrocks at Corps level, and for the Airborne it was Urquhart, Gavin, and Taylor, responsible for their own divisional plans. Do people really think Monty stayed up late in his caravan every night for a week plotting Johnny Frost's route march to the bridge on a map of Arnhem?
Montgomery's comment that Market Garden was "90% successful" can be interpreted in a number of ways. It may refer to the road mileage from Neerpelt to Arnhem, or it may refer to the fact that 24 bridges were involved in the airborne element and because of multiple redundancy a minimum of 10 bridges on the main supply 'Club Route' are required to get XXX Corps across the Rijn at Arnhem. So, the operation did not depend on 100% success at all, there was flexibility in the plan and the numerous alternative crossings were on route diversions coded 'Heart Route'. Operation Market missed a bridge at Nijmegen, allowing the Germans to reinforce both bridges and hold the operation up on the River Waal for 36 vital hours, so Market was 90% successful. After the tanks of Guards Armoured Division arrived, Operation Garden eventually secured the Nijmegen highway bridge, but could not get to the Arnhem bridge before it was retaken by the Germans, so Garden was 90% successful in the final reckoning as well.
But to assume that's how Montgomery measured the success of the operation as a simple percentage may be missing the point. The point may have been more subtle, like Churchill's House of Commons speech after Dunkirk, with the famous passage beginning "we shall fight them on beaches..." and ending with "... we shall never surrender." Most people listening to that speech over the radio or even in the House of Commons chamber itself were not aware that every word in that passage was carefully chosen using only words derived from Old English, except for the very last word which is derived from the Old French 'sur rendre' (to give up). It was a subtle dig at the French, who had capitulated to Germany, but only the intended recipients of the message would get it.
6
-
Oh my gosh, are you having a total meltdown? You're coming across as a two year old that's just had his ice cream taken away from them!
1. "90% success" - was probably Montgomery's coded dig at Eisenhower. Operation MARKET involved 24 bridge targets, and a minimum of 10 were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. The 82nd Airborne missing one at Nijmegen on the first day meant that MARKET had 10% failed. That's how I interpret it.
2. This idea the Poles were blamed for the failure of the operation has no basis in fact. If you have a reference that suggests this, please provide it. I've asked many people for a reference and not a single one has come up with anything. It's a disgusting slur. Sosabowski was criticised by Browning for being difficult to work with and insubordinate to Horrocks at the Valburg conference on 24 September, and the Polish troops lacked discipline when they had a chance to fight the Germans - perhaps understandably - and even the SS complained that Polish troops fired on their medics trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield (this is in Rob Kershaw's It Never Snows In September, 1990). Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. He then changed his tune after receiving reports from Browning and Horrocks and wrote to Alan Brooke (the CIGS) to ask that they be removed from Browning's command. Nowhere in any of that is a suggestion they caused the operation to fail - perhaps because they arrived too late to have a negative impact on an operation that was already compromised. Again - any reference that says otherwise, I would like to see it. People need to put up or shut up about this.
3. Eisenhower approved Browning and Montgomery's outline proposal for operation SIXTEEN as an upgrade to COMET by adding the two US Airborne divisions. USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army compromised the key features of COMET/SIXTEEN by removing the double airlifts on the first day and deleting the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. Browning was unable to object to the changes after he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation that was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps, and Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. LINNET II was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, so Browning withdrew his resignation letter, but his position was now neutralised by American politics.
4. Those four tanks had just fought a major battle and were in no condition to go haring off into the night (tanks in WW2 could not fight at night except for an experimental infra-red system used on some German Panthers). One tank was knocked out on the bridge, one had its crew captured, and of the two that reached the rail overpass in Lent the lead tank was stopped by an American anti-tank mine. The rest of Guards Armoured Division was fully committed to assisting 82nd Airborne's battles in and around Nijmegen.
5. The performance of Urquhart's division was remarkable. Only a reinforced battalion battlegroup held the Arnhem bridge for four days, fulfilling Browning's promise to Montgomery. While a British airborne division was supposed to be able function independently for eight days if properly supplied by air - 1st Airborne at Arnhem held out nine days while most of its resupply fell to the Germans.
6. Urquhart's division did their job, but they quite rightfully ask did everybody else? 1st Airborne's job was not to cover 82nd Airborne's failures by holding out until April 1945 (when Arnhem was finally liberated).
TIK's research and presentation is impeccable, and he could have gone a lot further if he had dug deeper into the 508th PIR's regimental history - it was not just Gavin that had made mistakes, but he was responsible for his divisional plan and the compromises he made. According to his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, he received "a British request" (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea, he said he eventually dismissed it because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. He then instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and this Lindquist failed to do. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and Gavin told Cornelius Ryan neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight.
TIK himself in a video responding to criticism of his Antony Beevor Arnhem book review said history is not a competition. It's about getting to the truth. If you're not on the side of the truth, where does that leave you?
Sources (none are British, they are Irish, American, Dutch, American, American, and Swedish authors):
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
6
-
@jbjones1957 - the Oxford dictionary definition of "imperative" is "of vital importance; crucial."
I still think this all came out of Browning's planning for COMET and not Montgomery. Montgomery did often involve himself in Dempsey's 2nd Army operations planning, but down to divisional level I don't think he was involved at all. My understanding of military command structures - and I'm fully prepared to be corrected by serving or veteran officers - is that commanders concerned themselves no more than two levels below their own command, so for Montgomery as an Army Group commander he would be working with Dempsey's 2nd Army staff to plan the Corps operations of XXX, VIII and XII Corps, and for the I Airborne Corps component he had meetings directly with Browning.
There's plenty of documented evidence Browning had the view the Groesbeek heights were critical but not a word from Montgomery on this. I wouldn't expect there to be, but it doesn't really make much difference because Browning and Gavin seem to have been in agreement and there was no apparent discord on this point. The heights were an operational concern for 82nd Airborne (and previously 1st Airborne Division for COMET).
With regard to what went wrong at Nijmegen, the issues are the planning compromises - the removal of COMET's dawn glider coup de main assault, the British request (Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin does not state who specifically) to drop a parachute battalion north of the bridge as an alternative, and the assignment of the 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th. The issue on the ground was then the command failure at the top of the 508th in not following Gavin's pre-flight instruction, the instruction is again well-documented, and more recently backed by witnesses to the briefing published in books by John McManus and Phil Nordyke. The bridge was not de-prioritised until after the first belated attempt to secure the bridge in the evening of D-Day, 17 September, had already failed. Browning then overruled Gavin on trying again until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived.
6
-
6
-
I think you're right, but with one or two nuances. Two lifts per day were possible and certainly desirable, but the objection from USAAF Generals Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army and Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command was that there was not enough time for aircraft maintenance and rest for the crews if two flights were made in daylight, but they had arbitrarily decided to conduct all flights in daylight instead of the original proposal by Browning to take off at night for a dawn arrival over the target and then an evening second lift that would return to land that night. This also avoids the hazard of fog forming at sunrise, delaying morning take-offs. So Browning's proposed dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges were consequently deleted as being 'too risky' for broad daylight. I suspect the American commanders did not like the idea of the 82nd's two key objectives (the largest single span and the longest multi-span bridges in 1944 Europe) being captured for them by two British Airlanding companies at Nijmegen and Grave - speculation on my part, based on Brereton being suspected of rejecting an operation on Walcheren when only US Airborne troops were available and didn't want them sacrificed for Montgomery's opening of Antwerp.
The first attempt on the Nijmegen bridge as actually planned by Gavin would have been a walkover, had Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR sent his 1st Battalion straight into Nijmegen as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing two days before the operation. He failed to do so, despite receiving a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had evacuated Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. Lindquist stuck to his original plan (made earlier in the planning process before Gavin decided to chance a battalion) to send a reinforced platoon to the bridge to report on its condition.
Unfortunately the main body of Lt Weaver's patrol got lost in the crowds of celebrating Dutch civilians after losing contact with the three-man point team from the Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section who led the way, and only PFC Joe Atkins and his two companions reached the bridge. They surprised seven guards at the southern end of the bridge and took them prisoner without a shot being fired, then waited an hour until dark for the rest of the patrol to arrive. When they didn't show up, they decided to withdraw and released their prisoners, and as they were leaving heard 'heavy equipment' arriving at the other end of the bridge.
When Gavin received a report that Lindquist had not sent the battalion into Nijmegen, he went to the 508th CP to chew out Lindquist and ordered him to send in the battalion. Lt Col Shields Warren was not aware his battalion was expected to take this bridge and his men were strung out in foxholes along the Groesbeek ridge in defensive positions. He received the order at 8pm, about the time Atkins withdrew and the SS armour arrived at the bridge, to move out and assemble on the main road, taking over an hour to get A Company out of their defensive positions, and then they waited at the IP (Initial Point - situated at the Krayenhof barracks) until 10pm for B Company to catch up, when they were ordered to move on without them. Both companies then got involved in a firefight at a traffic circle near the railway station over 1 km from the bridge sometime between 10pm and midnight.
In the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan in A Bridge Too Far, the story goes from Gavin instructing Lindquist before the jump to send in the 1st Battalion, and the battalion encountering strong resistance at the traffic circle. The part in between has only emerged in more works like American historian John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012).
You might also be unaware of Cornelius Ryan's notes from his interview with Gavin in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and available to view online - box 101, folder 10, James Maurice Gavin is the location. In the notes, Gavin said that neither he nor Matthew Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight and Ridgway wouldn't promote him. In fact, he had a problem in that he couldn't very well promote another colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin may have had the same problem as he failed to replace himself as assistant division commander when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August, and was effectively doing both jobs during MARKET.
Gavin also told Ryan the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and although he toyed with the idea, he eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily, where the Air Corps dropped them all over the island and the division was disorganised for days. It's interesting that the highly experienced Colonel Tucker of the 504th 'insisted' on a special drop zone for one company south of the Grave bridge so that it could be attacked from both ends, and he got it.
Because the Arnhem bridgehead was secured and held for 80 hours - longer than expected to be necessary, the real failure of MARKET and the whole operation was therefore at Nijmegen, and the chain of command responsible was Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist.
Williams was also responsible for objecting to Browning's proposed drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal at Son and south of Eindhoven, to help secure the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges as part of his 'airborne carpet' concept to help the Guards' breakout and contact the 101st. His objection was based on some Flak around Eindhoven. Aalst is only 4 km north of Valkenswaard, where the Guards stopped one hour before dark, so if the Guards had continued on just 4 km to contact US Airborne troops at Aalst on D-Day, a whole day of delay at Aalst by two 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG on D+1 could have been avoided, and the Son bridge replaced 24 hours earlier.
Browning was unable to object to the changes after unsuccessfully threatening to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II, so he was politically neutralised, and if he appealed to Montgomery then it might have gone to Eisenhower to adjudicate and Brereton might possibly have pulled the plug on the whole operation, as he did with Montgomery's proposed INFATUATE plan to land on Walcheren island to help open Antwerp requested on 11 September - not to be confused with the INFATUATE that went ahead later in November as an amphibious assault.
6
-
5
-
5
-
@ErikExeu - what a ridiculous thing to say in the face of overwhelming evidence. Just Google maps of the invasion. For example, I'm looking at the Normandy1944 site and the map 'The Invasion and Operations, 6-12 June 1944'.
The American beaches only have one armoured unit arriving in their sector, the 17.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Götz von Berlichingen' between the two beaches at Carentan (11-12 June). The division was a motorised infantry unit with 42 Sturmgeschütz IV assault guns in its panzer-abteilung, but no tanks, and two of the six infantry battalions were only on bicycles.
In the British and Canadian beach sectors, east of the US 1st Army and British 2nd Army junction, from west to east we have:
2.Panzer-Division (10-11 June)
Panzer-Lehr-Division (10 June)
12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' (7-8 June)
21.Panzer-Division (in situ at Caen 6 June)
Another map showing 'The Capture of Cherbourg and Operations, 13-30 June 1944' shows three additional panzer divisions have joined the sector around the British and Canadian beaches:
2.SS-Panzer-Division 'Das Reich'
9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'
1.SS-Panzer-Division 'Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler'
These are the seven panzer divisions Montgomery has drawn around Caen, preventing it's capture for many weeks, and not a single panzer division is in the American sector, apart from 2.Panzer-Division which has moved west to try to exploit the US 1st/British 2nd Army junction at Caumont. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' was in a reserve position at Argentan but would also join the battles around Caen. The I and II.SS-Panzerkorps also had their heavy panzer-abteilungen (101 and 102.SS-Panzer-Abteilungen) equipped with Tiger I tanks. There was also an army heavy Tiger abteilung, 503, in the area equipped with Tiger II.
This is history. It's the Americans that are taught fairy tales in their schools and in Hollywood films. You need to stop the ridiculous "USA! USA!" chest-beating BS and do a bit of proper homework.
5
-
5
-
There's a lot of false mythology surrounding the bridge vs ridge debate and as far as I can see the origin is Browning's warning to Gavin that the heights should also be secured in addition to every effort being made to secure the Grave and Nijmegen bridges. This is further conflated by Browning rejecting Gavin's proposed second attempt to secure the Nijmegen bridge on D+1, as Browning thought it would be better to wait until the armour of XXX Corps arrived to assist. This was not the pre-flight priority, but a decision made only after the first failed attempt to secure the bridge. McManus (2012) has the best analysis on the whole bridge vs ridge issue in the planning process.
The opportunity to secure the Nijmegen bridge was missed on the first afternoon, when the 508th failed to carry out Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directy to the bridge after landing. The Colonel commanding the regiment, Roy Lindquist, did send a recon patrol based on a reinforced platoon, which lost contact with its point team and got lost in the back streets of Nijmegen. The three-man point team reached the bridge, surprised seven guards at the southern end of the bridge and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. As they decided to withdraw, they heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9) arriving at the other end of the bridge, but the point was proven that the bridge was theirs for the taking if the battalion had been sent as Gavin had instructed.
So Gavin is responsible for selecting the poorly led 508th for the Nijmegen mission after already compromising his divisional plan by dismissing a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main. That request was obviously a backstop after Brereton had removed Browning's original Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave dawn glider coup de main assaults for COMET on the grounds of Flak. Although Gavin told Cornelius Ryan he toyed with the idea, his final decision was based on his experience in Sicily, where the US Troop Carriers were spooked by Flak and scattered his men over a huge area. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the whole division was disorganised for days. For MARKET Gavin decided to drop his three parachute regiments close together in a "power center", and then have the battalions radiate outwards toward their objectives. The only exception was the 504th PIR at Grave, where the experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the bridge to take it from both ends, and he got it.
By the way, the flat nature of the Netherlands does have exceptions in the east of the country, with glacial moraine deposits rising to 109.9 m (360 feet) north of Arnhem in a region known as the Veluwe, and also south of Nijmegen near the German border. At the village of Berg-en-Dal (objective of 3rd Battalion 508th PIR) the heights rise to 95.6 m (314 feet), overlooking a polder just 10 m above sea level only a km away. Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, because it was originally a Roman outpost established on the edge of the solid ground that is now mostly Germany, and overlooked the lakes and marshes that is now reclaimed by the Dutch.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge
Allied Map Service (A.M.S.) M831 (G.S.G.S. 4427) GINKEL 388 and GROESBEEK 12 N.W.
5
-
5
-
@johnburns4017 - do you know where you got that account of Horrock's visit from? I have heard references to British reconnaissance (I'm assuming the armoured cars of Household Cavalry) were able to observe "the bridge" and were amazed to see German troops crossing over the bridge unopposed. I had thought it might refer to a point west of the rail bridge (which had one track converted to a roadway with wooden planks between the rails) which was used for light traffic, or it could have been a location east of the highway bridge as you describe.
The only other detail I got is that they (the observers) were at an abandoned Flak position where the guns had been removed. That would correspond to a heavy Flak position on the polder east of the highway bridge that had 4 x 8.8cm and a neaby 3 x 2cm light position to protect it. I believe these were the guns that Reinhold had repositioned to protect the bridge - one 88 was on the Keiser Lodwijkplein traffic circle still on its trailer wheels, and two were positioned on the north bank in Lent and were taken out by Sergeant Robinson's tanks on 20 September.
This looks like a solid story and not just rumours, so if you have a source reference that would be great.
Some people dismiss the idea that three scouts from 1/508th could have seized the southern end of the bridge and take seven guards prisoner without firing a shot on the first evening, as there was a couple of Flak batteries in the area, but since there was no Flak on the bridge itself and the nearest guns were on the river bank down on the polder some distance away - the bridge itself is 640 metres (2,100 feet) long between each embankment - so it's a huge area, soldiers at that distance cannot be distinguished for their uniforms.
I also have an even more remarkable story from one of the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem volumes - 'A Lost Opportunity' - Battery Z Troop, by Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk and Marcel Zwarts (2022). The title quote comes from Lieutenent Eustace McNaught, the commander of Z Troop. As part of 1st AT Battery, his troop of 4 x 6-pounders were due to go to Arnhem on the 1st lift to protect Division HQ (Z Troop were originally part of the Light Regiment and used for AT protection of the gun positions, but was transferred to 1st Battery). Due to Browning deciding to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the 1st lift, some last minute changes were made to the chalk numbers which were not recorded in the official records, so Simpson et al found researching the Z Troop story very difficult. It appears Z Troop got bumped to the 2nd lift on D+1, but McNaught's Troop HQ glider - CN 1005 - seems to have gone on the 1st lift from reading this account.
The reason I think that is because McNaught said his glider released short of the LZ and came down near Zetten on the 'island' (they certainly failed to arrive as far as the Troop were concerned). He had seven gunners of his Troop with him, plus the two glider pilots, a Jeep with the radio and a trailer full of 6-pounder ammunition. He decided to take the Jeep with his driver, radio operator and one other without the trailer to be able to move faster, and told the others to stay put until he could arrange transport for them. He thought if he went for the Arnhem bridge, the main objective of the Division, he could hopefully meet the Reconnaissance Squadron at the bridge and arrange transport to pick up the rest of his men from the glider. He reached the main Nijmegen-Arnhem highway and turned north, but as he approached the Arnhem bridge he could see a large armoured column coming south towards him, so he turned the Jeep around and headed south to Nijmegen, thinking the Americans were there and he could link up with them.
They reached Nijmegen as it was getting dark and carefully drove over the bridge, but McNaught was surprised they were not challenged until they got into the city and were stopped by some civilians. They told him the Germans were on their way into the city and offered to hide them and the Jeep in a nearby monastery. There, they waited out the battle for Nijmegen, keeping track of troops movements in the immediate area. As soon as he deemed it safe to venture out on Thursday 21 September, one of the first people he bumped into was Lieutenant Howe of the 1st Battery seaborne element. Howe had suffered a road traffic accident in his Jeep and was being attended to at the side of the road when McNaught drove up. McNaught told Howe his story and said he wasn't going to wait around and left his three men with Howe, while he went off in the Jeep alone to look for the nearest SAS section to join. That was the last Howe saw of him until he heard after the war McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and after the war was with MI6 as a military attaché. Lieutenant Howe is unfortunately the only source for this story, although it was corroborated by the three gunners from McNaught's Troop that were with him.
What happened to the party left with the glider is unknown, but CN 1001 also landed near Zetten and the occupants were hidden by the Dutch until the area was secured - these two stories have been often conflated because the two gliders both landed in the same area, but this is the first I've heard of someone landing on the 'island' and being able to drive over the Nijmegen bridge unchallenged and I think it could not have been possible on D+1, so it must be D-Day if true.
5
-
5
-
5
-
@johnburns4017 - would love to hear a first hand account from McNaught, but since he apparently joined the SAS and then MI6, he seems to have disappeared into the shadows. Just done a quick search and found him mentioned in a school photo album where he was in a Rugby XV listed as "Eustace McNaught (New Coll Ox, WW Lt Airborne RA, Diplomat, MI6)" - so there you go. Appears he was born in 1922 and passed away 1992.
McNaught is also mentioned a few times in David Truesdale's book Arnhem Bridge Target MIKE ONE - an Illustrated History of the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment (2015), as he joined the 1st Airborne Light Regiment Royal Artillery from 123 OCTU and initially assigned to 2 Battery before taking command of Z Troop (6-pounder AT), and Z Troop were later transferred to 1st Anti-Tank Battery.
In Chapter 6: Market Garden, it does mention his adventures briefly, but in the passages relating to the second lift, and I suspect Z Troop was actually split between 1st and 2nd lifts as the only explanation for McNaught's story. (Editor) Karel Margry's Operation Market Garden Then And Now (2002) does suggest in the glider schedules that Z Troop elements were in both lifts. Anyway, Truesdale has this -
'Z Troop did not have a wholly successful flight. Flying the southern route, the Troop lost its commander when Lieutenant Eustace McNaught's glider came down some twenty miles to the west of Nijmegen. Local Dutch people sheltered the officer and his men until they were later able to linkup with elements of the US 82nd Airborne. From here McNaught and his men made their way to the headquarters of I Airborne Corps. McNaught did not rejoin the Division, transferring to the Special Air Service at the end of November.'
I think this is an example of the stories of McNaught's glider (CN 1005) getting conflated with another landing in the same area near Zetten (CN 1001) where the passengers were sheltered by the Dutch. According to McNaught, his party was split between the four taking the Jeep and the remainder ordered to stay with the glider. At least it confirms his joining the SAS.
5
-
I can help out with some of your questions.
1. I wholeheartedly agree with you, and that's why it was attempted and not cancelled like all the post-war armchair tacticians suggest.
2. The RAF were happy with the original Operation Comet plan to conduct two airlifts on the first day - one at dawn and the second in the afternoon. They were also happy with the proposed glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave highway bridges, with 6 gliders each, carrying one company from each of the three Airlanding battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade. These were modelled on the highly successful Pegasus Bridge coup de main in Normandy on D-Day and Staff Sergeant Jm Wallwork, who flew the lead glider on that mission, was due to lead the Nijmegen bridge attack.
After weather delayed Comet from 8 to 10 September, Montgomery cancelled Comet on the morning of 10 September, because of the worsening intelligence picture, and met with Eisenhower later that afternoon to propose an upgrade called Market Garden with the two American Airborne divisions added, so 1st Airborne could concentrate at Arnhem. The detailed planning, which basically combined the ground plan for Comet with the three-division air plan from the cancelled Linnet II operation, would have to be undertaken by 1st Allied Airborne Army instead of being an all-British Airborne Corps affair. Because the larger air plan depended on every aircraft being available and losses kept to an absolute minimum, General Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to the double airlift and also the glider coup de main attacks for fear of losses due to Flak. General Lewis Brereton of 1st AAA backed him up and so the RAF's approval of the Comet plan was moot, despite it being their aircrews that towed the gliders and the release points were on the ground tracks for the main drop zones and 6 Km from the bridges.
The weather requirement was for two days of clear weather, which was enough to get three airlifts in on the Comet plan. When Market was scheduled for 17 September, they had two days forecast as clear and then unpredictable (mixed) thereafter.
3. This is where the conventional narrative on Market Garden has been wrong for decades. Since Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far, it has been believed the Groesbeek heights were prioritised before the Nijmegen highway bridge, or given equal priority and there was a communications breakdown within the 82nd Airborne. Recent research has brought to light that Gavin actually instructed the commander of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to send one battalion straight to the bridge as soon as practical after landing, and if there was little or no resistance on his initial Groesbeek ridge objectives. This he failed to do, believing he had to wait for a divisional order to move on the bridge, and by the time Gavin found out and go him moving, it was too late and they lost the race to elements of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division coming down from Arnhem on the first evening. The regiment had similar command problems in Normandy and I recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - for both the Normandy and Nijmegen stories.
After the war, it seems that Gavin was reluctant to throw a subordinate officer under the bus and took much of the responsibility on his own shoulders, even co-opting the help of Browning in correspondence to muddy the waters with regards to the bridge vs high ground priorities.
The Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for demolition on the first day, although the explosive charges were stored in rooms inside the bridge piers and a local 'Schutzgruppe' of ethnic German NSDAP militia were drilled every month to wire up the bridge charges under the supervision of an engineer officer from von Tettau's Pionier staff at the WBN (occupation forces Netherlands). On 17 September, the NSDAP Shutzgruppe failed to show up and the officer could do nothing alone until 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 arrived the next day as part of Kampfgruppe Reinhold and started immediately to work. The charges probably failed to go off on 20 September due to artillery fire cutting the lines, but it's not known for certain. The Dutch believe a local resistance hero cut the wires, and this seems quite possible, but engineers usually test firing circuits at regular intervals and any breaks repaired.
4. The original Polish Drop Zone 'K' near the Arnhem highway bridge was not suitable for the first day because it was flanked by two of the four heavy batteries of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 that surrounded Arnhem on four sides. The zone was also crossed by high tension lines (!) from the Arnhem power station just southeast of the bridge. It was assumed in the planning that 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area by D+2 when the Poles were due, and so the Flak would be neutralised and the HT lines cut. The power station was also the RV for all four squadrons and companies of the Royal Engineers after their initial tasks were completed, and they would be in control of the power station. The intended role of the Polish Brigade was to pass over the bridge and take up their allotted eastern sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem.
5. There are no anti-tank guns seen at Arnhem in the Hollywood film, perhaps because they were not available for filming, but more likely because they wouldn't help Richard Attenborough's deliberate intention to portray the 1st Airborne Division as ill-equipped and the planners incompetent in his "anti-war film". Neither was actually true. The Division took 52 x 6-pounder and 16 x 17-pounder anti-tank guns to Arnhem. The Polish Brigade also had their own Anti-Tank Squadron with 4 Troops of 4 x 6-pounder guns, but they elected to reorganise them as 3 Troops of 5 guns taken by air, and the spare gun was probably in the Brigade 'sea tail' arriving by road (9 men are documented on the Squadron sea tail roster). That gives you a total of 83 anti-tank guns taken by air, or 84 if you count the Polish spare gun. By a stunning coincidence, Generalfeldmarshal Model had exactly 84 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front in September, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks in Belgium and Hodges' US 1st Army with I don't know how many tanks at Aachen. The Allies' optimism going in to Market Garden was well founded.
6. There are myths associated with the radios as well. The 'wrong cystals' only affected two VHF radio sets sent to Arnhem and they belonged to the two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron for contacting aircraft. All the British sets were working properly, but at much reduced ranges, and this was not understood at the time. The reason was the high iron content in the glacial moraine of the Veluwe high ground, and I believe this still affects police radios and TV/radio reception today. The worst affected were the battalion communications net as the distances involved were marginal for even the normal working ranges, but although the more powerful Royal Artillery sets were also affected they were still working over the ranges required to contact the gun batteries, so the pack howitzer batteries in Oosterbeek were able to support the 1st Parachute Brigade at the bridge - something also not shown in the film, of course. Both the British and US Airborne forces used the American made hand-held SCR-536 (actually called the "handie-talkie") in platoon communications and found it to be virtually useless unless you were almost in line of sight and were not popular. One of the reasons why Frost used a hunting horn!
Probably the best recent work that debunks the many myths in the film is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State university.
Hope this has been helpful.
5
-
@jacobgorman3145 - yes, I agree with your point, but this was imposed on Market Garden By 1st Allied Airborne Army when Comet was expanded to Market. Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to Comet's glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, and he also objected to two lifts on the first day, apparently on the grounds of flak near the bridges and the lack of night navigation skills in the IX TCC aircrews. The first lift for Comet was timed to arrive at dawn and the second late in the afternoon, so both flights required a departure or a return at night. The glider release points for the coup de main attacks were 6 Km from the bridges and on the planned ground tracks for the main landing zones, so the tugs were 6,000 metres from the bridge flak positions and not flying over them - so I find this decision nonsensical. There was also a question of the turnaround time between the two lifts being insufficient for maintenance of the aircraft, which is something else that would nat have impressed the RAF.
Brereton (1st AAA) backed Williams up, so the original all-British plan for Comet was already compromised and there was nothing that could be done about it. Browning had already threatened to resign over Linnet II and had to back down when it was clear he didn't intend to carry out the threat. He couldn't very well do it again. I'm afraid it's all tied up in Anglo-American politics, when the real issue should have been winning the war as quickly as possible, because that's what really saves the most lives.
There were not enough transport aircraft in the allied fleet to carry three divisions in one lift, but multiple lifts are not a problem unless the reinforcement delivery rate falls behind that of the opposing Germans on the ground, which is what happened from D+2 onwards due to the weather delaying the 3rd lift. When the 2nd lift for Market arrived on D+1, it had a demoralising effect on the Germans because the initiative had gone back to the Airborne again, but once lost on D+2 it had swung back to the Germans for the rest of the operation.
Best work on these aspects is Sebastian Ritchie's book Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019). It does what it says on the cover, looking at airborne operations conducted by both sides to incorporate lessons learned from them - none were very successful on their own terms, but were often rescued by quick reinforcement on the ground, such as in Normandy. Ritchie explains why the air plan for Market was done the way it was, and the choice of landing zones, and I've brought some of that out in response to some of the armchair tacticians on YouTube.
By the way, big woody (aka Para Dave and several fake accounts using other people's handles) is a troll with a huge Montgomery-sized 'bug up his ass' about Market Garden and has no interest in actually learning anything from the books he claims to have read. He's even quoted from Sebastian Ritchie, but doesn't seem to have understood it. I just ignore him, but I'm happy to engage with anyone interested in digging deeper than most of these videos go and I can see you've attempted to do that in your own responses to him.
5
-
XXX Corps stopped at Valkenswaard because they realised they would not reach Eindhoven before it got dark, and it was doctrine not to advance tanks at night - they could not fight in the dark during WW2. COrps commander Brian Horrocks said in his book Corps Commander (1977) that he had gambled twice in his career by advancing with tanks at night and on both occasions it had paid off, but he felt for MARKET GARDEN it would be pushing his luck to try it a third time. So he gave strict instructions for no movement at night except in friendly held territory.
With that in mind, Browning had originally selected drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal at Son and south of Eindhoven near Aalst to assist the capture of the Son bridge - the canal was the main German defence line in the area and the remaining bridges were all prepared for demolition with standing orders to detonate if threatened - the four bridges in the centre of Eindhoven, and a small bridge over the river Dommel at Aalst. The idea was to create an airborne 'carpet' over which XXX Corps could pass, and securing these southern targets would assist the XXX Corps breakout and reduce the distance to the first airborne linkup, hopefully on the first day.
Unfortunately, General Paul Williams of the US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to the drop zones because of the flak around Eindhoven and General Lewis Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army removed them from the plan. Browning could not object to any of the changes Brereton made to his his operation SIXTEEN outline to create MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over a previous Brereton plan for LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges), and knew if he did it again his resignation would be accepted and he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation.
At Aalst there was a pair of 8.8cm heavy flak guns positioned in a concrete revetment in the anti-tank role covering the bridge over the Dommel, and on 18 September after the XXX Corps advance resumed from Valkenswaard they also spotted a Jagdpanther tank destroyer and two StuG assault guns in the area, and dealing with these resulted in a delay for much of the day that could have been avoided if paratroopers had secured the area. Eindhoven itself was evacuated by the Germans and apart from two 8.8cm guns in the northern suburbs detached from the battery at the Son bridge, the city was liberated without incident by the 506th PIR on D+1.
The Son bridge was known to be demolished thanks to telephone connections made by Dutch civilian switchboard operators and US Airborne engineers were able to pass information on the bridge site to Royal Engineers in Guards Armoured Division. On his own initiative, the Guards CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) had the necessary bridging equipment brought up to Valkenswaard overnight, so that when the Irish Guards reached the Son bridge site at 1900 hrs on 18 September the bridge column was driven up the road in 30 minutes and work commenced on the Bailey bridge at 2000 hrs, with an estimated 10 hours for construction. It was completed at 0615 hrs (just 15 minutes over the estimate) before dawn, when the first armoured cars of Household Cavalry crossed over, and the Grenadier Guards tanks followed at first light.
John Sliz in his book, Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016), makes a good point that the delay at Son was effectively zero hours, because the bridging operation was conducted entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. So the implication is that they would have had to stop somewhere in the 101st Airborne area between Eindhoven and Veghel anyway. There was a gap between the 501st PIR (101st Airborne) at Veghel and the 504th (82nd Airborne) at Grave that was effectively 'Indian country' that could contain a German ambush, so the delay to XXX Corps' linkup to the 82nd at Grave was unavoidable without the bridges at Aalst and Eindhoven in American hands on the first day, otherwise the tanks might have been passed through to Veghel on the first night instead of stopping at Valkenswaard.
5
-
@johnlucas8479 -
1) You may well be right in saying Williams didn't make the decision to cancel drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal as he seemed happy with his one Troop Carrier Group's involvement in the otherwise all-British/Polish COMET plan, but seemed to change his tune in MARKET - I suspect because Brereton had his hands on the reins, but I said what I did because Taylor told Dempsey it was Williams, so what are we supposed to believe?
My source is RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014), page 55 reproduces the relevant part of the cable (so this is a primary source) that Taylor sent to Dempsey - 14 September, Annex 1, Employment of 101st Airborne Division, Operation "Market":
"1. The agreed mission of 101st Airborne Division in operation "MARKET" includes the securing of the canal and stream crossings at EINDHOVEN. Since this mission was received, Major General P. L. Williams, Commanding General of Troop Carrier Command, has determined that it is not possible to drop parachute troops south of WILHELMINA CANAL because of the flak about EINDHOVEN. Consequently, the nearest drop zone for the EINDHOVEN mission will be about eight miles from this objective. Allowing two hours to assemble the regiment and three hours for the approach march it is estimated that five hours will elapse before Airborne troops can reach EINDHOVEN. The present tentative drop schedule places the troops on the ground about 1500 on D Day. Hence Airborne troops will not be able to reach the brdges at EINDHOVEN until about 2000."
Karel Margry's (Ed) Operation Market Garden Then and Now (2002), may have picked up that Dempsey received notification from Taylor, but Taylor says in the cable it was Williams' decision.
Taylor did, I believe, reject a drop zone near Uden, which Browning had selected to close the gap between the two US Airborne divisions, and this was on the grounds his division would be overstretched over such a long sector of the corridor.
2) Because if the US Airborne had the route between the Aalst and Son bridges in their hands there would be nothing to stop XXX Corps moving the tanks up, even at night. It's just 4km between Valkenswaard and Aalst, they could just as easily reached that point as Valkenswaard itself. Page 87 of Poulessen (op cit):
'At 1815 IRISH GUARDS GROUP had reached the Stenen Brug - the bridge over the Dommel River - just before Valkenswaard. At 1910 - whilst not in contact with the enemy and darkness at 2003 - it was decided to harbour in Valkenswaard.'
So, they could have reached Aalst before dark if they knew the Americans were due to be there holding the bridge over the Tongel reep - a stream tributary of the Dommel (apologies if I said this was the Dommel itself at Aalst).
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
@ErikExeu - you obviously haven't really read my reply, so you have misquoted me and haven't taken on board several points.
Guderian? Guderian invaded Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. In neither of those invasions was he constrained by the Dutch terrain, so you're not comparing like with like. The actual German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 was east to west. Once they were across the Maas at Gennep and the Ijssel at Westervoort, they were advancing parallel to the major rivers, not across them.
Your reference to Beevor made me laugh. He's another tart who shamelessly writes for the American market, so no wonder you reference him. I completely wasted my money buying his Arnhem book because he only recycled the work of other authors and did not present any new primary sources that advanced the research frontier. I learned nothing new except a joke (literally). I donated my copy to a local charity bookstore, along with Anthony Tucker-Jones' The Devil's Bridge for the same reason that he hadn't advanced the research frontier on the German side since Rob Kershaw's outdated It Never Snows In September from 1990. You'll have to remind me if Beevor's commentary on Sosabowski's treatment was just his own opinion or if he actually cited a primary source that claimed Sosabowski was responsible for the failure of the operation? I'm sure I would recall if the latter had been the case, because that would indeed be explosive. If Sosabowski was criticised for being difficult to work with, that is valid criticism, and the evidence is uncontested. What is shameful is conflating that with the failure of the operation. That is a disgusting slur, and you should be ashamed if you are propagating such an idea.
"Blame Eisenhover (not Monty) for approval of Market Garden, but don’t blame Browning for his approval of Gavins decisions. Fantastic British two-sided logic" - I did not blame Eisenhower for approving MARKET GARDEN at all - he wanted a Rhine crossing, and after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's misleading book felt he had to make the public statement - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015). And there's no evidence Browning "approved" Gavin's decisions because he was not in a position to overrule his decisions if he didn't approve them. It is a matter of record that Browning warned Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults on the main bridges, so I think we have Browning's view on how important he believed they were. If the American commanders insisted on removing the glider raids and dismissed a request for an alternative option for MARKET, then you can't blame Browning. So you've completely made up my "British two-sided logic". Another completely false slur, this time aimed at me personally. This is probably about the time I should realise you know you have lost the argument and it's getting personal for you. I don't understand why that has to be. History is a debate, its not a competition on who 'wins'. That is missing the point.
The 32 Horsa gliders used by Browning to transport his Corps HQ (and 6 WACOs for the US liasion and USAAF fighter control teams) were his gliders, not Urquhart's or anybody else's. They are pre-loaded gliders that are going sooner or later. How many times have I had to make the point that we're dsicussing scheduling changes and glider tugs, not glider loads? If the 38 RAF tugs used on the 1st airlift to Groesbeek were allocated elsewhere, they could have taken the remainder of the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion (41 gliders) or 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery and made no difference at Arnhem, or perhaps tow 32 WACO gliders belonging to Gavin's 325th Glider Infantry Regiment (32 x 12 = 384 troops - less than half a battalion), or perhaps a field artillery battalion instead - again, making no difference at all if the biggest problem at Nijmegen was a command failure that left the bridges in German hands in the first few hours.
Criticising the 1st Airborne Division is deflection, because it actually doesn't make any difference how well they performed if XXX Corps cannot advance beyond Nijmegen within the four days Browning said they could hold the Arnhem bridge. As I said, it was not their job to cover 82nd Airborne's failure by holding out until April 1945.
"Browning should have interfered, but he didn’t" - how could he do that? The chain of command only has authority within the same army - Browning had no authority to order Gavin to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge, he could only request it, and Gavin was entitled to dismiss the request, as he did. You ignore this point. The thesis is that if the Nijmegen bridge were taken on D-Day, then the Guards Armoured Division would not be needed to commit half of its resources to take the bridges themselves. The actual plan if the bridge was in American hands was for the Guards to halt at Nijmegen and pass 43rd Infantry Division through to lead the next stage of the advance to Arnhem, because the terrain did not suit an armoured advance, and then Guards would take the lead again at Arnhem to the Ijsselmeer.
The four Grenadier Guards tanks in Lent were not available to advance to Arnhem - as I said, they had just fought a major battle, so because the division was fully committed in the Nijmegen area, there were zero tanks available to go to Arnhem - certainly not in the dark, and mopping up operations in Nijmegen prevented 43rd Division being moved up quickly, so eventually Horrocks was forced to move on with Irish and Welsh Guards the next day. You ignored this point as well and seem to believe they were fully armed and fit to go to Arnhem, as if four tanks alone would have been enough.
"The whole idea was extremely stupid" - then why did Eisenhower, Brereton, Williams, Gavin, and Taylor all go along with it? None of these officers could be forced into anything by a British commander. It seems that Eisenhower insisted on it, so maybe you're blaming Eisenhower and not me? Brereton rejected Montgomery's proposal to drop an American division on Walcheren in early September (operation INFATUATE) on the grounds it would be suicide. Unless Eisenhower overruled him, which I don't think happened, he could have rejected SIXTEEN (the outline proposal for MARKET) on a similar basis. The fact is that they didn't think it was stupid, and if Lindquist had sent his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen bridge on D-Day, and the operation had succeeded, then nobody would have looked stupid at all.
5
-
5
-
5
-
@stewartorr1939 - Brereton and Williams are responsible for deleting the double D-Day airlift and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from Browning's COMET plan for MARKET, and Browning was unable to protest because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation scheduled at too short notice. LINNET II was fortunately cancelled, but Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps.
Sources:
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014)
Gavin was also responsible for his own divisional plan, including toying with and eventually dismissing a British request (presumably Browning's) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main, because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. He then assigned his weakest regimental commander, Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR - who had not performed well in Normandy, to the critical Nijmegen mission instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. Gavin obviously thought it sufficient to instruct Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge immediately after landing, so Gavin and Browning did prioritise the bridge and see McManus for the best analysis on the whole bridge versus ridge debate.
Sources:
Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011)
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The fact is Lindquist failed to carry out this instruction, despite receiving a personal report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees at the initial objective on the Groesbeek ridge, that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left the highway bridge guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. He instead continued with his own plan to send a recon patrol based on a rifle platoon and the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section. He reported back to Gavin that he was not sending the battalion until the DZ was cleared. On hearing this, Gavin drove to the 508th CP, telling Lindquist "I told you to move with speed", at about the same the SS were arriving in Nijmegen. It then took another two hours to get A and B Companies out of their extended defensive positions along the Groesbeek ridge and moving into the city.
Source:
Nordyke (op cit, 2012)
The patrol got split up in the crowds of Dutch civilians and only the three-man point team from S-2 reached the bridge, took seven surprised prisoners at the south end without firing a shot, and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. They decided to withdraw and as they were leaving heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 with about 30 armoured vehicles) arriving at the other end.
Source:
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge
Essential background on Lindquist's poor performance in Normandy:
Nordyke (op cit, 2012), Chapters 3 and 8.
Gavin also talked about his and Matthew Ridgway's views on Lindquist in his interview with Cornelius Ryan (op cit, Cornelius Ryan Collection)
The German side of the Nijmegen bridge story, both reinforcement and attempted demolition, based on the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) is in Chapter 4 of Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014).
The only reason TIK didn't mention these other aspects, I'm sure, is because he hasn't drilled down to Nordyke's regimental histories or read Cirillo's thesis on command aspects or it seems, Cornelius Ryan's notes on Gavin's interview. The Gerritsen and Revell book is a specialist publication I doubt many people have read. I think TIK is on the right track as far as he's gone, but you can go a lot deeper with more references and it only reinforces his video.
5
-
@ErikExeu - the take-off time for COMET was in the early hours, and staggered to allow the gliders to get there first before the faster paratroop carriers overtook them - Montgomery's cancellation order came through to the airfields at 0200 hrs on 10 September, just as troops were loading their aircraft, so it was very last minute. The glider coup de main assaults on the three main bridges at Arnhem-Njmegen-Grave was timed for arrival at dawn and the gliders would turn and follow the rivers to navigate to their targets. This allowed plenty of time for the second lift planned to arrive in the early evening before sunset.
The reason Brereton deleted the double airlift for MARKET was probably the lack of night navigation experience in IX Troop Carrier Command and decided on each lift flying in broad daylight, and that meant one lift per day, and he cited the insufficient turnaround time for maintenance as the reason a second lift on D-Day was not possible. The glider assaults were then deleted on the pretext daylight landings near the bridges would be vulnerable to the flak defences, but probably has more to do with the lack of assault capability in the USAAF glider force or an unwillingness to allow the British glider units to seize the 82nd's objectives by coup de main for them.
Gavin, according to his interview with Cornelius Ryan (Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) received a "British request" (I would presume from Browning) to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge. He said he toyed with the idea, but eventually dismissed it because of his experince in Sicily, where the troop carriers were spooked by flak and dropped the 82nd over a huge area of the island. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the whole division was disorganised for days. He chose instead to drop his three parachute regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The only exception was the 504th at Grave, where Colonel Tucker insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the bridge so it could be taken from both ends, and he got it.
As far as the 3rd Parachute Battalion's stop in Oosterbeek on the first night is concerned, Lathbury had (fleeting) radio contact with his Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, at the bridge and was advised the 2nd Battalion route near the river was still clear and that he could slip 3rd Battalion south and get through that way. I've read accounts that Lathbury was all for pressing on, but Urquhart, who was with him and 3rd Battalion, ordered the halt and that's why Lathbury advised Hibbert they were stopping. Lathbury and Hibbert had plenty of airborne experience, but Urquhart did not, so I think that along with some of the planning compromises he shouldn't have accepted (on Gale's 6th Airborne advice), I think makes sense that the mistake here was Urquhart's.
Start times for the operation were based on sequencing. They wanted the morning for the bombing raids on flak and barracks facilities, although I don't see any problem with the previous evening or overnight raids. Horrocks would not order the ground advance (timed at H-Hour+1:30 or 1430 hrs) to be sure the airborne operation was going ahead and not cancelled like the previous 15 ops. He gave the order at 1435. Horrocks would have been happier with a start on Saturday as he was superstitious about Sunday operations - in his experience they never went well. You can't have the ground advance start before the airborne, because it would put German defences on alert on the axis of advance, and the later start by 1.5 hours was to deconflict 2nd TAF air support from the IX TCC airlift and escort traffic.
I'm currently studying the 82nd Airborne G-2 and G-3 documents available from PaperlessArchives. It is the raw material in terms of handwritten messages and typed daily intelligence reports from prisoner interrogations, and it's very clear the airborne landings were a total surprise. The Germans expected a ground advance and thought the bombings were preparation for that. In the Nijmegen area the main line was the Maas-Waal canal, connecting the Waal defence line to the west and the Maas line to the south, with a forward outpost at Grave. So, the 82nd landed with one regiment (504th) effectively between the outpost and main line, and two regiments (505th and 508th) behind the MLR. Nijmegen itself was not occupied by combat troops and contained only rear echelon units, mostly the Ordnungspolizei HQ for the Netherlands (the BdO, equivalent to a division HQ and evacuated from Den Haag in 1943) and some logistics units. The main line's command post was Oberst Hartung's HQ at the NEBO monastery north of Groesbeek near 1st/508th's initial objective at De Ploeg and also became the 508th CP, where Lindquist was met by resistance leader Gert van Hees and given intel the city was evacuated.
5
-
5
-
@johnburns4017 - I thought the problem was that the 508th's paperwork had mysteriously disappeared from the US Army records, apart from the Field Order No.1 dated 13 September. That did not contain any order to 1st Battalion (Warren) to take the bridge, only that the regiment was to be prepared to take the bridges on Division order. Gavin's instructions prior to the jump were to the regiment CO to send the 1st Battalion to the bridge, not directly to the battalion. Warren was not expecting the movement order when he first received it at 2000 hrs after Gavin had chewed Lindquist out at the 508th CP, and it took several hours for Warren to get the battalion out and assembled because it was strung out along the ridge in defensive positions ready to repel a counter-attack from Nijmegen.
I have frequently posted Nordyke's narrative account based on Chet Graham's testimony, but this is from September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ -
At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- My only problem with McManus is that after all the scholarly research, which compliments Nordyke's combat history of the 508th published in the same year, he then goes and blames it all on Montgomery for the whole idea being too difficult. But doesn't offer any rationale for making this claim. As TIK says, what's too difficult about - capture the bridges, pass the tanks over them? The fact is that Roy Lindquist was the 508th Regiment's Herbert Sobel and should have been transferred to an administrative role for which he was ideally gifted. Reading Nordyke's regimental history is the key to understanding this whole thing about the 508th. McManus and Zig Boroughs' collection of veteran's letters and stories (The 508th Connection, 2013) also helps flesh out the details.
5
-
@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- - in fact there were StuGs off the road situated at least on one flank (to the west) and the Shermans were going off-road after them. That bloody film (A Bridge Too Far) has completely brainwashed so many people who just can't be bothered to read books...
The other main problem with that scene were the German anti-tank guns - in reality they did not have prime movers to get them away from the road into proper positions and were positioned close to the road in exposed positions, so they were all knocked out by the opening artillery barrage. The Irish Guards tanks that were ambushed were the tail end of the leading squadron and first few tanks of the next squadron (the Germans cleverly let the first tanks pass before opening fire) and were hit by panzerfausts from the roadside ditches. These men were the panzer-zerstörer (tank destroyer) platoon of Kerutt's I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 18, and they were all killed by the Irish Guards infantry, so it was a suicide squad and that narrative did not fit Richard Attenborough's narrative the British were incompetently advancing into a German trap on an unsuitable road...
The Then and Now volumes by Karel Margry have hundreds of photographs up and down the corridor showing tanks on both sides (Panzerbrigade 107 at Nuenen for example) in fields and not necessarily confined to the roads. I think it's the best photographic collection on MARKET GARDEN and the information in the text and excellent captions have proved to be very reliable. The only fault I'm aware of in all the 800 pages of the two volumes is the Panzer II Ausf.b wreck in Hunner park, Nijmegen - so often captioned in books as belonging to the 'Hermann Göring' training regiment as it is here as well. Their 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando (NCO School Company) made their last stand at the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park, so it's not an unreasonable guess, but incorrect I'm afraid. The HG regiment never claimed to own such a vehicle, but one unit sent to fight MARKET GARDEN did, and that was Panzer-Kompanie Mielke (from Panzer-Erstaz-Abteilung 11 in Bielefeld), according to a document from Wehrkreis VI (Military District VI based in Münster) listing units and equipment sent to the Netherlands in response to the landings. The relevent page from this document is printed on p.125 of Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). So once again, you have to delve into a specialist book and really get into the weeds to obtain the right information and clear up these details.
5
-
... cont.
Traupel was expecting SS-Obersturmführer Hans Quandel's 16 Panzer IV tanks from 5.Kompanie and SS-Obersturmführer Franz Riedel's 4 StuG IIIG assault guns from 7.Kompanie to arrive from Vorden. Quandel's unit never arrived because they were blocked at Arnhem and the Mark IV was too heavy for the Pannerden ferry, but the assault guns (based on the lighter Mark III) did eventually get ferried across.
In the meantime, 18 September saw the arrival of Kampfgruppe Euling - SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl-Heinz Euling's IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21 (ex II./19 from the Hohenstaufen, later became I./22, aka 'the ghost battalion') and engineers from SS-Untersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel's 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10, who began work to instal the prepared demolition charges stored in the bridge piers under the direction of Oberleutnant Gerhard Bretschneider from von Tettau’s pionier staff, who was also in charge of the Nijmegen rail and Grave bridge demolitions, but only had a corporal and three privates with him.
The formation of Kampfgruppe Hencke was something that seemed to take place after the activities of the first day and mainly incorporated combat troops from the demolished or captured Maas-Waal canal bridges. These were the survivors from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 deployed along the canal, 4 and 5.Kompanie of Schiffstammabteilung 14 based at Zetten on the 'island' (2 and 3.Kompanie were sent to Elten near the south end of Arnhem bridge), a Pionier-Bau-Kompanie (engineer construction company) from Pionier-Bau-Bataillon 434 that had been digging trenches and anti-tank ditches along the canal line. They were withdrawn from the Honinghutje bridge on 18 September (D+1) when it was finally attacked and taaken by 82nd Airborne and concentrated in Nijmegen around the rail bridge. The 'Hermann Göring' Unter-Lehr-Kommando withdrew to the Villa Belvoir, a hotel overlooking their former camp in Hunner Park to reinforce Euling's perimeter.
The area between the two bridges was occupied by Kampfgruppe Melitz under Fallschirmjäger Major Engelbert Melitz, the Staff Major of Oberst Hartung's Fallshirm.AOK Ausbildungsstelle. His troops seem to be some Flak troops, an SS-Polizei Musikkorps (police band) that Traupel noted were guarding the bridge earlier, some "railway guards" I have not positively identifed but the 82nd Airborne had a large number of BdE (German state railway) troops in their POW cage at De Mookerheide that probably came from the train that they intercepted at Groesbeek trying to escape to Germany.
In other words, Kampfgruppe Hencke was formed from troops collected from combat units mainly on the defence line on the first day and some Flak units that surrounded the city. It seems that Oberst Hartung formed a similar motley collection of troops on the north bank of the Waal in Lent and it was they who opposed the river assault crossing by the 504th PIR on 20 September.
The implication from the sequence of events is that had the whole of Warren's 1st Battalion 508th gone directly to the bridge instead of just Weaver's reinforced platoon, then assuming they didn't all get lost, they should have reached the bridge led by PFC Atkins' S-2 point team at the same time Atkins actually did arrive. They had an hour to themselves with their seven prisoners before the Germans started arriving in force, namely Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 coming down from Beekbergen via Arnhem. That hour could have used to establish the battalion at both ends of the bridge, and Gräbner would have reported back to II.SS-Panzerkorps that the bridge was held in force by the Americans.
5
-
@johnlucas8479 - we know the sequence, but we don't know the exact timings. According to Traupel, Gräbner himself left at about 9pm with most of his battalion and he was informed the SPW kanon platoon were recalled at midnight. It was at that time Traupel left his HQ in Lent and went back to the bridge and found 30-40 men from the police band were there, and then early in the morning Baumgärtel's SS-Panzer engineers were the next arrivals.
We don't know exactly when Weaver tried to approach Hunner Park and were blocked, but Gräbner was there at least an hour, say from 7:30-8pm (as it got dark) and when he left at 9pm, Weaver may have been unlucky - any earlier he may have simply walked to the bridge to join Atkins unmolested, or after Gräbner pulled out there was just five SPWs left behind with these rear echelon people. I do think the police band were probably there and seven of them were possibly the bridge guards captured by Atkins, but not noticed by Traupel until later. They were left behind when the BdO (German Order Police HQ for the whole Netherlands) pulled out and had left by 6:30pm for Deventer and then on to Zwolle.
I don't think the various accounts are contradictory, they do fit together. I think the timings can be misleading and the situation was certainly fluid, not fixed. People were not in certain positions, like Kampfgruppe Hencke, because we know most of his combat troops were on the Maas-Waal canal on the first day. These forces withdrew into Nijmegen from the west, while the Americans seemed slow to advance from the south. Warren's battalion made an attempt to approach the bridge from the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle and were blocked by SPWs at around midnight. It seems both Warren and the SPW platoon withdrew from Nijmegen at around the same time.
If there were any other combat troops in the city at this time, I would certainly like to know who they were myself, because I've been compiling a list of every unit I can find a reference to and they seem to be mostly rear echelon units trying to get out of town, or already gone that afternoon. Remember, two trains left Nijmegen for Germany that night. One steamed right through the 82nd Divisional area without being stopped and escaped to Kranenburg, prompting Gavin to chew the 505th out and had them set up a bazooka team to stop any more. As far as I can determine, the troops jumping off the second train and rounded up for the POW cage were BdE (German railways) personnel - technically they were deemed by the rules of war to be combatants and had to be treated as POWs, but they were logistics troops not trained for combat, hence put on a train to be evacuated. There was a BdE training unit based at Nijmegen, but finding details has been difficult.
The other mysterious unit hard to find details on is the Rüstungsinspektion Niederlande (armaments inspectorate Netherlands). It was the organisation the Nazis used to control industries for the war effort. Instead of nationalising companies, they left the owners in place to run their businesses and embedded military officers fom the Heer, Luftwaffe, or Kriegsmarine as appropriate to need, and the whole organisation was controlled by SS staff reporting to Reichsführer Himmler. Apparently the Netherlands branch was disbanded in September 1944 and evacuated from Den Haag as Allied invasion seemed imminent and it's possible they were indeed in Nijmegen during their transit back to Germany when Market Garden started. I only have a vague source for this, but it would explain why Traupel saw so many senior staff officers in Nijmegen from all branches of the military, all milling about discussing what to do.
As I said in my second part, which crossed over your reply, if Atkins and his point team could get to the bridge unmolested, then the implication is that Warren's entire battalion could have done it. Atkins had an hour at the bridge undisturbed, so that time could have been used by the battalion to establish its positions around the bridge with hardly a shot being fired. Captain Adams of A/508th was of that opinion (in Nordyke, 2012), and he was there and I wasn't, so I see no reason to contradict him.
5
-
5
-
@johnlucas8479 - I think the timings are difficult because many of them are estimated and there are two different time zones involved. You can easily lose an hour between some of the timings, so I don't particularly trust them. I think the sequence is more important. Weaver's patrol had just 3 Km to march to the bridge from De Ploeg, that's a brisk walk in 30 minutes or a slower one in 60 minutes.
The point is that if Atkins can get to the bridge some time before Gräbner arrived, then so could Weaver with the rest of the patrol, or Warren with the whole battalion, if Lindquist had followed Gavin's instructions. The people who were there, like Able Company CO Jonathan Adams, 1st Battalion XO Ben Delamater, and Division CO Gavin, seemed to think it was entirely possible, but the weak link in the middle was Lindquist. There was clearly a gap in German occupation of the city after the rear echelon elements (like the Ortskommandantur and the BdO) had pulled out and SS-Panzer troops moved in after dark. That gap in the middle was when the Dutch civilians came out into the streets, believing they had been liberated, and Weaver's patrol got split up trying to push through them. The Dutch would not be out in the streets celebrating if there were many Germans around, so that's the picture it paints to me.
Yes, for disambiguation:
Kampfgruppe 'Heinke' was at the Belgian border, an SS battlegroup from II.SS-Panzerkorps under SS-Sturmbannführer Heinrich Heinke, former commander of SS-Feldersatz-Bataillon 10 and now taken over SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21 of 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' with various combat ready elements transferred from 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' and from 10.SS-Panzer itself. Attached to (Fallschirm) Kampfgruppe Walther based at Valkenswaard, Kampfgruppe Heinke were deployed northeast of the British XXX Corps bridgehead at Neerpelt around the villages of Borkel and Schaft.
Kampfgruppe 'Hencke' was Oberst Friedrich (Fritz) Hencke's Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1, staff only, no combat troops, sent by Student's 1.Fallschirm-Armee to Nijmegen in the days before Market Garden to take command of the city and the Maas-Waal defence line in the Nijmegen sector. He was established at the NEBO monastery just south of De Ploeg, sharing accommodations with Fallschirm Oberst Günther Hartung of the Fallschirm.AOK Ausbildungsstelle.
5
-
@johnlucas8479 - Hi John.
Let me see if I can construct a narrative using those sources:
01. Gräbner's SS-Pz.Aufkl.Abt.9 crosses Arnhem bridge around 6:00 p.m. (Nordyke p.287)
02. A/508th patrol and Lt Lee Frigo (S-2) report De Ploeg "no enemy" (Adams, Nordyke p.274)
03. 1/508th battalion (Warren) reach De Ploeg "at around 6:30 p.m." (Adams, Nordyke p.274)
04. Regimental CO "soon followed us onto objective" (Adams, Nordyke p.274)
05. Before Weaver sent, patrol sent to investigate Germans to rear (Delamater, Nordyke p.274)
06. At 6:30 p.m., Weaver patrol enters Nijmegen, knocks out MG position (Nordyke p.275)
07. Weaver patrol makes wrong turn and lost bearings (Nordyke p.275)
08. PFC Atkins' point team separated from Weaver, but reach bridge (Boroughs, p.246)
09. Weaver cuts thru back yards for half-hour, lost, asks for help at house (Nordyke p.275)
10. After an hour at the bridge and getting dark, Atkins withdraws, Gräbner arrives (Boroughs p.246)
11. When Gräbner arrived, Hencke organising defensive perimeter around bridges (Nordyke p.288)
12. About 8:00 p.m. Lindquist ordrs Warren to seize Nijmegen highway bridge (Nordyke p.288)
13. Guide arrives, takes Weaver one block, runs into Germans, taken POW or killed (Nordyke p.275)
14. German truck approaches Weaver from behind, firefight, withdraw to shelter (Nordyke (p,275)
15. Weaver receives message on SCR-300 two companies going for bridge, withdraws (Nordyke p.276)
16. About 10:00 p.m. Adams at IP waiting for B Coy told to go ahead anyway (Nordyke p.289)
17. SPWs and trucks with SS troops arrive at Keizer Karelplein (Nordyke p.290)
18. A Coy encounter MGs at Keizer Karelplein "a little after 22:00 hours" (Warren, Nordyke p.289)
19. Warren orders B Coy to push through A Coy to continue attack to right (Nordyke p.292)
20. Adams ordered to contact Dutch Underground, 2nd platoon unable to locate (Nordyke p.294)
21. Adams and 2nd platoon sent to Post Office near midnight for bridge detonator (McManus p.165)
22. Adams hits Post Office switchgear, and then hits Belvedere near bridge (McManus pp.165-166)
23. Unable to withdraw to Keizer Karelplein, Adams shelters in warehouse (McManus p.166)
I think the idea that Hencke had a sizeable force at the highway bridge at any time is false, and the accounts suggesting this (not explicit) are misleading, and here's why:
Hencke was put in charge of the forces in and around Nijmegen days before the Airborne attack. He was responsible for that sector of the Maas-Waal defence line. The forces under his command are listed in numerous books, Nordyke p.287 for example cites Reynolds (Sons Of The Reich), but (with my corrections on their proper names) they all agree on the same basic structure:
a. Staff Fallschirm-Leehr-Regiment 1 under Oberst Fritz Hencke.
b. Kompanien 3-5 detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 from Div 406, WK VI.
c. 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando, Fs-Pz-Ers-u-Ausb-Rgt. 'Hermann Göring', 245 men under Hptm Max Runge.
d. Fallschirm.AOK Ausbildungstelle, 95 staff and 14 candidates under Oberst Günther Hartung.
e. SS-Polizei Musikkorps Zug from BdO (Ordnungspolizei HQ evacuated by 6:30 p.m.), 30-40 men.
f. 8.8cm and 2cm Flak guns from 4./schwere.Flak-Abt. 572 and gemischte.Flak.Abt.345.
I would also add:
g. ?.Kompanie/Pionier-Bau-Bataillon 434 was digging ditches near the canal.
h. "Railway Guards"? I believe these are personnel from the BdE (German State Railway) training batallion.
I have a book on the Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 'Hermann Göring' (Lawrence Paterson, 2021), which has a bit on the training regiment in the Netherlands and this indicates Max Runge was the CO of the staff kompanie, which may be the source for some anti-tank guns deployed along the canal and some ended up in Hunner Park. I cannot find a unit that admits to owning these guns, so this is my current theory. The NCO company (all infantry, no heavy weapons) was probably under command of Oberleutnant Böhme, who was present at the Honinghutje canal bridge and Runge's unit as a whole is referred to as Kampfgruppe Runge, suggesting it was not a discrete unit but a mixed battlegroup.
The book, The Battle Of The Bridges - The 504th PIR in Operation Market Garden by Frank van Lunteren (2014), is useful on German units defending the Maas-Waal canal bridges from the 504th attacks on the first two days, and then encountered again as the 504th was used in the Waal assault crossing on the rail and road bridges on 20 September. He believes that 4./Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 (he has the wrong battalion as "Landesschützen-Bataillon II./6" which was at Aachen, but Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 was based at Grave before mobilisation) under Hptm Ernst Sieger at Bridge 9 - Hatert, and Kompanie Rümmele (5./Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6) at Bridge 8 - Malden. Frank, who I have corresponded with to clarify unit IDs, admits his information is sketchy and while he accepts my corrections, I'm disappointed the paperback edition of the book is a 2017 reprint of the hardback and not a revised edition. He doesn't know the identity of the unit defending the lock Bridge 7 - Heumen, or those that may have been defending the bridges at Neerbosch (demolished but not attacked) and the other lock bridge at Weurt.
My personal theory is that the three companies of Lds.Ausb.Btl.I./6 (3, 4, 5) were deployed as a screen on all six canal bridges, two bridges per company with aplatoon in reserve. I then think that the 'Hermann Göring' NCO company camped in Hunner Park (per Fullreide's visit in the morning of 17 September) were deployed by the alarm to reinforce the canal bridges. I base that on the presence of anti-tanks guns at the bridges and a group taken POW at Bridge 7 - Heumen consisting of two offciers and 15 NCOs - an odd grouping for Landesschützen home guards, but makes sense if they're from the Unter-Lehr-Kommando.
The book follows the account by Ernst Sieger from his diary that after withdrawing from Bridge 9 at Hatert, he reinforced Bridge 10 (road and rail) at Honinghutje, until it too came under attack the next day (18 September). They then all withdrew towards Nijmegen, the Landesschützen, Pionier-Bau-Kompanie 434, some Kriegmarine troops from Schiffsstammabteilung 14 at Zetten (two companies were sent to Nijmegen and two to south end of Arnhem bridge), all now incorporated into Kampfgruppe Runge. MOst of these troops withdrew to the rail bridge in Nijmegen, except the ULK which made its last stand in the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park near the nighway bridge.
The point I'm making is that all of these forces were always part of Kampfgruppe Hencke since before the Airborne landings, but the tight perimeter around the two bridges involving the estimated 750 men formed over the course of the battle over four days, 17-20 September. It's my understanding that the only troops Hencke had available to guard the two bridges on the first afternoon may have been the SS-Polizei BdO Musikkorps Zug (music band platoon) left behind by Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus when he evacuated his headquarters in Molenstraat. Gernot Traupel (Adjutant SS-Kampfgruppe Reinhold) estimated this unit to be between 30-40 men (the BdO was equivalent to a division HQ and a divisional band usually had 38 members under an NCO bandmaster). I have a Dutch record of an Oberwachtmeister Otto Paulus from the SS-Polizei listed as MIA 17-21.9.44 in Nijmegen. All of Henck's combat troops were deployed on the canal, so the only 'troops' he immediately had available were his own regimental staff (I have no numbers) and Hartung's staff of 95+14 school candidates as they evacuated the NEBO monastery and evaded the Americans until they could slip into town.
It's a guess, but I think those few staff personnel may have arrived at the highway bridge around the time Gräbner got there, and maybe that had something to do with it getting dark (to cover movement) and PFC Atkins also decided to leave the bridge as well.
5
-
@johnnycarroll4496 - very interesting passage. I have no idea what road he is talking about as there are no names or locations given and it should be mostly urban from De Ploeg all the way to the bridge. To be honest, it sounds very much like the terrain from the DZ on the way to De Ploeg! I'm going to have to think about that and maybe study some maps.
On the patrol itself, there seems to be differing accounts given by Warren and Delamater (CO and XO 1/508th respectively) as to whether the S-2 Section went separately as a patrol ahead of Weaver's platoon, or led the platoon as a single body.
This account seems to suggest Weaver was moving slowly and the S-2 Section had gone ahead. PFC Atkins and his two companions were the point team for Lieutenant Lee Frigo's S-2 Section, and they became separated from the rest in the crowds of Dutch civilians in the city, but pushed through and made it to the bridge on their own with no sign of the others. At this point, Nordyke and McManus seem to agree that the three Lieutenants (Frigo, Weaver, and Weaver's assistant Platoon Leader whose name escapes me for the moment) were in the same place and lost in the back streets of Nijmegen, suggesting they were all one patrol at that point, minus Atkins' team.
The fact that it was getting dark during this passage also suggests these events were happening while Atkins was at the bridge, because his testimony is that he got there before dark and then waited an hour for reinforcements until it got dark, before deciding to withdraw.
I'm going to have to consider buying the book unless you can give us some more clues, Johnny? Would you say it was a recommended read, in any case?
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
You have to allow several hours for the Arnhem bridge to be secured before enemy traffic could be interdicted. This happened from about 2100 hrs on D-Day when Frost's unit stopped three fuel trucks from crossing the bridge, which probably belonged to the supply column of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, which had been mobilised at Beekbergen rail station (unloaded from flat cars and had tracks and guns refitted to make them administratively 'operational' again) and attached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reconnoitre reports of airborne landings at Arnhem and Nijmegen. Frost observed most of Gräbner's unit crossing the Arnhem bridge between 1830 and 2000 hrs as he approached the bridge from the west.
We also know from the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel that he and SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (adjutant and commander of II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) were probably the last to cross the Arnhem bridge by car before Frost started stopping traffic, and they arrived in Nijmegen to assess the local defences (Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell, 2010). The next unit attempting to cross the bridge was SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl-Heinz Euling's Panzergrenadier-Abteilung (previously II./SS-PGR 19 and transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-PGR 21), which after a short engagement with Frost was redirected to the ferry crossing at Huissen. The Dutch ferryman at Huissen had little choice but to pass Euling's unit over the Neder Rijn, but then scuttled his vessel afterwards.
After this, German attention switched to the ferry crossing at Pannerden and elements of SS-Panzer-Flak-Abteilung 10 were used to secure the ferry site to prevent any further sabotage and as a defence against Allied air raids. The next units that were passed across the river to Nijmegen were elements of the engineer battalion - 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Ateilung 10, and the four StuG IIIG assault guns concentrated in Reinhold's 7.Kompanie of SS-Panzer-Regiment 10. The sixteen Panzer IV tanks of 5./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 were too heavy for the ferry, or even a raft made from Rhine barges (the first tank slipped from the raft and fell into the river), so these tanks were held back until the Arnhem bridge was finally cleared on 21 September.
Because of the ferries, the process of infiltrating units onto the Nijmegen 'island' was a slow process and mostly had to be done at night to avoid Allied air interdiction.
Taking the Nijmegen bridge was considered a priority, but one that was not adhered to due to a command failure in the unit assigned to take it - the 508th PIR. The regiment CO failed to send his 1st battalion directly to the bridge as instructed. The failure to provide for a coup de main mission on the bridge was also a choice made by Gavin - he told Cornelius Ryan he had received a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge and eventually dismissed it, because of his experience of widespread drops in Sicily, preferring to concentrate his landings instead. It was also Gavin's decision to assign the critical Nijmegen mission to the 508th, with its problematic command issues that had manifested during their first combat operation in Normandy, instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. The 505th was assigned the Reichswald sector of the divisional perimeter and it seems that Gavin either did not fully appreciate the issues in the 508th or his rationale was that the Reichswald represented a greater threat of counter-attack than the possibility of mission failure in Nijmegen.
I think the best analysis of the bridge versus ridge priority is in chapter 3 of John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and his point is that possession of the high ground is pointless without the bridges, since the bridges are a perishable commodity in enemy hands, but the heights weren't going anywhere and could be regained with support from XXX Corps if temporarily lost. He concludes, I think correctly, that Gavin and Browning expected both the bridge and the heights to be secured by the 508th, and since neither were strongly held by the enemy on D-Day, the opportunity to secure them both and ensure the success of the overall operation was an opportunity lost by the 508th.
5
-
5
-
5
-
I have to agree, and attempts to have a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen highway bridge were cancelled or dismissed. In the first instance, Browning had planned dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, for Operation COMET using D Companies of the three battalions of 1st Airlanding Brigade. The lead Glider Pilot for the Nijmegen mission was to be the same man who led Operation DEADSTICK in Normandy on D-Day to secure the Orne canal 'Pegasus Bridge', Sergeant Jim Wallwork. This operation was planned for 8 September, delayed by weather until 10 September, when it was cancelled by Montgomery as troops were boarding the aircraft after he had received intelligence on the II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem area.
Montgomery proposed instead an upgraded operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN, then later MARKET GARDEN) involving three divisions instead of just British 1st Airborne and the attached Polish Brigade by adding the two US Airborne Divisions to hold the corridor between Eindhoven and Nijmegen. This would enable the British and Poles to concentrate at Arnhem with their superior anti-tank gun assets, 83 guns in total. This necessitated turning over the planning to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army, and he removed some of the key features of Browning's COMET plan. This was thought necessary because the US air assets had reduced capabilities - fewer trained night navigators that forced a single daylight lift instead of double lifts on the first day, and US glider pilots were not combat trained for direct assaults like their British counterparts.
The glider assaults on the bridges were also deemed to be too risky for broad daylight, but Browning had warned during the COMET planning that the operation should not go ahead without the planned dawn raids. He was unable to protest Brereton's changes because he had already been politically neuralised over the Operation LINNET II affair, in which he threatened to resign because Brereton had planned the operation with too little notice to print and distribute maps for the troops. Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Fortunately, the operation was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning could hardly threaten resignation again, knowning what would happen if he did. It may have been this episode that persuaded Browning that if he could not influence the planning then he would try to influence events on the ground by taking his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift - it is known that this decision was a last minute change to the MARKET glider lift schedules.
For MARKET the 82nd Airborne were assigned to the Nijmegen and Grave sector and they were briefed by 1st Airborne Division planners who had already spent a week studying the same area for COMET. According to Cornelius Ryan's 1967 interview with General James Gavin for his book, A Bridge Too Far (1974), "the British" requested that a battalion be dropped north of the Nijmegen highway bridge to secure it by coup de main, and after toying with the idea, Gavin eventually dismissed it because of his experience in Sicily. There, the USAAF were panicked by Flak and dropped his 505th Regiment over a huge area, so Gavin landed with just four or five men to command. He said the whole division was disorganised for days. He decided instead to land his troops concentrated on three main drop zones as a power centre and then fan outwards to secure the objectives. At Grave, 504th PIR CO Colonel Reuben Tucker - a veteran of Sicily and Anzio - insisted on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge for one company and he got it, but there were no other coup de main provisions made by the US Airborne for MARKET.
Gavin therefore instructed the 508th PIR to secure the vital Groesbeek heights as their initial objective to protect the landing zones from a counter-attack from Nijmegen, and only if this went well to send the 1st Battalion on to the highway bridgeas soon as possible. Unfortunately, the 508th CO was a poor field commander and did not understand the importance of securing the bridge quickly and delayed sending the battalion, only sending a small pre-planned recon patrol instead. This was in spite of being met at De Ploeg (1st Battalion objective on the Groesbeek ridge) by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had evacuated the city and left only an NCO and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. It was for this reason the 508th lost the race to secure the bridge to elements of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division, compromising the entire operation and sealing the fate of 1st Airborne at Arnhem.
5
-
"Why has Hollywood ignored this?" - we have Al Gore to thank for the appropriate phrase - "an inconvenient truth". Cornelius Ryan did the same thing when he wrote his book. The Cornelius Ryan Collection of his documents and interviews held at Ohio State University and accessible online (albeit difficult to navigate - the boxes and folders are not in any order) has plenty of material inconvenient to this newspaper journalist's 'story', but it's there for anyone to see who doesn't have a common medical problem (bone idle).
Another example is the lack of a single 508th PIR trooper in the film, gosh - how their story would be inconvenient! Also the lack of a single airborne anti-tank gun or field artillery gun - to create the impression the airborne troops lacked anything heavier than a PIAT with which to fight tanks, ignoring the fact that the Germans lost many of their panzers in Normandy to British anti-tank guns around Caen (and not Tom Hank's colt .45 pistol), so Model had less than 100 operational panzers in September 1944. Curiously, there is one anti-tank gun seen in the final scene at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek at the end of the film, wrecked and lying on its side among all the wounded left behind, but it's not the airborne Mark III version - it still has the carriage shield on, which made the standard version too big to fit into a Horsa glider.
Probably the best book on the operation so far is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944 – An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which uses unpublished material from the CRC and also debunks the many myths from the Hollywood film.
5
-
Technically you're right, but I have a collection of contemporary maps, most of which are civilian maps that date from the 1930s, because the war interrupted the normal updating and publication of civlian maps, and the military maps made during the war were based on pre-war civilian maps and updated by aerial photography.
Most of the maps used at this time still used the name "Zuider Zee", but might have in brackets beneath it "(Ijsselmeer)". The documents from Montgomery's 21st Army Group actually do use "Zuider Zee", specifically the town of Nunspeet on the coast, as the final termination point of the Guards armoured Division's advance. They were to deploy between Apeldoorn and Nunspeet. So I think it's safe to say that people, at least outside of the Netherlands, were still used to the old name and were still frequently using it.
The one dimension people often forget when discussing historical matters is time. Custom and use changes over time, and while nobody may be using the name Zuider Zee today in 2024, there's plenty of evidence they were still using it in 1944.
4
-
4
-
4
-
The drop zone on the south side of the Arnhem highway bridge was deemed not suitable for D-Day because it was situated between two of the four heavy Flak batteries around Arnhem and crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station. It was expected to be usable for the Poles scheduled on the third lift on D+2 because it was expected the British 1st Parachute Brigade would be in control of the area to secure the drop zone by then, and the Royal Engineers were also due to rendezvous at the power station to take control of it after completing their Phase 1 tasks. The fact these things did not happen was the reason for the Polish drop having to be re-directed further west to a drop zone near Driel to support the divisional perimeter at Oosterbeek, since the Poles would not be able to use the Arnhem bridge to cross into their assigned eastern sector of the planned Arnhem perimeter.
There were also insuficient aircraft to deliver the Poles on the first lift, unless a similar number of troops were bumped to the third lift in their place - such as the British 1st Parachute Brigade. So you pays your money and you takes your choice. If an additional brigade could have been dropped on D-Day, then prirority would have gone to the British 4th Parachute Brigade scheduled for D+1.
I would question the Polish Brigade as an "Ace-in-the-Hole" - the brigade was raised as an ordinary rifle brigade from an assortment of men who were able to escape the German occupation of Poland and Sosabowski decided to have them parachute trained as he believed they were more likely to be used if they were airborne. They were not trained to the standards set by the British airborne as special forces and this was the main reason they came in for criticism after the battle because of incidents of poor discipline. Even the SS in Oosterbeek complained that their medics were fired on by the Poles when they tried to retrieve their wounded - something the British normally allowed them to do. No one doubts the Poles were keen to take their revenge on the Germans at the first opportunity and few people in Britain would disagree that it was right to honour the military alliance and declare war on Germany for the invasion of Poland, but the way the Poles were portrayed in the film Battle of Britain would probably also apply to the Polish Parachute Brigade. I think that film is far more accurate than A Bridge Too Far. Sosabowski also made himself unpopular by being difficult to work with and was flagrantly insubordinate at the Valburg conference on 24 September. It was these criticisms that led to the brigade being removed from British Airborne command and Sosabowski was relieved by the Polish Government-in-Exile, who had ultimate political control over the brigade and was their decision, not the British.
Taking a poll of pilots is an interesting idea and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the presumed results - it certainly reflected the views of the RAF, but the moment the military becomes a democracy then you have lost all discipline. The fact remains that Brereton and Williams were both charged by Eisenhower to address the issues of navigation and accuracy in the Troop Carrier Command after the misdrops in Sicily and Normandy when they were appointed, and much of the planning compromises for MARKET were made by these men for those reasons, to the detriment of the requirements of the airborne troops and the ground forces expected to relieve them.
4
-
4
-
@johnburns4017 - Lindquist's first Field Order (No.1) dated 13 September does indeed indicate that no moves were to be made on the Nijmegen bridges until receiving a division order. Lindquist's original plan seems to have been to task Lt Weaver of 3rd Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, to lead a recon patrol to the bridge to determine its condition and report back. Weaver was selected because he had performed well in Normandy.
Then Gavin, according to his letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover dated 17 July 1945, stated:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
So 48 hours prior to take-off would be 15 September.
Gavin also confirmed this to Cornelius Ryan (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967), who states in his notes on the interview:
'Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.'
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9:
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
The bridge was only de-prioritised after the first failed attempt by 1st Battalion 508th to secure it (too) late on 17 September. When Gavin proposed a second attempt the next day, Browning rejected the plan and intended to wait until XXX Corps arrived to provide armoured support. I don't have the reference to hand (it's probably in McManus), but it was definitely Browning that rejected a plan suggested by Gavin.
Two attacks on 19 September failed, even with armoured support, so Browning was right to reject Gavin's plan to attempt the attack on 18 September without the armour available. Gavin did at this time propose his own troops from the 504th be sent across the river to take the far side. He first proposed this when the Guards first linked up early on 19 September, but the suggestion was rejected in favour of trying with armour and the 505th alone from the south side.
The default XXX Corps engineering plan for this scenario (enemy still held intact bridges at Nijmegen) was an assault river crossing of the Waal to be made by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one (Operation BESSIE) or two brigades (Operation BASIL). The 43rd Division were put on warning order to be ready to move up to Nijmegen, but the call wasn't made because of Gavin's insistence his own troops be used instead.
He was clearly very keen to make up for the blunder by the 508th on D-Day and wanted to use his own troops to make amends.
4
-
4
-
@johnburns4017 - got it. I have a digital copy of A Bridge Too Far, so doing searches is easy:
'Immediately after the link-up in the 82nd's sector, Browning called a conference. The Guards' lead armored cars were sent back to pick up the XXX Corps commander, General Horrocks, and the commander of the Guards Armored Division, General Allan Adair. With Browning, the two officers drove to a site northeast of Nijmegen, overlooking the river. From there Corporal William Chennell, whose vehicle had picked up one of the two officers, stood with the little group observing the bridge. "To my amazement," Chennell remembers, "we could see German troops and vehicles moving back and forth across it, apparently completely unconcerned. Not a shot was fired, yet we were hardly more than a few hundred yards away." '
A Bridge Too Far Bibliography:
Chennell, William, Cpl. [Guards Armoured]. Carpenter, London, S.e. 4.
Ohio State University Digital Archives Collection:
Cornelius Ryan WWII papers, box 114, folder 47: William Chennell
Page 1 of the Cornelius Ryan papers, box 114, folder 47, has the full type written story, quoting Chennell - "we weren't a hundred yards or so from the bridge.
William Chennel was aged 32 in 1944 and held the rank of Corporal [of Horse?] as an armoured car wireless operator-gunner in 4 Troop, C Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment. The car commander and Chennell got out of the car to allow Horrocks and Adair to get in, and they followed in a Jeep back to the observation position near the bridge.
The location next to the bridge 100 yards away would correspond with the abandoned heavy Flak battery at 718630 and light Flak platoon at 718628 [defence overprint of AMS map M831 (GSGS 4427) 06-SW-NIJMEGEN]. They may have approached from the east on the roads over the polder as they had to be east of the Het Meer river.
Difficult to say why McNaught decided to lie low as long as he did, or maybe he made contact with Allied troops sooner and Howe was the first familiar face he came across. This story is secondhand from Howe, so we don't have all the details. McNaught also said he was pretty angry about not being challenged on the bridge, he said it was a lost opportunity, although with just the four of them they were in the same position as PFC Joe Atkins and his two other scouts who waited until it got dark and decided to withdraw, as they knew they couldn't hold the bridge against any attack. The could hear the armoured vehicles arriving at the other end as they were leaving, so they were probably there and keeping a low profile when McNaught's Jeep crossed the bridge. I suppose you have to be careful and not assume an American Jeep coming from the north was not a captured vehicle and full of SS-Panzergrenadiers in camouflage pattern jackets... it makes some sense.
I'm also familiar with several monasteries in Nijmegen, and there's little clue as to which one it was. Some of them were used by the Germans as acommodations themselves, so was a fluid situation.
4
-
@jacobgorman3145 - actually no, but TIK hasn't gone as deep to drill down to the problems within the 508th PIR. They actually go back to Normandy and the formation of the regiment.
TIK obviously reads a collossal number of books, on Stalingrad, Hitler and National Socialism etc., as many books perhaps as I have on Market Garden alone, as I don't have more than a passing interest in some of his other topics.
He's correctly identified Nijmegen as the key to understanding what went wrong with Market Garden, but Gavin being responsible is as far as he's got with the books he has used. One of his recommended books is Lost At Nijmegen by Dutch researcher RG Poulussen, which was probably the first to break into this area, and the post war documentaion of corresponsdence between Gavin and Browning, which is inconclusive and obviously written after the fact, is as far as he went.
Nordyke's book on the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and also John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) were both published in the same year and do not reference each other, but they independently interviewed witnesses to Gavin's divisional briefing and testified to the clear instructions he gave to the 508th's CO to send a battalion directly to the bridge. Nordyke's witness is Captain Chet Graham, the 508th HQ Company CO and liaison to Division HQ, and McManus has an account from Division G-3 (Operations Officer) Jack Norton, who both sat in on the briefing.
The weird thing about McManus is that he appears to be an excellent historian, unearthing the true story and presenting a detailed narrative of events on what went wrong, but where he differs from Nordyke is that he then offers a personal opinion that it was still Montgomery's fault for coming up with the idea in the first place, which is a common American complaint I call the 'too difficult' excuse.
In his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan, Gavin did touch on the internal politics within the 82nd Airborne, but did not expand on it and the story did not make it into Ryan's book. The whole Nijmegen story on the first day is inconspicuous by its absence from the book and more publicly in the film, where the implication is that the bridge at Nijmegen was strongly held by the Germans from the get go, but this is not true. In fact the film does show Bittrich (Maximillian Schell) giving Ludwig (Hardy Krüger) orders to get to Nijmegen, which is correct - the SS panzer troops were not already there, but they did win the race against the too slow 508th to reinforce the bridges and the city.
4
-
@bigwoody4704 - "why did Horrocks,Dempsey,Vandeleur leave the bridging equipment in the rear when the Germans blew the bridge over Wilhelmina Canal the 1st day?" - They didn't. The Royal Engineers brought the bridging equipment up to Valkenswaard overnight 17/18 September, and then it only took them 30 minutes to get it to the Son bridge site after the Irish Guards reached it at 1900 hrs on 18 September.
The delay caused by the Son bridge demolition was effectively zero, since XXX Corps reached the blown bridge site as it was already starting to get dark, and the Bailey bridge was constructed in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. First across the new bridge were the Household Cavalry armoured cars at 0615 hrs, and the Grenadier Guards' tanks followed at dawn, 19 September.
Source:
Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016)
4
-
I think it's an open question whether there was a report sitting unread on a German intelligence chief's desk on Sunday 17 September, when the airborne landings were taking place, and I haven't followed this up in the literature because I am satisfied that the Germans did not act on any actual information received. This suggestion was debunked in 1963 by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree in his book De Slag By Arnhem, translated into English with journalist Cornelius Bauer as The Battle of Arnhem (1966). Boeree had studied the movements of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' to draw his conclusions and it would be questionable why the division was in the process of being withdrawn to Germany for refit (another day and the last elements would have been gone) if it had been sent to Arnhem in the first place because they were expecting an airborne attack there. None of the German Generals interviewed after the war had any idea the airborne attack was coming.
General Gavin investigated this aspect of the MARKET GARDEN story himself and was satisfied it was nonsense, and told A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan this in their quite extensive correspondence. If you look in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of his papers held by the Alden Library at Ohio State University, and much of it is digitised for online access, box 101 folder 09 contains copies of Boeree's research that Gavin forwarded to Ryan and letters exchanged between them where Gavin tells Ryan he found the research useful - he even suddenly realised now in 1966 the reports of German armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen in transit to Arnhem. Ryan himself complained that Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands had "a real burr under the saddle" about the whole Christiaan 'King Kong' Lindemans story and was "almost bludgeoning" him into doing it in the book. He thought it was worth a large footnote at the most.
The only instance of forewarning that was acted on as far as I can find is from Generalmajor Walter Grabmann of the Luftwaffe 3.Jagd-Division at Deelen airfield near Arnhem. He realised the open fields around his accommodation in the grounds of the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital made ideal airborne landing zones and tried to warn Model his new headquarters at Oosterbeek might be vulnerable. Model dismissed his concerns, pointing out that the area was too far behind the lines and several river barriers for the Allies to risk an airborne operation. The one officer who did take Grabmann seriously was SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Sepp Krafft of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 based in Arnhem. He and Grabmann knew each other from their pre-war service in the German civilian police and took the warning seriously. He arranged for his two training companies to vacate their depot in Arnhem and camp in the woods north and west of Oosterbeek as additional protection for Model. This placed them in the ideal position to block the first moves of 1st Parachute Brigade from the landing zones into Arnhem.
The Arnhem barracks were bombed during the morning of 17 September, as was the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital, as British intelligence knew it was being used for senior Luftwaffe officer billets, female 'Blitzmaiden' signals auxiliaries, and as a collection centre for about 400 artillery troops from units shattered in Normandy to refit Artillerie-Regiment 184 from 84.Infanterie-Division.
All the indications are that the airborne landings achieved total surprise. Grabmann, having lunch at his quarters, was horrified to see a glider landing less than a kilometer away, and because of the landing zones had to make a long detour to reach his command post at Schaarsbergen near the airfield, where he found significant bomb damage to the Divisions-dorf area and total confusion.
Other sources:
Why Did 3 JD Relocate from Deelen to Duisburg.pdf, gyges web site Denmark, downloaded 13/06/2009
Arnhem, a Few Vital Hours: The SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 at the Battle of Arnhem September 1944, Scott Revell with Niall Cherry and Bob Gerritsen (2013, revised 2021)
4
-
4
-
Gavin's divisional plan was his plan, and he did not follow advice or have to take orders from a British officer. Pegasus Archive dates back to 2001 and does not appear to have been updated with more recent research. It contains some obvious errors (COMET did not plan a landing in the Eindhoven area), and the agreement you quote between Browning and Gavin on the heights before Grave and the canal and Nijmegen bridges is not sourced or (quite importantly) dated.
The documentary evidence shows that Gavin's divisional plan evolved over time, as Lindquist's Field Order No.1 for the 508th PIR dated 13 September shows that he was to seize the Goesbeek ridge and be prepared to move on the Nijmegen highway bridge "on division order." This Field Order, reproduced in the Appendix to RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), indicates a copy to Division HQ, so it was presumably approved by Gavin, but it precedes Gavin's instruction to Lindquist in the final divisional briefing on 15 September:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
(Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945, p. 11, Poulussen 2011)
Gavin confirmed this instruction to Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far:
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 – box 101, folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
This has since been corroborated by officers present at the briefing:
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
(Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012)
The next day (16 September) was the final Corps briefing:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
(September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012)
This was a reminder to Gavin that while the bridges were the primary objectives of the operation, it was essential to control the heights as well. McManus continues with an excellent analysis of the priorities:
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
(McManus op cit)
I have no doubt that Browning saw the bridge as a priority right from the start. For COMET he had planned for the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges to be taken by dawn glider coup de main raids, and regarded them as so essential he advised Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without them. The same dawn and late afternoon double airlift for D-Day was carried over into the provisional operation SIXTEEN outline after COMET was cancelled in light of the intelligence situation. The detailed planning was then devolved to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army headquarters, and here Brereton decided on all daylight flights, limiting delivery to one lift per day and ruled out the dawn raids on the bridges. Clearly Browning wanted alternative arrangements to take the bridges quickly. According to Gavin:
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
(Cornelius Ryan op cit)
The evidence is overwhelming that Browning's priorities were focused on the bridges, and had been a week before Gavin was even assigned to an operation on Nijmegen during 1st Airborne Division's planning for COMET. That priority was frustrated by Brereton and possibly Williams (it was noticeable that Williams was more co-operative for COMET), and also by Gavin's own decisions not to undertake a coup de main parachute drop at Nijmegen and assigning his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical NIjmegen mission. I would refer to Nordyke's earlier chapters for Lindquist's poor performance in Normandy for context here.
Gavin was most emphatically not told where to drop his troops or which assignments to make. Browning had no authority to do that, and Gavin must shoulder the responsibility for his own decisions. Although he did not drill down to regimental history level as I have done by reading Nordyke, TIK is on the money with Gavin, and the blame also rests with Lindquist for the tactical compromise on D-Day, by failing to send in the 1st Battalion directly, and Brereton for the air planning compromises. If you're not prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads in order to simply pin the blame on a Brit, then you're guilty of national prejudice yourself, as well as hypocrisy.
4
-
4
-
4
-
@johnburns4017 - SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 was based at the Saksen-Weimar kazerne (barracks) in northern Arnhem. They had handed most of their armour (I think around 10 Mark IV tanks) to SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Vorden, leaving the 9.SS-Panzer with three Mark V Panther tanks and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen'. 1st Parachute Battalion war diary records a column of 5 tanks and about 15 half-tracks (the latter probably from Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, since no other unit in the area had that many half-tracks), seen patrolling the Amsterdamseweg on 17 September, preventing them from reaching their high ground objective.
I came across a Dutch historical article online about an Arnhem resident living in the house on the corner of Callunastraat with Heijenoordseweg who received a knock on the door on the Friday morning, 15 September 1944, to find some SS panzer crewmen at the door asking for any spare milk. They explained that they had moved their tanks out of the barracks and hidden them under the trees on Heijenoordseweg to avoid any bombing of the barracks.
Two of the Panthers were knocked out by B Company 3rd Parachute Battalion on 19 September, with a Gammon bomb dropped out of an upper floor window and a PIAT, while the third survived the battle in Arnhem to participate in the seige of the Oosterbeek perimeter. The unit was Kampfgruppe Harder under SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Harder, nominally the commander of 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 and the most senior officer representing the regiment at Arnhem. The two Möbelwagen are well-documented (and photographed) on the Dreijenscheweg supporting Kampfgruppe Spindler's blocking line against 4th Parachute Brigade on 18-19 September.
To put it into perspective, Model had fewer than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B in September facing Montgomery with 2,400. 1st Airborne Divisison and the Polish Brigade took 83 anti-tank guns to Arnhem, including 16 of the 17-pounder guns capable of tackling the Panthers and Tigers.
4
-
@johnburns4017 - just been re-reading part of Christer Bergström's volume 2 chapter VII on Results and Conclusions to look something up and came across this note:
'Heeresgruppe B had not had any more than 84 operational tanks and tank destroyers left in the middle of September 1944.' (Citation: OB West Ia No. 8138/44 g.Kdos. vom 15.9.1944; Jung, Die Ardennen-Offensive 1944/45, p. 33.
My figure of "fewer than 100 operational tanks" came from Didden and Swarts' The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022).
I had remembered the more recently read reference, but the note from Bergström quoting from Jung is clearly based on official strength returns recorded by the Operations Officer of OB West. It's also interesting because the exact number of anti-tank guns taken by 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Parachute Brigade to Arnhem comes to 83. The breakdown being 24 in the Airlanding Battalions (8 per Support Company), 4 Troops of 17-pounders (total 16 guns), 7 Troops of 6-pounders (total 28 guns, 1 Troop per Parachute Battalion, plus 'Z' Troop for division reserve), and the Poles had 4 Troops (16 guns) they opted to reorganise as 3 Troops of 5 guns for Arnhem, bringing the total sent by air to 83. I'm assuming the spare Polish gun was taken in their sea tail, and their roster does include 9 men listed for the Anti-Tank Squadron's Sea Tail, which would bring the total to match Model's 84 operational tanks! It's quite a stunning coincidence.
I have some figures on monthly (total) strength returns for 10.SS-Panzer-Division and the claimed figures of 16 Mark IV and 4 StuG IIIG seems to be borne out by published information, and I'm quite confident about their numbers and locations in the narrative, but wouldn't know how the figures were officially broken down into operational/short-term/long-term repair.
My narrative on 9.SS-Panzer-Division is pieced together from many sources which all seem to fit together into a coherent narrative regarding the three Panthers. I've often thought about why they weren't handed over to 10.SS-Panzer with the Mark IV tanks and my conclusion is they are either three Befehlspanthers (command tanks with the extra radios that belong to either the Regiment Nachrichten [signals] platoon or I.Abteilung Panther Nachrichten Platoon - they both should have three such vehicles) and therefore harder to obtain replacements, so were retained by the subterfuge of listing them in short-term repair (not operational), or because SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 did not yet have their own Panther Abteilung (still training in Germany) and likely not have the Werkstatt Kompanie 'Panther' platoon to maintain them.
I'm inclined to think probably the first option, because during the battle Model did send 20 new Panthers from the factory and they were crewed by the 100 un-horsed Panther crewmen from I./SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 that were an 'alarm kompanie' acting as infantry and then transferred to the Frundsberg division to re-form 8./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10. I would imagine the Panther Werkstatt platoon would have to go with them. It also fits the narrative that the three survivors from Normandy were moved to the Heijenoordseweg on Friday 15 September (according to the Dutch resident in Callunastraat) from the Saksen-Weimar kazerne, where they were probably in the workshop for just a few days to have tracks and guns removed for the subterfuge of listing them as 'non-operational' to avoid handover.
All of this would have to be in the 10-part mini-series remake of A Bridge Too Far that will never get made for political reasons. Drama.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
@ErikExeu - "I am not very happy" is an emotional response. I'm only referring to historical research.
1. Sosabowski was vociferous in his criticism of COMET and did indeed tell Browning he thought to ask for a letter confirming he was ordered to undertake his part in the operation and Browning asked him if he wanted such a letter, to which Sosabowski responded he didn't, because if it was a massacre it wouldn't make any difference. He was then silent during the MARKET briefing. These scenes are conflated in the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far for dramatic purposes, and the point I was trying to make is that the film should not be used as a basis for a historical discussion - in other words, stick to the facts, and not draw the film's own conclusions from it's fictional narrative. Attenborough, Goldman and Levine all had their own motives in the making of the film, ranging from political to entertainment.
2. Gavin did have the final say over his divisional plan. Browning could not object because he did not have the authority to order Gavin to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, it could only be a request. He could order Urquhart, an officer in his own British Army chain of command, but he had no authority to order Gavin's dispositions without Gavin's agreement.
3. Point 2 came about because Browning was unable to object to Brereton's removal of the key COMET double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from the MARKET outline plan. The reverse would not be possible - Brereton could not order the British glider raids on the bridges if Browning objected, because Brereton could not order British troops to be put in harm's way without the agreement of their British commander.
Browning also could not object to the removal of the glider raids by threatening to resign a second time, because he had already done so over Brereton's LINNET II plan a couple of weeks earlier. LINNET II was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps and Browning strongly objected to it by writing a letter threatening resignation. Fortunately, the operation was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, so Browning withdrew the letter, but Brereton had intended to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. American military historian Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis from Cranfield University in the UK is a good source for the LINNET story - The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (2001).
Browning now knew what would happen if he tried to object to the MARKET compromises - he would simply be out of the job and Ridgway would lead the airborne operation. This was probably the motivation for Browning to move the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek up to the 1st lift, in a hope to influence events once he was on the ground, not for reasons of ego (why was it on the 2nd lift originally if that were the case?) - we know it was a last minute change because many of the glider chalk numbers were not amended on the official records, and some anti-tank assets were bumped from the 1st lift to Arnhem as a result, much to Urquhart's frustration.
4. Montgomery blamed himself in his memoirs for not intervening in the planning of MARKET to order the troops be dropped closer to the bridges, although again, he could not have ordered Gavin's parachute drop on the Nijmegen bridge, but presumably could have overruled Brereton and reinstated the British glider raids, as only British troops and RAF aircrew would be at risk. Eisenhower supported MARKET GARDEN and had no objection to it at all, although Montgomery indirectly blames him for not getting the full logistical support he asked for - Bedell Smith's assurances on 12 September appear not to have been fulfilled in reality. I think only Americans blame Eisenhower for not objecting to MARKET GARDEN, but he had no reason to.
5. The failure of the operation can most fairly be placed on the one aspect of the plan that was not followed - specifically the failure by Lindquist to carry out Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion 508th PIR directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge after landing, and the post-2011 literature with witness accounts supports this, although Gavin's 1945 letter to Historical Officer Captain Westover and confirmation in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974) have always been there, but not previously substantiated by other sources and disputed by Lindquist himself. You can also blame all the classic mitigating factors, like the Germans, the weather, etc., but these are factors that mitigate against all military operations, so the failure to even follow a plan against zero opposition has to be the prime cause.
I personnally resent any suggestion that British subscribers are fundamentally anti-American (although we do have a few communist types in the UK). My own family is probably about three-quarters American, since a major family migration to Illinois during the Industrial Revolution, so I don't make any general remarks about incompetence in one army versus another. The truth, as always, is much more complex. The fact is, supported by the literature, Roy Lindquist was a poor field commander, just like Herbert Sobel of Band of Brothers fame in E/506th PIR. He was actually a gifted administrator. Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) has very enlightening chapters on his performance during the Normandy campaign, the 508th's first combat operation. Gavin had some difficult decisions to make in his divisional plan, but he clearly made some mistakes despite some steers - the "British request" (I assume Browning's) to drop a battalion onto Nijmegen bridge as a coup de main - and perhaps not used to the British doctrine of giving a job requiring two divisions (as his G-3 Jack Norton noted in the Corps briefing) to just one (this is normal in the British Army because we never have enough resources).
On the contrary, the conventional narrative for the MARKET GARDEN story does seem to be anti-British. Cornelius Ryan was a newspaperman from Dublin embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - I cannot think of two finer anti-Montgomery schools than Dublin and Patton! Richard Attenborough was an anti-establishment leftist pacifist who wanted to make an "anti-war film" showing the British officer class as incompetent. He found Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far to be the perfect vehicle, but his film only works as an historical docu-drama for exactly 50% of its screen time, based on a scene-by-scene analysis. The rest is clearly a narrative constructed for the American market, and it has shaped public perception on both sides of the Atlantic ever since.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
@johnlucas8479 - the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges were to be carried out by British Glider Pilots in British Horsa gliders towed by RAF Stirlings carrying D Companies from the 2nd South Staffords, 7th KOSB and 1st Border Battalions respectively (the three battalions from 1st Airlanding Brigade). The plan was a carry over from COMET (cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft) to the proposed SIXTEEN outline replacement operation, and then dropped for the final MARKET plan after Brereton and Williams got their hands on it.
The 33% losses related to the glider coup de main assaults, not the main body that would still go to the main landing zones west of Arnhem and south of Nijmegen. The landing zones near the bridges were not large enough for massed landings, only six gliders assigned to each bridge. RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014) has a map from the COMET plan showing the aircraft tracks and the coup de main glider release points and glide paths for the Arnhem and Nijmegen missions. They release over the rivers as landmarks on the same track as the main body flying on to the British main landing zones west of Oosterbeek, and the coup de main gliders make a right turn and follow the rivers to their targets six kilometers away.
The American glider forces were not trained or equipped for these kinds of assaults - they were purely transport assets and the pilots were from the Troop Carrier Squadrons, not trained as light infantry once on the ground like their British counterparts. In fact, they only carried personal weapons, usually a Thompson sub or folding carbine, and no personal sleeping or mess kit. This was a major difference in doctrine and capability, which is why the Americans would never consider doing their own assaults using gliders. After the operation, Gavin complained to the US Army about their glider pilots being a liability, needing looking after until they could be evacuated, but any change in doctrine was superceeded by the introduction post-war of helicopters to replace the combat glider, so it became moot. US glider infantry were not trained in an assault role, they were organised like regular infantry to be delivered by glider, which is why their airborne divisions delivered paratoops first to secure landing zones for glider troops to be delivered as reinforcements. British doctrine was to land glider infantry and anti-tank units first to secure and protect the drop zones for the paratroops.
By removing the British glider coup de main assaults from all three main river bridges, the only alternatives for Nijmegen and Grave were special drop zones for 82nd Airborne paratroops near the bridges. Tucker got his for a 504th company at Grave because he insisted on it, but Gavin discarded a British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge. Urquhart's solution at Arnhem was the Reconnaissance Squadron coup de main.
4
-
4
-
The name 'Puma' was strictly applied to the German concept of putting a large calibre anti-tank gun into an armoured car in a rotating turret, and this was done for the SdKfz 234/4 vehicle with a 7.5cm L46 PaK 40 gun introduced in December 1944. The previous versions 234/1/2/3 mounted the 2cm kanon, 5cm anti-tank gun, and 7.5cm L24 close support howitzer, respectively.
Some 234/4 Puma vehicles were used by 2.Panzer-Division in their leading battlegroup that made the deepest penetration of the Ardennes counter-offensive at Celles, just short of the River Meuse at Dinant. The name 'Puma' is often used for all 8-wheeled German armoured cars, but it's not really correct, and the 234/4 Pumas were too late for the Normandy and MARKET GARDEN timeframes.
SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Viktor Eberhard Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 at Arnhem had at least two surviving 8-wheel armoured cars of the older SdKfz 231 series, as well as three SdKfz 222 series 4-wheeled armoured cars, all in the 1.Kompanie and armed with 2cm kanon. The 1.Kompanie after Normandy also had rolled into it the surviving five SdKfz 250/9 half-track armoured cars from the disbanded 2.Kompanie, and these were also armed with the 2cm kanon. It appears these did not go to Nijmegen with Gräbner, they seem to have been operating west of Arnhem in action against 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions attempting to get to the bridge, which was also part of Gräbner's mission, with at least one SdKfz 250/3 command vehicle from the Abteilung 'stab' (staff or HQ) being photographed in the Oosterbeek area.
Gräbner's 3.Kompanie, which also contained vehicles from the disbanded 4.Kompanie, had twelve SdKfz 250 series half-tracks, and the 5.Kompanie (heavy company) had six SdKfz 251 half-tracks. The latter 5.Kompanie were intitially left behind at Nijmegen until elements of 10.SS-Panzer-Division arrived to secure the bridges, and then also withdrawn to Elst at midnight on 17 September. They remained at Elst when Gräbner attempted to rush the Arnhem bridge with his wheeled armoured cars of 1.Kompanie and the halftracks of 3.Kompanie. He followed up the armoured attack with a number of trucks reinforced by sandbags and earth-filled oil drums, which may have been the few trucks listed as part of 3.Kompanie - six light and medium trucks.
The Abteilung also had a 6.Kompanie, a Versorgungs (supply) company, with twenty-one medium and three heavy trucks, but I don't believe they (all) went to Nijmegen. When Frost first arrived at the Arnhem bridge, most of Gräbner's unit were observed crossing over on their way south to Nijmegen, and the first traffic Frost was in a position to interdict were four trucks apparently carrying fuel supplies, possibly from Gräbner's supply column following behind, and it was the fuel cargo spilled from these trucks that caused the huge conflagration that prevented any further attempts to take the south end of the bridge.
Gräbner himself is said to have been using a captured British Humber Mark IV armoured car acquired in Normandy. There is no sign of this vehicle among the wrecks photographed on Arnhem bridge and possibly it was recovered by the Germans not too badly damaged after the battle or was not present, but Gräbner was one of the men recorded as having perished on the bridge. Another SS-Hauptsturmführer, Karl-Heinz Recke, is recorded as taking over, but I don't know if he was an officer already within the Abteilung or transferred from elsewhere in the division.
4
-
@johnburns4017 - chain of command at Son? My knowledge in the 101st Airborne AO is more limited than Arnhem and Nijmegen, so I have not established who was in charge at the bridges on the Wilhelmina canal at Son and Best. I know the canal defence line was held by Flieger-Ausbildungs-Regiment 53 (a Luftwaffe basic training unit for recruits before posting on to specialist pilot/ground/flak training units) in the Sonsche forest sector between the two bridges and most likely on either side along the whole canal (in 1944 it had two abteilungen), depending on how thin they were strung out.
The bridges at Best and Son were reinforced in the days before Market Garden by 3 and 4./schwere.Flak-Abteilung 428 respectively, relocated from Deelen airfield with 8 x 8.8cm and 2 x 2cm guns at Best (presumably two heavy guns were attached from another batterie) and at Son 4 x 8.8cm and 3 x 2cm, with 2 x 8.8cm guns detached to the northern suburbs of Eindhoven (later dealt with by F/506th on 18 September).
Both bridges were prepared for demolition and presumably had a 'sprengkommando' of engineers, but I have no knowledge of who they were, or what their orders or protocol for initiating detonation was. I've seen a reference that troops from the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' were at the Son bridge, but nothing specific. The vehicles from the Reserve Panzer Kompanie based at Harderwijk (on the Zuider Zee coast) that were ordered to Hechtel in Belgium to join II.Abteilung on 7 September and broke down near Deelen, famously photographed by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September, had found their way as far as Wolfswinkel, just north of Zon, on 17 September. Those are the only HG troops I know to be even in the area.
If I was to speculate, possibly a sprengkommando from the Panzer-Pioneer Kompanie - nominally the 6.Kompanie in August (source: LXXXVIII Korps records on the sturmpanzer site) and detached from II.Abteilung in reserve, but I believe reorganised in September (in the transferr to 1.Fallschirm-Armee whose records are lost) to be part of a new Pionier Bataillon with Kompanie numbers 18-20 (part of the re-org that had the Unter-Lehr-Kommando or NCO training company renumbered from 21 to 29, because the 'Rekruten' Bataillon from Berlin rejected by Fritz Fullriede on the grounds it would be infanticide to use them probably took up Kompanie numbers 21-28).
What I do know is that the higher command was still LXXXVIII Armeekorps, as it was also transferred from WBN (occupation command Netherlands) to 1.Fallschirm-Armee (Student), and the commander was General Hans Wolfgang Reinhard based in Tilburg. His first action on reaching his HQ on 17 September was to send the I./SS-Polizei-Regiment, which was also based in Tilburg, to Best (less one company having its time wasted responding to a false report of paratroops at Udenhout, but they later rejoined the battalion at Best). Student's Chief of Staff, Oberst Walter Reinhard (I hope you're keeping up!), had already sent I./Grenadier-Regiment 723 (only reserve from 719.ID northeast of Antwerp), as well as Feldersatz-Bataillon 347 (of 347.ID and previously on Meuse-Escaut Canal, including at Joe's Bridge) and remnants of 59.ID of 15.Armee escaping across the Scheldt.
According to Christer Bergström, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vol 1 (2019), chapter IV 'The Screaming Eagles' 17 September 1944, Student (1.Fallschirm-Armee) only had the Flak units at the bridges and these were ordered to defend the bridges at all costs and, as a last resort, to blow them up.
Bergström says 2nd Battalion 506th assembled 30 minutes behind scedule due to confused signals on the DZ associated with the 502nd, and the CO was missing, then 2 hours spent house clearing down the main street instead of moving quickly. Impossible to say it made any difference as the bridge was prepared to be blown as soon as it came under pressure.
Since there was no delay on XXX Corps in constructing the replacement Bailey bridge entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to move tanks, I see no fault or time delay that could easily be made up in this phase of the operation. These kinds of problems are to be expected and were not fatal to the success of the operation. What happened at Nijmegen was not expected.
4
-
@johnburns4017 - re the orders for the bridge garrisons at Best and Son (I do prefer the spelling of 'Zon' as this disambiguates the name from an English word - as in Son of God, but apparently 'Son' is the correct spelling notwithsstanding the 'Zon' spelling used on the US GSGS AMS maps used for the operation):
I think the orders were probably standing orders, because the way Christer Bergström describes the deployment of the Flak batteries at the bridges suggests their orders were "to defend the bridges at all costs and, as a last resort, to blow them up." I don't know exactly when the batteries of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 were redeployed from Deelen, I only know that the two guns detached from 4.Batterie at Son to the northern outskirts of Eindhoven in a forward deployed position happened the day before they were engaged, which would be the 17 September, the day of the landings.
These defence lines along the canals - Wilhelmina canal at Best and Son, the Maas-Waal canal west of Nijmegen, had all their bridges prepared for demolitions and most of these were blown as soon as they were threatened, suggesting they were already well prepared regardless of how soon they were attacked. The lift bridge at Heumen on the Maas-Waal canal, really the only one captured completely intact, was effectively kept under fire by Bravo Company 504th as soon as contact was made, and this seemed to be the reason the demolition charges were not primed. The defences at Son were more extensive with the heavy Flak guns, and regardless of the delay before the defences were attacked, the attack itself took time to press forward until paratroopers were within 100 yards of the bridge as it was blown.
As you know from our previous conversations, I think the outcomes at these bridges are due to the Germans being on the ball and doing everything right. Even if they had to report contact to Student (in the case of Son and Best) or Scherbening of Division zbV 406 (in the case of the Maas-Waal canal bridges) and ask permission, they had time to do so and get a reply at Son after contact was made, but I think this may be irrelevant if there were standing orders at bridges along these defence lines. I believe Scherbening was out of contact with the canal defences, it is certainly the case in Kershaw's It Never Snows In September (1990) that Landesschützen-Ausbildung-Bataillon I./6 headquartered at Haus Kreuzfuhrt (grid 7954 on the Groesbeek AMS map) lost contact with its three companies deployed on the Maas-Waal canal.
My view with regard to Son and its impact on Market Garden's timetable I have also discussed before, and I am persuaded by John Sliz's observation that the Bailey bridge was constructed entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to operate tanks. The work started at 2000 hrs, within an hour of XXX Corps reaching the bridge site at 1900 hrs, and the Royal Engineers' advance (Recce) party at 1930 hrs.
I highly recommend you to Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers During Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2015, 2016), the engineering details are fascinating (you'll be able to build your own Bailey bridge after reading this and be one up on Elliot Gould who, let's face it, is only an actor playing a Colonel who wasn't really there when the bridge was built). The narrative on the Guards' Royal Engineers story of Market Garden is also very interesting, because even though their responsibilty for any bridging required ended at Grave (where the Canadian AGRCE - Army Group Royal Canadian Engineers) took over, they were regrettably not involved in the assault boat saga at Nijmegen despite having assault boats at Nijmegen (nobody asked them).
I think the reason for that may be the demarcation of responsibilities into sectors in the corridor and John Sliz's book on the Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden (2021) also revealed news to me that the contingency plan for Nijmegen, in the permutation where both bridges are intact and held by the enemy, were for a river assault crossing by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one or two Brigades up, until Gavin intervened. So these Market Garden Engineers series of books are not a technical or peripheral area of interest to the general topic, they do cut to the heart of many of the issues we frequently discuss, and explain why certain things were organised and done the way they were.
So Nijmegen remains as the one place where the plan was not followed - a completely unforced error on the part of the Airborne, and the contingency plan was also abandoned at the insistence of a division commander attempting to make amends for his division's earlier mistake. The events on the canal defence lines were not unexpected and the contingencies of engineered crossings or using alternative 'Heart Route' bridges were carried out successfully.
As for your questions about the need for the bridges to be used by a German counter-attack, I have wondered the same thing. I can only speculate that the major crossings at Arnhem and Nijmegen would be too difficult for the Germans to replace in time, whereas the canal crossings could be bridged by engineers in relatively short order, as the Guards Armoured did at Son overnight. I am aware of an example during the Ardennes counter-offensive (which replaced Model's original plan of doing it in the Netherlands in October/November) - the Germans opened the offensive in the 5.Panzer-Armee sector by attacking with 26.Volksgrenadier-Division along a wide front over the River Our (the actual front line on 16 December), which was then bridged by engineers at Dasburg in a matter of hours to allow 2.Panzer-Division to roll over it and pass through 26.Volksgrenadier to take the lead in the advance on a narrow divisional front (called a 'Rollbahn'). This tempo would not be possible if the engineers had to replace, for example, the largest single span bridge in Europe in 1944 - the Waalbrug at Nijmegen.
4
-
4
-
4
-
Browning actually had nothing to do with it. The failure occurred between Gavin (82nd Airborne) and Lindquist (508th PIR). 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - tells the story that Cornelius Ryan's research for his 1974 book A Bridge Too Far failed to unearth:
Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark."
"A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
4
-
@stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85 - that's a point I initially accepted before on face value, but then thought more about it.
The obvious reallocation of glider tugs (it's not the gliders that are limited for a particular lift, it's the towing aircraft) is to tow the second half of the South Staffords Airlanding battalion to Arnhem on the first lift instead. Browning's Corps HQ used 32 Stirling/Horsa and 6 Albemarle/WACO combinations, while the second lift for the South Staffords used 40 Dakota/Horsa and 1 Halifax/Hamilcar combinations (Source: Glider Pilots At Arnhem, Mike Peters and Luuk Buist, 2009).
What was the mission of the South Staffordshire Battalion at Arnhem? In Phase 1 it was to protect Landing Zone 'S' for the second lift on D+1, and then in Phase 2 to take up its assigned position in the Airlanding Brigade sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem. I believe all four brigades had sectors allotted so that two battalions were forward in the line and the third in reserve, so while the 1st Border Regiment actually took up its assigned positions on the western side of Oosterbeek as per their Phase 2 orders, the rest of the brigade line was to be held by either the 2nd South Staffords or the 7th KOSB, with the other battalion in reserve. Probably the Staffords were nominal reserve because they arrived last, and the KOSB's role in assisting 4th Parachute Brigade was over ground at Johannahoeve probably familiar to them if they were briefed in England to occupy that part of the perimeter. That seems logical to me.
In the event, the Staffords held LZ 'S' in Phase 1 with two Companies (B and D), the battalion HQ and the Hand Cart Mortar and MMG Platoons (requiring a total of only 20 Horsa gliders out of a total of 60 for a whole battalion with the Jeep support platoons). They were supported in that role by Flights from Glider Pilot Squadrons C, E, and F of No.2 Wing, and the Independent Company (pathfinders) at Reijers Camp farm. Each Wing of the GPA were the equivalent of a light infantry battalion equipped like paratroops to fight once on the ground. These three squadrons held the eastern sector of LZ 'S' and cleared the village of Wolfheze and the psychiatric hospital with its extensive grounds and pavilions (these facilities were used as a collection centre for German artillery troops as well as senior Luftwaffe officers and 'Blitzmaiden' from the Deelen airbase).
The Staffords, and attached Glider Pilots of No.2 Wing were not under any serious pressure from the Germans during Phase 1, and therefore there was was absolutely no major benefit to be gained from having the whole battalion arrive on D-Day. Unless, of course, you rewrite the entire divisional plan to send six battalions to the bridge and leave no protection for the landings zones, which is probably the way modern airborne doctrine would work instead of telegraphing your intent to reinforce with further lifts by holding the drop zones.
By the time Brigadier Hicks (in temporary command of the Division) decided he could spare the Staffords on the Landing Zone and send them into Arnhem to support 1st Parachute Brigade, the 2nd Lift was due, and the second half of the battalion actually landed and caught up with the first half in the western outskirts of Arnhem as the leading companies came into contact. I'm convinced that without substantially changing the divisional plan (which is a whole other debate in and of itself) the Staffords having all four Rifle Companies and complete Support Company on the ground for Phase 1 would not have made an atom of difference to the outcome of the battle at Arnhem. I'm convinced if you want to change the outcome at Arnhem, you have to secure the highway bridge at Nijmegen on D-Day and pass XXX Corps over it as soon as it arrives on the morning of 19 September. Frost was controlling traffic over the Arnhem bridge until around midday of 20 September, and Tony Hibbert (1st Para Brigade Major) maintained they could have received XXX Corps as late as 1300 hrs on 21 September.
My understanding of Browning's rationale for going was to be seen to lead his troops on the mission, instead of remaining in England. Part of his glider lift were two WACOs carrying liaison teams from 82nd and 101st Divisions and four WACOs carrying two Fighter Control Teams from the USAAF. The HQ itself was the 32 Horsas allocated.
You might be amused/amazed to know that one of the GPR Flights (a platoon sized unit with 44 men) going to Arnhem were actually earmarked to protect Browning's HQ (to join a Flight from A Squadron and Regiment HQ that flew him in to Groesbeek). How they were expected to get there nobody could tell them, and the officers in the Flight resolved to find an excuse for not being able to make the journey!
4
-
Opposed major water crossings were always backups to the primary method of seizing the bridges if those went wrong. The opposed river assault at Nijmegen should not, and would not, have been necessary if the 508th PIR had "moved with speed" on the highway bridge as Gavin had instructed in the divisional briefing in England.
Source: Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012).
The backup plan for the Waal bridges in Nijmegen being held in strength by the enemy was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to conduct a river assault to the west with either one or two Brigades up. They had one battalion in two of their Brigades fully motorised in DUKW amphibious trucks for this eventuality, but this plan was apparently thrown away when Gavin insisted his own troops be used if XXX Corps could supply boats. I believe he was trying to make amends for his blunder in assigning the wrong regiment to the Nijmegen mission.
Source: Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Market Garden, John Sliz (2021).
Both British and US Airborne Divisions were well served with field artillery and anti-tank guns, although the Americans opted to leave most of their artillery for later airlifts and land on D-Day with all their paratroopers. Most indications of German armour were in the Arnhem area and 1st Airborne took 83 anti-tank guns (52 x 6-pounder, 16 x 17-pounder, and 15 x 6-pounder in the Polish Brigade) and 24 pack howitzers (75mm) to Arnhem. Considering Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B (facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400), I think that's quite a lot of heavy weapons!
The operation failed because a key officer was a poor combat leader and ignored a specific instruction from his division commander in the face of zero opposition from the enemy. Nothing to do with Eisenhower or Montgomery.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 -
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University.
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 -
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan (1974) -
Although General Browning had directed Gavin not to go for the Nijmegen crossing until the high ground around Groesbeek was secured, Gavin was confident that all the 82nd's objectives could be taken on this first day. Evaluating the situation some twenty-four hours before the jump, Gavin had called in the 508th's commander, Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, and directed him to send one battalion racing for the bridge. In the surprise and confusion of the airborne landings, Gavin reasoned, the gamble was well worth taking. "I cautioned Lindquist about the dangers of getting caught in streets," Gavin remembers, "and pointed out that the way to get the bridge was to approach from east of the city without going through built-up areas." Whether by misunderstanding or a desire to clean up his initial assignments, Lindquist's own recollection was that he was not to commit his troopers in an assault on the bridge until the regiment's other objectives had been achieved. To the 1/Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, Jr., Lindquist assigned the task of holding protective positions along the Groesbeek-Nijmegen highway about a mile and a quarter southeast of the city. Warren was to defend the area and link up with the regiment' remaining two battalions to the west and east. Only when these missions were accomplished, Warren recalled, was he to prepare to go into Nijmegen. Thus, instead of driving for the bridge from the flat farming areas to the east, Warren's battalion found itself squarely in the center of those very built-up areas Gavin had sought to avoid.
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 –
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
4
-
Your quote from Beevor (a very poor book and a hack author recycling an outdated narrative) relates to 18 September - the day after the D-Day for the operation on 17 September, and after the first failed attempt to secure the bridge on the night of 17/18 September, when it should have been taken earlier in the evening just as PFC Joe Atkins and his S-2 Section point team had proven was possible. Browning reasoned that any further attempt to take the bridge should wait until armoured support arrived from the Guards Armoured Division. In view of how difficult it was to try taking the bridge on 19 and again on 20 September, it was undoubtedly the right decision.
My quotes come from Gavin himself in his letter to the official US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, noting that he instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge - the history was subsequently written in a book by another Historical Officer called MacDonald.
This instruction was confirmed by Gavin in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974), who did not explore the problems with Lindquist any further, or the lack of enemy troops in Nijmegen itself until the battalion was finally got moving after an intervention by an extremely "mad" Gavin, too late to beat SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 to the bridge. The events in the city have not come to light until the more recent books by McManus and Nordyke in 2012, using first hand accounts from officers and troopers involved.
There's also an interesting account from the German point of view in Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010), using the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting as adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, and later 'Kampfgruppe Reinhold' in charge of the Nijmegen defence), but this specialist subject book had a limited print run and may be difficult to obtain. Reinhold and Traupel were probably the last Germans crossing the Arnhem bridge from north to south before Frost's men starting interdicting traffic and Traupel said they arrived in Nijmegen and...
"To my complete surprise I came across the complete SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner. Never before had I seen so many armoured vehicles; there were maybe thirty or more. From Gräbner I learned that many American troops had landed west of the Reichswald. Gräbner had received orders to go back to Arnhem. As the Nijmegen bridge was very short of the troops required to defend it, I asked him to leave one Zug (five Panzerspähwagen) for the defences. He agreed and left for Arnhem around nine o'clock in the evening. Feeling better about the situation I went back to our Headquarters in Lent and took a nap. Around midnight the officer in command of the Zug of Panzerspähwagen arrived at the Headquarters and told me that he had received orders to join the rest of his unit at Elst."
"After he left I went across the bridge again to visit the troops located around the bridge in Nijmegen. Another thirty to forty men had arrived which belonged to a military police band and had been incorporated into the defence. I was still waiting for Quandel [5./SS-Pz.Rgt 10] and his tanks [16 x Mark IV] and had no information on why they had not arrived. Early in the morning of 18 September I was surprised to see the first arrival was SS-Obersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel with about ten men from his Pionier Kompanie [1./SS-Pz.Pi.Abt 10]. Reinhold and I then learned what had happened at the Arnhem bridge and on hearing this information made me adjutant of the Kampfgruppe. In the early afternoon SS-Hauptsturmführer Euling arrived with elements of his Battalion [former II./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21]. Both units crossed the Nijmegen bridge to strengthen the bridgehead on the southern side of the Waal."
- The police band was the Musikkorps-Zug from the BdO (HQ of the German Order Police for the entire Netherlands and equivalent to a division HQ), that had evacuated at about 1830 hrs going north to their training depot at Schalkhaar (near Deventer) and then finally new digs at Zwolle. They left their Musikkorps-Zug behind to guard the bridges, so it's my view that they were there the whole time when Traupel first arrived, but he simply did not notice them while Gräbner's troops were there in force. 30-40 men split between guarding both ends of the road and rail bridges would be consistent with a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge according to Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, and seven men surprised by PFC Joe Atkins of the 1/508th's S-2 Section when his team took possession of the southern end of the highway bridge also fits this narrative.
Quandel's unit (5./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) had failed to arrive because Frost was in possession of the Arnhem bridge and his Mark IV tanks were too heavy for the ferry at Pannerden, so they were held back until the Arnhem bridge was retaken three days later. Only the four StuGs in the 7.Kompanie could be ferried across, plus some infantry, engineers, and one artillery abteilung, for the defence of Nijmegen. The Nijmegen highway bridge itself was not prepared for demolition until the SS engineers arrived. The explosive cutting charges were available, stored in the bridge piers as numbered wooden boxes shaped to fit the superstructure in corresponding numbered locations, and even painted the same shade of green to match the bridge. An NSDAP 'Schutzgruppe' (ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands and volunteered as a militia) had been trained to place the explosives and drilled every month by an engineer officer, Oberleutnant Brettschneider, from von Tettau's staff at the WBN (Wehrmacht HQ Netherlands). The last drill was carried out mid-August and on 17 September the Schutzgruppe simply failed to show up. Brettscheider was in Nijmegen, he was also responsible for the rail bridge, and he was able to direct the SS engineers to prepare the highway bridge as soon as they arrived.
Now you know about as much as I do, and I don't see how Browning can be blamed for missing the bridge at Nijmegen. He was constantly compromised by American officers in the planning process at 1st Allied Airborne Army, and on the ground was very much in James Gavin's hands and his troopers at Nijmegen.
4
-
4
-
4
-
@johnlucas8479 - I don't think Adams attacked the bridge at all. His Company was leading the battalion's belated advance into Nijmegen from about 2200 hours - he gives a 10pm timecheck in Nordyke (chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) when his company was at the initial point (Krayenhoff barracks on Groesbeekseweg), where they were waiting for B Company, and then told to move on without them. At some point after that they bumped German units at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle on the west side of town near the railway station, because their Dutch guide was taking them to the bridge via the resistance headquarters (located in a hotel on Molenstraat at the corner with Tweede Walstraat).
By this time I believe Gräbner had left for Elst with most of his unit (at 9pm per Traupel), but left an SPW Zug armed with 7.5cm close support kanon - SdKfz 251/9. The interesting thing is that some accounts of this engagement include the killing of an SS-Hauptsturmführer by Corporal Jim Blue, which would not be Victor Gräbner himself, but most likely one of his company commanders. It's my theory that Gräbner left the whole 5.Kompanie behind, but this only consisted of 5 SPWs of the Kanon Zug, a couple of trucks that was probably a supply train, and an SdKfz 251/3 command half-track that would be the company commander's vehicle. It's the only explanation for an SS-Captain to be present when only a 'platoon' of vehicles were supposed to be left behind. I think it's semantics - the platoon was essentially the whole reduced strength company.
After B Company arrived and moved through A Company to continue the attack, Adams was tasked with contacting the resistance HQ, but Lt Lamm (2nd Platoon) could not seem to locate it, Adams was then told to send a patrol to the control station for the bridge demolitions, said to be in the Post Office in the centre of town. As time was pressing and Lamm was having trouble reading the map, Adams decided to lead the patrol himself. They were in contact just short of the Post Office, but Lamm and six men assaulted the building and set fire to it, reporting back there were switches in the building that could have been just ordinary light switches. As they withdrew, they were under fire from 20mm kanon coming from the Keiser Lodwijkplein traffic circle south of the highway bridge, but they managed to advance to the Keiser Lodwijkplein, destroying several machine-gun nests. Adams attempted to radio battalion, but couldn't raise them, so they withdrew back to "the park" (Keiser Karelplein traffic circle to the west) with their casualties. They found they were cut off and after attempting several different routes back to the Keiser Karelplein, and it was beginning to get light, they decided to hole up in a building in the city centre area to the north of the traffic circle.
It seems to me that the bridge defences were still very weak at this time, Adams was able to assault the area of the traffic circle to the south of the highwaay bridge (Keiser Lodwijkplein) with Lamm's platoon, but did not have the troops to secure the bridge itself and had to withdraw. The Germans were in the process of establishing their defence perimeter, which was based on both traffic circles and the main avenue (Oranjesingel) linking them, so this was the beginnings of Kampfgruppe Hencke - essentially the staffs of Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1 commanding the Maas-Waal canal sector of the German MLR in the area, and the co-located Fallschirm-AOK Ausbildungsstelle under Oberst Hartung - both formerly headquartered in the NEBO monastery at De Ploeg, which was now occupied by the 508th PIR. There's also mention that they were establishing an outpost line around the city, I think this was using machine-guns from the heavy Flak batteries that ringed the city to the south and were bombed in the morning of the 17th September. Spare Flak troops were gathered to man the gap between the two bridges as Kampfgruppe Melitz, who was Hartung's staff Major, and I think it was probably these troops forming road blocks on the defence line that Adams was trapped behind.
As we've discussed before, the timings are not necessarily reliable because they often rely on recollections and there are different time zones used by the Germans and Allies, but I think I have a sense of the sequencing of events, which I think is the critical thing. At midnight, the SPW Zug was also withdrawn to Elst (according to Traupel), but the bulk of 1st Battalion 508th had also disengaged, apart from Adams' patrol, which was trapped behind the German defence perimeter and became evaders for a couple of days.
4
-
@johnlucas8479 - it's also clear from Traupel's diary that the reason Gräbner was withdrawn to Elst was because this was midway between Arnhem and Nijmegen and therefore he had a radio relay link between the SdKfz 251/3 command half-track presumably left in Nijmegen, and an armored car he left on the Arnhem bridge. He could therefore report back to II.SS-Panzerkorps (Bittrich) if there was enemy activity in Nijmegen or Arnhem, and also best placed to move to either location if needed.
Also, reading recently a series of booklets on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery: A-Z Troop volumes, by Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022), there's an incredible story in the Z Troop volume that is worth mentioning here. There's a big problem with some of the glider schedule data because of late changes made to take Browning's Corps HQ to Groesbeek, and this disrupted the anti-tank gun 1st lift schedule, much to Urquhart's annoyance - another discussion for another day. However, Z Troop (a divisional unit of 6-pounder guns for protecting Division HQ) landed with the 2nd lift, but there's a story from the Troop Leader that seems only possible if he landed with the 1st lift:
Lt Eustace McNaught was Troop Leader of Z Troop, whose glider suffered a broken tow rope and landed short near Zetten on the Betuwe ('island'). He had seven of his gunners, the command Jeep with a No.22 Set radio, a trailer with ammunition, and the two glider pilots. He decided his best course of action was to leave the trailer and just take three men (driver, batman, and radio operator) in the Jeep and head for the Arnhem bridge, where he knew the Division were due to seize it, and he could arrange transport to come back and pick up the rest of the men and the pilots. They got to the (Arnhem-Nijmegen) main road and headed north, but as they approached the bridge they could see an armoured column heading towards them. Realising they must be German, McNaught turned the Jeep around and headed south for Nijmegen, where he knew the Americans would be taking the bridges (ha!)
They got to Nijmegen as it was getting quite dark and cautiously drove over the bridge and were quite surprised they were not challenged at all, which made McNaught quite angry - where were the Americans? They were stopped in the city centre by some Dutch people who told them the Germans were heading into the city and they would have to be hidden, so they were taken to a monastery (I don't know which one) where they remained hidden with the Jeep, monitoring troop movements until Allied units entered the city in strength on 19 September. By coincidence when he ventured out, he ran into Lt Howe of his own battery's sea tail, who had suffered a road traffic accident and was having his injuries attended to at the roadside. McNaught related his story, left his three men with Howe and left in the Jeep saying he was going to find the nearest SAS section to attach himself to.
Howe said that after the war he heard that McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and later served with MI6 as a military attaché.
I have not been able to verify this with any other source and have to confess I don't know what to make of it. The glider Chalk No is 1005, which officially landed on D+1, but the official records are a mess because of the late changes for the Corps HQ. Many of the records are known to be wrong because they were not updated with late changes. The book is a new one and the result of many years of painstaking research and talking to veterans of the Anti-Tank Batteries over many decades. Lead author Nigel Simpson is the son of Sergeant Eric Simpson of Z Troop Gun No.1. The records say the glider CN.1005 flew D+1 when the guns of the Troop landed, but this story is surely impossible unless it went on D-Day, which makes the story possible if the timing is right.
I just wish I was a fly on the wall in Nijmegen when all this was happening - some of it beggars belief!
4
-
@johnlucas8479 - it's like a police investigation to establish a timeline, but you have to be wary of witnesses giving timings because they can wrong, and there's a one-hour diffrence between Allied and German time zones, unless the Allied timings have been correctly adjusted to continental time. I think we have to allow at least an hour margin of error on some of the timings, especially if they're estimates or recollections after the war. My sense of the sequencing is this:
The 82nd Airborne starts to drop parachute elements at 1300 hrs, the 508th on DZ 'T' at around 1330.
German rear echelon units (the Ortskommandantur and the Ordnungspolizei headquarters) evacuated Nijmegen in the afternoon of 17 September and there is a sense in the early evening that the city is deserted of the occupiers and the Dutch think their liberation is at hand. HQ of Kampfgruppe Hencke (Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1 staff commanding mixed reserve troops stationed on the Maas-Waal canal MLR) and Hartung's Fallschirm-AOK Ausbildungstelle (95 staff and 14 officer candidates), both located in the NEBO monastery at De Ploeg, is evacuated.
The 508th PIR occupy their initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge south of Nijmegen at De Ploeg (1st Battalion), De Hut (2nd Battalion) and Berg-en-Dal (3rd Battalion), establishing roadblocks on the main routes out of the city. Regiment HQ follows on to De Ploeg and is met by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who tells Colonel Lindquist the Germans have deserted the city and the highway bridge is guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men.
Lt Weaver's pre-planned recon patrol (based on 3rd Platoon of C Company and led by the 1st Battalion S-2 Section) is organised and sent into the city. Weaver loses contact with PFC Joe Atkins' S-2 point team after taking a wrong turn, but Atkins pushes through the crowds of celebrating Dutch to reach the bridge, surprises seven gaurds at the southern end and takes them prisoner. Weaver's patrol is lost in the back streets and stops at a house to ask the resident to find a guide from the resistance.
Atkins waits an hour until it gets dark and no one from their patrol has showed up, so they decide to release their prisoners and withdraw. As they did so, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge.
Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrive and conducts a reconnaissance of the city, establishes that American paratroops have landed west of the Reichswald.
Obtaining a guide, Weaver attempts to reach the bridge well after dark and runs into German resistance in the area of Mariaplein, preventing them from reaching the bridge. They manage to establish radio contact with battalion on the SCR-300 set, and are told two companies (A and B) have been sent towards the bridge, so Weaver decides to withdraw and return to C Company, which remains in reserve position at De Ploeg.
Reinhold and Traupel (Kommandeur and Adjutant, II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) arrive in Nijmegen to assess local defences and are suprised to find Gräbner's entire SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 with 30 or more vehicles, along with some senior army officers [unit(s) unknown] discussing what to do. Gräbner is ordered to withdraw to Elst, so Traupel asks for a platoon of SPWs to be left behind while there are so few troops to defend the bridge.
Captain Adams' leading A Company bumps German machine guns and armoured half tracks at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle. An attack on the Keiser Karelplein by B Company passing through A Company allows Adams to slip through with a patrol to the Post Office to destroy alledged controls for the bridge demolitions, and then attempts to reach the highway bridge, but despite putting several MG posts out of action in the Keiser Lodwijkplein area south of the bridge, is forced to withdraw with casualties.
The 1st Battalion 508th (minus Adams' patrol) is withdrawn from the city, considering the bridge to be too strongly held.
Traupel, resting in Lent, is informed at midnight the SPW platoon has been ordered back to Elst and crosses the bridge to assess defences and finds the police band has been incorporated into the defence (I personally think they were the bridge guards left there when the police HQ pulled out and Traupel simply hadn't noticed them before with Gräbner's troops there) and was wondering what had happened to Quandel's panzers and why they had not arrived. In the early hours, the first arrivals are engineers from 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10.
Cut off behind the German defence line established between the two traffic circles, Adams is blocked from reaching the Keiser Karelplein, and with it starting to get light, decides to hole up in a warehouse to await an opportunity to exfiltrate back to the battalion.
Bataillon Euling (former II./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 19 of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division transferred to 10.SS-Panzer as IV./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 21, also aka "the ghost battalion") arrives in the afternoon and forms the main element of Kampfgruppe Reinhold's defence south of the bridge.
4
-
@johnlucas8479 - I can answer some of those questions, but I'll try to take each one in turn:
1.) The defence of the bridge when Gräbner left with most of his abteilung was a platoon of SPWs and a few troops? Traupel did note there was a Flak battery in the area, and since there was no Flak installed on the highway bridge itself (the rail bridge had 2cm kanon on it and at both ends) I'm guessing he was referring to the heavy Flak position down on the polder southeast of the bridge, and some time between 11 September (when they appear on my copy of the defence overprint map) and the 20 September crossing by Grenadier Guards, these were repositioned for ground defence - one in Hunner Park, one in Mariaplein, and two on the Lent side of the river by all accounts.
I would also point out that we need to disambiguate the defences of the bridge itself and the MLR being constructed between the two traffic circles and the outpost line around the south side of the city, I can only assume from Luftwaffe and RAD Flak troops from the heavy Flak positions around the city that were bombed on the morning of 17 September. The troops on the canal MLR did not withdraw into the city to help defend the rail bridge until after they were dispossessed of their canal bridges, and Frank van Lunteren's book Battle Of The Bridges: The 504th PIR in Market Garden (2014) is the best work I have on that as he identified some of the canal bridge defenders and what they did after withdrawing from the canal.
2.) My impression was that it started getting dark around 1930 hrs and was fully dark by 2000 hrs, which would better fit the known movements of Weaver and Atkins because 1st Battalion allegedly reached De Ploeg at 1830 hrs, Warren received the order to move his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen at 2000 hrs, A Company reached the IP at the Krayenhoff barracks and then waited an hour for B Company before being ordered to move without waiting on them at 2200 hrs, and the engagement at the Keiser Karelplein was between this time and around midnight. These are timings in Nordyke (off the top of my head) and possibly also McManus. If Gräbner was seen by Frost crossing the Arnhem bridge at around 1830-1900 hrs and they reached Nijmegen at 2000 hrs as Frost was getting into position, that would fit. Frost started interdicting traffic at around 2100 hrs, his first victims were four fuel trucks that may have been part of Gräbner's supply column (6.Kompanie).
3.) Where does Hencke and Hartung evacuate to? As far as I can make out they spend some time evading American patrols. Nordyke relates that the 508th kept getting Dutch civilian reports of German troops in the woods, and whenever a patrol was sent to check it out, they would be gone. It seems that Hencke and possibly also Hartung (who ended up in Lent north of the rail bridge) were attempting to slip into the city, but having to avoid American movements as they did so. The 508th PIR approached De Ploeg (and their NEBO monastery HQ) from the east, as the route from Drop Zone 'T' was first northwest to just south of Berg-en-Dal, and then 1st Battalion swung west, so Hencke may have been cut off from the city for a while and evaded the Americans by looping around them in the woods. It's also possble Hencke's first instinct was also to contact his troops on the canal MLR, so he may have headed west for that reason before slipping back into the city.
It also occurs to me that there were 200 troops manning the Luftwaffe Feld-Luftmunitionslager 15/VI west of Groesbeek in the 505th PIR sector (one of the MG posts nearly killed Gavin on his way to his CP if you recall), and these troops would have been ideal for Hencke's outpost line, as I think about it. I believe they mostly evacuated the munitions dump after detonating it, but Gavin's encounter indicates some stayed behind as a rearguard.
4.) Gräbner was ordered to withdraw to Elst, it was not his decision. His unit is not supposed to get involved in direct combat as a reconnaissance unit, although it was often the case that the SS divisions did treat them as additional battlegroups. It's one of the reasons in the Battle of the Bulge the SS divisions in 6.Panzer-armee on the northern shoulder did not penetrate as far as the army divisions in 5.Panzer-armee in the centre - they were not using their recon units to find the best routes forward. My personal impression is that both sides at this point in Nijmegen were feeling out the other side's strength, so it's a bit too easy for us to judge from an armchair and with hindsight. Both sides were quite weak in the city on the first night, but both sides were also feeding in more units.
5.) Who did Weaver's patrol bump in the Mariaplein area? I don't know, seems to be just a roadblock, but the truck that came up from behind them is interesting as it may be part of Hencke's or Hartung's staffs slipping into town and approaching the bridge themselves, but that's just a thought that occurred as I was reading that.
6.) The 'additional' troops in Nijmegen could really only have been the spare Flak troops, but they were not stationed in the city itself but on open spaces around the edge of the city in four heavy Flak positions, and a lot of light Flak in the power station area. It's logical that Hencke was organising these troops to concentrate on building a defence line in the city centre, based on the two large traffic circles, and an outpost line that would be on the edge of the city to give advance warning of enemy troop movements. They didn't all coalesce at the highway bridge, which accounts for a two company attack penetrating the position at the Keiser Karelplein and Adams' patrol slipping through to the Post Office and almost to the bridge. He was mostly having to deal with Machine-gun nests.
As I said, I wish I was there just to see what was happening.
4
-
I think the problem with the timings is that a lot of them are recollections after the war in interviews with the authors, so unless it's very specific (to the minute) and has a time code after it, I don't think a timing can be relied on. What I do think is important is the sequence of events, and that reveals that PFC Joe Atkins, who was one of the three point men from Lt Lee Frigo's S-2 (Intel) Section leading Lt Robert Weaver's reinforced patrol based on his 3rd Platoon from C Company 508th PIR, reached the bridge unmolested and held seven POWs at the southern end for an hour until it got dark. Because nobody else from the patrol showed up, they decided to withdraw, because they couldn't hold the bridge on their own if there was an attack. As they withdrew, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other (northern) end of the bridge.
PFC Atkins says his team got separated in the crowds of Dutch civilians celebrating their apparent liberation, but pushed through and found their way to the bridge. The rest of the section and Weaver's platoon apparently got lost and couldn't find the bridge, which is disappointing to say the least. Only Weaver had an SCR-300 radioman from Battalion HQ with the range to report back to battalion the situation at the bridge. They decided to ask for help and spent some time at a house waiting for someone from the Dutch resistance to arrive and act as a guide. It was when they resumed their attempt to reach the bridge they started running into trouble and the way to the bridge was blocked. It's my impression that these roadblocks were SS troops belonging to Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, because I don't think the few rear echelon elements in the city would have given paratroopers as much trouble.
So what German forces were in Nijmegen before Gräbner arrived? Well, in the morning, when Oberst Fritz Fullriede did his rounds of his greatly distributed units in Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', he noted in his diary that 245 men (iirc) of the 29.Unterführer-Lehr-Kommando (NCO Training Company) were camped in Hunner park at the southern end of the bridge before he continued south to visit his battalions on the front lines. Some references use 21.ULK, as the regiment was undergoing a reorganisation during this period and the company was renumbered from 21 to 29 as the Berlin 'Rekruten' batallion was transferred to the west and officially joined the training regiment with its companies 1-8 renumbered 21-28.
Once 82nd Airborne arrived, this NCO unit seemed to be in combat almost everywhere, from Nederasselt at the northern end of the Grave bridge to the Honinghutje bridges on the Maas-Waal canal, and a reference at Heumen bridge of a couple of officers and fifteen NCOs being taken prisoner leads me to suspect they were from the NCO training company as well, as most of the Maas-Waal defenders were the three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 - a home guard type unit of sub-standard troops controlled by Division zbV 406 across the border in Kleve, and part of the Maas-Waal defence line along those two rivers and interconnecting canal.
It's my belief that the NCO company deployed to forward positions at Nederasselt and on the Maas-Waal canal as soon as the landings started and the alert went out that an attack was under way. That would explain why the Nijmegen highway bridge, behind the lines and not even yet prepared for demolition, was left relatively undefended with just a few guards. I'm currently reading Cornelius Bauer's The Battle Of Arnhem (1963 in Dutch, 1966 and 2012 in English), based on Dutch researcher Colonel Boeree (who was the resistance leader in Ede) who says Model expected the British to make their main Rhine crossing and airborne attack at Wesel via the Maas at Venlo, and only a flank protection force to cross the Maas at Grave and swing south from Nijmegen in support. He ordered the defences appropriately, with 1.Fallschirm-Armee occupying the rear combat area he expected to contain the British operation and von Tettau's Netherlands occupation forces held back on the Waal defence line. He didn't expect the British to land airborne forces at Arnhem and go north, or he wouldn't have established his headquarters in Oosterbeek.
Who was Hencke and when did he arrive? Well, Oberst Fritz Hencke was a parachute commander from 1.Fallschirm-Armee in command of Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1, but with no troops, just a headquarters. He was sent to Nijmegen to take command of the battalions on the Maas-Waal defence line in the Nijmegen sector, and (iirc) he arrived around 15 September, a couple of days before Market Garden. He established his headquarters at the NEBO monastery near De Ploeg (the 1/508th objective), sharing accommodations with Oberst Günther Hartung's Fallschirm-Armee Ausbildungsstelle (parachute army training staff). I have figures for Hartung's unit - 95 staff personnel and 14 officer candidates on a course. When the Americans landed, both staffs evacuated NEBO and apparently spent some time evading patrols in the woods until they could slip into the city.
My sources for all this is fragmentary and it's not possible to put accurate timings on them, but the best source I have for the German impression once units from II.SS-Panzerkorps started arriving is Retake Arnhem Bridge by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014), using the account of SS-Obersturmführer Gernot Traupel, acting adjutant of II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, aka Kampfgruppe Reinhold. Traupel and Reinhold were probably the last people to cross the Arnhem bridge before Frost closed it to traffic and arrived in Nijmegen after dark to be astonished to find Gräbner's entire SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 there with about 30 armoured vehicles, more than Traupel had ever seen in one place. He also noted there was a large number of senior staff officers present from every branch of the military (possibly from Rustungs Inspektion Niederland) discussing the situation, but there were no combat troops to speak of apart from Gräbner's reconnaissance unit. Gräbner told him the Americans were not in the city in any force and he had been ordered back to Elst, halfway back to Arnhem. Traupel asked him if he could leave a few vehicles as his own kampfgruppe had not yet arrived and Gräbner agreed to leave a platoon of half-tracks armed with 7.5cm kanon.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
@AdamsTysu - yup, I think you're wrong:
1. Montgomery, as an Army Group commander was responsible for strategic and not operational planning, originally ordered (not planned) operation COMET (1st Airborne Div and Polish Brigade on Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges), planned by Browning (I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey (2nd Army). Cancelled by Montgomery after Dempsey received reports from 'Ultra' code intercepts that II.SS-Panzerkorps were ordered to Arnhem to refit and verified Dutch reports of armour in the Reichswald, and because of continuing resistance on 2nd Army front that required additional airborne forces dropped in front of it. Dempsey secured permission from Montgomery to plan an upgraded operation, so Browning flew out to assist and they drew up provisional operation SIXTEEN using three airborne divisions. Montgomery presented the outline plan to Eisenhower for approval and Browning then took it back to 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning.
2. The plan was poorly prepared, I agree. Brereton (1st AAA) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) removed Browning's proposed double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that were key features of COMET/SIXTEEN. Williams also rejected Browning's proposed drop zones for the 101st south of the Wilhelmina canal to seize the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges quickly and effect a linkup with XXX Corps on D-Day. Gavin discards a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge in his divisional plan because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop.
3. Browning is unable to object to the changes after already threatening to resign over a previous Brereton plan called operation LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges) scheduled too soon to print and distribute maps and Brereton planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. Thankfully, LINNET II was cancelled, but Browning now knew what would happen if he protested Brereton's MARKET plan, which was based on recycling his LINNET II air plan.
4. According to David Belchem, standing in for Montgomery's hospitalised Chief of Staff Freddie De Guingand, 21st Army Group were only notified of the changes for MARKET after Brereton's 14 September cut-off date for making any amendments. A Montgomery intervention would likely have to go to Eisenhower to adjudicate and probably result in Brereton cancelling the operation, which he had the authority to do.
5. Sosabowski protested the COMET plan. During the MARKET briefings he remained silent.
6. It is undisputed that Sosabowski was difficult to work with and insubordinate to Horrocks (XXX Corps) during the Valburg conference in front of witnesses Browning and Thomas (43rd Division).
7. Sosabowski was in command of a brigade and not even a division, and carried the Polish Army rank of general brygady - the equivalent of Major General (a division commander) in the UK and US, as there is no Major General rank in the Polish Army. He was therefore still subordinate to Lieutenant Generals Browning and Horrocks, both Corps commanders.
8. The Poles were under Polish Government-in-Exile control and only attached to the British Army for operations. They did not fight for the British Goverment and were not paid or pensioned by the British Army. Sosabowski chose asylum in the UK instead of returning to Poland. Britain was impoverished after two world wars, having to pay for American help in both - the final payments were not made until 2006 and the USA profited from the war (the only major combatant to do so) almost to the exact penny the British Commonwealth lost money. If you want Polish soldiers to receive a pension from anywhere other than Poland, I suggest writing to the American embassy (because they have all of our money) and I wish you the very best of luck!
9. Sosabowski and the Poles were not blamed for the failure of the operation, they could not possibly affect the outcome either way after arriving late on D+4 and only scheduled to be a reinforcement on D+2, so this is obviously complete nonsense. Sosabowski and the Brigade were only criticised for disciplinary problems, which Browning and Horrocks reported to Montgomery, after Montgomery had already written to Sosabowski to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and ask for recommendations for awards. Even the SS in Oosterbeek complained about the Poles shooting at medics. The Polish Government-in-Exile chose to relieve him of command after Montgomery only requested the brigade be removed from Browning's command. The Polish Government-in-Exile made their own decision, the British Army had no authority to remove any Polish army officer.
10. Both Browning and Montgomery had frontline experience in the trenches of WW1 as Lieutenants and both received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Montgomery commanded the 3rd Infantry Division in the B.E.F. in France and Belgium in 1940, and took over the role of Corps commander at Dunkirk when Alan Brooke was recalled to England. Browning raised the British Airborne Forces from scratch in 1941 and was the first commander of the 1st Airborne Division. He would have still been senior to US General William Lee, had Lee remained fit to continue service instead of suffering his heart attack and Ridgway became senior US Airborne commander. To put experience into perspective: Browning received his DSO for Cambrai in 1917 when young Jimmy Gavin was 10 years old and still in short trousers.
Britain and France both went to war with Germany over the invasion of Poland and this kind of criticism does not show Poles in a very positive light. You need to get your facts right.
4
-
@norwayitalo - my interpretation of Montgomery's 90% successful comment is based on geography. Operation Market involved 24 bridges (depending on how you count them), including alternative rail crossings and multiple canal crossings to provide alternative routes - the "single road" myth comes from A Bridge Too Far. A minimum of 10 crossings on the main 'Club Route' are needed to get to Arnhem, and some of the 'Heart Route' alternatives involve as few as 9 crossings. Considering that Operation Market successfully captured 9 out of those 10 minimum needed, only the highway bridge at Nijmegen was missed in a blunder by 508th PIR, and the eventual total held by the ground forces after Operation Garden was missing only the final Arnhem bridge. So, 9 out of 10 bridges is 90% successful. It's just a theory - I don't know what exactly was going through Montgomery's mind when he wrote that, but it does fit the facts.
Many people are not aware that well-educated public figures use the language very skillfully to make a pointed criticism, without the general public being aware of it. A good example is Churchill's speech in the House of Commons made after Dunkirk, in which he constructed the key passage that begins "we shall fight on the beaches..." and ends with "we shall never surrender" using only words derived from Old English, except for the very last word which is derived from the Old French "sur rendre", meaning to give up. To most people listening to the speech in Britain it was a morale-boosting speech typical of Churchill, but to well-educated senior diplomats in France, it contained a very pointed dig.
4
-
@norwayitalo - even Wikipedia has a comprehensive answer, but you only took one figure from it:
"German casualties are harder to determine, due to incomplete records. Rundstedt provided an official figure of 3,300, but this has been challenged by historians. Conservative estimates range from 6,400 to 8,000 killed and wounded.[167][168] Kershaw listed the German order of battle, with between 6,315 and 8,925 casualties.[169] In A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan estimated 7,500 to 10,000 additional casualties to those provided by Rundstedt, for a final total of 10,800–13,300 losses.[170]"
[167] Reynolds, M .(2001), Sons of the Reich.
[168] Badsey, Stephen (1993), Arnhem: Operation Market Garden.
[169] Kershaw, Robert J. (2004), It Never Snows In September.
[170] Ryan, Cornelius (1999) [1974], A Bridge Too Far.
4
-
4
-
4
-
Gavin was not told at a particular time on the ground to go for the Nijmegen bridge. He was told by Browning on D+1 not to make a second attempt on the bridge until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived to provide armoured support, but that gets conflated with a pre-jump instruction. The bridge was always a primary objective, and in the Corps briefing on 16 September (D-1) he was cautioned by Browning that...
“Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge.
(September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012, Chapter 3)
Browning was concerned about the Nijmegen bridge right from the start with operation COMET. All three of the main bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave were to be seized by dawn glider coups de main assaults in operation COMET, and the same idea was carried over into the provisional operation SIXTEEN outline when COMET was cancelled and expanded into a new operation with three airborne divisions instead of just one. Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army then took control over the detailed planning and they decided on all daylight flights with only one flight per day, and the glider coup de main assaults were not considered feasible for broad daylight landings, so they were removed.
Browning could not object after he had threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation was scheduled on just 36 hours notice and was threatened in return with being replaced with Matthew Ridgway as Brereton's Deputy and Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully, LINNET II was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but there was no doubt now who had control over the air planning.
Browning then tried unsuccessfully to influence Gavin into making a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge in his divisional plan:
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - box 101, folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Only Colonel Reuben Tucker (504th PIR) insisted on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge, to enable it to be attacked from both ends, and he got it.
I'm sure Browning's last minute change (late in the evening of D-1) to the transport schedule for his Corps HQ to be carried on the first airlift, now that Brereton's decision to abandon a double airlift on D-Day meant the second airlift was on D+1 and not the afternoon of D-Day, was almost a desperate attempt to be on the ground during the critical D-Day of the operation. The last minute nature of the change belies the suggestion it was an ego trip on Browning's part. If that were true, it would have been part of his plan all along.
You talk about Browning not taking "proper command" - how can he do this when he and Gavin did not serve in the same army? And you question his competence after he had received his DSO as a young Lieutenant (narrowly missing out on a VC) for pulling together several companies that had lost their officers during the 1917 battle of Cambrai, when young Jimmy Gavin was just 10 years old and still in short trousers. The Americans would not accept Browning's appointment to command 1st Allied Airborne Army despite his experience at building Britain's airborne forces and even though they had no suitable candidates of their own (their first choices could not be spared from their current jobs), so Brereton, even with a sketchy record, was prefereable to being under British command. Williams was appointed Air Transport Commander and he had Hollinghurst's 38 and 46 Groups RAF under his command, so there was no way the Americans could be ordered to deploy their forces in a way they didn't wish. Both Brereton and Williams were also charged by Eisenhower when he appointed them to 1st AAA to improve the USAAF Troop Carrier's navigation and drop accuracy record after the disastrous Sicily and Normandy flights. While Browning, with Hollinghurst's support, was prepared to accept 33% casualties going in, so long as the troops were landed close to their objectives, Brereton and Williams were not willing to accept that and they compromised the SIXTEEN outline to protect their own assets at the expense of the airborne troop's requirements.
Brereton and Williams were resposible for deleting drop zones for the 101st between Valkenswaard and Son and at Elst for a third brigade of 1st Airborne - all part of Browning's "airborne carpet" concept. The concept was thrown out, but remarkably that phrase still found its way into the script of the Hollywood film. I think that's misleading, as is the suggestion Browning and Montgomery did all the planning. When Montgomery heard about the removal of the double airlift on D-Day, he sent David Belcham (GSO 1 Ops at 21st Army Group) to see Brereton at his Ascot HQ in England and impress apon him the importance of having two airlifts on the first day. Brereton would not change the schedule.
4
-
@joshuabutcher3645 - thanks, and you're certainly asking all the right questions. I had not previously understood that Montgomery had tried to intervene because he expressed his regrets at not doing so in his memoirs, but Geoffrey Powell's The Devil's Birthday (1984) has this paragraph on Brereton's decision to fly one airlift per day based on William's view that there was insufficient time to turn the aircraft around and fly a second sortie in daylight:
The consequence of this decision was that the arrival of Urquhart's 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem would now need to be spread over three days, the implications of which Brereton may have failed to grasp, lacking as he did any intimate knowledge of the problems of the ground battle. Montgomery, however, spotted the snag in the plan as soon as the details reached him in Belgium, and he sent Brigadier Belchem to Ascot by air in order to urge Brereton to change his mind and allow a double lift for the troops who were to tackle Arnhem. But Brereton stood firm, probably rightly so in the circumstnces, since by the time Belchem arrived it was too late to change the plan so radically, as Brereton had insisted at the first planning conference, this was the type of fundamental decision which, once made, must stand if confusion were to be avoided.
Brereton's decision on flying only one sortie each day was constrained by his own decision to fly entirely daylight flights. The time to turn aircraft around was therefore squeezed out, in William's view. So the real question is why Brereton did not want to fly the outbound leg of 1st lift and the return leg of 2nd lift at night? Brereton made a binary choice between a nocturnal flight or a daytime one, and nocturnal was ruled out by it being a no-Moon period in mid-September 1944. The RAF's view, promoted by Hollinghurst, was the hybrid option of taking off and landing at night, but the delivery of the airborne troops on D-Day would be at dawn and a second lift delivered before dusk. The reason Brereton made this such a simple binary choice is not explained. Both Hollinghurst and Belchem had lobbied Williams and Brereton respectively for the double airlift and failed to change their minds. It's noted by Powell that this was uncharacteristic of Williams, who had previously been more helpful towards the requirements of the airborne troops. LINNET II only two weeks earlier was based on three divisions landed in two lifts on D-Day, based on 1st lift taking off at 0500. COMET just a week earlier than MARKET had take-off due shortly after 0200 hours (for the dawn coup de main flights), when it was cancelled on 10 September as the men were boarding their aircraft.
Beyond that, I don't have any answers from my current reading of the literature. I can say that Brereton was an air force man with backers in Washington keen to develop the "air weapon" with a view to the United States dominating this kind of warfare in the post war era. I'm beginning to wonder if the Americans were thinking of not just the next war (at the expense of getting the current one finished as quickly as possible), but also possibly continuing the war of independence - something they have been doing since the war of 1812, which as far as Britain was concerned was about keeping the USA out of the war with Napoleon, but this is taught quite differently in American schools.
It also occurs to me that a decision to fly a single sortie arriving around midday also ruled out the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, because their feasibility was based on night landing under full Moon conditions or dawn landings in a no-Moon period. My question would be: was Brereton concerned by the optics of the 82nd Airborne's two primary bridge targets at Nijmegen and Grave being captured in coups de main by two companies of British Airlanding troops, and how this would play in Washington and the American press, and highlight the fact the US Army had no comparable glider assault capability? The US Glider Infantry Regiments had only been used as reinforcement forces landing on zones secured by paratroopers, and their glider pilots were not combat trained, unlike their British counterparts. This is an issue that had not presented itself in LINNET/LINNET II - which did not use glider coup de main assaults, or COMET, which was an all British/Polish operation except for using two of Williams' Troop Carrier Groups to carry British and Polish paratroops. This is my personal analysis and not one I have seen explored in the literature so far.
4
-
4
-
@jbjones1957 - a lot of interesting points, I'll try to take in turn.
I think the priorities of the bridge versus ridge at Nijmegen is not really an issue as I think everyone down to Gavin inclusive was (or probably would be if you include Montgomery) in agreement. By far the best historical analysis I've read on this issue is by American historian John McManus in September Hope (2012), and I have posted the full page of that analysis before in other threads, but I haven't done so here. Hopefully you've seen it in one of the other threads. If not, I can easily post it again.
What went wrong was a command failure below Gavin, in the 508th PIR, and Phil Nordyke's combat history of the regiment gives very interesting background in his chapters on formation of the regiment and first combat operation in Normandy. Interesting that Nordyke is not a full-time historian, he's actually a computer consultant like myself and just seems to have a particular interest in the 82nd Airborne, writing many books on it, and three regimental histories. I believe he's the 'official historian' of the 505th. His style seems to be to give the facts and first hand accounts, even if they seem conflicting, and let the reader make their own judgement.
Browning is an interesting one. Having grown up with the conventional narrative that Montgomery and Browning were the villains of this drama (I first read Cornelius Ryan at age 15, borrowed from a school friend), it has been interesting how my opinion has changed over the years from further reading. The most remarkable thing I find about him is that his judgement seems to have been borne out time and again. He was absolutely dead-on when he first (allegedly) said to Montgomery "we can hold it [the Arnhem bridge] for four [days], but sir, I think we may be going a bridge too far." The second part may be a reference to the fact his own preference was for Wesel as the target instead of Arnhem, and this would have meant one less major river to cross.
Browning is often criticised for not having led airborne troops in combat before, but this is disingenuous. He was decorated as a junior officer in WW1, receiving a DSO (Distinguished Service Order) for taking command of three companies that had lost their officers while still only a Lieutenent himself. According to his Wiki page - 'the order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross.' In 1940, he was a Brigadier in command of 128 Brigade of 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, which was a territorial (reserve) unit being mobilised to join the BEF, but the move was cancelled when the French collapsed. He then led the formation of the British Airborne and could draw on the experience of all of its commanders who had been in action before MARKET GARDEN.
Browning was criticised for dismissing the only aerial photo image of German armour in the Arnhem area, a key scene in the film version of A Bridge Too Far, but I think his judgement was again spot on after the missing photo recently emerged from a Dutch government archive and analysed. The photo does indeed appear to show obsolete tanks, and we now know they did not belong to II.SS-Panzerkorps and the unit is now identified as a training unit that were camped opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone at Wolfswinkel, north of Son in the 101st Airborne sector. The tanks attempted to interfere with the 506th's landing but were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Cornelius Ryan's telling of this episode rested entirely on interviewing Corps Intelligence officer Major Brian Urquhart (Browning had already passed away). Major is a GSO 2 staff position - the Corps didn't appear to have a GSO 1 (Lieutenent Colonel) for Intelligence, so newspaperman Ryan appears not to appreciate the young Major was probably out of his depth at this level and Browning was a cooler head showing some judgement rather than gung ho for the operation as the film seems to suggest. Browning's widow is well known to have been deeply upset by the film's protrayal, and although Dirk Bogarde also knew Browning personally (he was on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff ironically selecting bombing targets from RAF aerial photos) he appears to have opted to mitigate the script by playing the character as conflicted instead of turning down the role to have another actor take the part.
Browning's third major criticism was the decision (presumably his own) to take his Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift, which required taking 38 glider tugs from other possible glider loads. First speculation that they were taken from the second half of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment, but this appears to be incorrect. The changes actually affected some of the anti-tank units going to Arnhem instead. Either way, a study of the anti-tank resources in action at Arnhem and the South Staffords' role can both demonstrate that the outcome at Arnhem would not have been changed if the glider schedule had not been changed. The most interesting thing about this is the fact the changes were made at a late stage, so Browning had not planned to go to Groesbeek on the first lift right from the start, it was a late change. It was so late in fact that some of my books have incorrect glider data, because the books were based on the planned allocation of Chalk Numbers and not actual, and the official records were not updated with the changes. This is specifically described in the recent volumes on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery: A-Z Troop volumes, by Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, and Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022). Some of their data is speculative because it has been reconstructed to take account of the late changes. The problem here is that we don't really know the reason for the late change (unless it's in a book I haven't read, like Mead's biography of Browning). It seems likely to me that it was in his judgement the best way he could influcence events, after he had been politically neutralised by Brereton in objecting to planning aspects in the LINNET II affair. Even Gavin was frustrated by 1st AAA's unwillingness to adjust the air plan devised for LINNET/LINNET II in order to adapt it for MARKET's requirements on the ground, and that also seems to be the main reason some of COMET's key features were removed.
4
-
@jbjones1957 - that's interesting re 52nd Division - they had one brigade travelling by road, which would be under Dempsey/Horrocks from the start, but the rest of the division was in England and ready for air transport. It makes sense because they were intended to fly into Deelen after the US 878th Airborne Engineer (Aviation) Battalion had landed by glider and repaired a runway, in order to reinforce the Arnhem area after XXX Corps had deployed north of the Rijn, and all these Airborne units would have come under Dempsey in any case.
I doubt very much Brian Urquhart had Ultra clearance and if he did he would not have been cleared to fly to Groesbeek. Even Brereton wasn't cleared as an Army commander, although it may also be his rank - he was still a Lieutenent General (usually a Corps commander) and Ultra was not cleared to Corps headquarters. In any case, I've found from reading the volumes on 1st Airlanding anti-Tank Battery by Nigel Simpson et al (2019-2022), the Battery CO Major William Arnold was briefed to expect "heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day", including Panthers and Tigers. This would be an example of how Ultra intelligence could be 'sanitsied' and given to lower level headquarters by stripping out the unit identifications and just giving vague warnings, so the Panthers and Tigers are clear code for a 1944 Panzer Division and Korps heavy panzer abteilung respectively. Gavin was also told there may be "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and tanks in the Reichswald, which was a sanitised warning given because 10.SS-Panzer-Division's exact location was unknown (but strength estimated at regimental battlegroup) and a tank depot was (incorrectly) thought to be in the Kleve area.
The breakdown I have on the Corps HQ gliders is 32 Horsas and 6 WACOs (Appendix 8, Glider Pilots At Arnhem, Mike Peters and Luuk Buist 2009). Two of the WACOs carried the two US Airborne Division Liaison officers and their comms teams to Corps HQ (the 101st's crashed near Student's HQ at Vught and he obtained the resupply schedule from a translated document), and the other four WACOs carried the two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron (4 Jeeps) allocated to the HQ. I've just finished reading two books on the Resistance/Jedburghs and No.10 (Inter-Allied) Commando myself, and the Jedburgh command team 'EDWARD' (5 men) had the loan of an SAS Jeep and trailer, so that would account for one of the Horsa loads. The RAF radar detachment went to Arnhem - last minute change made to the second lift, and two of the gliders landed short near Zetten on the 'island', and if I recall the loads were split in a way that neither group on the LZ or on the island could assemble a complete radar unit, so both units were completely useless and the equipment had to be destroyed. I'm sure the majority of the 32 Horsas going to Groesbeek were actually Browning's staff and Glider Pilot Regiment HQ.
1st Airborne's support units were split over the first two lifts and those landed on the first day were those supporting the 1st Parachute and 1st Airlanding Brigades, so they were needed, but even they had elements bumped back to the second lift - the ammunition Jeeps and trailers for the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery (1st 1st Para Brigade) for example, and I believe General Urquhart was concerned about this. The implication for not having the reserve AT ammunition trailer was that the entire allocation of HE rounds for the guns were on the second lift and did not reach the 5 guns that were at the bridge, but they had not exhausted all their AP rounds by the end of the seige because the Germans were wary of sending their tanks in after losing a few in the first engagements. When the Paras ran out of small arms ammunition and tried to break out (rather than surrender), the Germans actually captured stocks of unused 6-pounder AT rounds at the bridge.
4
-
@jbjones1957 - I've found the Airborne Corps report on the Vrienden Airborne Museum website, so I see where you get the 14 gliders from for Browning's staff. The remainder of the 32 Horsas are not listed, but would easily be accounted for by the Corps signals staff, and there's some clues in the later sections of the report that indicates the numbers of signals staff broken down into Tac (air), Main (seaborne) and Rear (UK) headquarters.
It also lists the elements in 157 Brigade Group (52nd Division) arriving by road and it does include one infantry battalion ("6HLI") and the support elements are only the support elements for the one Brigade.
The support units arriving in the first lift were support units needed for 1st Parachute and 1st Airlanding Brigades, such as 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery and 1st and 3rd Batteries of the Light Regiment, and about half of the divisional HQ staff. Indeed, some elements as I said were bumped back to second lift, such as Z Troop 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery, which was originally raised as part of the Light Regiment and then transferred to 1st Anti-Tank Battery for protection of Division HQ prior to MARKET GARDEN.
The second lift mainly delivered the 4th Parachute Brigade and its support units - namely 2nd (Oban) Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery and 2nd Battery of the Light Regiment, plus its share of the RASC, REME, RE elements that also had Brigade support elements, as well as the second half of the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion and both of its Anti-Tank Platoons (8 guns) in the Support Company and all of its transport. The way the South Staffords were split were two Rifle Companies in each lift, but by keeping the AT guns and and transport back in the second lift resulted in the glider allocation being split 20/41. The odd 1 being a Hamilcar glider carrying two Universal Carriers in the Transport Platoon - every infantry battalion had two carriers allocated for ammunition.
The second lift also had some spare capacity to bring in one advance Platoon of the Polish Anti-Tank Squadron with five guns - the remaining 10 guns were due on the third lift to coincide with the parachute element, although the paratroops were delayed by weather in England.
I'm quite sure Brian Urquhart was not cleared for Ultra intelligence. Nobody in formations dropped behind enemy lines would be made aware it even existed for security reasons - so that includes Browning and everyone under his command. Even Brereton was not cleared, and I think it was because he was still a Lieutenent General, despite being an Army level commander. Brian Urquhart was receiving the Dutch resistance reports on SS panzer troops in the Arnhem area and was trying to find a means of confirming the reports by aerial reconnaissance.
I have a copy of Julian Thompson's Imperial War Museum publication Victory In Europe (2005), a multi-media type book that inludes facsimile inserts of original documents, and my interest in obtaining this book was because the document reproduced in the section on MARKET GARDEN is the Dutch report dated 13-14 September of German troop movements in the Arnhem area, with an English translation at the back of the book. It makes very interesting reading, recording troop numbers and uniform waffenfarbe (piping colours indicating service branches), signposts, vehicle insignia, etc.. It gives a clear indication of 'Hohenstaufen' (9.SS-Panzer-Division) units in the region, but no indications of the 'Frundsberg' (10.SS-Panzer-Division) anywhere. I think trying to confirm the location of the Frundsberg was driving the Intelligence staff nuts, hence the fears over Nijmegen and the Reichswald. The Hohenstaufen were ordered to transfer combat ready units and heavy equipment over to the Frundsberg, so not knowing that only makes the picture look confusing, and there's no sense of the River Ijssel being the inter-divisional boundary that it was.
4
-
@bigwoody4704 - Heinz Harmel was unaware of Kampfgruppe Knaust already forming a blocking line at Ressen after crossing the retaken Arnhem bridge, which the Household Cavalry had reported on the night of 20/21 September by reconnaissance. Unlike his portrayal by Hardy Krüger as 'General Ludwig' (Harmel did not want his name attached to this piece of fiction), Harmel wasn't even at Nijmegen when the bridges fell. He was also unaware that the tanks that stopped in Lent had no choice: they can't fight at night, only one was still running, and they all needed maintenance and re-arming. You're not living in the real world.
Gavin had insisted on using his own troops (the 504th PIR) to cross the Waal in a river assault, despite them not having been trained to use assault boats or conduct this type of operation. The default plans for this scenario of the Waal bridges at Nijmegen remaining intact and in German hands was for a river assault to be conducted by 43rd (Wessex) Division with one or two brigades (operations BESSIE and BASIL). It was Gavin who insisted (twice before the idea was accepted by Browning) on using his own troops, no doubt to make up for the blunder by the 508th on D-Day and his own mistakes in discarding a British request to drop a battalion on the north side of the bridge and assigning his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission.
These were American mistakes, and the price paid for them were their own high casualties and the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.
Sources:
Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011)
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021)
4
-
You're repeating the conventional narrative started by the book, A Bridge Too Far, which failed to identify the error fatal to the operation, and made worse by the Hollywood film that was never going to expose a blunder made by an American Airborne unit.
Your very frist statement, "the failure of MG was in the planning", is correct, but the flawed plan was Brigadier General James Gavin's divisional plan for the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen.
Intelligence of German armour in the [Arnhem] area was not ignored, it had a major impact on Comet being cancelled and replaced with Market in the first place. The aerial photo showing German tanks near Arnhem was correctly dismissed by Browning because they were obsolete models and judged probably unserviceable. I can give you a post-2015 reference for a study of the original photograph after it was found in a Dutch government archive. We also know who the tanks beonged to, and that they were nowhere near Arnhem when the operation started, and had failed to reach their planned destination because they broke down.
The Dutch staff college exam question for Brigadiers was a theoretical Brigade attack on Arnhem from Nijmegen. There's a correct answer that involves a left flanking move rather than going up the main highway. What A Bridge Too Far ignores in its narrative is that the main highway towards Elst was tried with one battlegroup (2nd and 3rd Irish Guards), because not to do so would be negligent if the area was not strongly held by the Germans, but they also tried a right flank attack towards Ressen (with 3rd Irish Guards) and a left flank through Oosterhout (with the Welsh Guards). All three villages were strongly held by the Germans because the Airborne blunder at Nijmegen on the first afternoon gave them time to build up those forces.
Gavin did not order Lindquist immediately after landing. Lindquist was given pre-flight instructions in the divisional briefing (with other witnesses) in England pre-flight:
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Source: Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012).
In chapter 10 of Nordyke, after the initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge had been secured:
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
The Nijmegen highway bridge on 17 September had explosive charges stored in rooms inside the bridge piers. They were not in place and wired up for detonation, and there was no standing 'sprengkommando' on the bridge, only a militia 'Schutzgruppe' that failed to show up to install the charges. I can go into the detailed German plans for the bridge if you wish, but the important point is that the bridge could only be prepared for demolition after 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 engineers arrived to join Kampfgruppe Reinhold overnight on the 17/18 September, and started work on preparing the bridge for demolition, actually against Model's orders. On the first afternoon, the Airborne could have taken the bridge without hardly firing a shot, as there were only 18 German guards on it until darkness fell and the SS arrived, or fear the bridge being blown.
The 508th PIR only had two bridges to secure in their area of operations, the road and rail bridges at Nijmegen. The division's other tasks were being carried out by the 504th and 505th PIRs. Don't use their workloads as an excuse for the 508th failing to move, as instructed, against zero opposition in Nijmegen.
Sources:
Retake Arnhem Bridge, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke (2012)
September Hope, John C McManus (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013)
Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Royal Air Force (2016, revised 2019)
Nijmegen Schutzgruppe, Regionaal Archief Nijmegen, NL-NmRAN_80_86_0001 - 0015 (1947)
4
-
@paulc254 - the reason this has been one of the most hotly debated campaigns in WW2 is because the original narrative never made sense. These things that went wrong are the things that normally go wrong with most military operations and you just manage the problems and get on with it. Weather is never perfect every day. Intelligence is never perfect, but turned out to be remarkably accurate at Arnhem, and the possible "regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and "1,000 tanks in the Reichswald" turned out to be completely absent, which makes the failure at Nijmegen all the more baffling.
The 1,000 tanks was always a silly rumour anyway, borne out of the observation that the forest could hide 1,000 tanks, but there was never any reason for that many to be there even if the reported panzer depot at Kleve actually existed (it was actually near Münster). The fact is that Model had less than 100 (one-zero-zero) operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B, and he was facing Montgomery's 21st Army group with 2,400 and Hodges' US 1st Army also on his front at Aachen with yet more tanks.
Logistics are a British Army speciality, still is today. The 'one road' was only the main supply route for XXX Corps ('Club Route') and had many diversions on it ('Heart Route') for alternative crossings, and the flanking VIII and XII Corps were using their own 'Spade' and 'Diamond' Routes respectively. These methods were used since the breakout from Normandy and the routes terminated in Germany in 1945 - nothing unsual for Market Garden, but the particular difficulty of the Dutch terrain is the reason they used airborne forces to take the bridges.
If there's not enough planes, you fly more sorties, but the IX Troop Carrier Command objected to two airlifts on the first day because it involved night flying and they lacked trained navigators. I'm sure the RAF were most impressed with that.
The distance between the landing zones and the primary objectives was an issue how? 1st Parachute Brigade dropped 30 mins later than the 508th, had 3 Km further to march to their prime objective, had an SS training battalion with MGs and mortars, and armoured cars from 9.SS-Panzer on even Frost's 2nd Battalion route, and yet they got 750 troops onto the Arnhem bridge and held it for 80 hours.
Browning's Corps headquarters was next to Gavin's Division CP between the 2/505th on Hill 81.8 and the 3/505th cleared the town of Groesbeek and then deployed on the landings zones, so your assertion these troops took the heights to protect the Corps HQ is nonsense. 3/505th was protectng the zones for the second lift and 2/505th was the division reserve.
What Cornelius Ryan missed, was that the 508th secured an unoccupied Groesbeek ridge, received a report in person from resistance leader Geert van Hees that the city was deserted and the highway bridge guarded by an NCO and seventeen men, but they only sent a recon patrol into the city, ignoring Gavin's specific pre-flight instructions to "move with speed" on the bridge with 1st Battalion as soon as possible after landing. Three Scout troopers from the 1/508th S-2 (Intel) Section secured seven prisoners at the southern end of the bridge without even firing a shot, and stayed for one hour before the SS panzer troops arrived at dusk, and nobody showed up to reinforce them. Most of the patrol got lost in the back streets and eventually left without reaching the bridge.
This was not in Cornelius Ryan's research, and subsequently not filmed for the Hollywood film (would it ever?), so public awareness and most historians were completely unaware of this. Apparently most of the 508th's records have been missing from official US Army records. Only in the last 10-12 years have there been some books published that have set the record straight and explained why a perfectly workable plan - that was working everywhere else - so spectacularly failed at Nijmegen precisely where the intelligence picture turned out to be most favourable.
Best work on the planning is probably Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019).
Also, Sebastian Ritchie authored the RAF's study on the missing aerial photo of German tanks in the Arnhem area dismissed by Browning and found in 2015 in a Dutch government archive - Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story (2016, revised 2019).
Sources on the Nijmegen story:
Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust, Bob Gerristen and Scott Revell (2010)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
The 508th Connection, Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
TIK has done a great job as far as he went, but he needed to drill down to regimental histories to get the full story.
4
-
@johnburns4017 - on point 3) the Waalbrug was not wired for demolition at all on the afternoon of 17 September. The position was that most important rail bridges in the Netherlands were prepared for demolition and had 'sprengkommandos' on them for months (apparently) under command of von Tettau's Pionier staff (three officers and six enlisted). This includes the Oosterbeek, Nijmegen Waal, and Mook rail bridges, they even detonated the Ravenstein rail bridge, as soon as a 504th patrol was spotted, but it was never a target bridge under threat.
At Nijmegen, a junior offcier from the WBN (Wehrmacht Befehlshaber Niederlande) Pionier staff called Oberleutnant Gerhard Bretschneider was in charge of both Waal bridges, but only the rail bridge was prepared and ready for detonation. Only road bridges on the defence lines were also prepared, which explains rapid detonations at Son, Best, and the Maas-Waal canal bridges, either being detonated or attempted to be detonated. Both the Waal and Rijn highway bridges were behind these defence lines and were not wired up with charges at all.
The Waalbrug at Nijmegen did have prepared cutting charges standing by, in specially shaped boxes designed to fit inside the girders of the superstructure in specific places, each box numbered and matched to a corresponding number painted on the superstructure, and the boxes were even painted the same shade of green to match the bridge. They were stored inside rooms inside the bridge piers. An NSDAP 'Schutzgruppe' of ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands and recruited for this purpose was trained by German engineers to place the charges and wire them up to detonation circuits. They were practice drilled every month under Bretschneider's supervision so that they would be ready in the event the bridge was threatened. The last drill was in August. On 17 September, the Schutzgruppe failed to show up, which often happened with these militia type groups who were happy to serve as long as it was safe, but failed to show up if elite paratroopers start falling out of the sky.
Bretschneider was at the Waal bridges when the SS arrived, so he was able to brief them on the demolitions, and when SS-Untersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel's 1./SS-Panzer-Pioneer-Abteilung 10 arrived by bicycle from Pannerden overnight 17/18 September, he was able to instruct the SS engineers on the placement of the charges. Not a difficult job because of the painting-by-numbers arrangement for the Schutzgruppe, but the SS company was needed for the manpower, it was too big a job for Bretschneider and the corporal and three privates he had with him.
Sources are an online pdf on the 'WOII-Rivierkazematten-Lent', and in RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) is a paragrapgh on Bretschneider's responsibility for the Maasbrug at Grave and what happened with the charges on that bridge. The Schutzgruppe Nijmegen is in 1947 documents on the Regionaal Archief Nijmegen site entitled '80 Commissie tot Documentatie van de Bevrijding van Nijmegen 1945 – 1953'. Apart from Poulussen's book, all in Dutch I'm afraid.
I had always assumed Bretschneider was an army pionier officer, but since the WBN had a mixed Heer/Luftwaffe/Kriegsmarine staff I believe I have found him in the career summaries documents on 'The Luftwaffe, 1933-45' site, and the entry is:
- BRETSCHNEIDER, Gerhard. (DOB: 17.12.11). (n.d.) Fl.Ob.Ing. - which is short on career details but the last bit says he's a 'Flieger Ober Ingenieur', and in the WBN's KStN 17 (war establishment) dated 1.12.42, the third staff officer is Stellengruppe 'K' - Kompanie commander rank of Hauptman or Oberleutnant, and has to be an "(Offz. (Ing.))", but despite the service column having 'H' for Heer, I think this Luftwaffe officer is our man filling that position because the name matches and he has the engineering qualification.
4
-
4
-
3
-
The RAF advised during the original all-British operation COMET planning against certain landing zones because of Flak, but also because of unsuitable terrain. Paratroopers could not be dropped on the southern side of the Arnhem bridge because the area was flanked by two heavy batteries of Flak-Abteilung 591 (each having 6 x 75mm French Schneider M.36 heavy guns and 3 x 2cm light kanon), some additional light Flak around the bridge approaches, and the polder was also crossed by high tension lines (!!) from the Arnhem power station near the bridge. It was ruled out as a landing zone for massed glider landings as the polder is criss-crossed by small drainage ditches, making landing fields too small and unloading of vehicles and artillery too difficult. For MARKET, it was deemed good enough for the Poles to drop there on D+2, after it was assumed the British 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area to suppress the Flak, and the Royal Engineers were scheduled to rendezvous at the Arnhem power station and take control after completing their Phase 1 tasks.
The solution to this problem in COMET was the glider coup de main assaults, eighteen gliders carrying three Airlanding (glider infantry) companies to the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges. COMET was cancelled at the last minute when Montgomery received intelligence II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET was not strong enough. He and Browning then drew up an outline proposal provisionally called operation SIXTEEN (COMET had been FIFTEEN) that added the two American divisions to hold the corridor, so that 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade could concentrate at Arnhem with their superior anti-tank gun resources (the American units had a different doctrine and were equipped with more field artillery). SIXTEEN was presented to Eisenhower and he endorsed the idea, and detailed planning was turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army (because it required all of their resources) and USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams.
Brereton (1st AAA) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) adapted a previous three-division air plan for cancelled operations LINNET and LINNET II to the COMET objectives, but they decided to delete the proposed double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the bridges. Browning could not object because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation (Liege-Maastricht bridges) being scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps, but it was fortunately cancelled. Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation letter and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation, but Browning now withdrew his letter and both men agreed to forget the matter.
The RAF had no input to the planning for MARKET because it was now under American control - Nos 38 and 46 Groups RAF were attached to Williams' IX TCC and under his command. The idea that the RAF was running the air show comes from the Hollywood film, which cast an RAF character, but did not cast roles for USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams. American audiences cannot blame American characters if they do not know they even exist.
Browning, for his part, wanted Gavin (82nd Airborne) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge as an alternative coup de main plan. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for his book A Bridge Too Far (1974), that he toyed with the idea, but eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where troops were scattered over a wide area by the Troop Carriers and the division was disorganised for days. Browning could not order Gavin to do this, that wasn't how the alliance relationship worked. Only a senior US officer could compel an instruction on Gavin, so that would have to be Brereton, and he was part of the problem! Colonel Tucker of the 504th was highly experienced and his unit had missed Normandy because it was still recovering strength after Anzio in Italy. He insisted on a special drop zone for one company to drop south of the Grave bridge so it could be taken from both ends, and he got it, but Gavin would not provide for a coup de main on the Nijmegen bridge. He assigned his least aggressive and experienced unit, the 508th, to the critical NIjmegen mission, instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing.
Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and failed to understand that speed was essential. He thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, only sending a small recon force to the bridge - most of which got lost in the crowds of Dutch civilians in Nijmegen. Three scouts did reach the southern end of the bridge, surprised the seven German guards and took them prisoner without firing a shot. They waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived.
In the UK, it drives us crazy that Americans commenting on YouTube accept the Hollywood film as an accurate and complete record of the operation. It's not. Even the source book by Cornelius Ryan was incomplete, partly because of his terminal cancer forcing him to publish the book unfinished, but he also failed to follow up any suggestion that American officers were at fault. Gavin was quite open about Lindquist's failings in his interview, he said neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight, but it wasn't included in the book. Ryan also did not investigate the evolution of the planning from COMET to SIXTEEN to MARKET, and how Brereton and Williams had compromised Browning's original concept, sidelining him from having much influence on the operation. The only thing Browning was able to do was advance the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift (now on D+1 thanks to Brereton and Williams) to the 1st lift, which meant taking some RAF glider tugs scheduled to transport some anti-tank assets to Arnhem, and for this he's accused of going on an 'ego trip'. He was hoping to have at least some influence on the operation on the ground from the first day, but the failure at Nijmegen was unfortunately due to a command failure in the 508th to follow Gavin's pre-flight instruction, and there was nothing that Browning could have done about it. When Gavin found out Lindquist wasn't moving, he went to the 508th CP and ordered Lindquist to get the 1st Battalion moving to the bridge, but it was too late and 10.SS-Panzer-Division were already moving armoured units into the city at the same time Gavin's order was being passed to 1st/508th.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
The 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem: A-Z Troop volumes, Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022)
3
-
3
-
@ToolTimeTabor - Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th in WW2 (2012):
Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
3
-
@ToolTimeTabor - Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013), a collection of letters and stories from 508th members recalling events from the regiment's history:
Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge -
A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’)
The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
3
-
@ToolTimeTabor - I suppose my take on all of this is that after the war, Gavin didn't want to throw Lindquist under the bus, so he took a lot of responsibility for what happened apon himself. He even seems to have co-opted Browning into giving some cover re the priorities of the heights vs the bridge. As Lewis says in his video 'Was Gavin to blame?', documents produced after the war are not as reliable as sources as contemporary ones, and the problem with the 508th is that much of their records have gone walkabout. That's ironic since Lindquist was noted to be a gifted administrator and in Gavin's words to Cornelius Ryan, he produced documentaion like you wouldn't believe.
Another useful reference is RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), which includes as annexes Captain Westover's Q&A from Lindquist, in which I find Lindquist's answers to be disingenuous:
"2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you orders to move directly into NIJMEGEN?
As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on."
He was told BEFORE landing, in England before take-off, according to Gavin and witnesses present.
And also the "Field Order No.1, 508 PIR, 13 September 1944
2. a. ... be prepared to seize WAAL river crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on Div order,
LINDQUIST
Commanding"
Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan is also interesting in regard to his comments about Matthew Ridgway not trusting Lindquist and refusing to promote him. In fact, he couldn't promote any other colonel over him because he had seniority.
Nordyke's earlier chapters on formation of the regiment and first combat operation in Normandy are important for context, because it demonstrates Lindquist's abilities as an administrator and deficiencies as a combat leader. Gavin inherited a problem in the 508th after Ridgway was promoted to US XVIII Airborne Corps in August, but how much of a problem he knew is hard to say. His rationale for selecting the 504th for Grave is well known, he wanted top priority of securing his division supply line to XXX Corps carried out by his best regiment is understandable.
What his rationale was for giving the Nijmegen mission to the 508th is not recorded as far as I know. He may have decided the more experienced and aggressive 505th were better placed to face the potential tank threat from the Reichswald, and he had argualbly the best battalion in the whole division - Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th - in division reserve on Hill 81.8 above the town of Groesbeek. It seems from the witnesses who contributed to Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and John McManus's September Hope (2012), Gavin made sure to explain to Lindquist the importance of the Nijmegen bridge in relation to the overall success of the operation, and even showed him on a map exactly which route he wanted Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion (Warren) to the bridge.
I think the post-war debate over priorites involving Gavin and Browning is misdirection, by none other than Gavin himself. It certainly makes a lot less sense than the contemporary evidence unearthed by Nordyke and Poulussen, although it's in witness rather than documentary form.
One final thing, XXX Corps already had a contingency plan for the Nijmegen bridges being still intact but strongly held by the enemy, long before Gavin insisted his own troops be sent across the river, if XXX Corps can supply the boats for him. In fact, the planning for Market Garden had an engineering plan for every crossing and for every permutation of possible problem - demolition of bridge, site held by own side, site held by enemy, or bridge intact and held by enemy - and a backup plan for each eventuality. The backup plan for the Nijmegen bridges being still intact but strongly held were a river assault crossing by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division with either one or two brigades up. Two of its brigades had one battalion fully motorised with DUKW amphibious trucks, and the other battalions would follow in assault boats, or if suitable ramps were not available, all waves would use assault boats. During the battle for Nijmegen, it looked like this plan was going to be put into operation and the Royal Canadian Engineers of 1st CAGRE (who were responsible for bridging requirements in the Grave-Nijmegen sector) were put on alert to find suitable sites and then stood down again as Gavin insisted his division make the assault instead.
Source: Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021).
My take is that Gavin wanted to make amends for the 508th's earlier failure and his decision to assign them to the Nijmegen mission in the first place. I think all these things demonstrates Gavin's decency and willingness to take responsibility, but in doing so he has muddied the waters of the historical record.
3
-
@ToolTimeTabor - sorry I didn't get a notification to the previous direct reply or I would have responded 2 days ago (YouTube!), but I just got one a few minutes ago for your latest reply to yourself - so everybody should get a notification.
I note the date of this 82nd AB order is 13 September, same date as Lindquist's 508th Field Order No.1 reporduced in Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), and Gavin's:
"(3) 508 Prcht Inf will:
(b) Seized, organize and hold key terrain features in the area of responsibility, and be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714533) on order of the Div Comdr."
... matches Lindquist's (apart from the grid ref for Nijmegen bridge I assume is your typo, Lindquist's is correct):
"2. a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ 'T', seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589)."
I think the question is what happened between 13 September and take-off on D-Day 17 September? I think Gavin said in an interview (with Cornelius Ryan?) that when the plan looked like it was shaping up well, he ordered Lindquist to go for the bridge with 1st Battalion as soon as possible after landing, or words to that effect. I think the concerns, on a daily updated basis, were the intelligence estimates, because the possibility of SS troops in Nijmegen and tanks in the Reichswald from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area seems to have played on Gavin's thinking.
I don't have a date for the divisional briefing related to Phil Nordyke by the 508th Liaison Offcier, Captain Chet Graham. So, the question is: was it before or after the 13 September orders were written? In his words:
"I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke, 2012).
If Gavin had de-prioritised the bridge and not prioritised it again before take-off, then why this reaction when Chet Graham reported to him with Lindquist's message at around 1830 hrs 17 September:
"I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " (Chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke, 2012).
I maintain that the key to understanding what happened and why it happened is in Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy, and Lindquist's background early career in the Airborne. He was a gifted administrator but had not demonstrated the aggressive leadership the Airborne role required. I think Gavin was aware of this, to some extent at least, because at the briefing Gavin made a point of showing Lindquist on a map exactly the route he wanted 1st Battalion to go.
On the ground, Shields Warren was surprised when he finally got an order to move at about 2000 hours (full dark, and would be after Scout Trooper Joe Atkins' S-2 point team had withdrawn from the Nijmegen bridge and SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 had arrived). Another two hours elapsed while A and B Companies got out of their positions strung out along the ridge and A Company couldn't wait any longer and moved off alone with HQ Company. They ran into trouble with the SS troops at the Keizer Karelplein traffic circle, about 1.5 Km from the bridge, at around 0000 hrs.
3
-
@@johnnycarroll4496 - you haven't given a source for Warren's account as this text is not from Nordyke or McManus, although does describe the same events. Unfortunately, all the moves after 2000 hrs are far too late, because this was about the time that the S-2 point team under PFC Joe Atkins had to leave the bridge and SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived on the scene. The time to move the 1st Battalion to the bridge was as soon as they arrived at De Ploeg, instead of stringing themselves out along the ridge and digging-in. The 1st Battalion led by A Company bumped Gräbner's troops at the Keizer Karelplein - the traffic circle near the railway station and 1.5 Km from the highway bridge.
I can tell you the resistance headquarters that Geert van Hees was guiding them towards was in a hotel in Molenstraat. The building is now occupied by the Pinnoccio pizzeria if you want to check it out on Street View, on the corner of Tweede Walstraat with Molenstraat. Incidentally, the main German occupiers of the centre of Nijmegen until the airborne attack were also based in Molenstraat at the Oud Burgeren Gasthuis (old civilian hospital), which was the BdO (Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei) - HQ of the German 'Order Police' for the entire Netherlands under Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus, and equivalent to a division HQ. The site has since been redeveloped into the Molenpoort Nijmegen shopping centre. Van Hees was captured by the SS at the traffic circle when he went forward to visit his HQ in Molenstraat.
I said Warren was surprised at being ordered to move because Phil Nordyke says the order wasn't expected, and Warren ays it was the first time he heard the battalion was to take the bridge. Chapter 10 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012):
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
It makes perfect sense he wasn't expected to be moving because the battalion was dug-in along the ridge line and it took a couple of hours to get A Company out and assembled on the road, and they waited an hour for B Company, which was further along the ridge, and eventually left without them. B Company caught up with the battalion at the contact on the Keizer Karelplein, and Warren ordered B Company to pass through A Company to try and press the attack forward.
John C McManus in September Hope (2012) says much the same thing:
A couple miles outside of town, along the main Groesbeek-Nijmegen road, Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, commander of the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was settling his unit into defensive positions for the night. The battalion had easily captured its objective at De Ploeg, along the Groesbeek heights, and Warren was preparing to defend it it against possible enemy counterattacks. Instead, his superior, Colonel Roy Lindquist, commander of the 508th, came to him with a different mission. The battalion was to seize the Nijmegen road bridge over the Waal River.
McManus then says that Lindquist had told Warren during a final briefing the previous evening that he might get this assignment, which doesn't make sense because the battalion was clearly not ready to move at all, and it took several hours just to get the battalion out of their defence positions and assembled for the move. McManus doesn't give a source or quote anyone for that statement, so we don't know what he based that on. McManus does not mention that Gavin was "mad" at the report by Chet Graham the regiment was not moving on the bridge and they went directly to the 508th CP to tell Lindquist to get moving. Lindquist is behaving like he was expected to wait until he was told what to do, which was his Normandy behaviour as well, but by then it was far too late. If the battalion had moved into the city at the time Weaver's patrol did, then they should have reached the bridge with an hour to spare to set up defensive positions before Gräbner arrived. Instead, the battalion only got the order at 2000 hrs, two and half hours after arriving at De Ploeg on an unoccupied ridge, and informed by van Hees the city was deserted of Germans and left only 18 guards on the bridge. That's the compromise, right there, and Gavin was understandably angry because it's clear he realised at that moment that the entire operation was now in jeopardy.
3
-
@@johnnycarroll4496 - thanks for giving the reference, I recall seeing the site some years ago and I'll have to revisit it.
I used the word "surprised" because the order was "unexpected" (Nordyke's word), and it was clearly unexpected from Warren himself based on his own words - “this was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge." There was nothing in Lindquist's Field Order No.1 that mentioned a specific battalion to take the bridge, only that "the regiment be prepared to seize [the bridge] on Div order." He surely wouldn't have dispersed his battalion along the ridge where it would take 2+ hours to reassemble it on the road to move into Nijmegen if he thought he was going to take the bridge that night. He seemed to be settled in for the night prepared for a counter-attack from Nijmegen, despite being told there were no German troops of any significance in Nijmegen. Warren was following Lindquist's regimental plan, but Lindquist was not following Gavin's instructions. That is the problem.
Lt Weaver's adventures are described in some detail by first hand accounts from three members of his platoon in McManus. They got lost in the back streets after getting separated from the point team, holed up in a house for a while to wait for a giude from the resistance to help them, and then started running into roadblocks near the bridge, probably after Gräbner's arrival. They had problems with the SCR-300 radio loaned from battalion, and when they finally did establish contact they were informed two companies were on the way to the bridge, so they decided to withdraw and rejoin C Company back on the heights. McManus also says that Atkins' team also got lost while withdrawing from the bridge and didn't get back until sometime the next day. Seems to me PFC Atkins did his job in getting to the bridge, but everybody else failed to follow him.
Weaver's patrol was organised by both Lindquist and Warren, so it may have been using resources from Warren's battalion, but clearly it was a regimental reconnaissance and this was typical of Lindquist according to Nordyke's chapters on Normandy. All in all, it's a shambles, when you consider the geography was very similar at Arnhem - drop zones several kilometres away, a wooded ridge between them and the city with its bridges, and yet Frost stopped for nothing and got most of his 2nd Battalion and Brigade support units to the Arnhem bridge despite actually having opposition from MGs, mortars and armoured cars along the way, and was in a position to start stopping enemy traffic on the Arnhem bridge about the time Gräbner arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. If 1/508th had been on the Nijmegen bridge as Gavin expected, Gräbner's unit would have been bottled up on the 'island' with no escape except either a long detour to the west or the ferries to the east, or destroy himself trying to force the Arnhem bridge as actually happened.
3
-
3
-
The threat was not ignored - this is the myth created before the existence of Ultra was publicly acknowledged in 1974 - the same year A Bridge Too Far was published. The known presence of II.SS-Panzerkorps was the reason COMET was cancelled on 10 September and replaced with MARKET using three divisions. The strength concentrated at Arnhem was now four brigades (including the Poles) and 83 anti-tank guns, whereas COMET was to drop only the 1st Parachute Brigade and their support elements at Arnhem, preceeded with an airlanding company as a coup de main at the highway bridge. Montgomery (or rather, Browning and Dempsey after obtaining permission from Montgomery to plan the new operation) had quadrupled the force landing at Arnhem and had a whole second division drop at Nijmegen-Grave and a third to secure the corridor.
MARKET did not fail at Arnhem, where the bridge was taken and held for almost four days. It failed at Nijmegen when the battalion tasked with taking the highway bridge on D-Day was not sent immediately while it was still guarded by just 18 transport guards and sent too late after it was reinforced by one of the SS panzer divisions coming from many miles away.
The reasons for the failure of MARKET was the compromises to the air plan made by Brereton and Williams to deliver the troops over three days and not close to the objectives, Gavin for discarding a suggestion to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge and for selecting Lindquist's 508th Regiment for the critical Nijmegen mission, and Lindquist for failing to send the 1st Battalion directly to bridge after landing as Gavin had instructed. Browning was frustrated at every turn and edged out of the planning process once Brereton and Williams were involved, Dempsey had no authority over the airborne until they came under his command on the ground, and Montgomery's 21st Army Group was not even notified of the changes until after Brereton's 12 September cut-off date for making any further amendments.
All of the airborne troops requirements to be landed as quickly as possible as close to objectives as possible were sacrificed by Brereton and Williams to save as many of their aircraft as possible, and to improve on their appalling navigation and drop accuracy record after Sicily and Normandy, and Gavin refused advice from Browning because, ironically, of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop disorganising his division for days. Lindquist was not a good field officer and had not performed well in Normandy. His assignment in MARKET should have been switched with Ekman's more aggressive and experienced 505th Regiment.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, James Daly (2024)
3
-
@SNP-1999 - you're welcome. I actually have a copy (somewhere in a box!) of FW Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret (1974) that first revealed the German codes were broken during the war - the reason for the late revelation was because Bletchley Park was still breaking codes during the Cold War. The intelligence source was only known to key commanders down to Army level (Dempsey) and special sections in their headquarters that handled the information. Brereton, although the commander of 1st Allied Airborne Army - was not cleared, but I hear that Browning was aware of the information - which I find unlikely included the fact the codes were broken because any airborne officer was a potential risk if captured behind enemy lines. He may have been given a hint or steer that the Dutch resistance information had been confirmed by a secondary source, but no one who knew could reveal the source.
The anti-tank units in 1st Airborne had been briefed to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks, based on a new series of books by Nigel Simpson et al on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem (Troop volumes A-Z, 2020-2022), but I don't think this warning was widely spread around all the airborne troops, because this was how 'Ultra' intelligence was 'sanitised' to enable it to be passed down to lower headquarters without attribution to a source.
Obviously Cornelius Ryan did not know and his book was rushed to publication unfinished in 1974 as he passed from his terminal cancer the same year. Nobody he interviewed would have been aware of 'Ultra' either. The whole story of Browning dismissing the aerial photo of panzers in the Arnhem area is a distraction Cornelius Ryan seized apon - the photo was located in a Dutch archive in 2014 and found to confirm Browning's assessment they were obsolete vehicles that did not belong to a 1944-type panzer division. The unit involved was a Luftwaffe training unit camped opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone near Son, and at most may have been responsible for the 2nd Battalion's delayed assembly. One tank escaped an air attack and bumped the 504th's roadblock at Grave, causing a few casualties as the troopers got out of their foxholes believing it was British tank arriving early!
The point being that Dempsey became aware of II.SS-Panzerkorps' orders to refit in the Arnhem area, which put an identification on resistance reports of armour in the Reichswald, and added to the continued resistance on 2nd Army's front (the reason COMET was postponed several times from 8 September to 10 September), the new information led Dempsey to suggest to Montgomery a rethink was required. So Montgomery ordered COMET cancelled, and Dempsey got permission to plan a new operation with Browning to add two additional divisions to the airborne plan - one to reinforce the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave target area, and another to secure the corridor from XXX Corps' front to the airborne at Grave.
There's also an interesting document in the Cornelius Ryan Collection in the other Gavin folder, box 101, folder 09, page 48), which is a covering letter by Gavin to Ryan enclosing the research papers of Dutch Colonel TA Boeree (also in folder 09), who had researched the movements of the Hohenstaufen Division to debunk the betrayal myths (why would the division be entrained for refit in Germany if they were expecting an airborne landing at Arnhem?) Boeree had tracked the withdrawal of the Hohenstaufen from Belgium (where Allied forces lost contact with it) and crossed the Maas into the Netherlands at Maastricht on 4 September and concentrated at an assembly area near Sittard just to the north. On 7 September it received orders to move to the Veluwe region north of Arnhem to refit and passed through Venlo, Gennep, Nijmegen, and Arnhem, reaching their designated billets in towns and villages in the region on 10 September. Movement was restricted obviously to night time and days with weather too bad for flying, so they apparently made a stop in the Reichswald forest that generated the Dutch reports of heavy armour in the area.
After COMET was cancelled on 10 September, Gavin was alerted by Brereton he was assigned to the Nijmegen-Grave area, so he went immediately to 1st Airborne HQ to see their plans and intel for the area they had for their own drop in COMET and learned of these reports. Dutch reports of SS troops moving into billets in the Veluwe and Achterhoek areas only started coming in on 14/15 September, and only the Hohenstaufen was identified (by vehicle insignia), which left the exact location of the Frundsberg as a mystery and the possibility it was in the Reichswald and Nijmegen areas. You can see how this would have influenced Gavin's divisional planning! It was only now, in 1966, he realised the armour in the Recihswald was the Hohenstaufen in transit and no longer there when MARKET was launched.
Boeree's research was published in Dutch as De Slag By Arnhem (1963) and translated into English by Cornelius Bauer as The Battle Of Armhem (1966). The book has a map of the Hohenstaufen's route linking the major towns on the east bank of the Maas, but does not showa detour to stop in the Reichswald, so this was something Gavin had deduced from Boeree's research and the Dutch resistance reports. The Frundsberg withdrew into the Netherlands by the Eindhoven-Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem route, so both divisions had troops transiting Nijmegen.
I've also found that the SS also had their own Lazarett (military hospital) in the Sint-Jozefklooster (St Joseph monastery) on Kerkstraat in western Nijmegen near Neerbosch, with 60 convalescents from SS-Polizei-Regiment III (the main occupation police unit and the Ordnungspolizei HQ for the Netherlands was in Nijmegen) and about 240 men from 8./SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 4 (training and replacement battalion for the 4.SS-panzergrenadier-Division 'Polizei'). The Wehrmacht had their own Reserve-Lazarett in the Jonkerbosch area near Hatert canal bridge. Also, the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) documents available from PaperlessArchives online indicates the anti-tank guns on the Maas-Waal canal defence line and forward outpost at the Grave bridge were from SS-Panzerjäger-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Abteilung 2, so there were a few different SS tunits in the area at the time of the landings that the Dutch resistace and Allied intelligence may not appreciate had nothing to do with II.SS-Panzerkorps, which was now north and east of Arnhem.
3
-
3
-
3
-
@bigwoody4704 - I already gave you the source:
Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016)
Page 44: 'Lieutenant-Colonel Jones [CRE Guards Armoured Division], "Although I had been warned to keep my bridging vehicles off the road, now choc-a-bloc, I took a chance and moved the necessary vehicles up to Valkenswaard, where they would be ideally placed for a dash to Zon if the opposition at Aalst could be overcome."
The Irish Guards reached Eindhoven at 1800 hours. At 1900 hours they reached Zon. When the Irish Group began to move, Charles Jones got on the radio and told his men to bring the bridging equipment forward.
"John's squadron and the bridging arrived almost simultaneously at 1930 hours, and the squadron got right on with the job." '
Page 49: 'Certain works blame the Zon bridge for putting the operation thirty-six hours behind schedule. This is incorrect. At most, it put the advance only ten hours behind schedule, but I think that this is also not correct. Since the armoured forces did not operate at night, they would have stopped for the night anyhow and started again the next morning. The engineers worked all night and made sure the bridge was ready by the morning.'
I'm not giving you the answer for why the ground operation started at 1435 hours on D-Day, and the aircraft were not flying overhead at that time, they had delivered their last loads by around 1400 and were on their way home. You'll have to re-read Ritchie's book you claimed to have read, or if you had the ability, figure it out for yourself! I can think of three reasons - one in Ritchie that has to do with the air plan, one given by Horrocks for the sake of his ground troops, and a third one I can think of myself which has to do with surprise. Ten points for each correct answer!
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
@craftingpeople7097
4. When the Nijmegen bridges were finally taken, the tanks stopped in Lent because it was dark and tanks can’t see to fight in the dark. The scene filmed for A Bridge Too Far was misleading, perhaps deliberately so, given Richard Attenborough’s political motivations in portraying British officers as incompetent. Doctrine in WW2 was to pull tanks back behind the infantry lines to laager for the night, and continue operations at first light. It was the same reason they stopped at Valkenswaard on the first day, instead of going on to Eindhoven. Horrocks had said in his book (Corps Commander, 1977) that only twice in his career he had gambled by advancing tanks at night and both times it had paid off, but he was reluctant to try his luck a third time as he was already spooked by Market Garden starting on a Sunday, because in his experience no operation starting on a Sunday had gone well.
One of the problems with the Americans complaining after the assault crossing was that two officers claim to have had the confrontation with Captain Lord Peter Carrington, second in command of No.1 Squadron 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Grenadier Guards, but Carrington denied the incident actually happened. This is an area where American historian John McManus (September Hope, 2012) is misleading. He suggests US paratoopers, led by one of those two officers, Captain Moffatt Burriss (CO of ‘I’ Company 504th PIR), reached the far end of the highway bridge as British tanks came across the bridge and stopped. In fact, he had not seen the first tanks cross over 45 minutes earlier and disappear up the road into Lent, before stopping at the rail overpass, where they met troopers of ‘G’ Company and were stopped from advancing further by a StuG III assault gun firing at anything poking its nose beyond the overpass tunnel. Burriss actually blows a hole in his own account when he mentions passing an abandoned 7.5cm PaK 40 anti-tank gun on the north bank between the bridges, a gun that was knocked out by Sergeant Pacey’s Sherman as it crossed the bridge earlier.
I’m afraid this is a frequent problem we have with our American cousins; they are still fighting the war of independence 240 years after we thought we had settled the matter. Much of the mythology about Market Garden seems to have originated with Cornelius Ryan, who was an Irish newspaper journalist from Dublin, who may have been working for the Daily Telegraph in London as a war correspondent, but he was embedded with Patton’s US 3rd Army in Europe and emigrated to the United States after the war where he wrote his three books. He doesn’t seem to have given an even-handed account of the operation, and a Hollywood film was never likely to help redress that.
As for the liberation of your country, I do wish you well and hope you are able to free yourselves from the Fourth Reich. Just don't do it the way we did, by allowing the liberal elite in control of the country to sabotage the will of the people and make an almighty dog's breakfast of it...
3
-
3
-
@ErikExeu - I appreciate how difficult it is to pull information out of your head on the spot - I have a library of maybe 100 books now on MARKET GARDEN and related subjects, such as unit histories, but off the top of my head the main reason for the delays was the problem of getting units moved up the corridor. It wasn't, as many people suggest, because it was a "single road", although traffic jams undoubtedly did occur.
The main problem was that if you advance a unit then you have to replace it with another one to take over the task it was doing. Again, this is just from memory without diving into a lot of books, but I can think of one example and that was the protection for the Grave bridge and surrounding area. This was taken on D-Day (17 September) by the US 504th PIR, until they were relieved by the Welsh Guards group (consisting of 1st Battalion infantry and 2nd Battalion armoured reconnaissance with Cromwell tanks). This enabled the 504th Regiment to become Gavin's division reserve and moved them up to the Jonkerbos woods just east of the Maas-Waal canal between the Honinghutje and Hatert bridges. This was the area the 504th rested until they moved up to the south bank of the river Waal for the assault crossing operation, and in the Hollywood film this was represented by the scene where Gavin comes to see Julian Cook (CO of 3rd Battalion) to tell him his unit is leading the assault.
After the Nijmegen bridges were taken, the original plan was for the Guards to hand over the advance to 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, which I think I mentioned before was because the terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was not ideal for an armoured advance into contact - 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment's armoured cars had established the Germans had formed a blocking line at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel, so they knew there would be contact on the advance. The bridgehead was held by 504th Regiment, forming an outer perimeter between the old Dutch forts on the north bank at Hof van Holland and Het Lauuwik. (On Google maps, these forts are now called Fort Beneden Lent and Fort Lent respectively). Bridge security was provided by the two surviving companies of infantry from 3rd Battalion Irish Guards, and they had some M10 tank destroyers from 21st Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery. 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Irish Guards were re-arming after supporting the 504th's crossing, and the Coldstream group were assisting the 505th at Mook against attacks from Fallschirm Kampfgruppe Hermann (6.Fallschirm-Division).
Delays got to a point where the XXX Corps commander, Brian Horrocks, decided he could not wait for the 43rd Division to take over the advance and ordered the Irish and Welsh Guards groups to continue the advance. The Irish Guards were in a depleted condition but ready to move by 1300 hrs, and the Welsh Guards at Grave had been relieved by the Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade, which was attached to 43rd Division and took over protecting the Grave bridge. The impression I get is that these movements were like a Chinese puzzle (the one where you move tiles around inside a fixed frame and only one tile can move at a time into the empty square).
The failure to secure the Nijmegen bridge(s) on the first day with the airborne forces not only caused a delay while they had to be taken with support from Guards Armoured Division, but it also disrupted the choreography of the planned movement of XXX Corps up the corridoer, which was organised and sequenced with units needed for the advance (Guards Armoured, 43rd and 50th Infantry) but also with 8th Armoured Brigade, which donated battlegroups to support the US Airborne Divisions (the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry relieved the Coldstream Guards to support 82nd Airborne as soon as they arrived, etc., which freed up the Coldstream).
The Guards have often been accused of moving slowly, but this is because they are methodical and consolidated their gains before moving further forward. Their advance to Brussels on 3 September established a record daily divisional advance that was better than anything Patton ever achieved (the 11th Armoured Division's advance to Antwerp the next day went even further, but it was a two-day advance from the same start point), and it was a record that I believe was not broken until the First Gulf War in 1991. I have no doubt the Guards were the best unit to lead the ground advance in operation GARDEN, and if they could have got to Arnhem at all, they would surely have done so.
Everyone was aware by 20 September that things were not going well at Arnhem and the Germans had in fact forced the highway bridge with three Tiger tanks at 1230 hrs on the same day the Grenadier Guards crossed the Nijmegen highway bridge at 1830 hrs. The race had already been lost. Heinz Harmel, the commander of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division responsible for holding the Nijmegen bridgehead and for re-opening his own supply line at the Arnhem bridge, did say that if the British tanks that crossed the Nijmegen bridge on the evening of 20 September had carried on, "it would have all over for us", but he was incorrect. He was constantly travelling between Arnhem and Lent and was only in intermittant contact by radio with his command. The responsibility for clearing the Arnhem bridge was delegated to the attached army Kampfgruppe 'Knaust', which was a panzergrenadier training battalion and attached panzer training companies 'Mielke' (panzer III and IV) and 'Hummel' (Tiger I).
Harmel was unaware that Knaust was able to move south to establish a blocking line at Ressen, and this connected the existing 'hedgehog' positions at Oosterhout (V./SS-Artillerie training regiment) and Bemmel (elements of Harmel's 10.SS-Panzer-Division). He thought there was a gap in the middle on the main road to Arnhem and only a small security unit (two companies from naval cadet training unit Schiffsstammabteilung 14 that were on the 'island') would be in the way of an Allied advance from Nijmegen.
In point of fact, the book Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944 by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010), is very interesting in that much of chapter 4: Betuwe (the Dutch name for the Nijmegen 'island') is based on the diary of Gernot Traupel, who was acting as adjutant to SS Kampfgruppe Reinhold, the commander of II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and directly responsible for the defence of the Nijmegen bridgehead from a command post in Lent.
Unlike the Hollywood film, Harmel (represented by Hardy Krüger's character "General Ludwig") was not present when they tried to detonate the Nijmegen bridge. Neither was Reinhold at the command post either. So it was Traupel (only a 2nd Lieutenant) who watched in horror as the British tanks started to cross and asked the SS engineer officer, Werner Baumgärtel (also a 2nd Lt), if he could blow the bridge on his own authority. Baumgärtel refused, so Traupel ordered him to detonate the bridge on his own authority and Baumgärtel left the command post to carry out the order. Just then, Reinhold arrived and Traupel told him he had ordered the bridge blown and Reinhold said something like "are you completely insane?" and stormed out of the CP to travel a mile up the road (probably to Bemmel) where the radio van had contact with HQ. Baumgärtel then came back into the CP and reported the demolitions had failed and Traupel realised the British tanks would be there in two minutes and ordered the command post evacuated. He found Reinhold in the radio van had calmed down, because he had just recieved an order from Harmel to blow the bridge. Traupel reported the explosives had failed but he was okay about it.
I think the true story would have made a better and more dramatic film, but the problem for the filmmakers is that it would have got the British off the hook and they had to sell the film to the American market. I think the same is true of Cornelius Ryan's source book, as Ryan hailed from Dublin and was embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - two finer colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of thought I cannot think of.
3
-
3
-
@ErikExeu - "I find it fantastic that you declare that Ryan film and Hollywood are not reliable sources"
I am laughing my arse off...
That has to be a joke?
Ryan's research was incomplete (partly due to his terminal cancer, but he was also clearly biased) and did not delve into the 508th's failure to move promptly on the Nijmegen bridge, despite Gavin mentioning it in his interview with Ryan:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Gavin's claim has been corroborated by 82nd Airborne Division G-3 (Operations Officer) Jack Norton in McManus (2012), and 508th PIR liaison officer to 82nd Division HQ Chet Graham in Nordyke (2012):
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The best updated work on MARKET GARDEN is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which uses unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, and he also debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film.
For the background on the LINNET II affair and the way Brereton had politically neutralised Browning, I would refer to American military historian Roger Cirillo:
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
For Montgomery's minimal involvement in MARKET - he only ordered the operation, he did not plan it - and his communications with Eisenhower, I would refer to Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book (2014)
Poulussen's earlier book, Lost At Nijmegen (2011), was the first that really questioned the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974) and also includes Gavin's 17 July 1945 letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, and Colonel Lindquist's 508th PIR Field Order No.1 dated 13 September and his responses to Westover's Q&A form.
If you have any better references, then I would be interested to hear recommendations, but please not a Hollywood film!
3
-
@johnlucas8479 - "Therefore, coupe de main would have to be added to Operation Linnet Air plan for Market not deleted has you Brits like to claim, because you cannot delete something that did not exist in the first place." - John, I resent this suggestion about "you Brits like to claim". I could be bloody Chinese as far as you're concerned, as I'm just someone interested in the history of this operation and reading as many sources as I can find to understand what happened. I deeply resent anyone taking 'sides' just to have an argument, or who get partisan over it, as if the revolutionary war was still being conducted by other means. If that's all you're interested in, then go and annoy someone else instead of being a dick on my time. Its stupid and childish, and we're not going to learn any thing from it. Most of the latest research is from Dutch and American authors and historians, perhaps the best overall work correcting Cornelius Ryan's is currently Swedish historian Christer Bergström's two-volume Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019, 2020). The only British contribution to this particular area of the air aspects is probably Sebastian Ritchie, and American military historian Roger Cirillo did write his PhD thesis on MARKET GARDEN while studying at Cranfield's College of Defence Technology in the UK. That's about it from the "Brits". So there's no reason to get pissy about any of this, nobody is suggesting it was your fault and I presume you weren't even born yet when all of this happened.
The SIXTEEN proposal was Browning and Montgomery's outline devised on the morning of 10 September after Montgomery had cancelled COMET in the early hours as the troops were loading their aircraft, and presented to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their Brussels airport meeting in the afternoon for approval. It should be noted, as American historian Roger Cirillo does in his thesis, that SIXTEEN was called SIXTEEN because:
'FAAA had only nine operations on the books at the time. British 1st Airborne Division, however, had planned fifteen. The original draft order is marked "Operation Sixteen". "SIXTEEN" was proposed by I Airborne Corps. (Footnote 692, P.387, The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944, Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
SIXTEEN was born out of COMET, which you shouldn't be surprised had the provisional name of FIFTEEN.
SIXTEEN was based on COMET's objectives, but expanded to three divisions, and included an extension to the south to Eindhoven, which was not in the COMET plan. It included the double airlifts and glider coup de main assaults from COMET, because Browning saw them as critical to the success of COMET. He had previously advised Dempsey that they were essential for COMET, he obviously considered them that important. Here, I do rely on Sebastian Ritchie, if I may:
[After consulting with the RAF] Hollinghurst apparently believed that some of his 38 Group glider tug crews would be able to navigate successfully to the Arnhem-Nijmegen area in darkness and that limited numbers of glider-borne troops might thus be landed safely next to the bridges. Browning accepted the plan and signalled Dempsey on the evening of 5 September 'that he considered it essential to land coup-de-main glider parties on each bridge on the night of 7/8 Sep and then bring in the first main lift early daylight 8 Sep, otherwise surprise would be impossible' [CAB 44/253, p. 69]
(P.111, 2019 paperback edition, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie)
While looking this up, I came across the source for my comment about the USAAF crews not being as well trained in night navigation, so I have pleasure in reproducing the following footnote [8] to page 110's discussion of day versus night operations:
'Predictably enough, 46 Group later claimed that they could have operated at night, and that the real problem lay in the fact that American air transport crews were not trained for night operations.'
If you want to take issue with this, contact Sebastian. I simply note the reference and move on.
There was no detailed air plan for SIXTEEN as yet, because that would be done by Brereton's staff at 1st Allied Airborne Army in England, and Brereton did this by adapting his three-division air plan from LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) to create the detailed plan for MARKET, because it used the same force assigned for LINNET and LINNET II. He could have created a new air plan completely from scratch, but he chose to clone an existing plan instead and adapt it to the new mission. As a trained analyst/programmer, I appreciate the logic that 'cloning' an existing entity that has already had many of the bugs ironed out makes sense and is the most efficient use of time and resources. What is frustrating, and Gavin had this problem with Brereton as well, was Brereton's (possibly Williams, but Brereton seems to back Williams up anyway) unwillingness to change the air plan for MARKET's airborne troop's particular needs. It was at this stage that they deleted the double airlift on D-Day - features of both LINNET II and COMET, on the pretext of not enough time for aircraft maintenance turnaround - although you argue the USAAF could navigate in the dark, I'm not alone in thinking this was actually an issue for the USAAF. Opting for a single airlift in the middle of the day apparently then made the glider assaults too risky, so they were deleted - Cirillo uses the word "ignored" with the regard to the coup de main landing zones next to the bridges rather than 'deleted' for the whole coup de main concept - but the fact is that they were not carried over from SIXTEEN into MARKET after the first planning meeting of 1st AAA on the evening of 10 September.
This is why Browning - and I presume it was Browning, because Montgomery said he did not intervene in the air planning for MARKET - wanted Gavin to drop a battalion north of Nijmegen. The exact words in Cornelius Ryan's interview notes are:
'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
So Gavin still didn't trust his own air corps even in broad daylight more than a year after Sicily. I don't know if I find that interesting or exasperating - I just note the facts, and move on.
So Browning had been trying to keep a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge all along, but was frustrated by Brereton/Williams and then Gavin. Gavin said his plan was "approved" by his Corps Commander - he wasn't specific it was Browning, as Ridgway was officially his Corps Commander, or maybe he did mean Browning as Corps commander for the operation and was being a little disingenuous about his use of the word "approved". Browning could hardly object, because of the LINNET II affair and Brereton's plan to accept his resignation and replace him with Ridgway (did Gavin know about all of this?), and he could not order Gavin to drop his troops on the north end of the bridge if Gavin thought it was too risky to commit them or just wanted to drop his men together as concentrated forces. His plan, with the exception insisted on by Tucker for a 504th company dropped south of Grave, was to drop his three regiments intact as a "power center", and then have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. One look a map of the 82nd Division's deployment for MARKET should make it obvious that was indeed his thinking.
3
-
@johnburns4017 - do you have a copy of Bergström's Arnhem 1944 vol 1? Pages 131-132, 135, 142-143, and 148 on Son defences. Reinhard (LXXXVIII AK) was at Oirschot (page 131-132) when the transports flew over and then he made his way back to his HQ in Tilburg. Page 135 has the quote from Student - it's in the 501st PIR section of the narrative regarding the capture of the bridges at Veghel, but these were not on a defence line and only rear echelon German troops were found here. I believe the quote relates to all the bridges prepared for demolition in his area, so that I would reasonably argue includes the Wilhelmina canal bridges at Best and Son, guarded by 3./Flak.Abt 428(+) and 4./Flak-Abt 428 respectively, with the canal line held by Flieger-Ausbildungs-Regiment 53 (iirc the 5.Kompanie was on the canal between these bridges in the Sonsche forest).
The chain of command up from the bridge commander would logically be his battalion (I or II./FAR 53?), FAR 53 HQ, LXXXVIII AK (Reinhard), and then 1.Fallschirm-armee (Student). If Student's quotation in Bergström is correct, then the bridge commanders had standing orders to blow their bridges when threatened with being overrun, which is exactly when the Son bridge was detonated.
The LXXXVIII AK war diary note timed at 17:45 mentioned only the Oirschot and Best bridges to be blown only on written orders, and that may be a consequence of the Son bridge already having been blown at 16:00.
The movement of XXX Corps at night may not have been permitted beyond Son or certainly not beyond Veghel, because then it is territory possibly held by the enemy. The only time possibly saved if the Son bridge were taken intact was the time taken to drive from Son to Veghel, but that's still taking a risk in the areas between the 101st Airborne's regimental strongholds at Son, St Oedenrode, and Veghel. Given what Horrocks said about night movement and not wanting to push his luck, I think he would say "no".
3
-
3
-
@johnburns4017 - I still think the Germans should should be given credit for responding to threats against the bridges on their prepared defence lines. The bridges on the Wilhelmina canal (under Stab zbV Oberst von Hoffman) were on the second line behind the part-breached Albert canal line under command of Generaloberst Student. Those on the River Maas and Maas-Waal canal were on a third line under command of General Feldt (Wehrkreis VI), and also linked to the River Waal line west to the North Sea under von Tettau (WBN).
Many of these bridges were promptly demolished when threatened during the operation and the evidence seems to suggest the bridge commanders had standing orders. We know that the three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6 (Major Ahlemeyer) to guard the Maas-Waal canal bridges immediately lost communications with their batallion headquarters at Haus Kreuzfuhrt (grid square 7954 near the Reichswald) because of the landings between them, yet most of the bridges were detonated, suggesting they had standing orders. Christer Bergström also states that bridge commanders in Student's area (which would include the Wilhelmina canal) had standing orders to defend them to the last man before demolishing their bridge.
Of all the bridges on these prepared defence lines, only the Honinghutje road bridge (on the main highway 'Club Route' over the Maas-Waal canal) was damaged when the rail bridge alongside it was demolished and the road bridge charges presumably failed, and the Heumen lift bridge (on the alternatve 'Heart Route' over the canal) was taken intact for reasons that are not clear, possibly left too late or a technical problem.
The Son bridge was detonated at approximately 1600 hrs, less than three hours after the 506th landed at 1312 hrs. The 1st Battalion 506th moving directly through the Sonsche forest were held up by tree burst fire from 88s around the bridge and mortar fire causing many casualties. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions moving through the village down the main road were slow in house clearing, but both 1st and 2nd Battalions were close to the bridge when it was detonated (Little Sense Of Urgency, RG Poulussen, 2014).
Considering the circumstances, I don't have any real criticism for the 506th at Son. Two of the 88s were emplaced in the main street north of the canal, and were able to fire back up the street at 2nd Battalion, the other two were near the canal northern bank in positions east and west of the bridge. The west gun position gave 1st Battalion so much trouble with the tree bursts in the Sonsche forest approach.
3
-
3
-
@kimnelson-barclay7427 - airborne doctrine was still being developed, but many of the features incorporated into 'Comet' British I Airborne Corps were taken out for 'Market' by 1st Allied Airborne Army, such as the glider coup de main attacks on the three main bridges and two lifts in one day.
But even the plan for Market would have worked if it had been followed at Nijmegen as it was (against German opposition) elsewhere. The 508th had an open city in front of them until it got dark, and the entire operation was undone by a simple command failure that first manifested in Normandy (Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell, 2012, refers). What followed after the war was that you had a divisional commander taking responsibility himself instead of throwing a subordinate officer under the bus, muddying the waters with regard to competing priorities, incomplete research by the terminally ill Cornelius Ryan, and public perception influenced by a part-fictional Hollywood film based on his book.
If you want to focus on doctrine, then Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) is the best study of that, looking at the lessons learned from previous airborne operations conducted by both sides and applied to Market Garden, but I don't think it's fair to apply modern doctrine to a WW2 operation. The plan was clearly working on its own terms, except at the one place where it wasn't being followed.
3
-
@kimnelson-barclay7427 - the point of Operation Market Garden was to get British 2nd Army over the Rhine. Operations into Germany would be the aim of subsequent operations, not Market Garden.
"Airborne lands, achieves limited objectives, and waits for the army to arrive. At Arnheim, it never did." - It actually did exactly that at Arnhem. 1st Parachute Brigade secured the far end of Arnhem highway bridge and waited twice as long as they were expected to have to for their relief, but XXX Corps never got there because the Germans were allowed to reinforce the Nijmegen bridges and impose a critical delay of 36-hours.
The error at Nijmegen was completely unforced and contrary to instructions from the divisional commander, and that was a problem that had previous form in Normandy. It had nothing to do with circumstances in Holland or anything unique to Market Garden.
What specifically in the US Army manuals of the day were ignored in Market Garden? You make these dark references to things being ignored, but you don't offer any specifics. Specifically what was the 508th not capable of, that makes you think they did everything they could? When Gavin found out they were not moving on the bridge, he was as "mad" (which I would translate into the English word "angry" rather than taking the English meaning of "insane") as their liaison officer had ever seen him, and they went to the 508th CP to chew out the CO and get him moving. Is that in the Field Manuals?????
3
-
3
-
3
-
Nordyke (op cit), Chapter 10 -
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
Zig Boroughs’ The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge -
A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’)
The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
Nordyke (op cit), Chapter 10 -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
3
-
Have to admit I struggled to understand some of your arguments and questions, but I might be able to help in some areas. I can recommend a book called Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden by Sebastain Ritchie, 2011. It does what it says on the cover and examines Airborne operations by both sides in the war up to Market Garden, so it explains why the decisions that were made, were made based on the available experience, and like everything else in life - there are no real solutions to problems, only trade-offs. It might answer a lot of the specific questions in your post. Being a recent book, it is revisionist history, like TIK's channel, using the latest available information and research. It is therefore controversial, because it challenges the huge inertia of the popular post-war narrative established by A Bridge Too Far and many other books that followed it.
Ritchie's book also contains a summary of the detailed research into the infamous aerial photo (actually an 'oblique' photo in the movie) of German tanks in the Arnhem area. Oblique photo reconnaissance was not used to look for tanks in the woods, it was desgined for specific known targets, like bridges and barracks. The Dutch Government digitised their archives in 2015 and all the RAF's aerial photos donated after the war to help with reconstruction came to light, and the suspect photo (Frame 4015, taken on 12 September by a 541 Squadron Spitfire from RAF Benson) was re-discovered. The tanks were found to be obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV tanks, ruling out a Panzer Division as the likely owner. The RAF's analysis has identified the only possible owner in Holland, and this unit was mostly destroyed in Belgium before Market Garden, and the survivors were located near the 101st Airborne's drop zones on the day of the landings. Browning is effectively exonerated from the rather shameful portrayal, but acted so well by Dirk Bogarde in A Bridge Too Far, in this incident. You can obtain a free pdf download of a booklet on this aspect of the story by searching "arnhem the air reconnaissance story royal air force" by Sebastian Ritchie on the Royal Air Force website, courtesy of the British taxpayer.
You mentioned Ultra. This intelligence was disseminated no lower than Army headquarters, in order to protect the source, which was not declassified until 1975. Ultra had more easily broken a Luftwaffe code, so 21st Army Group (Montgomery) and British 2nd Army (Dempsey) knew that the Luftwaffe Liaison Officer ('FLIVO') for the German Army Group B (GenFM Model) was located in Oosterbeek, near Arnhem, and it was reasonable to assume Army Group B headquarters was in the same location as the FLIVO. Ultra doesn't tell you everything, the codes had to be broken every day, and some codes were easier to break than others, which is why we knew the Luftwaffe communications before the Army ones.
The location of II.SS-Panzerkorps (Bittrich) with 9.(Harzer) and 10.(Harmel) SS-Panzer-Divisions under command, were not known precisely. Dutch resistence had reported some sub-units identified as parts of 9.SS 'Hohenstaufen' Division had moved into the Saksen-Weimar barracks in Arnhem, and in the Apeldoorn and Zutphen areas. Dutch intel was highly regarded, but had to be treated as suspect until confirmed, because of recent German counter-intelligence successes. For example, the entire Oosterbeek underground cell had been penetrated and wiped out. No information on 10.SS was available. The latest intelligence information at Eisenhower's headquarters before the operation was SHAEF Intel Summary #26 (dated 16 September 1944), listed II.SS-Panzerkorps as refitting somewhere in the eastern Netherlands, and presumed drawing tanks from a depot known to be in the Cleve area. This possibly threatened the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen rather than the 1st Airborne at Arnhem, and it led to a silly rumour that the Reichswald forest between Cleve and the 82nd's landing zones could be hiding 1,000 panzers.
3
-
Browning and Gavin were actually in agreement on securing the Grave and Njmegen bridges as quickly as possible, but Browning had stressed that it was also important to hold the Groesbeek heights as well. Brereton and Williams' decision to fly the MARKET flights entirely in daylight meant that the dawn delivery of Browning's proposed glider coup de main raids on the three main bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave was now rendered too risky to be undertaken in broad daylight (conveniently, in my opinion), so Gavin received a British request (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge instead.
Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far that he toyed with the idea, but eventually discarded it, because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. So Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion (508th PIR) directly to the bridge from the main drop zone after landing, which Lindquist then failed to do, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first. The idea that the Nijmegen bridge was not a priority was a post-war conflation designed to explain why the bridge was not taken on D-Day.
This was not in Ryan's book and only more recent research has unearthed the full story, although Ryan's research notes and interviews can be accessed online by anyone with an internet connection.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
3
-
Churchill's only involvement in this story was his concern over the new V-2 rocket operations - the first rockets landed in London on 8 September, and after receiving a report from the War Office indicating the launch sites were on the Dutch coast near Den Haag, Churchill signalled Montgomery the next day enquiring when he intended to "rope off" that general area of the Netherlands. It confirmed in Montgomery's mind that Arnhem generated the better outcomes than the Wesel (Germany) alternative considered for a Rhine crossing, so when he decided on the morning of 10 September to cancel Operation Comet (just as the men were boarding the aircraft) due to reports of increased German forces in the Netherlands target area, he proposed an upgraded operation with three airborne divisions called Market Garden at his meeting with Eisenhower later that day. Market Garden was fatally compromised when the Airborne missed a bridge due to a command failure in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Nijmegen, and not because of any fault in YouTube commenter's favourite targets of Browning, Montgomery, or Churchill.
This persistent shit-flinging at senior British figures is based on ignorance and Hollywood movies should be seen as part-fiction (or even anti-British propaganda) and go back to reading books. There's plenty of American, Dutch, and even Swedish historians out there, telling the true story:
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
The 508th Regiment's written Order N.1 dated 13 September states that the three battalions were to dig in along the Groesbeek ridge and be prepared to move on Division order to t he highway brudge in Nijmegen. 48 hours before the drop on 15 September, when Gavin thought the plan was coming together nicely, he instructed Colonel Lindquist in the final divisional briefing to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge apon landing and there are two witnesses to this - the Division G-3 (Ops) Jack Norton, as related in John McManus (September Hope, 2012) and 508th liasion officer Chester 'Chet' Graham in Phil Nordyke's 508th regimental history (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012).
When Gavin found out from Chet Graham's report at around 1800 hours that Lindquist was not moving on the bridge, they went to the 508th CP to get him moving, Gavin telling Lindquist - "I told you to move with speed" (Nordyke). McManus does an excellent analysis of the whole bridge vs ridge debate on priorities and comes to the firm conclusion that Browning and Gavin expected both to be taken, but the bridge was the perishable asset. Lindquist was not a good field commander, something Gavin expressed in his interview with Cornelius Ryan was also the view of 82nd CO in Normandy, Matthew Ridgway. Lindquist thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, before sending any sizeable force to the bridge. Nordyke's chapters on the 508th in Normandy are also very illuminating, consistent with Gavin's remarks to Ryan, but Ryan didn't include them in A Bridge Too Far (1974) or what really went wrong in Nijmegen at all.
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
@georgesenda1952 - how can you get every statement wrong?
You said - "On 9-1 Bradley ordered 5,000 tons of supplies to First Army which was supporting Monty's attack in Holland" - Montgomery was still in France on "9-1". His advance from France to Brussels was on 3 September, Antwerp was liberated the next day. Overnight that night on 3/4 September was Montgomery and Browning's first meeting to discuss a Rhine crossing for British 2nd Army and that operation became COMET. This was still two weeks before MARKET GARDEN. Bradley wasn't supporting Montgomery's attack in the Netherlands at all, Hodges' 1st Army was directed by Eisenhower on Aachen and a crossing of the Rhine between Cologne and Bonn.
You said - "if the weak Bradley had allowed Patton to close the Falaise Gap and take a chance even though there might have been some loss of troops from friendly British and Canadian fire... then a great deal of German troops would not have been available for a refit to start the attack in the Bulge." - Bradley stopped Patton's XV Corps from advancing on Falaise because the 90th Infantry Division was already over extended at Argentan and Bradley later wrote that he would "rather have a firm shoulder at Argentan than a broken neck at Falaise." This was sound tactical sense. Montgomery accepted Bradley's decision and ordered a wider envelopment at the Seine instead.
You said - "and Monty had bragged that he would be in Caen quickly, it took him a long time" - Montgomery did not brag that he would be in Caen quickly - that really is movie B.S. He said he hoped to take Caen in the first 24 hours, unless the Germans counter-attacked the beaches with armour, in which case 3rd Infantry Division were ordered to hold a line north of Caen to protect SWORD Beach. 21.Panzer-Division was based around Caen and immediately counter-attacked the beaches, reaching the Channel coast between SWORD and JUNO. Anyone who thinks that's not a greater concern than taking Caen quickly needs their brains removed with tweezers and examined under a mircoscope for signs of life.
You said - "Everything was geared for Market Garden which was destined to fail because DUTCH intelligence on panzers in the area was IGNORED by the British" - no, Montgomery cancelled operation COMET after he received reports II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area because he knew COMET was not strong enough to deal with it. He ordered an expanded airborne operation to replace it by adding the two American divisions to hold the corridor and this allowed the British and Polish airborne units to concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun assets to meet the armoured threat. The operation did not fail because of II.SS-Panzerkorps. It failed because the 82nd Airborne failed to move quickly to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on D-Day, which cut off the British at Arnhem and led to 1st Airborne Division being destroyed.
You said - "the failure to not have bridging units" - actually a double negative, so technically correct and not a failure at all. From Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2021), I listed earlier in this thread the considerable number of bridging columns gathered together in Belgium from three Army Groups Royal Engineers - the Canadian 1st CAGRE, and the British 10th and 11th AGRE. These were in addition to the divisional bridging column in every British armoured and infantry division, of which there were three Corps involved in the operation.
You said - "dropping troops not all at once due to a lack of transport" - the available transport was proposed to land two airlifts on the first day as Browning and Montgomery had planned for COMET and carried over into the outline plan SIXTEEN to replace it, but USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams cancelled the double airlift for their final MARKET plan.
You said - "being 8 miles away from the bridge" - which would not be a problem if Brereton and Williams had not also deleted the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges planned for COMET and proposed again in the SIXTEEN outline.
You said - "IF Patton had been asked he would have said it was more important to clear out Antwerp and the Schelde estuary so supplies could get through" - do you have any evidence for that? EIsenhower's view was - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015)
You said - "That job was left to the Canadians" - yes, the Scheldt was in their sector. Brereton had refused Montgomery's request for an airborne operation (INFATUATE) on Walcheren, so Antwerp had to wait. You don't expect British 2nd Army to sort out everybody's problems for them, do you?
3
-
3
-
@georgesenda1952 - working with Americans on military operations can often be exasperating. This was widely reported in the UK, but the most full account I've found is on Reaction, dated August 22, 2021 by Tim Marshall:
War of words: British and US military clash over Kabul airport chaos
In the heat of the moment strong words can be exchanged between colleagues and friends in a war zone. However, what has allegedly been happening at Kabul airport goes deeper and shows the levels of anger in the UK military, and government, about America’s decision to cut and run from Afghanistan.
Two independent sources say that last week a senior officer from the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) had a blazing row with the commanding officer from the American 82nd Airborne Division in front of other soldiers at Kabul airport. The exchange of views came after British special forces units made several forays into the city to rescue people who were in hiding and could not pass through Taliban checkpoints to get to the airport.
One source suggests 2 Para units have also gone on “snatch” missions just outside of the airport to get people they recognize. On occasion they have aggressively pushed past Taliban checkpoints and ignored demands to go back inside. Following this Maj.Gen. Christopher Donahue from the 82nd Airborne ordered the British officer to cease operations outside of the airport perimeter fence because it was embarrassing the American military and angering the Taliban, thus risking the possibility of firefights breaking out.
The British officer reminded the Maj.Gen. that the UK operation was independent of the US. The conversation allegedly ended when the Maj. General was called a “bastard” by a British Major, and the senior British officer told the American to “f*** off!” Apparently the “most vocal” person in the room was a very senior officer from the SAS.
Some American officers are unhappy with the caution showed by their Maj. Gen although it’s probable he was under orders from US Central Command (Centcom).
One, with close contacts in 2 Para, says: “The Parachute Regiment, bravely venture into Kabul to rescue the Queen’s subjects while our force of now 6000 soldiers and marines strong says it isn’t possible. My brave friends from 2 Para are doing what I would both want to do and expect from my government. I love my Army, my fellow Rangers and paratroopers, but tonight my pride stands with my at risk brothers in 2 Para and my brothers in the UK SAS and other special forces. I will always stand with action vs inaction when it comes to the political will to execute in a time of crisis.’’
Some officers and NCOs in the 82nd have asked permission to go out on escort patrols but have been refused permission.
American risk aversion stems from concern that if serious shooting breaks out the entire rescue mission would be in jeopardy. However, it also reflects a high-handed attitude which reflects how the retreat from Afghanistan has been handled. Allies were not told in advance of the accelerated pull out and were blind-sided when the Americans snuck out of Bagram airbase under cover of darkness.
There has been a serious lack of communication between Washington and London for weeks on the issue and now sources suggest that the most senior military figure overseeing the British role in the evacuation, Vice Admiral Ben Key, has been frozen out of negotiations between CENTCOM staff and Taliban commanders in Kabul. Other allies are also being kept out of the loop and are not communicating with each other efficiently. This has been a factor in flights leaving almost empty. A large Luftwaffe plane left with only 7 people on board and an Australian C-130 departed just a third full.
An argument can be made for the gradual exit from Afghanistan and the end of America’s “forever war”, even if former Prime Minister Tony Blair describes the term as “imbecilic”. But the manner of leaving has shocked people all over the world. Some are in despair, others gleeful. America has not only led NATO into a generational failure, but it has also shown it cannot plan for and manage the immediate fall out. It has also put doubt in its friends minds about its reliability.
The UK should not, arguably cannot, end its friendship with the US, but the strong words used at the airport reflect what, in the heat of this moment, the governments of the NATO alliance are thinking.
Reaction has approached the MOD for comment on the allegations above, but to date it has not responded.
3
-
3
-
@nexusnero - Browning had no control over USAAF officers Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) who planned MARKET, removing key components of Browning and Montgomery's outline proposal for operation SIXTEEN, that was approved by Eisenhower, for the final MARKET plan.
The outline included two lifts on the first day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, both removed by Brereton and Williams for their own reasons, mainly to save as many of their aircraft from exposure to flak as possible. Browning had threatened to resign over a previous Brereton operation called LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) that was scheduled with too little notice to print and distribute maps, and Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully, LINNET II was cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, but it was clear the USAAF was in control of the air planning for MARKET.
Browning did try to get General Gavin to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and while Gavin told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that he toyed with the idea, he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop leaving the division disorganised for days.
Instead, Gavin assigned his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission, instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy, and Gavin noted to Ryan that neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted him in a fight. Lindquist thought he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, and only sent a recon patrol to the bridge (which got lost). By the time Gavin found out and ordered him to send in 1st Battalion, it was too late and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had already sent armoured units into the deserted city and reinforced the 18-man bridge guard.
Browning had done everything he could to ensure the operation succeeded, but he was undermined by American officers Brereton, Williams, Gavin and Lindquist, who all thought they knew better. Browning was in no position to commit the air force, he was almost completely sidelined.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
3
-
@johnlucas8479 - what Gavin knew at the time was what the British knew at the time. First thing Gavin did when he was given the Nijmegen assignment was go to 1st Airborne HQ and they took him through the intelligence and planning they had been working on for COMET, so he had all of the information made available to him before he considered his own divisional plan. The reason I know this is because of my note at the bottom about the 1966 Boeree papers covering letter, but to the matter at hand - according to Cornelius Ryan's 1967 Gavin interview notes on the discussion about objectives:
'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area.
Gavin hesitated to speculate what might have happened if he had put troops on the northern end of the bridge. He did not, however, think a company could have held it and he openly wondered if even a battalion might have.'
(Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 10, page 5)
Americans are very fond of accusing Montgomery, and the British in general, of being too cautious, and yet what the actual is Gavin doing here??? Even a company would have made a difference on the day, but Gavin actually instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion from the drop zone. Browning (I'm presuming "the British" was Browning) was right all along, with either a glider company or parachute battalion coup de main. He got neither, and Lindquist messed up Gavin's half-arsed alternative. Tucker knew what he was doing when he insisted on a company drop zone south of Grave and made sure he got it.
On another issue that might interest you, I just recently came across a letter written by Gavin to Cornelius Ryan to enclose some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree (I have his book, The Battle of Arnhem, written with Cornelius Bauer, 1963), and Gavin had just realised (in 1966!) that the reports of German armour in the Reichswald that the British had on 10 September must have been the Hohenstaufen Division in transit to Arnhem on their route march from Maastricht described by Boeree as going through the Nijmegen area, which would explain why there were no tanks in the Reichswald on 17 September. The Reichswald report was what he learned during his visit to 1st Airborne, as he said the British were making their plans accordingly to deal with it before their operation was cancelled.
(Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 9, page 48)
3
-
3
-
@johnlucas8479 - Lindquist was supposed to find out when he was supposed to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing. I know I've posted this before, but if you need reminding:
Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
- It's clear to me Gavin did not know if the SS troops and tanks were there or not, but he had to go for the bridge and expected to take it if they were not, and he would soon know if they were there. By the time Chet Graham reported in that Lindquist was not moving and the 505th liaison officer reported no tanks in the Reichswald, Gavin knew he had screwed up. If Browning had got his way, the Nijmegen bridge would have been in the hands of D Company 7th KOSB by glider, or a US Parachute Infantry Battalion (I would prefer 2nd 505th) landing on the northern end.
3
-
@bigwoody4704 -
"Harmel was the Germans security/Intel officer in that section from Arnhem-Nijmegen" - No, he was the commander of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division.
"he stated there was one field gun there and Carrington stopped anyway" - no he didn't (I have a copy of Kershaw as well). Kershaw does say about that night - the night the British tanks stopped in Lent because they can't fight at night back in WW2, remember? -
"By darkness a rudimentary line had been established one kilometre north of Lent, and this gradually thickened into linked outposts as more units, including the Kampfgruppe 'Hartung', became available to Reinhold. By first light German blocking positions occupied the crossroads one kilometre south-west of Ressen, south of the village itself and south of Bemmel down to the Waal river."
Kershaw is wrong that Kampfgruppe Hartung arrived by crossing the Pannerden canal, his forces were part of the Nijmegen defence originally on the Maas-Waal canal, incorrectly called 'Kampfgruppe Henke', and the survivors had concentrated around the rail bridge in Nijmegen, with Hartung relocating his command post (originally the NEBO monastery near Groesbeek) to Lent and taking under command army militia, RAD Flak, and Kriegsmarine troops, defending the north bank. Most of his original command lay dead or taken prisoner from the Maas-Waal canal bridges and massacred on the Waal rail bridge. My source for Hartung is the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) documents available to download from PaperlessArchives online, and the raw data on Hartung is from captured documents from his evacuated HQ in the NEBO monastery taken over by the 508th PIR on D-Day.
The "one field gun" I presume you mean the Stug IIIG assault gun belonging to 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 firing at any tank that came out of the railway underpass at Lent? There were two field batteries - 21.(15cm) and 19.(10.5cm) - belonging to Schwappacher's V./SS-Artillerie-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Regiment at Oosterhout and Ressen respectively as part of the Waal defence under von Tattau's command, and Harmel also had an overstrength 10.5cm field artillery battalion (II./SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 10) from his own division deployed at Flieren.
Carrington had to stop where he did at the far end of the Nijmegen highway bridge to maintain the radio rear link from Sergeant Robinson's Troop of tanks half a mile up the road in Lent, and the Squadron commander a similar distance back in Nijmegen. They were in no condition to push on after fighting a major battle over two days to take the bridges the 82nd Airborne could have secured on D-Day without firing a shot, and even if they could advance immediately, they could not do so in the dark. That scene in the Hollywood film was misleadingly filmed in broad daylight, which was also missing the burning buildings in Lent and the mopping up operations that were still ongoing until well after midnight.
Harmel was not even there, his secondhand account is a mis-translation of the first-hand account he got from Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), and particularly Reinhold's adjutant, Gernot Traupel, who kept a diary of the events at Nijmegen. This diary was used as a basis for the account of the battle in Chapter 4: 'Betuwe' of Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). It was Traupel, in the absence of both Reinhold and Harmel from the Lent command post, who instructed the SS engineer officer Werner Baumgärtel (1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 and also only a 2nd Lieutenant like Traupel) on his own authority to blow the bridge. Reinhold only got permission to blow the bridge from Division (Harmel) after Traupel had told him he had ordered the bridge blown and Reinhold left to get retrospective permission, not knowing the explosives had failed. Reinhold was a mile up the road in a radio van at Bemmel, where it could contact Harmel's HQ at Doornenburg via code machine. Harmel was not at Lent, he was not fully aware of what the situation was, and that is why Kershaw's conclusions are out of date.
Kershaw's is an older book (1990) and you need to get more up to date sources with more detail to understand what happened and why.
3
-
@bigwoody4704 - the one gun was a StuG, not a field gun, and Kershaw didn't know the unit it belonged to. His research is out of date. In fact, he conflated Röstel's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 10 with the four StuGs in Nijmegen, he thought they were detached from his unit, but Röstel was detached to 7.Armee at Aachen with all 21 Jagdpanzer IV/L48 vehicles with him. Kershaw thought the Abteilung was in the MARKET GARDEN corridor near Valkenswaard, but those vehicles were a couple of StuGs and a Jagpanther belonging to Heeres schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 - an error he imported from Wilhelm Tieke's In the Firestorm of the Last Year of the War - II. SS-Panzerkorps with the 9. and 10. SS-Divisions "Hohenstaufen" and "Frundsberg" (1975). Tieke probably conflated Röstel's area of operations around Valkenburg near Aachen with Valkenswaard south of Eindhoven, but Kershaw didn't spot it or the fact the two units had different equipment. Kershaw even correctly refers to "assault guns" crossing the Nijmegen bridge into the city, which should have given him a clue if he knew his German armour. I guess he didn't know the difference.
So, on 21 September, apart from the lone StuG that had withdrawn from Nijmegen, further up the road along Stationsstraat between the main highway and the Ressen-Oosterhout station, were 11 repositioned heavy Flak guns, ex-French 75mm Schneider M.36 models in the anti-tank role, several supporting 2cm Flak guns, as well as 8.8cm shell casings and tracks left by at least two of the three Tiger I tanks from Panzer Kompanie Hummel that had crossed the Arnhem bridge the previous day.
The blocking line was located by reconnaissance conducted by Household Cavalry overnight 20/21 September, so they knew there was a defence line waiting for them and the evidence was found after the area had been cleared. The StuG had been withdrawing from Nijmegen, where 10.SS-Panzer had four from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, deployed with two in Hunnar Park in front of the highway bridge and the other two defending the rail bridge. One near the rail bridge was knocked out by a Sherman and the others withdrew to the north bank before the bridges were taken. Harmel thought the StuG withdrawing up the main road was the only thing between Nijmegen and Arnhem that night because it was the only asset from his division in that area and he didn't know about anything else on the island apart from a couple of marine cadet companies near the Arnhem bridge. All the other stuff belonged to von Tettau's Waal defense line, Hartung's Nijmegen garrison, or kampfgruppe Knaust that had crossed the Arnhem bridge.
I always recommend Kershaw's book as part of a foundation course with Cornelius Ryan's, because they both represent first cuts at getting the basic story down from the Allied and German points of view, but they are both flawed, both out of date, containing many errors and omissions. That's why any serious study of the subject has to be developed by more reading, and hanging on to old outdated texts because they suit your bogus argument is just part of your Stage 4 Montgomery Derangement Syndrome.
3
-
3
-
3
-
@stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85 - an airborne component to INFAUATE in September was requested at the time the British I Airborne Corps was committed to COMET, so it would have to be done by one or both of the US airborne divisions. I think this is why Brereton rejected it - he didn't want to see his Air Corps dropping American paratroopers into the North Sea or flooded areas of Walcheren, for the sake of helping Montgomery open Antwerp. The request was first made on 4 September, the same date that COMET planning started.
It's not actually why Wesel was rejected in favour of Arnhem since the decision was made by Montgomery and Browning overnight 3/4 September after Dempsey had retired for the night and his diary only records that he was informed in the morning the final decision was Arnhem. I don't think Brereton was involved at all at this point. Since both Browning and Dempsey both favoured Wesel, it must have been Montgomery's final decision and Sebasian Ritchie (Arnhem: Myth and Reality 2011, 2019) speculates that it may be because the Venlo-Wesel axis was close to the US XIX Corps (US 1st Army and US 12th Army Group) boundary, and he feared he would end up sharing a Rhine crossing at Wesel with the Americans.
The most likely factor in deciding on Arnhem over Wesel, and this is only my own speculation, is that the choice of a northwards advance to the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) coast presented an opportunity of a wide envelopment - which is a classic Montgomery response to the failure of a smaller envelopment. He did this after the Poles and Canadians met strong resistance at Falaise (from our old friends II.SS-Panzerkorps holding open the gap) and ordered an advance to the Seine in response. He also ordered Patton takes the coast road around Sicily to envelop German forces that were blocking 8th Army on the east coast, although naturally the Americans saw it as a race. Now at Antwerp, it had not been possible to cross the Albert canal in force and exploit the bridgehead at Merksem, so he was going for Arnhem and the Zuider Zee coast instead. This is just another example of strategic thinking influencing operational decisions.
On either Antwerp or Rhine crossing, Eisenhower made it clear after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's misleading book A Bridge Too Far in 1974 that “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015)
So, Eisenhower also saw the logic in striking for the Rhine before the Germans could fortify the river and canal defence lines, which were still forming, while the defences around the Scheldt estuary was already part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall coast defences for years. In fact, the Germans were combing out units from the coast defences in order to man the inland defence lines.
The decision to go for Arnhem with COMET for the primary objective of a Rhine crossing and secondary objective of envelopment of German forces in the western Netherlands, became a triple imperative on 9 September when the first V-2 rockets fell on London and the launch sites were determined to be on the Dutch coast, so the tertiary objective became the cutting of the V-2 supply lines to the Dutch coast. The decision to cancel COMET on 10 September was made because it was determined one airborne division was too weak to deal with the increasing opposition in the target area and MARKET was the replacement upgrade, now with the same primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives carried over from COMET.
Apart from my own speculative comments, I think that's a fair summary.
3
-
I can shed some light on this particular thread.
The Paras were not told that II.SS-Panzerkorps were in the Arnhem region because it was only known from 'Ultra' code intercepts, the existence of which could not be divulged below Army level (Dempsey) or anyone in the airborne dropped behind enemy lines for security reasons. I Airborne Corps were in receipt of intelligence reports from the Dutch resistance that SS panzer troops were billited in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel), but they were only able to identify vehicle insignia for the 'Hohenstaufen' (9.SS-Panzer-Division). The Dutch also identified Kasteel Ruurlo as a divisional HQ, but could not identify the division (it was actually the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg').
Dutch reports had to be treated with caution because the resistance had been penetrated by the Germans in some areas and false information fed to the Allies, so Major Brian Urquhart at Browning's Corps HQ was trying to verify the Dutch reports by aerial reconnaissance. The one photo he obtained showing German tanks in the Arnhem area (actually at a supply dump near Deelen airfield undergoing maintenance) was famously dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles. When the photo was found in a Dutch government archive in 2014, it was subjected to a study by the RAF's Air Historical Branch and found to show Mark III and early model Mark IV tanks, ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. Browning's judgement was therefore correct.
In fact, we now know the only unit in the Netherlands with such old tanks was the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment based in Utrecht for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division that was currently fighting in Poland. In early September the regiment was mobilised by the 'Valkyrie' Plan to mobilise the Reserve Army and the three Abteilung (grenadier, panzergrenadier, and artillerie) were sent to the front in Belgium. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie in Harderwijk on the Ijsselmeer coast were ordered on 7 September south to Eindhoven to join the II.Abteilung, and only three tanks completed the journey without breaking down. They were destroyed by the Guards at Hechtel in Belgium on 12 September, along with most of the II.Abteilung. The broken down vehicles had been caught by RAF reconnaissance Spitfire on the same day near Deelen undergoing repair, and this was the image shown to Browning. Having dismissed them as a threat to the British Airborne at Arnhem, on the day of the landings they were actually camped at Wolfswinkel, just north of the Son bridge in a reserve position for the Wilhelmina canal defence line, and directly across the road from the 506th PIR's drop zone on Sonsche Heide. They attempted to fire on the drop zone and were immediately attacked by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Two Mark III tanks escaped and were sighted at St Oedenrode, Veghel, and eventually bumped the 504th's roadblock at Grave, where the lead tank caused a few casualties (troopers came out of their foxholes thinking they were British and realised their mistake when the tank opened fire). After turning around and escaping, both tanks disappeared.
The airborne formations could not therefore be told II.SS-Panzerkorps were in the Arnhem area, because the only source not classified Ultra was unconfirmed, but the anti-tank units sent to Arnhem were given a sanitised steer to expect "heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day", including Panther and Tiger tanks, which is a coded signal to expect a panzer-division and corps heavy tank battalion. This is from research by Nigel Simpson et al in a series of books on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem, Troop volumes A-Z (2020-2022). The Airborne's experience was that the heavy armoured counter-attacks did not start on the first day, but took several days to build up as reinforcements from Germany arrived. SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 did have three Panther tanks hidden under trees on the Heijenoordseweg in the western outskirts of Arnhem, and two of them were dispatched by B Company 3rd Parachute Battalion with a Gammon bomb and a PIAT on 19 September. The third survived to take part in the siege of the Oosterbeek perimeter, where CANLOAN officer Leo Heaps of 1st Parachute Battalion said he helped a PIAT team stalk a Panther tank in a wood that menaced the perimeter, so it makes sense to me that this might be Kampfgruppe Harder's remaining Panther. The anti-tank guns were more than adequate in number and the Germans were wary of getting into their lines of fire, so 1st Airborne ran out of PIAT ammunition trying to stalk them and even at the bridge the 6-pounders still had unused rounds when the PIAT and small arms ammunition ran out and the men attempting to break out were captured. There were five 6-pounders at the bridge (one gun from C Troop got there by missing the 3rd Para RV on the LZ to help some Hamilcar glider crash victims and the Battery CO told them to follow his HQ behind Frost's battalion and Brigade HQ to the bridge), but only two were in positions for action against SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 coming across the bridge from the south on 18 September, and they did most of the damage to the German vehicles rather than PIATs. The paras suffered few casualties in the engagement that practically destroyed 3.Kompanie of Gräbner's unit and got himself killed as well.
The Hollywood film, for political reasons to show the airborne troops as virtually defenceless against tanks, does not show a single airborne anti-tank gun deployed or in action. You only glimpse one wrecked 6-pounder, on its side, at the end with the wounded left behind at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek, and that gun has a front carriage shield - obviously not the Mark III airborne version modified to fit into a glider. It should also be noted that the Airlanding battalions did not double their 6-pounder establishment, they always had 8 guns (2 platoons) in their support companies (WE I/239/2 effective 12 March 1943), so with four rifle companies they were usually allocated two guns per company.
The whole rationale behind upgrading COMET to MARKET was that by adding the two American divisions to hold the corridor, the 1st Airborne Division and the Poles could concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun establishments, where the armoured threat was considered greater. At one point there was a plan to have the 101st land at Arnhem and the 1st Airborne at Nijmegen, because of the rumoured threat of tanks in the Reichswald, but in the end the assignments were switched so the 1st Airborne went to the location where at least some Dutch reports were more certain. The 101st and 82nd were later switched to deconflict the air traffic, since the 101st was located at more southerly airfields in England. Gavin was given a steer that there might be "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen and a tank depot behind the Reichswald near Kleve - so this was the sanitised warning stemming from the fact that neither Ultra or the Dutch had precisely located the Frundsberg Division.
TIKs comment at 12:00 I don't really understand - it's not very specific. Browning's decision to move his Corps HQ transport from 2nd to 1st airlift was a late change and it bumped Z Troop (6-pounders for 1st Airborne Division HQ protection) and the second line ammunition Jeeps and trailers to the 2nd lift, but as it turned out, the guns and ammunition were not needed on the first day. The only impact this change did make was that all of the HE (High Explosive) scale for the 6-pounders were in each Troop's second line trailer, and they couldn't now get to the bridge. Some of the AT troops at the bridge said that HE shells might have been useful there on soft targets if they had them, and would have supplemented the HE PIAT bombs the Paras had, but we're not talking about a major game-changing impact here that would have changed the course of the battle. Urquhart argued for more gliders so he could receive a complete transport of his support units, but there were no more available tugs and Browning seemed rightly concerned about the critical Nijmegen battle and wanted to be there.
2
-
A number of people crossed the Rijn during the battle in both directions. Some glider passengers that came down short on the Nijmegen 'island' due to early tow cable release were able to use the ferry at Driel to cross the river and join their units in the division, including a Jeep and 6-pounder anti-tank gun combination.
Some who crossed in the opposite direction included a Royal Engineers Captain from the Division CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) section by Jeep, using the same ferry in order to make contact with XXX Corps, but due to German patrols had to abandon the Jeep and complete the journey to the American bridgehead at Nijmegen on foot.
After the Polish Parachute Brigade landed at Driel on 21 September, the Driel ferry had unfortunately just been scuttled by the Dutch ferryman, because he feared the Germans would soon secure it, so further crossings were made by swimmers or some by inflatable dinghy. Officially, the Polish Brigade's Engineer Company had no boats, but before take-off in England they had 'acquired' six RAF inflatable two-man dinghies, but these were of limited use on the river. One of the swimmers was the Polish liaison officer to 1st Airborne Division, probably the man you're thinking of, and also the 1st Airborne CRE himself, Lt Col Eddie Myers, also swam the Rijn to contact the Poles, I think he accompanied the Polish liaison officer if I recall correctly.
2
-
@raybarry4307 - if the point you are making is that the airborne's requirements were undermined by the air force commanders, you are correct, and that is indeed one of the main reasons why the operation failed because the compromises removed a lot of the flexibility and redundancy in the original concept and created the situation where evrything would have to go right or the operation would fail. So the failure was the result of a series of planning compromises, and then a command failure in one regiment on D-Day was the fatal compromise that broke the operation.
The reason all of this happened, or was allowed to happen, was because of the nature of the Anglo-American alliance. The Americans would not submit to British control, so no senior British commander could compel an American officer of lower rank, or vice versa. The alliance was co-operative, but at every level, a British commander has an American claiming seniority on the grounds of having more troops committed all the way up to Roosevelt, so where does the buck actually stop? Montgomery actually outranked Eisenhower in both grade and seniority when in the same grade, but the actual command arrangement was more political. Browning was also senior in grade to Brereton, but was Brereton's deputy for political reasons.
Browning could not order Gavin to drop a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge, unless supported by Brereton. Neither could Montgomery intervene to overrule Brereton and Williams' removal of the glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges. If he did, it would have ignited a row that would probably have involved Eisenhower and would most likely result (and I accept this is speculative) in Brereton refusing to proceed with the operation and Montgomery would be forced to cancel it.
A good example of a precedent is Montgomery had requested an airborne operation on Walcheren island to assist the Canadians in clearing the Scheldt approaches to Antwerp in the same timeframe as the British/Polish COMET operation under Browning's British I Airborne Corps was being planned (first week of September), so it would have to involve Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps and one or two of the US Airborne divisions. Brereton refused this operation, arguing it was suicidal because he feared his own air corps would be mis-dropping American paratroops into the North Sea and drown them and because the island was well defended with flak, so Brereton could refuse Montgomery and Eisenhower did not force the issue.
If Eisenhower had backed Montgomery and Browning over MARKET, it would be against both Brereton and Williams, and probably Gavin and Ridgway as well. (Ridgway had no role in MARKET, but his XVIII Corps staff in England were involved in organising the resupply airlifts).
Sorry about the length of the response (both of them!), but I think you have to get into the weeds to understand all the issues. About two weeks of history were compressed into 2 hours and 56 minutes of the Hollywood film, and it was further compromised by not being a totally honest account made for the American market. I wanted to disabuse you of the notion the RAF compromised the operation in any way. They were actually very co-operative for the most part, particularly in supporting the COMET glider coup de main solution to the lack of suitable drop zones near the bridge targets, but their influence was severely limited by the allied command structure once the plan evolved into operation MARKET and they were removed by the USAAF officers.
I think this is where Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis is quite helpful. He is an American military historian, but he studied for his PhD at Cranfield's College of Defence Technology here in the UK. His thesis on allied operational command in the MARKET GARDEN campaign, which you can download for free online, has a few technical errors in it, but it mainly deals with this issue of command and control.
2
-
@johnlucas8479 - you haven't understood the relationship. No commander in one allied army could order a subordinate in another allied army to put his troops in harm's way if he doesn't agree with it. That is why Gavin was able to discard Browning's idea of dropping a battalion on the Nijmegen bridge. Browning was able to reject Gavin's planned second attempt on the bridge because that did not compel Gavin to put his troops in harm's way - quite the reverse, he was sparing them by rejecting an operation and opted instead to have the 508th PIR remain defensive on the Groesbeek ridge until armoured support arrived - which was a point missing in the Buckingham quote ("vacillated" sounds like Buckingham's biased personal opinion to me).
On your other examples in Italy etc., can you show any example of a British commander ordering an American subordinate to put his troops in harm's way and the American officer is not able to refuse the order? Or the reverse? Remember, a refusal of an order is a disciplinary matter only if the officers are in the same army, but the rule does not apply if it involves a British superior and an American subordinate, or American superior and a British subordinate.
Modern example I absolutely love: British pop singer James Blunt was previously a Captain in the Household Cavalry during the NATO mission in Kosovo (former Yugoslavia) in 1999, and claims he prevented World War III by refusing an order from an American General to attack a Russian force that had occupied Pristina airfield without agreement from NATO -
Although US general Wesley Clark had issued a command to "reach the airfield and take a hold of it", the Russians had arrived there first. "We had 200 Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively," Blunt recalled. "The direct command [that] came in from General Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as 'destroy' came down the radio."
"Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III', and told us why don't we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead."
"And after a couple of days the Russians there said: 'Hang on we have no food and no water. Can we share the airfield with you?'."
If Gen Jackson had not blocked the order from Gen Clark, who as Nato Supreme Commander Europe was his superior officer, Blunt said he would still have declined to follow it, even at the risk of a court martial.
(Sources: BBC News 14 November 2010, The Guardian 15 November 2010)
- Note that Blunt was in danger of court-martial only from his own British General Mike Jackson if Jackson had confirmed Clark's orders instead of refusing them. Clark could do nothing if a British Captain refused his orders, and neither could he do anything when his deputy in the NATO mission, British General Mike Jackson, did in fact refuse them.
This point is also central to refuting the whole disingenuous argument that British commanders were to blame for the failure of MARKET GARDEN. I have demonstrated many times in comments that Browning in particular had done everthing he could to ensure the success of the operation, but was frustrated at every turn by American commanders Brereton, Williams, and Gavin, compromising the planning of the operation, and Browning was powerless to do anything about it. If Browning had escalated his objections to Montgomery, Montgomery could have insisted Brereton land troops closer to the bridges (he later wrote he regretted not doing this), but this inevitably would have caused a row with the Americans and I predict Brereton would have refused on the same grounds he refused Montgomery's request for an airborne operation on Walcheren. Brereton would have to be overruled by Eisenhower to compel him, and I doubt Ike would have done this.
2
-
2
-
2
-
@johnlucas8479 - I did come across that when reading about Brereton. He was certainly a keen proponent of the "air weapon" - a term used by his supporters in Washington concerned with dominating the post-war strategic environment. The problem with Brereton was that he was a pilot by training and not a soldier, and that bias was betrayed by his actions as commander of 1st Allied Airborne Army, putting the safety and needs of his aircrews before the needs of the airborne troops he was supposed to be delivering to the objective.
There's not much point in launching an airborne operation if you cannot or will not deliver the troops to their objectives, a point Browning understood when he solved the RAF's objections to drop zones near the COMET objectives by using the glider coup de main assaults that were so successful in Normandy. Browning may not have passed the parachute course, although he did qualify as a glider pilot, but once on the ground the airborne trooper is basically an infantryman and that was Browning's background and experience going back to WW1.
The thing about Browning is that I quite happily accepted the criticism of him in A Bridge Too Far when that was my only source on the operation in 1977, but the remarkable thing is that my view of him changed radically when new information became available and his decisions started to make a lot of sense. When the missing photo of the German tanks near Arnhem emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2014, and both the vehicles and the owner were identified, it was seen that his decision made a lot of sense. His decision to advance the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek, often dismissed as an 'ego trip', should also be seen in light of his attempts to ensure the Nijmegen bridge was secured as a priority by coup de main, and when that failed, by asking Gavin to drop a battalion on the bridge and was frustrated again. He was obviously concerned about Nijmegen and wanted to be on the ground from the 1st lift, especially since the 2nd was now deleted from the evening of D-Day by Brereton and Williams and scheduled on D+1, in order to try and influence events once on the ground. On closer inspection, his decisions are now clearly on the money, and the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan is at fault, not Browning.
Quick search on the interweb reveals that the only airborne operations actually launched in WW1, right at the end in 1918, were by the Italian Arditi (special forces), and they were five operations dropping a lone individual behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. The plane was flown by an RAF pilot with a Canadian observer.
2
-
@johnlucas8479 - you said - "Your problem is you cannot see the difference between military discipline which I agree do not cross national boundaries and operation orders given by a superior commander to a subordinate regardless of nationality." - what's the difference? If the 'orders' are not enforceable by military law then the 'orders' can only amount to a request in a cooperative alliance.
You said - "Browning as Gavin superior could have ordered Gavin to drop a Battalion north of the Waal. If Gavin refused the order Browning could have raise the matter up with either Ridgeway or Brereton both could have discipline Gavin." - exactly! Browning's order was not enforceable if Gavin refuses it. It would have to be backed by a superior officer in Gavin's own US Army chain of command, either Brereton, Ridgway, or even Eisenhower if need be. I have already dealt with that.
Brereton was clearly not minded to support Browning - they were already at odds over the whole question of delivering the troops close to the bridge targets (and while we're on the subject - this is all evidence Browning clearly prioritised the Nijmegen bridge), and any strong objection to the point of resigning would bring Brereton's LINNET II scenario into play - replacing Browning with Ridgway. What Browning was hoping for was Gavin's support in dropping the battalion on the bridge and hope Brereton or Williams are not minded to overrule Gavin by denying it. Tucker insisted on a company drop zone south of Grave and Gavin granted it, obviously without objection from Brereton and Williams.
You said - "There is no doubt that Boy explicitly instructed Gavin, at a divisional commanders’ conference on 14 September, not to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge until he had firmly established control of the Groesbeek Heights." - Since the heights are between the drop zone and the bridge, this makes perfect sense.
From McManus (September Hope, 2012) we have the quote from Browning - "Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” Then McManus, after his perfect analysis of the bridge versus ridge debate and conclcuded both were the priority and both Gavin and Browning were in agreement on this point, goes on to say:
'General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.'
This backs up Gavin's account to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover in his 17 July 1945 letter:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
Gavin confirms this in his 1967 interview with A Bridge Too Far (1974) author Cornelius Ryan:
'Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.'
And Ryan goes on to note in the interview:
'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
So, the final Corps briefing, where Browning cautions Gavin to secure the heights as well as the Nijmegen and Grave bridges, was 16 September, because the previous day's Divisional briefing was 15 September in which Gavin had already instructed Lindquist "about 48 hours prior to take-off" to send 1st Battalion directly to the bridge. These obviously supercede any meeting on 14 September, and the first Field Orders issued on 13 September that Lindquist in particular relies apon. The idea the bridge had lower priority to the heights was pre-15 September Divisional briefing, and then again on 18 September after the first attempt on the bridge had already failed Browning rejected Gavin's proposal to try again. These get incorrectly conflated with D-Day - 17 September, and the pre-flight instructions and expectations. It's not rocket science - you just have to understand there's a time dimension to take into account of your situational awareness as well.
The whole of the Groesbeek heights had been secured when Lindquist failed to order 1st Battalion to move into the city, and ordered Weaver's recon patrol instead. 1st Battalion were deployed all along the ridge line and were digging-in. Gavin was as "mad" as Chet Graham (the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ) had ever seen him at hearing his report that Lindquist was not moving on the bridge and they both went to the 508th CP to "get him moving." Gavin would not have been so "mad" if Lindquist's defensive stance was what Gavin had intended. It was because it took two hours to even get A Company out of their positions and to the IP (Initial Point) at the Krayenhoff barracks, where they moved on at 2200 hrs without waiting for B Company to catch up, that the whole movement was far too late. The SS panzer troops were occupying the city at around the same time Lindquist finally ordered Warren to move his battalion, and only then because he had just received Gavin's Boot up his arse (Put Us Down In Hell, Nordyke 2012). We've been all through this already.
You said - "You also have Col Frost comments" - I don't think Frost had read Poulussen (2011), McManus (2012), or Nordyke (2012), on account of the fact Frost passed away in 1993. Funnily enough, I hadn't read these books in 1993 either! So I wasn't any the wiser than Frost was. The time dimension again!
You said - "No publish source I have read on the subject mention Browning or British ordering or requesting the drop." - That's unworthy of you. It's in Cornelius Ryan's Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University). Ryan didn't publish it in his book, I would suggest, because he wanted to put the British in the worst possible light and keep Gavin out of it. Most of Ryan's errors are errors of ommission. We've had to wait 37 years for someone to dig into this (Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) and two more books the following year (McManus and Nordyke, 2012) to back it up.
You said - "If Browning or British only requested or wanted a drop north of the Waal River then Gavin refusal after consideration would not have raise a disciplinary matter under Military Law only a direct order refusal." - Explain the difference! I think you're dancing on the head of a pin here. If an order was not legally enforceable, it could not be a disciplinary matter under military law, so it could only be a request in the first place. Browning was only doing what he could and no more. The difference between Browning in MARKET GARDEN and Wesley Clark in Kosovo was that Browning was a gentleman who understood the limits of his authority and Clark was an arrogant prick who overstepped his authority. I think Clark was removed or sidelined after this incident in 1999, and a good thing too.
You said - "Yet he refused Gavin request to attack the bridge on the 18th" - yes, and it was because Browning judged that it would be better to wait until XXX Corps arrived to provide armoured support to overcome the German armoured defence in Nijmegen. This is another instance when Browning's judgement was proven correct, because if the 2nd/505th could not break the German defence in frontal attacks with the Grenadier Guards in support on 19 September, then it stands to reason that they would not have been able to do it without armoured support on the 18th. A river assault crossing was then deemed necessary to unhinge the defence. If Gavin's and Browning's views had been the reverse and Browning wanted Gavin to make a second attempt on the bridge on 18 September, and Gavin refused the order/request (however it was couched), Browning could not force the matter.
2
-
@ToolTimeTabor - part of the problem is that many of the official documents belonging to the 508th are missing from the Army's records, which may be convenient for some and also remarkable because Lindquist was apparently a gifted administrator who (in Gavin's words to Cornelius Ryan) produced documentaion you wouldn't believe. I think the Field Order No.1 dated 13 September still exists because it supports Lindquist and undermines Graham's eyewitness version of events. McManus also notes that Jack Norton, the Division G-3, was also present at the divisional briefing and corroborates Chet Graham's telling of events in Nordyke.
So you get a more complete picture if you combine Nordyke's and McManus' books, both published in 2012, so they don't rely on each other. Just a note that the two authors differ in that Nordyke presents his first hand accounts, both versions if they differ (Warren and Delamater's accounts vary slightly), but doesn't offer any opinion of his own, preferring to let the reader make up their own mind. McManus on the other hand, while just as diligent in his research as Nordyke and equally helpful, then goes and offers the irrational opinion that it was all Montgomery's fault because it was his idea in the first place. I don't think that's very professional - it strikes me as irrational and emotional and he doesn't present any argument for it.
My view is that Gavin decided to take much of the responsibility on himself, rather than throw a subordinate officer under the bus. That would be the honorable thing to do, and that's in character with what we know about James Gavin as a man. That is why I think Lindquist was at fault, but Gavin was responsible as his supervisor and the author of the divisional plan assigning the 508th to the Nijmegen mission. It's consistent with his reaction to Chet Graham's delivery of the message and his insistence on his own division making the river assault crossing instead of allowing XXX Corp's contingency plan of 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division being used and letting the British get on with it.
Gavin seems to have muddied the waters post-war to take that responsibility for the 508th's priorities and even enlisted Browning's assistance in doing so. The recent books have been published after most of the key people have passed on (only Chet Graham passed later in 2015), and I think that's significant. If the true story can't be told now, then when?
Securing the Groesbeek ridge line at De Hut (2nd Battalion objective), De Ploeg (1st) and Berg-en-Dal (3rd) does not protect the drop zones directly. This line was the line of the scarp slope facing Nijmegen, while the dip slope is barely noticeable back towards the drop zones and Groesbeek. It blocks the three main roads south out of Nijmegen, and this was the intent expressed in the field orders. The regiment were dug-in against a possible counter-attack from the north out of Nijmegen. Only D Company remained on the DZ to clear it (as Lindquist referenced in his message to Gavin) of supply canisters and assist the S-4 and his small staff that arrived by parachute to establish the regmental supply dump at Voxhil farm. If you have the contemporary US GSGS AMS map 12-NW-Groesbeek, it's in grid square 7657.
The potential threat from the Reichswald was mostly in the 505th PIR's sector of the division perimeter and 1st and 3rd Battalions were deployed facing the Reichswald. Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th was on Hill 81.8 (7355) in division reserve and Gavin also had the parachute companies of the Engineer Battalion with him around his CP (7354). When D Company at Voxhil was threatened with being overrun on 18 September, 1/508th was withdrawn from its belated attempt to take the bridge in Nijmegen. It would have been odd if this unit was used if they were defending the bridge and reserves not taken from elsewhere.
I urge you to read Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012), and I mean the whole book from the beginning, rather than just the key chapters on Market Garden. Lindquist's role in Normandy informs his subsequent behaviour in Market Garden.
2
-
@Jsmith2024 - A Bridge Too Far bugs me more and more every day, as I learn more details about the campaign. When I first read the book in 1977, a few months before seeing the film at the cinema, I completely accepted the narrative that it was another Gallipoli-style disaster without question. But I was fascinated by the story and kept reading about it for the next 45 years.
The Enigma code breaking effort was not declassified until 1975 and FW Winterbotham's book, The Ultra Secret, which I read when it was first published in paperback. At the time my family home was near Cheltenham, the home of GCHQ and the successor to the Bletchley Park GC&CS (Government Code & Cypher School) organisation that broke Enigma, so it was a bit of local interest as well as wartime history. I have my father's copy of Behind The Enigma - The Authorised History Of GCHQ by John Ferris on loan with me, but heaven knows when I'll get around to reading it - it's quite a heavy hardback!
Taking a quick look at it - there's only a chapter on the Second World War as a whole, and no mention of Arnhem or Market Garden at all. On D-Day and the following campaign, it does say success was greatest on the strategic level, on issues such as the number of enemy formations. Our estimates of enemy Divisional strengths was reduced to an error factor of 10% by Ultra. The Germans were still over-estimating our strengths by 200%. At the tactical level - how many tanks the units had, it was more difficult, and tank counting was actually worse than in 1941. This was a limitation of Ultra. Ultra didn't tell us that 352nd Infanterie-Division had moved into the Omaha Beach sector just before D-Day, for instance. So you can understand that Ultra did not tell us everything we wanted to know about II.SS-Panzerkorps in Holland.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@thevillaaston7811 - this is a bit disinegnuous of Gavin since he was writing this after the fact and not before the operation. MacDonald's official history was based on his interviews and the information collected by Captain Westover on the US Army Historical staff. Since Lindquist denied in his interview with Westover being given an order to move on the bridge until after he was in position (on the Groesbeek ridge), Gavin's letter to Westover in which he said he instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge was disregarded, since Lindquist would not confirm it. For that apparent reason, the priority of taking the bridge as well as the ridge is not in MacDonald's official history.
American historian John C. McManus found a witness to the final divisional briefing in Lt. Col. Jack Norton (the Division G-3 Operations Officer) and has conducted what I think is a very good analysis of the whole bridge versus ridge priority debate and has come to the correct conclusion that Gavin wanted both secured at the same time, and he and Browning were of one mind on this. Browning made at least two attempts to have the bridge secured by coup de main, but was frustrated in this by Brereton and then Gavin, but at least if all the 508th's objectives were attacked at the same time from the main Drop Zone then the plan at Nijmegen and the whole operation should have, could have, worked successfully.
McManus' account (September Hope, 2012) ties in with 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental history of the 508th (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012), who has another witness to the same briefing in 508th liaison officer to Division HQ, Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, who also had to relay Lindquist's message to Gavin he was not sending a battalion to the bridge until he had cleared the DZ, and then went with Gavin back to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving.
The US Army Official History had not interviewed enough people to get to the true story, which seems only to have emerged since RG Poulussen started investigating this aspect of MARKET GARDEN for his book Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and was followed by McManus and Nordyke in the next year with their books.
I find it extraordinary that Gavin would claim physical possession of the bridge would be "worthless" without the high ground, and it's simply not true that the high ground dominated all the terrain around it. It actually only dominates the polder to the east from the heights at Berg-en-Dal (where 3/508th observed German troops from SS-Division zV headquarters fleeing into Germany), while the ridge to the west is heavily wooded and has a more gradual slope northwards down into the urban area of Nijmegen - it is too flat and too wooded to overlook the city. It looks dominant on the topographical map, but not when you are on it, and anyone can check this from anywhere in the world with an internet connection by using Google Street View. I challenge anyone to get observation on the Nijmegen bridges from anywhere on the Groesbeek ridge and post the coordinates on this thread.
If Gavin's logic was correct, then Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion would not be able to hold the north end of Arnhem bridge for four days against an SS-Panzerkorps without Dobie's 1st Parachute Battalion succeeding in their mission of holding the high ground to the north? Obviously nonsense, since Frost did what he did and Dobie's battalion was destroyed abandoning the high ground and trying to reinforce him. A battalion of the 508th on Nijmegen bridge should have been able to hold it even with the Germans on the Groesbeek ridge. Gavin's airhead might have been in serious trouble, but the bridge would be his long enough for XXX Corps to get to him. This is clearly the opinion of an American historian (McManus op cit, 2012), and I commend his analysis. Gavin's opinion after the fact as related to Cornelius Ryan and in MacDonald, were to cover Lindquist's and his own failure.
2
-
@thevillaaston7811 - his Arnhem book was published in 2018 and did not address any of the issues in the 82nd Airborne disclosed by Gavin himself in his 1967 interview with Irish journalist Cornelius Ryan (and not included in A Bridge To Far), in Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost at Nijmegen (2011), or American historian John McManus' September Hope (2012) and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). He had plenty of time to read these books and address the findings, but chose to ignore them and recycle the old narrative established by Ryan instead. It's hard to respect a country that enjoys having smoke blown up its collective arse by the likes of Ryan and Beevor, but they just seem to just lap it up. It's a lack of critical thinking.
Beevor's service in the British Army was indeed short and sweet, serving in the 11th Hussars from about the time they became the first unit to receive the Chieftain main battle tank in Germany, and then the regiment was amalgamated with 10th Royal Hussars (Prince of Wales's Own) to form the Royal Hussars in 1969. Beevor resigned his commission in 1970, and as you say missed most of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland.
I see that other notable members of the 11th Hussars include Harry Flashman - a fictional character from Tom Brown's School Days (1857) by Thomas Hughes and whose adventures continued in the series of books known as The Flashman Papers by the Scottish novelist George MacDonald Fraser. Flashman was a detestable character, a Rugby School bully in Tom Brown's School Days and described by Fraser in later life in the British Army as "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and, oh yes, a toady." In the Flashman Papers – which are purported to have been written by Flashman and discovered only after his death – he describes his own dishonourable conduct with complete candour. Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who often runs away from danger. Nevertheless, through a combination of luck and cunning, he usually ends each volume acclaimed as a hero. Flashman was played by Malcolm McDowell in the Richard Lester 1975 film Royal Flash. (Harry Flashman, Wiki)
I see Beevor as someone who wanted desperately to be Harry Flashman, but lacked the luck and cunning to become a hero. Except in America, of course...
Flashman was one of three favourite topics my school history teacher (who was also the head of department) always digressed into when he got bored with teaching us Bismarck, or whatever he was supposed to be doing. His other two favourites were Captain Nolan's death as portrayed by actor David Hemmings in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), and the SAS assault on the Iranian embassy in Princes Gate, London 1980.
2
-
2
-
@refuge42 - I think the issue of the Groesbeek ridge was that it was a terrain feature between the drop zones and the city of Nijmegen. For the 508th, assigned to the Nijmegen mission, the ridge was an initial objective for all three battalions - minus D Company, which was clearing the drop zone of containers and assisting the Regiment S-4 Supply Officer to establish a dump at Voxhill farm. I believe De Ploeg (1st Battalion initial objective) was achieved by 1730 hrs, recon patrols reporting no opposition perhaps earlier, and we have a more precise time of 1830 hrs (in Nordyke 2012) for the regiment HQ that followed them, but exact timings are unclear on certain points.
There's mounting evidence that Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing - in his letter to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover (17 July 1945) he said - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
48 hours prior to take-off was Friday 15 September, two days after the first orders were issued on 13 September, and either Lindquist updated his Field Order No.1 and issue a revised plan in accordance with Gavin's verbal instruction (apparently many 508th records are 'missing'), or he didn't for some reason and stuck to his original plan of having 1st Battalion dig-in on the ridge at De Ploeg and send a pre-arranged recon patrol based on Lt Weaver's 3rd platoon of C Company. When Lt Col Shields Warren (CO 1st Battalion) was eventually told to move the battalion into Nijmegen at 2000 hrs on D-Day, he was surprised by the order, suggesting Lindquist did not update his own Field Orders on 15 September.
Gavin confirmed his instruction to Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far:
'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army.'
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) - my square brackets because of the errors.
This I think is where the narrative gets distorted. Gavin did not prioritise the Groesbeek heights over the Nijmegen bridge - that part is in Ryan's notes, but not in quotes, so he's not claiming Gavin specifically told him that. Ryan's notes go on to say - 'He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.' - How does Gavin know he has three days before the operation? Only Ryan knows that from hindsight, and it runs counter to the need for speed. Gavin would have no idea if XXX Corps would arrive in 3 hours or three weeks. I believe it was hoped the link-up with 82nd Airborne would be in one or two days - it was actually on D+2 (19 September), but about 43 hours 30 minutes elapsed time for the armoured cars (Household Cavalry) and 45 hours for the tanks (Grenadier Guards), so less than two days.
I don't think Ryan understood that Gavin secured his first priority with the 504th, his concern about the Reichswald with the 505th, and that left the 508th to secure the Groesbeek ridge and the Nijmegen bridge(s). For the 508th the Groesbeek ridge was their initial objective, so if it was occupied then a pitched battle for Nijmegen could be expected. If not, as was the case, then Gavin expected the 1st Battalion not to delay in going for the highway bridge in Nijmegen. This has been cleared up by John C McManus (September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, 2012) and Phil Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, 2012), who both have first hand witness accounts of the final briefing and Gavin's instruction to Lindquist (Division G-3 Ops officer Lt Col Jack Norton and 508th Liaison officer to Division HQ Capt Chet Graham respectively).
There's also a conflation between this pre-flight instruction and a proposal by Gavin on D+1 to have a second attempt at getting the Nijmegen bridge after the first failed (too late) attempt the previous night. Browning rejected the proposal, preferring they wait until the Guards arrived to provide armoured support. This often gets cited as evidence Browning prioritised the heights over the bridge, but this is nonsense. Browning was reacting to the tactical reality the Germans had reinforced the bridges in Nijmegen with SS panzer troops and all attempts at a coup de main had failed. Brereton had deleted Browning's proposed glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from the MARKET plan, and Gavin had discarded a British request (I presume Browning again) to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge, he told Cornelius Ryan because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. Gavin's own solution was his instruction to Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion from the drop zone without delay, but we know this failed to be understood by Lindquist. Browning and Gavin were of one mind on the objectives, but planning compromises and a miscommunication both contributed to the failure to secure the bridge while it was still undefended.
2
-
@refuge42 - I think the best analysis on the whole bridge versus ridge debate is in John C McManus' book, September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), and this extract from Chapter 3 'Foreboding' I think sums it up very well:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
2
-
2
-
@johnlucas8479 - that's the same document TIK tore apart in his response to @Clone Warrior in the video -
Gavin wasn't to blame? 'New' evidence on Operation Market Garden's failure? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3p6uWW19U
He pointed out that it was written after the operation (and after the war) on 23 October 1945, and contained the infamous line in the previous point:
II 1. General Browning directed General Gavin not to attempt seizure of NIJMEGEN Bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the BERG-EN-DAL high ground was firmly in our hands.
- The next paragraph is the one your quote comes from:
III All unit commanders present expressed deep concern for the air column in its daylight approach to the DZ in that flak losses could be extremely heavy. General Browning stated, in strictest confidence, that he was fully aware of the danger and was prepared to lose 33% of his forces getting in.
- If Browning actually said that in paragraph III, then I stand corrected he was referring to the whole force in terms of accepting 33% losses and not just the coup de main (which were probably long gone by the time of this briefing), which would think be much more risky. That scale of losses for the whole force - equivalent to a division - seems a bit extreme, considering how light they actually were on the first day, and did not even approach that level on the subsequent airlifts when the Germans knew they were coming and had brought in an additional Flak Brigade from Germany. Maybe he said this to assure everyone he had taken the flak into account, but didn't think it was realistics figure, or he didn't actually say it at all and the document's author was trying to make excuses after the failure of the operation.
My problem with this document is the same as TIK's - it was written by the G-3, Lieutenant Jack Norton, after the war, but another problem I have is that Norton himself was a witness to the final divisional briefing on 15 September in which Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist to go directly for the bridge, directly contradicting his October 1945 report. Norton is quoted in McManus (Chapter 3, September Hope, 2012):
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- Admittedly, it's not clear which quotes come from which individual, as Gavin, Norton, Lindquist and Shanley are all quoted, and McManus collects his sources together into footnote 8 listing the various sources, including 'Norton meeting notes, September 16, 1944, all in Ryan collection' - but does not give a box and folder number for Norton's notes. The notes do, however, indicate that Norton is a primary source for both the divisional briefing on 15 September that included Lindquist and the final Corps briefing on 16 September that included Browning, and it makes sense Gavin and Norton were present for both. So, Norton's post-war report document, which Gavin said in his covering letter to Cornelius Ryan he had not seen before, runs contrary to the contemporary recollections of those present on the Nijmegen bridge priority, including Norton! Like TIK, I don't think you can rely on this document.
2
-
2
-
2
-
There were upwards of 20 bridge targets in operation MARKET, of which a minimum of nine or ten were required to get XXX Corps to Arnhem, and then a number of crossings over the Ijssel were to be seized (but not necessarily intact) to form a basis for further operations into Germany. The critical failures were the failure to seize the Son bridge quickly - arguable this was a big ask since the Wilhelmina canal was the main defence line in this sector and was well-prepared with bridge demolitions and bridge commanders had standing orders, and perhaps the single biggest failure at Nijmegen, where the highway bridge was undefended in the first critical hours and no move was made to seize it despite Gavin's specific instruction to Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to move with speed.
TIK is actually incorrect to suggest Gavin de-prioritised the bridge in favour of other priorities, but he could have taken up a British suggestion of dropping a battalion on the northern end of the bridge or assign the more aggressive and experienced 505th to the Nijmegen mission - so in that sense he didn't ensure its quick seizure and thought his instruction to send the 1st Battalion directly from the DZ would be sufficient. He was let down by Lindquist, who was not a good field commander and had not perfomed well in Normandy.
Some of the bridges needed by XXX Corps had drop zones selected by Browning close to them and were then removed from the target list by Williams and Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army on the grounds of Flak or lack of transport aircraft: between Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges (by Williams because of Flak around Eindhoven) and a brigade drop zone at Elst (by Brereton for lack of aircraft). Brereton also decided on only a single sortie by the transport aircraft each day, pushing the second lift back to D+1 and the third lift outside the predictable weather window of two clear days, and this also pushed Browning's proposed dawn glider coup de main assaults on the three big bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave beyond their feasibility window as they were deemed too risky for a midday assault. These factors all contributed to a compromised airborne operation, and in turn led to the delayed ground advance because of the loss of the two key bridges, and the delay at Aalst meant a delayed linkup at Eindhoven and bridging equipment for the Son crossing could not be brought up for 24 hours.
The flanking VIII and XII Corps had their progress made more difficult by the lack of supplies promised by Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, who was lobbied by Bradley not to provide them) and without the benefit of airborne troops seizing bridges for them, so their slower progress and high casualty rates probably reflect the greater difficulty. The subsequent battles around Overloon and Woensdrecht involving very high casualties in much the same sort of Dutch terrain also speaks to the difficulty of fighting over this terrain.
I think the case has been made that where things went well with the airborne operation, casualties were light, and elsewhere were very heavy.
2
-
2
-
2
-
@thevillaaston7811 - no. I believe the origin of this story is from Lieutenant Rupert Mahaffey of the Irish Guards in Cornelius Ryan's book, of which I have digital searchable copy, so I was able to find the reference:
'Lieutenant Rupert Mahaffey of the Irish Guards remembers that an officer of the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade came to the Guards' mess for dinner shortly after the tanks were stopped at Elst. Looking around the table, the Dutch officer said, "You would have failed the examination." He explained that one of the problems in the Dutch Staff College examination dealt solely with the correct way to attack Arnhem from Nijmegen. There were two choices: a) attack up the main road; or but) drive up it for 1-2 miles, turn left, effect a crossing of the Rhine and come around in a flanking movement. "Those who chose to go straight up the road failed the examination," the officer said. "Those who turned left and then moved up to the river, passed." '
This Dutch officer may not have been aware that the Welsh Guards had also tried to advance through Oosterhout on the left flank, but this village was also part of the blocking line in a hedgehog position held by Schwappacher's V./SS-Artillerie-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Regiment, reinforced with tanks and infantry from Kampfgruppe Knaust (four companies from Panzergrenadier-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Bataillone 64, 161 and 4, with attached Panzer-Kompanie Mielke of Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Abteilung 11). The next day (22 Septeembr), a unit from 2nd Household Cavalry was able to slip past Oosterhout in the morning fog and make contact with the Polish Parachute Brigade at Driel.
I do recall reading about this in another book, where it was said that the exam was a Brigadier's exam, and if you passed you got the promotion and a brigade, but I can't find where I got that from. I thought Kershaw, which I also have in digital searchable form, but can't find the quote.
I don't see the point of not trying the main road. If nothing else, it would pin down the German line at Elst while other units flanked left, which is what happened. Britain has a staff college as well! Our Dutch friends just like to think they have a monopoly on unsuitable terrain. The original plan for MARKET GARDEN had taken terrain into account and the Guards were intended to stop at Nijmegen and the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division passed through to lead the XXX Corps advance to Arnhem, and then the Guards would take over again for the advance to their final deployment between Apeldoorn and Nunspeet.
The whole airborne debacle at Nijmegen threw the planned choreography out the window, as the Guards had to fight a major battle for the bridges in Nijmegen and the 43rd could not be brought through the resulting carnage in Nijmegen quickly enough, so they eventually went with resuming the advance with the only Guards unit available - the Irish Group. Welsh Guards had taken over defence of Grave to relieve the 504th PIR as Gavin's reserve for his river assault, and the Welsh Guards could not be freed up to support the Irish Guards' advance until relieved by the Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade, which was attached to 43rd Wessex. Gavin's insistence on using his own troops for the river assault crossing meant that the warning order for 43rd Wessex to move up and conduct the crossing with two brigades (operation BASIL) - for which they had been trained and equipped - never came, and they were languishing in the rear, mostly doing nothing.
2
-
2
-
2
-
Further to John's answer, there were problems with deconflicting 2nd Tactical Air Force (the close air support) based on airfields in Belgium and France, with the Transport Command traffic from England delivering the Airborne forces. There was a complex timetable of Airborne activity, three lifts over three days, delivering reinforcements and resupply, and the close air support from 2nd TAF had to be grounded while that was going on.
This timetable was compromised by the weather after the first day (which was perfect), such that the 2nd Lift was delayed by several hours. The 2nd TAF could have flown while the 2nd Lift was delayed, but the already complex air plan was not that flexible, so the 2nd TAF remained on the ground until the lift had been and gone, delayed from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. By that time, they had lost practically a whole day of close air support.
This is the picture I got from Sebastian Ritchie's book, Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011).
I thought I had a note of the weather reports over holland for the Market Garden period but I can't immediately put my hands on it, but as far as I can recall there were days when the weather was bad in England and clear on the continent and then the bad weather would move onto the continent and the weather would clear in England.
The Polish Parachute Brigade air movement in the 3rd Lift was badly disrupted. The glider component of the Polish Brigade, bringing their Anti-Tank Company Jeeps and 6-pounder guns, and a Supply Company with Jeeps and trailers, landed on LZ 'L'. This was a battlefield at the time, with the British 4th Parachute Brigade trying to withdraw from contact after several failed attempts to reach their high ground objective north of Arnhem. In the confusion, the British, Germans, and Poles were all shooting at each other, unable to identify friend from foe. Much of the Pole's equipment had to be abandoned. The airfields hosting the parachute elements of the Polish Brigade - the three Parachute Battalions and Brigade HQ, Signals, and Engineers - were still affected by fog and did not fly with their glider element. When the Polish Parachute element was finally given a go-ahead to fly on Day 5, a recall signal was sent due to bad weather reports over the continent, which was only received by the planes carrying the 1st Battalion, which duly turned around and flew back to England. The rest of the Brigade carried on and managed to locate the drop zone near Driel. Much was made of the fact the drop was opposed, but casualties were not as heavy as often suggested, and the reason the Brigade was under strength on the ground was because the 1st Battalion had failed to arrive. No one was aware of the recall, and the 1st Battalion's Mortar Platoon actually did arrive safely, although the Mortar Platoon from one of the other Battalions were missing, so they attached themselves as replacements. The 1st Battalion took off again on a later airlift (can't recall which day offhand) and dropped further south in the 82nd Airborne's area, and had to march north to rejoin the Brigade.
I think it's fair to say the whole story is always more complicated, and the difficulties faced by the greatest generation were greater than the armchair tacticians in the 21st Century claim. I've been reading on Market Garden for 45 years since reading Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far in 1977, and I'm still learning stuff every day. I'm currently reading a rare limited print run book I managed to get through a specialist book store - Freddie Gough's Specials At Arnhem: An Illustrated History Of The 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron by Robert Hilton (2017).
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
The British landing zones were as close as they could be without landing on the town, woods, or polder crossed with drainage ditches and power lines (people tend to ignore the latter - they just see open spaces on the map). The Polish drop zone on polder near the bridge was deemed safe only for the third lift, and assumed 1st Parachute Brigade controlled the area, dealt with the Flak positions, and cut the power lines crossing the drop zone by this time. The fact this didn't happen was one reason the Polish drop zone was moved to Driel.
After Operation Market had ended with the withdrawal of 1st Airborne Division on the night of 25/26th September, Operation Garden continued until 7th October. All efforts to push forward towards Arnhem with Guards Armoured, 43rd (Wessex) and 50th (Northumberland) Infantry Divisions, made little headway, with the capture of the town of Elst being the high water mark.
On the night of 5th October, the Germans launched a major counter-attack by II.SS-Panzerkorps across the Linge-Wettering canal that drains the 'island' between Arnhem and Nijmegen, and marked the front line, aimed at recapturing the Nijmegen bridges. The 10.SS, 9., and 116.Panzer-Divisions were under command, based on bridgeheads at Pannerden and Huissen ferries, and Arnhem bridge respectively. They were supported by diversionary attacks of battalion size launched by newly arrived XII.SS-Armeekorps, which had taken over units in the Division von Tettau fighting the British Airborne west of Arnhem. The diversions were launched across the Rijn from Kasteel Doorwerth (SS-Kampfgruppe Oelkers) and Renkum (SS-Kampfgruppe Hensmann).
The SS-Kampfruppe Hansmann attack is the one featured in Band Of Brothers episode 5 'Crossroads', and was repulsed by E/506th as shown in the episode. The 101st Airborne DIvision had been brought up by Montgomery in early October to occupy the western side of the Nijmegen 'island' so he could pull out 43rd (Wessex) Division in preparation for Operation Gatwick. This was a plan to strike southeast through the Reichswald towards the Rhine bridge at Emmerich. As part of the switch to Gatwick, the bridge at Arnhem was bombed on 7th October, offically ending Operation Garden.
Gatwick had to be postponed to the following year (when it became Operation Veritable) because the Germans still had a bridgehead west of the Maas at Venlo in the Peel marshes, and this was a thorn in Montgomery's side tying up VIII Corps (11th Armoured and 3rd Infantry Divisions). To free those Divisions up for Gatwick, he got the Army group boundary moved so that the American 7th Armored Division could take over the sector. So the battles around Overloon became a major development in an effort to eliminate the German Maas bridgehead.
All of this Market Garden epilogue was missing from Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far, because he knew he was dying of cancer and had to rush the book to publication unfinished.
2
-
2
-
TIK doesn't drill down to regimental level histories, so the closest he's got to the full story on Nijmegen is RG Poulussen's recommended Lost At Nijmegen (2011), but if you read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), or even American military historian John C McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), you'll see witness accounts that Gavin assigned Nijmegen to Colonel Lindquist of the 508th and instructed him to send his 1st Battalion (Shields Warren) directly to the Waal bridge without delay after landing, while his other two battalions were to secure the Groesbeek ridge to protect the landing zones from any German movement south from Nijmegen.
The problem was that Roy Lindquist was not a good field officer, and there's some parallels here with the well-known Easy/506th (101st Division) story of Captain Herbert Sobel getting removed from command of the Company after the Sergeants staged a mutiny refusing to serve under him, because they thought he would get them all killed on D-Day. The Sergeants were reduced in rank for the mutiny and Sobel was reassigned to a training school, but in the 508th there was no mutiny in training and gifted administrator Roy Lindquist did not perform well in the field in Normandy. In particular, a lot of men in 2nd Battalion got killed unnecessarily in an attack on Hill 95 (Saint Catherine) over open ground near La Haye in Normandy on 4 July, but he was not removed from command, probably because the Regiment Executive Officer had already been court-martialled out of the Airborne for being combat ineffective on D-Day and the XO from the 505th was reassigned as a replacement to the 508th to shake things up over there and was himself badly wounded while acting 2nd Battalion CO just before the Hill 95 attack.
Lindquist was still in place for operation MARKET, although Gavin told A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan that neither he nor Matthew Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight and would not promote him. In fact, Gavin said Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn't really promote Tucker, Billingslea, or Ekman over him, as Lindquist was the senior Colonel in the Division. Ryan also observed in his interview notes that Gavin may have had the same problem, as he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August, and this was why Gavin was running himself ragged doing jobs during MARKET. The interview is online in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University, box 101, folder 10.
Gavin's priorities when drawing up his divisional plan for MARKET was to secure his supply line to 2nd Army with his best regiment (Tucker's 504th PIR), and he was concerned about a massive enemy reaction coming out of the Reichswald on the German border and assigned his other most aggressive and experienced regiment (Eckman's 505th PIR) to protect his flank in that sector. Gavin's glider infantry (Billingslea's 325th GIR) were a reinforcement force in US Airborne doctrine and slated to arrive in the 3rd lift, so the critical Nijmegen mission drew the short straw of Lindquist's 508th PIR on only its second combat operation. Gavin thought that giving Lindquist a clear instruction to move with speed, and stood with him over a map to show him the exact route he wanted the 1st Battalion to take to the bridge, would be sufficient.
Lindquist failed to interpret his instructions correctly, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives on the Gresbeek ridge first, before sending a large force to the bridge. When Gavin found out the battalion wasn't moving, he was as "mad" as the 508th liaison offcier had ever seen him and they went by Jeep to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving (this is only detailed in Nordyke, 2012), but it was too late. At 8:00 PM, Shields Warren received an order he was not expecting to get this bridge, and it took two hours to get the battalion out of its extended line along the ridge, assembled on the road and to the initial point. By this time it was far too late and II.SS-Panzerkorps had already sent units into the otherwise deserted city and reinforced the handful of elderly bridge guards.
So, Gavin had several jobs to be fair, and he had three complete parachute regiments - nine battalions - with which to play with, and two were in reserve roles (3/504th and 2/505th) on D-Day. Lindquist had two jobs with three battalions at his disposal, but was not an officer that could grasp the necessity for speed and getting both objectives secured as quickly as possible.
As for Gavin using his own troops for the river assault crossing, I think this is clearly Gavin motivated to rescue his own Division's reputation after the debacle of D-Day, so he insisted on using his own troops for the operation despite not being trained or equipped for assault crossings, and the default plan for the secenario was for British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to conduct such operations. The 43rd had a battalion in each of two brigades fully mobilised in DUKW amphibious trucks, had trained for river assaults in England, and successfully conducted such an operation over the Seine at Vernon in August. The default plans for an assault over the Waal at Nijmegen in the scenario of the bridges being intact and held by the enemy, were for a one brigade operation (BESSIE), or two brigades (BASIL), and the Division was put on a warning order for BASIL as soon as contact was made with the 82nd on 19 September. This is where Gavin intervened, twice, to ask that his troops be used, and the Welsh Guards had taken over protection of the Grave bridge to free up the 504th as Division reserve for this purpose, ironically robbing the Guards of a battlegroup that could have exploited a sucessful crossing.
It's a mess Jim, but not as we know it - thanks to Cornelius Ryan not publishing Gavin's surprisingly open interview and leaving his readers instead to assume Nijmegen was strongly held from the get go. I've even recently managed to identify the security unit manning the bridge guard, from the 82nd Airborne's own G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Ops) Section documents in WW2, you can obtain for a fee from PaperlessArchives online.
2
-
@UzumakiNaruto_ it's a fair question and the responsibility rests mainly with Gavin (for the tactical compromise on D-Day at Nijmegen), as he was responsible for drawing up his own divisional plan for the 82nd and Browning could only make suggestions - he could not order a US Army officer on how to dispose of his troops. Military discipline cannot cross national boundaries, regardless of rank.
There's a good example of this from the Kosovo NATO mission in 1999 in which a British officer, Captain James Blount of the Household Cavalry (who later began a career as a pop singer as James Blunt), was ordered by US General Wesley Clark (head of the NATO mission) to take Pristina airport from a company of Russian mechanised infantry that had seized it independently of the NATO mission. Blount refused the order as this would trigger a direct confrontation with Russia and he was backed by the senior British General Mike Jackson, who was Clark's Deputy. Jackson said he would not allow British troops to start WW3 and Clark had to back down. Jackson instead ordered Blount to do what he could with his armoured reconnaissance unit, which found the Russians occupying only the airport buildings, so he positioned his light tanks around the perimeter and covered the runways so that the Russians could not be reinforced by air. The Russians soon left when they ran out of rations and it was agreed they would receive British rations at the main gate if they left the airport.
The same sort of differences in approach between the Allied nations unfortunately existed in MARKET GARDEN back in 1944.
Browning had originally wanted glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, recreating the success of the Orne river and canal bridge raids in Normandy, and was an essential part of the original all-British plan in operation COMET, and in fact Browning had advised Dempsey that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults. That operation was eventually cancelled by Montgomery at 0200 hours on 10 September, just as the men were boarding their aircraft, because of reports of heavy armour in the target area and 2nd Army had not yet reached the planned start line at Eindhoven. So Browning and Dempsey got permission to plan a new upgraded operation by adding the two US Airborne Divisions - one to reinforce the Nijmegen-Grave area to allow 1st Airborne to concentrate at Arnhem, and the second to form an "airborne carpet" between Valkenswaard and Uden to help 2nd Army break through the canal zone to reach the Airborne at Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem.
The outline plan, provisionally called SIXTEEN, was approved by Eisenhower when it was presented by Montgomery at their scheduled meeting on the afternoon of 10 September, and then taken back to England by Browning for detailed planning by USAAF Generals Lewis Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Paul Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command and 1st AAA Air Transport Commander) as operation MARKET. Both US commanders had been appointed by Eisenhower to their positions and charged with addressing the navigation and drop accuracy issues in the Troop Carriers after the Sicily and Normandy drops. Brereton's solution was all-daylight flights, recycling an earlier air plan devised for cancelled operations LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges) without altering it to suit the COMET/SIXTEEN objectives. Williams calculated there would not be enough daylight hours to fly two missions on D-Day, so the double airlift on D-Day was deleted, as was the glider coup de main assaults on the three big bridges, because they required a night flight approach to land at dawn - they were deemed to be too risky in broad daylight and could not land at night in a no-Moon period. Brereton also refused a third brigade of 1st Airborne landing at Elst due to insufficient aircraft - he had allocated them to 82nd and 101st Airborne for LINNET, and Williams refused two drop zones selected by Browning for the 101st between Aalst-Eindhoven-Son to take those bridges quickly on D-Day - on the grounds of Flak around Eindhoven.
Leslie Hollinhurst (RAF 38 and 46 Groups) tried to appeal to Williams (his boss in 1st AAA) to reinstate the double airlift on D-Day, but was told Brereton had made the decision. Montgomery sent his GSO I (Ops) officer David Belchem to Ascot to appeal directly to Brereton, but found him to be "obdurate". Brereton had the authority to refuse or cancel airborne operations and there was nothing Browning (Brereton's Deputy) or Montgomery could do about it. If Montgomery had tried to appeal to Eisenhower, then James Daly (Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, 2024) speculates that Ike would have consulted his Air Commander and Deputy, Arthur Tedder (RAF), who was not well disposed toward Montgomery. The dilemma for Eisenhower would be that he had appointed Brereton and Williams to their positions and charged them with improving the Troop Carrier performance, but Eisenhower would have to overrule or dismiss Brereton if he took the side of the British and the division commanders (Gavin was also frustrated by Brereton's unwillingness to change the LINNET air plan to meet the troops' requirements for MARKET).
Gavin was also responsible for his own Divisional plan, within the restrictions of the air plan handed down by Brereton. Cornelius Ryan noted in his interview with Gavin for A Bridge Too Far:
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - box 101, folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University Alden Library)
You will note the irony that Gavin was afraid of a scattered drop like the one in Sicily, but Brereton had already decided on all-daylight flights to address that problem. Gavin compounded his decision in the selection of his units to his division's priorities. He assigned his best regiment - the 504th - to secure the Grave bridge because it was on his Division's supply line to 2nd Army. His other veteran unit from North Africa, Sicily and Normandy - the 505th - he assigned to his flank facing the Reichswald and the German border, from which he expected the main German reaction. This left the 508th - on its second combat operation - under Colonel Roy Lindquist, for the critical Nijmegen mission.
Gavin faced similar objectives and terrain as the British 1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem - high ground and two main bridge objectives (road and rail). Lathbury's solution at Arnhem was to send his 1st Battalion to the high ground north of Arnhem to block German reinforcements, and 2nd and 3rd Battalions to secure the bridges. He was only partly successful - 1st Battalion couldn't reach the high ground and only the equivalent of one battalion (2nd Battalion minus C Company, plus C Company from 3rd) reached the highway bridge with the Brigade HQ and support units.
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.”
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, op cit)
This is why I believe the errors were compound and caused by the US chain of command: Eisenhower-Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist - not listening to their British counterparts and taking their advice.
2
-
@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- the problem with the (out of date) popular narrative is that Browning's judgement has since been proven correct, and while it's possible Gale and Ridgway might have made similar choices, the fact remains that Browning had an outline air plan overruled by Brereton (who simply recycled his own LINNET plan), an alternative coup de main suggestion discarded by Gavin, and a found aerial photo that vindicates its dismissal.
Ridgway was a Major General who had only just been promoted from (82nd) Divisional to (XVIII Airborne) Corps command, so he was far too junior to be appointed Airborne Army commander. Gale was also a Divisional Major General who would have been a good choice for promotion to succeed Browning at I Airborne Corps if Browning was given command of the Army. Browning was senior to Lewis Brereton in the grade of Lieutenant General and Brereton had no experience in ground combat - this was the folly of appointing an air force man to command an airborne formation - he made his choices to protect the air assets at the expense of the airborne and ground forces requirements. Williams was a fair Air Transport commander, but he should have been subordinate to an airborne officer.
As for Hollinghurst, he was supportive of Browning and could accommodate Browning's late change in the glider schedule to transport his Corps HQ to the Netherlands on the first lift, but Hollinghurst could not do his own thing with the air plan set by Brereton and Willaims. I don't think John grasps the the way the alliance worked - British officers had to be co-operative or the American support could easily be withdrawn and we don't have a viable operation.
He obviously misread the Rostron quote about Elst to think the decision was made by the Brits on 14 September, which is obviously nonsense. Brereton locked in the major decisions on the air plan and allocation of aircraft on 11 September and the next day was the cut-off point for any further changes. Browning's meeting with Dempsey on 14 September was obviously to brief him - they could not make any decisions. As Rostron also points out, Dempsey had no authority over the airborne forces until they came under his command (through Horrocks' XXX Corps) on the ground after link-up. Browning's authority was marginalised during the LINNET II affair. So it was only Montgomery's late appeal through David Belchem (21AG GSO I (Ops) officer) directly to Brereton was the last chance, and since 21AG was only informed of the changes after Brereton's 12 September cut-off date, he obviously felt he had the right to be "obdurate".
I don't know if John is pretending to be stupid to cover up his intent to just troll me (and I'm not going to engage with trolls), or he's pretending to be stupid to cover up for really not getting it.
2
-
Insufficient resources!
Responsibility for capture of the Nijmegen bridges was given to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and their commander did not insist on a drop zone North of the bridges in the same way Col. Reuben Tucker demanded a drop zone west of the Grave bridge for Easy Company 504th PIR to capture both ends at once. One of the reasons why the 508th's failure to capture the Nijmegen bridges on Day 1 of the operation, and the failure of the whole operation.
At Arnhem, the Polish Parachute Brigade were to be dropped South of Arnhem bridge, but only on the third day, when it was assumed the area would be under the control of British 1st Parachute Brigade and the electricity transmission lines crossing the drop zone (!) had been cut and removed. In the event, this did not happen and the Poles were dropped two days late and further west near Driel.
In order to capture the Arnhem bridge from both ends at once, it was planned that 'C' Company of 2nd Parachute Battalion would capture the railway bridge at Oosterbeek and use it to cross to the South bank of the Rijn, and assist 'A' Company in their task of attacking the highway bridge. Unfortunately, the Germans blew up the rail bridge when paratroopers had just got onto it and 'C' Company then switched to a secondary objective of the Ortskommandantur (German military headquarters) in Arnhem. They never reached it, got surrounded in a house at 55 Utrechtstraat and forced to surrender.
In the orders for 1st Airborne Division, there are specific instructions not to attempt to link South with 82nd Airborne because there was a Southern bomb-line for air operations in that area. However, there was also some orders for the Reconnaissance Squadron to recon main roads leading out of Arnhem when the main objective had been secured, and this included the road South to Nijmegen.
Bizarrely, according to the excellent book Glider Pilots At Arnhem by Mike Peters and Luuk Buist, 20 Flight (a platoon of about 40 men) of the Glider Pilot Regiment landing gliders at Arnhem were designated to be protection for Airborne Corps Headquarters landing at Groesbeek, South of Nijmegen! Presumably because the one Flight flying the Corps HQ gliders there were deemed insufficient protection. Nobody in 20 Flight was looking forward to making that journey or even expected it to be possible. After arriving on the LZ at Arnhem, the orders were conveniently forgotton and they remained attached to the 2nd South Staffordshire Air Landing Battalion they had flown in.
Remarkably, a small group under a junior officer from the HQ 1st Airborne Division CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) actually crossed the river by vehicle ferry with a Jeep and drove part way to Nijmegen to make contact with the Americans and XXX Corps, to brief them on the situation at Arnhem. They had to evade German patrols and abandon the Jeep along the way, but got through on foot. This was before the ferry was destroyed and the CRE himself, Lt.Col. Myers, had to swim the Rijn in order to convey the same information to the Polish Brigade at Driel, and that episode actually made it into the film version of A Bridge Too Far.
2
-
I'm afraid that SHOUTING does not make any of this nonsense sound more convincing. The plan drawn up by Browning (British I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey (British 2nd Army), and approved in outline form by Eisenhower when presented by Montgomery, was then compromised by USAAF officers Brereton and Williams in 1st Allied Airborne Army. An appeal to Williams by Hollinghurst (RAF 38 Group) to change the plan back to Browning's original schedule of two airlifts on D-Day and to Brereton by David Belchem (21st Army Group GSO I (Ops) on Montgomery's behalf), both failed to move Brereton. 21AG had not even been informed of the changes until after Brereton's 12 September cut-off date for making any further changes to the air plan.
This compromised air plan was then further compromised by Gavin's decision to discard a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main and then assign the critical Nijmegen mission to Colonel Lindquist's 508th PIR on only their second combat operation, after Lindquist had already not performed well in Normandy. Lindquist then failed to move on the bridge immediately after landing as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing, thereby compromising the entire operation and leaving 1st Airborne Division cut off for several days.
8,000 is the total number of casualties at Arnhem, not dead - he did not kill 8,000 at all. The actual figures (from Imperial War Museum) are 1,485 British and Polish Airborne troops killed, whereas 6,525 (mostly wounded who could not be evacuated) were captured, and just over 2,000 evacuated.
2
-
When were the Dutch underground ignored?
Montgomery cancelled operation COMET (British 1st Airborne and Poles to land at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave) on 10 September after receiving confirmation II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area and proposed the upgraded operation SIXTEEN by adding the American divisions that became operation MARKET.
The Nijmegen-Grave area was then assigned to 82nd Airborne and Gavin went to 1st Airborne HQ after getting this assignment, because the British had already been studying this area for COMET. He said in a letter to Cornelius Ryan that the British had intelligence from the Dutch there were heavy armoured units in the Reichswald forest and they had been preparing to deal with them in their plans. It now occurred to him (in 1966), in reviewing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree that he was sending to Ryan, that these heavy armoured units were the Hohenstaufen division in transit on their withdrawal route to Arnhem. For MARKET, the British 1st Airborne were making their plans in expectation these armoured units were now to the northeast of Arnhem, where the Dutch resistance had more recently reported SS troops to have moved into billets in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions.
The reason British 1st Airborne Division was not relieved was not because of II.SS-Panzerkorps, but because Gavin failed to ensure the Nijmegen highway bridge was secured on D-Day of the operation.
Montgomery and Browning's proposed operation SIXTEEN outline, approved by Eisenhower on 10 September, was handed over to USAAF Generals Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army and Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command, for detailed planning to create the final air plan called MARKET. They removed the proposed double airlift on D-Day that would have delivered most of the airborne troops on the first day, and they also removed the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges.
In making his divisional plan, Gavin discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge and instead assigned his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the Nijmegen mission, instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st battalion directly to the bridge as soon as practical after landing. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and now delayed at Nijmegen, thinking he had to clear the DZ and secure his other objectives first before sending a large force to the bridge. Lindquist had even ignored a report he received in person at the initial De Ploeg objective on the Groesbeek ridge, from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men guarding the highway bridge. He sent a platoon recon patrol under Lt. Weaver instead, which got lost after losing contact with the three-man point team, so that team under PFC Joe Atkins reached the bridge alone, took seven prisoners at the southern end without firing a shot, and then waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. This delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy the city overnight and reinforce the bridges, imposing a fatal delay to the advance of XXX Corps to Arnhem.
"An American led army would have have moved forward to rescue the Brits" - ha! The British never needed rescuing. They just needed not to be stabbed in the back... repeatedly, by their so-called 'allies'. It beggars belief that Americans still think they know better in the comments on YouTube 80 years later.
Sources:
Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State Univerisity - box 101, folder 9, page 48, Gavin covering letter to Ryan re T.A. Boeree papers and Reichswald armour.
Cornelius Ryan Colllection, Ohio State University - box 101, folder 10, pages 3-9, notes on meeting with James Gavin, January 20, 1967 re Lindquist and objectves.
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), bridge versus ridge objectives, Gavin's instructions to Lindquist and Lt. Weaver's patrol to the bridge.
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Normandy, command problems in the regiment, Nijmegen objectives and Gavin's instructions.
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge, Joe Atkins story.
2
-
@georgesenda1952 - Cornelius Ryan's 1967 interview with Major Brian Urquhart was totally one-sided, Browning had already passed away in 1965 and couldn't defend himself, and the aerial photograph in question could not be located until it emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2014.
[Spoiler alert] When the photo was analysed, it was found to indeed show obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. The photo did not confirm the II.SS-Panzerkorps were near the British landing zones and in fact we now know who they belonged to and where they were on 17 September when the landings took place. Browning was right to dismiss the photo - although it is a wonderful view of the Dutch countryside as Browning said, and I have a poster-sized copy of the photo, frame 4015, taken 12 Sep '44 by a 541 Sqn Spitfire over the Deelerwoud hanging on the wall over my desk as I type this on my PC. It could not be more different to the oblique shot created for the Hollywood film and a real let down for all the Patton fans across the Atlantic. [End spoiler]
I'm not impressed with Brian Urquhart as a witness. As you may recall, he was sent on medical leave and did not rejoin the Airborne Corps HQ until 22 September in the field. If you research the British Airborne Corps war establishment (equivalent to the US Army tables of organisation and equipment), the senior Corps intelligence officer would normally be a GSO I (General Staff Officer grade 1 - Lieutenant Colonel), with a GSO II (Major) as his assistant, and a couple of GSO III (Captains) on the staff, one of which would be a German speaker for prisoner interrogations. SOme of the top posts in Browning's staff were not filled and Urquhart appears to have been out of his depth. After the war, he was in the Civil Service and was instrumental in setting up the useless and corrupt United Nations organisation, serving as the first Under-Secretary-General for 'Special Political Affairs' - apparently a euphemism for peacekeeping operations. Impressed, George, I am not!
Cornelius Ryan hailed from Dublin and was embedded as a newspaper journalist with Patton's US 3rd Army during the campaign. I cannot think of two finer colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of military philosophy than Dublin and Patton. He emigrated to the United States after the war, where he wrote his three books. A Bridge Too Far was his final book, rushed to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer. The biggest problem with his book is what he left out of it, particularly any research material he had collected that showed US officers in a bad light, but the Brits were fair game of course. He was biased George, as was the Hollywood film version of the book. You need to do a lot of reading from as many sources as possible to get a more rounded view of this operation, and TIK does an excellent job of research for his videos.
If you want to read all about the photo analysis you can find the study online as a free pdf download (the RAF seem to have removed their 2nd edition download while a lunchtime lecture on the topic scheduled for 17 September 2024 is being advertised, but the original 1st edition is still on the Dutch Vrienden Airborne Museum site), and there's an abridged version of the study in author Sebastian Ritchie's revised version of his book:
Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019)
Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie (2011, revised 2019)
2
-
@georgesenda1952 - from Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021):
The bridging operations required would depend entirely on the number of bridges that the airborne troops failed to capture intact. Bridging columns, including the necessary troops and equipment, were pre-arranged for each possible crossing in the advance as far as the Ijssel River, and these columns could be called forward from Leopoldsbourg as required. No bridging equipment was put in the order of march except an amount allotted to Guards Armoured Division; this was sufficient to bridge small obstacles on the route and to provide assault boats and rafts...
... columns could be provided at the same time for bridging all obstacles as follows:
Maas River = 878 vehicles (500 RE and 378 RASC)
Maas-Waal Canal = 483 vehicles (300 RE and 183 RASC)
Waal River = 380 vehicles (200 RE and 180 RASC)
Neder Rijn = 536 vehicles (250 RE and 286 RASC)
In the event of assault crossings being required over major river obstacles, columns would be provided at the same time for all crossings:
Maas River with one brigade = 300 vehicles (100 RE and 200 RASC)
with two brigades = 419 vehicles (160 RE and 259 RASC)
Waal River with one brigade = 209 vehicles (100 RE and 99 RASC)
with two brigades = 316 vehicles (160 RE and 156 RASC)
Neder Rijn with one brigade = 300 vehicles (100 RE and 200 RASC)
with two brigades = 419 vehicles (160 RE and 259 RASC)
In the event of all bridges being captured intact, a column for the crossing of the Ijssel River would consist 766 vehicles (400 RE and 366 RASC)
In addition, each plan consisted of different scenarios, that considerd if the bridges had been blown or not and if the enemy was holding the far bank or not. A series of code names was established and they were:
- if the bridges were blown and no opposition:
HARRY - for the Maas with 878 vehicles
JIM - for the Maas-Waal Canal with 843 vehicles
MICHAEL - for the Waal with 380 vehicles
PETER - for the Neder Rijn with 536 vehicles
- if all went well and the column required for the Ijssel River:
RICHARD - for the Ijssel with 766 vehicles
- if a single bridge was blown and no opposition:
MAURICE - for the Maas with 1110 vehicles
GEORGE - for the Maas-Waal Canal with 566 vehicles
SPIKE - for the Waal with 1486 vehicles
JOHN - for the Neder Rijn with 1146 vehicles
- if bridges were held by the enemy and a single brigade crossing required:
TOM - for the Maas with 300 vehicles
FRED - for the Neder Rijn with 300 vehicles
BESSIE - for the Waal with 309 vehicles
- if bridges held by the enemy and two brigades crossing required:
BILL - for the Maas with 419 vehicles
BERTRAM - for the Neder Rijn with 419 vehicles
BASIL - for the Waal with 316 vehicles
So when the Waal bridges were found to be still in German hands when XXX Corps arrived on 19 September, the default plan for an assault crossing of the Waal was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make the assault with one brigade up (operation BESSIE) or two brigades up (operation BASIL), and the necessary units would be ordered up to carry out the operation. Gavin threw a spanner into the works of these carefully laid plans by twice insisting his own troops be used (504th PIR were in division reserve since the Welsh Guards took over defence of the Grave bridge) for the crossing, no doubt to make up for his blunder in assigning his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to take the Nijmegen highway bridge on D-Day, and on the second occasion this was agreed.
The result was confusion over where the assault boats were to be found, because none were allocated to the 82nd Division and it was not appreciated by the commanders in the conference that the Guards actually had 26 boats in Nijmegen already because there was no representative from the Royal Engineers in the meeting. It was a mess - everyone can agree on that - but it's not appreciated in the US that it was caused by failures in the US Airborne units, and American commanders insisting that they should fix them, because Cornelius Ryan did not research or explain any of this in his book to protect American commanders from any criticism.
I'll leave it to others to write essays on your other nonsense - I'm done with you for now!
2
-
2
-
The location of II.SS-Panzerkorps was not known by 'Ultra' Engima decrypts, and Dutch reports had to be treated as suspect until confirmed, due to recent German counter-intelligence successes. The latest assessment available to Eisenhower's headquarters before the operation was SHAEF Intel Summary #26, dated 16 September 1944. It listed II.SS-Panzerkorps as known to be refitting somewhere in the eastern Netherlands, presumably drawing new tanks from a depot in the Cleve area. This would pose a threat to the 82nd Airborne at Nijmegen rather than the 1st Airborne at Arnhem, and led to the ridiculous rumour that the Reichswald forest between Cleve and the 82nd's landing zones could hide up to 1,000 panzers.
The actual locations were Bittrich's Korps HQ at Doetinchem, 9.SS-Panzer-Division dispersed at locations in the triangle formed by Apeldoorn-Zutphen-Arnhem, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division between Ruurlo-Arnhem-Zutphen. The River Ijssel was the inter-divisional boundary and they formed a reserve supporting the construction of a defence line along the Ijssel, which was a distributary of the Rhine.
The British Airborne did not land "on top of" these divisions, but they were within striking distance, which is actually more dangerous in terms of counter-attacks as they would be able to organise and assemble before being committed to action. However, these units were severely depleted by the fighting in Normandy and reduced to regimental battlegroups in size, mostly of logistics and support units. The 9.SS was in the process of being withdrawn to Germany for refit, and only a few 'alarm' companies remained, mostly panzer and artillery crews without tanks and guns, acting as infantry. The 10.SS received most of the available heavy equipment handed over by 9.SS and was to be refitted in Holland. However, it had to deploy the combat ready units it had to the Belgian border, and only some reserves were available to combat the Airborne attack. Market Garden was defeated mostly by training and reserve units scraped together from all over Holland and Germany, at great cost to the Reserve Army and its ability to feed replacements to the Field Army. This would have a detrimental impact on the German Army in the closing stages of the war.
Intelligence on German units in Arnhem itself was known, and was remarkably accurate. The SS training battalion 'Germania' (the name was out of date) was based at Arnhem, and known to be training Hitler Youth recruits for 12.SS-Panzer-Division. The local defence force was Landesschützen-Bataillon 908, a home guard unit of WW1 veterens defending the bridges and nearby Deelen airfield. It was even known that the psychiatric institute at Wolfheze was being used as an artillery collection centre for survivors of units shattered in Normandy, and the estimate of 400 turned out to be accurate. It was the reason the hospital was bombed in the morning of the operation. They were without guns, and few had even personal weapons. They were more of a headache for the 1st Airborne Division Intelligence Section that had to catalogue the fantastic number of different units they came from, after they had been captured. The location and reaction of the SS battalion was more unfortunate. Their commander (Sepp Krafft) had moved them out of Arnhem into Oosterbeek to avoid bombing of the barracks and deployed a blocking line that stopped the Reconnaissance Squadron and two of the Parachute Battalions (1st and 3rd) moving into Arnhem, leaving only the 2nd Battalion and 1st Parachute Brigade headquarters and support units to slip past and secure the Arnhem highway bridge.
The planners underestimated the speed of the German reaction, but the intelligence picture was remarkably accurate.
1
-
1
-
Interesting to see someone from Arnhem commenting here. I found your points interesting, and while agreeing with much of what you say, I think I know what the answer would have been from the people planning the operation in considering your points.
1. The area to the east of Arnhem, as well as south of the bridge, is polder, and that was deemed unsuitable for large scale glider operations, particularly for vehicles brought in by glider. The Drop Zone ('K') originally planned for the Polish Brigade on the Malburgsche Polder was planned for the 3rd lift, when it was expected the area would be in the hands of the British 1st Parachute Brigade, the electricity lines crossing the Drop Zone (!) would have been cut and no longer pose a danger, and all flak units in the area destroyed. I think drop and landing zones in the polder south of Velp or the open ground north of the Saksenweimar-kazerne were rejected because the aircraft would have to fly through the flak situated around Arnhem. The zones to the west around Wolfheze could be approached from the south and aircraft turn to the west away from Arnhem and Deelen flak.
I have copies of defence overprint maps showing the locations of the Arnhem flak positions, as well as the Deelen flak positions, but there is some question that the Deelen heavy flak guns were still in position on 17 September due to the Luftwaffe air units being removed. If you have any knowledge of the flak situation at Deelen after 11 September, when the intel maps were prepared, and 17 September, I would be grateful. Yes, the plan was for Deelen to be secured after XXX Corps crossed the Arnhem bridge and fly in an American Engineer Construction Battalion to bring the airfield into operation (it was bombed on 3 and 17 September) and then fly in the 52nd (Lowland) Division, an air transportable infantry division that was part of the Allied Airborne Army.
My personal view is that the landing and drop zones selected were probably the best ones in view of all the problems with other areas. Where I do agree with alternative proposals is the suggestion of a glider coup de main, perhaps risking one company (just 6 gliders) of airlanding troops, landing south of the main bridge. This worked at Pegasus bridge in Normandy (Operation) on D-Day, but that was at night during Moon-lit period. The use of the Reconnaissance Squadron for a coup de main was not liked by its commander, who would rather have deployed each Troop of the Squadron ahead of the three Parachute Battalions as they advanced into Arnhem.
The plan for 1st Parachute Brigade involved the 3rd Parachute Battalion taking the Ijssel bridges at Westervoort and holding the eastern side of Arnhem until the eastern perimeter could be occupied by the Polish Brigade. In the event, the 3rd Parachute Battalion got stuck in Oosterbeek. It would have been better to drop the 1st Parachute Brigade on Landing Zone 'Z' first and get them moving towards their objectives while the gliders came in afterwards. The objectives of the Airlanding Battalions were the Drop and Landing Zones themselves. The Divisional unit gliders could have landed on Landing Zone 'X', and the anti-tank and other support for the Parachute Brigade could assemble and follow on as soon as they could. The British doctrine of gliders first and parachutes second, worked against us at Arnhem. The American doctrine makes more sense to me in terms of quicker assembly of the whole Division.
2. The land operation starting before the Airborne operation I completely agree with. I noted from Horrock's book Corps Commander that he said he wanted visual confirmation the Airborne attack was going in (and not cancelled) before giving the order for the ground forces to start their advance. In my opinion, the Germans were expecting an advance from the Neerpelt bridgehead anyway, so it would have been an advantage for the ground forces if the Germans were distracted at a crucial time by the Airborne armada passing overhead. It would still have been a surprise at any time, and British tanks would have been well on their way to Valkenswaard when the Airborne operation was launched. So on this point I completely agree. This lesson was learned for the Rhine crossings in 1945, and it worked then.
3. I also agree on this point, and the main reason for the failure of the whole operation was the American failure to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day. I know TIK has blamed this on Gavin, and I agree it was his responsibility to devise his divisional plan and see that it was carried out. The cause of the command failure, I believe, was that the commander of the US 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment was not the aggressive leader the job requires. Roy Lindquist was a gifted administrator. I think he was simply the wrong man for the job, and his less experienced Regiment was the wrong one to be assigned to taking Nijmegen. I agree with Gavin's logic that Grave was a priority because it was on his Division's supply line to XXX Corps and assigned his best Regiment, the 504th, but I think the 508th and 505th should have been switched. The 505th was almost as experienced as the 504th and would have made a much more aggressive advance into Nijmegen by at least two routes, east and west, while the 508th would have been suited to the defensive role of securing the landing zones. I don't understand why the defence perimeter here was established on the open farmland. I would have pushed into the Reichswald to deny the enemy positions from which to fire onto the landing zones. This was the British doctrine, for example around Drop Zone 'Y' at Ginkelse Heide, and that plan worked.
I agree also with your concluding comments about how history could have been very different if the plan had succeeded. I think it was worth the risks, and German accounts of the battle researched by Robert Kershaw revealed how narrow the margin of their success was in defeating Market Garden. The Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far has not only whitewashed the American failure at Nijmegen, but also perpetrated the myth that the operation was ill-conceived and doomed to failure. The planning was indeed rushed, that is not unusual, and the weather is notoriously unreliable in the Autumn. The intelligence, on the other hand, was surprisingly accurate. What was underestimated was the speed of the German reaction, and it was the fact that the Germans won the race of reinforcements that led to the defeat of Market Garden.
Very interesting comment and thanks for posting. My regards to all our friends in the Netherlands from Birmingham, England.
1
-
@geitenkampsejos - Hi, I assume from your Googe handle that your name is Jos and you're based in the Geitenkamp area of Arnhem? Thanks for your reply. A lot of points I agree on.
After Market Garden was "90% successful", Montgomery planned Operation Gatwick to move towards Emmerich/Wesel from Nijmegen and clear the Reichswald. It was cancelled because of the Venlo pocket still being occupied by the Germans and it was deemed that clearing the Scheldt and all areas up to the Waal was more urgent.
I read that when things started to go wrong after Nijmegen for XXX Corps, Horrocks wanted to go for the Rhenen railway bridge, but Montgomery denied him permission. I believe the reason for that was that Rhenen, and areas further south like Zaltbommel and s'Hertogenbosch were in the XII Corps area of operations, should they get that far in their advance. The VIII Corps were directed on to Helmond and a crossing of the Maas at Gennep, possibly to exploit towards Kleve and Emmerich.
Market Garden also delayed Model's plans for a counter-attack through Holland, which is why he denied permission to demolish the Nijmegen bridges. That counter-attack eventually became the Ardennes offensive, so Market Garden not only delayed the offensive but also forced it out of Holland into Belgium/Luxembourg. The late-1944 counter-offensive certainly shortened the war, whenever it happened, because it used up valuable reserves that could have been used in a more sensible defence of Germany.
On my specific interest, the battle of Arnhem, I think the polder landing areas were indeed incorrectly judged to be too soft for glider landings - that is absolutely right. But I do think they are unsuitable for a number of other reasons. The many drainage ditches would make glider landings difficult, but they would also make it difficult to get wheeled vehicles (mostly Jeeps towing trailers and anti-tank guns) off the landing zones quickly. These areas also tend to be very open with no surrounding woodland to offer defensive positions, unlike the ideal zones selected around Wolfheze. I think the main objection came from the RAF with regard to the flak positions around Arnhem. In fact, the Southwest, Southeast and East flak positions are located on the polder areas around the town and had good fields of fire in most directions. The heavy SW flak position on the Meinerswijk Polder was even firing into British occupied buildings near the highway bridge, but there was also the SE heavy flak position, which was on the Malburgsche Polder, where there is now a housing estate called Immerloo. That is even closer to the bridge than Meinerswijk and may have also been firing on the bridge area.
So I can well understand the desirability of the Wolfheze landing zones, and I would also point out that despite their distance from the main bridge, the US 82nd Airborne had a similar distance from their landing zones around Groesbeek to the Njmegen bridges. The key thing in my opinion is to get your paratroops on the ground first, as was American doctrine, and get them moving into the town as fast as possible. If Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion had arrived at Arnhem bridge one hour earlier, he would have blocked Grabner's 9.SS recon battalion from crossing over to patrol down to Nijmegen, and that would have assisted the Americans, if the 504th or 505th PIR had been given the job, of securing the Nijmegen bridges. Whichever way you cut it, the speed of the German reaction was the main factor in defeating Market Garden. At Arnhem, everyone except Frost was too slow, and at Nijmegen the Americans were too slow.
I don't know if you can answer them but I have a few questions about the German situation in Arnhem on 17 September that I have had trouble trying to find the answers to in the 44 years I have been studying the battle. Maybe with your local knowledge you can help?
1. As I said in my previous reply, I don't know if the four heavy flak positions around Deelen still had their guns, or had they been removed after the airfield was bombed on 3 September and the German air units evacuated to German airfields? I only know that the 11 September Intel maps had heavy flak guns indicated, but 17 September is open to question.
2. Generalmajor Friedrich Kussin was the Feldkommandant, which is a regional military command equivalent to a Brigade level headquarters, and I understand his (Feldkommandantur) staff occupied the Villa Heselburgh, previously a monastery or nunnery? And I undertstand the nearby Heselburgerweg Central ULO School was also occupied by German staff, possibly Luftwaffe signals staff. In addition to this, there was British intel that there was an Ortskommandantur (a local military command equivalent to a battalion headquarters in major towns) located in a building on Nieuwe Plein that I believe is now called Willemsplein, and the building it occupied is now the Hotel Restaurant Arnhem Centraal? According to the Battledetectives website, this staff immediately relocated to Dieren ( https://www.battledetective.com/Kussin_Junction.html ). Do you know who the Ortskommandant was? I've never heard anything about this officer or his staff. The story goes that this Ortskommandantur was the secondary objective of 'C' Company of 2nd Parachute Battalion after the railway bridge at Oosterbeek was demolished, but the Company got cut off and surrendered at 55 Utrechtestraat.
3. When the II.SS-Panzerkorps mobilised against the Airborne landings, they first seemed to move their headquarters from Doetinchem to the Velp area, but I have no idea which building they occupied. The 9.SS-Division then moved from Beekbergen to the Villa Heselburg and took over Kussin's Feldkommandantur staff. The 10.SS-Division then moved from Ruurlo to the Velp headquarters used by the II.SS-Korps, but I wonder where Bittrich took his Korps headquarters? I suspect they occupied the ULO School in Heselbergherweg or somewhere in that area close to 9.SS. I believe there was a military telephone switchboard, possibly in the ULO School, which aided the communications of the 9.SS and possibly II.SS-Korps as well. Any local knowledge you have on these or other German occupied buildings in the Arnhem area would be of great interest.
Hope you are having a good day in Arnhem. We have a little bit of rain here in Birmingham today, so you'll probably get that tomorrow! Cheers.
1
-
1
-
1
-
@bigwoody4704 - simply untrue on every point.
1. British XXX Corps were on schedule until they reached Nijmegen on the morning of the 19th September, where the AMERICANS had FAILED to secure the bridges in the first 24 hours. If they had the Nijmegen bridges in their hands, the tanks would have been in Arnhem by the afternoon - precisely 2 days after the operation started, AS PLANNED.
2. Montgomery was unable to leave his 21st Army Group headquarters during the initial phases of the operation as his Chief of Staff was absent due to illness, and Montgomery was doing both jobs. Commander of British 2nd Army, General Miles Dempsey, visited the corridor during the operation to meet Maj.Gen. Maxwell Taylor of US 101st Airborne and Lt.Gen. Brian Horrocks of XXX Corps at St. Oedenrode. Both Montgomery and King George VI later visited the headquarters of the Guards Armoured Division at the Generaal de Bons barracks outside Grave, I think it was late September, when the Airborne Operation Market was already over but Operation Garden was still ongoing. Not many Allied participants can claim their King paid the troops a visit - I don't recall Roosevelt or even General of the Army George Marshall setting foot in Europe at any time during the European campaign, so this criticism is a bit rich. Also, Montgomery didn't actually plan the operation in detail. That was done by First Allied Airborne Army (1st AAA), and the two decisions that most compromised the air plan (one lift per day and aircraft taking off in daylight) were insisted on by the American commanders of 1st AAA and US 9th Troop Carrier Command, Lt.Gen. Lewis Brereton and Maj.Gen. Paul Williams respectively.
3. Tanks maneuvered off the 'Club Route' at many points, including during the breakout - the portrayal of this action in the movie version of A Bridge Too Far is incorrect for a number of reasons, and not just this one. The only significant section where this was not possible was on the Betuwe (the polder 'island' between Nijmegen and Arnhem), and this was part of the reason they were stopped south of Elst on 21st September, the main reason being the two day DELAY at NIJMEGEN taking the bridges, allowing the Germans to reinforce the Betuwe. The Germans did NOT flood ANY area along the Market Garden corridor until 2nd December, when they flooded the Betuwe just south of Arnhem, AFTER Operation Garden was officially over on 7th October with the aerial bombing of the Arnhem bridge in preparation for Operation Gatwick. In point of fact, the river is not high enough to allow the Betuwe to be flooded by blowing a hole in the Rijn's Winter dijk until... the Winter. The only areas flooded by the Germans before Market Garden were along the Dutch coast, which was prepared for the invasion that actually happened in Normandy.
4. The people you call idiots were already fighting the war before America was 'surprised' by an attack TWO YEARS into a GLOBAL conflict. So who are the real idiots? I know that's a bit harsh, but people in glass houses...
5. The only time the XXX Corps advance was stopped by Panzerfausts was during the initial breakout by the anti-tank platoon of Fallschirmjäger-Battalion 'Kerutt' (I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 18) - another point on which the movie is inaccurate - the PaK 40 anti-tank guns had all been deployed in the open due to lack of prime movers and subsequently destroyed by the opening artillery barrage. If you know of any other instances when Panzerfausts stopped XXX Corps, please let me know. I'm always interested in new information!
I wish you would do some proper reading instead of peddling the same old prejudiced mythology based on an American produced movie. It does make you look really silly, and people who are genuinely interested in history might be misled.
The most up to date book on the subject is Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019), in two volumes by Swedish historian Christer Bergström. His primary source is the Cornelius Ryan Collection of documents and interviews at Ohio State University, and contains much information that did not make it into Ryan's original book A Bridge Too Far, including the first detailed account of what went wrong at Nijmegen.
1
-
@bigwoody4704 - Again, wrong on every point:
1. “Monty wasn’t there to direct”. First, he was doing two jobs and couldn’t leave his headquarters. Second, Generalfeldmarschall Model’s command style was very abrasive and according to many of his Generals it caused as many problems as he solved. No wonder he was one of Hitler’s favourites. Many of the German losses suffered were due to units being committed to attacks on the Market Garden corridor before they were really ready to do so. This applied to Panzer-Brigade 107, II.Fallschirm-korps, and 59.Infanterie-Division. All suffered unnecessary losses due to Model’s insistence on immediate commitment piecemeal, and all for no gain against Allied positions. I know two of the better co-ordinated attacks cut the corridor for many hours, but by then the operation was already in serious trouble through no fault of XXX Corps.
2. If Market Garden had succeeded in reaching the Ijsselmeer as planned, the V2 launch sites in western Holland would have been cut off, along with the German 15.Armee, much of the Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Niederlande (German Armed Forces Netherlands), including the whole of the 88.Armeekorps defending the Dutch coast, and the 1.Fallschirm-armee (under Student) west of the corridor. All of your angst over the Allied losses and Dutch suffering is the result of the American failure at Nijmegen and the subsequent myth that it must have been all Monty’s fault because it was his idea in the first place.
3. The Germans had the same problems with manoeuvring around the Dutch countryside as the Allies - the Panzer Brigade 107 attack on the Son bridge being just one example. XXX Corps were making it work until they got to Nijmegen, as I’ve already explained.
4. Your point about Winter closing in completely undermines your criticism of further progress not being made in the rest of 1944. You can always rely on trolls to trip over their own nonsense. Like Judge Judy says – “you don’t have to have a good memory if you tell the truth”. The point is not entirely true anyway. Progress was made in 1944 to widen the corridor and liberate much of southern Holland up to the Waal in operations around Woensdrecht and Overloon. In clearing the Venlo pocket around Overloon, Simpson’s US 9th Army had arrived to deploy between British 2nd Army and US 1st Army, and had taken over responsibility for the German pocket around Overloon, but the US 7th Armored Division couldn’t reduce the pocket and the area had to be given back to British 2nd Army so that 11th Armoured could finish the job. These delays meant that Montgomery's planned attack into the Rhineland through the Reichswald (Operation Gatwick) had to be postponed until February 1945 (Operation Veritable).
5. 2nd Household Cavalry reached the 82nd Airborne’s Area of Operations at 0820 on 19th September, and the Grenadier Guards at 1000 hours. By my calculation that is 45 hours into Operation Market Garden, and not 3 days. At that point they were still on schedule to reach Arnhem in two days, but they were unable to do that because the 82nd Airborne DID NOT have the Nijmegen bridges in their possession, as I have previously and very patiently explained.
6. Viktor Gräbner’s 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arrived in Nijmegen at dusk on the first day, when the three American paratroopers from the first patrol to reach the Nijmegen highway bridge had to withdraw and give up their nine prisoners, because nobody came to reinforce them at any time that afternoon. This failure is detailed in Swedish historian Christer Bergström’s book Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, using material researched by Cornelius Ryan but not published in A Bridge Too Far. You only have to review what happened to Gräbner’s unit when it attempted to rush the British positions at Arnhem bridge on the following morning to realise what would have happened if the Americans had got just one Parachute Battalion onto the Nijmegen bridge at the same time Frost took up positions at Arnhem bridge. This fact makes a complete mockery of the criticism that the British landing zones were too far from their objectives at Arnhem. Frost’s Battalion had about 11 kilometres to march to Arnhem Bridge, the 508th landed about 8 km from the Nijmegen bridges, and the American doctrine was paratroops landed before gliders, while the British used the reverse. The American performance at Nijmegen on the first day was disappointing (I’ve chosen to use a lover’s word rather than a troll’s) to say the least.
7. The 82nd Airborne did NOT have the most objectives over a larger area to secure. That honour went to the US 101st Airborne, who had to secure 4 bridges in Eindhoven, 2 over the Wilhelmina Kanaal at Son and Best, 2 over the River Dommel at St.Oedenrode, and 4 road and rail bridges over the Zuid Willemsvaart Kanaal and River Aa at Veghel - 12 bridges over a 20 kilometre sector of the corridor. The 82nd had to secure 1 bridge over the River Maas at Grave, 1 rail bridge over the Maas at Mook, at least 1 of 4 bridges over the Maas-Waal Kanaal at Heumen, Malden, Hatert and Honinghutje, and the 2 road and rail bridges over the Waal at Nijmegen – 8 bridges over a 16 kilometres sector. Both Divisions had to secure their landing zones from counter-attack.
8. The Germans had great difficulty ferrying tanks across rivers and canals because they did not have the engineering resources of the Allies. The ferrying operation at Pannerden to reinforce the Betuwe (the ‘island’ between Arnhem and Njmegen) was hampered by a lack of bridging material AND Allied air interdiction. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division could not get anything heavier than their last four StuG III assault guns across the canalised section of the Rijn known as the Pannerden Kanaal. They reportedly had up to 16 Panzer IV tanks on hand, but the first one they tried to ferry across the canal slipped off the makeshift ferry into the river. The vehicle ferry further downstream at Huissen had already been scuttled by the Dutch ferryman. By contrast, XXX Corps constructed a class 40 Bailey Bridge capable of carrying 30-ton Sherman tanks over the Wilhelmina Kanaal at Son in just 10 hours overnight, one of the scenes in the movie A Bridge Too Far that was actually well done, but they were NOT “36 hours behind schedule” as Elliot Gould (Colonel Stout) claimed. XXX Corps then travelled the 40 kilometres (25 miles) to Grave in two and half hours. THEN, they were delayed by 36 hours because of the 82nd's failure to secure the Nijmegen bridges.
9. Montgomery was an actual Field Marshall. His promotion was effective on 1st September 1944. I see no reason to be offensive to historical figures decades after their passing, and unable to defend themselves. Your whole attitude is one of belligerent ignorance. You do yourself a great disservice in refusing to learn anything.
1
-
@bigwoody4704 - Not drugs, just more up to date information.
Many of your prejudices about Montgomery date back to the war for god’s sake. You provide a link to a thesis on Ultra intelligence I am already aware of, thank you. It actually makes the point that intelligence failures were not the reason for the failure of Market Garden, nor was the intelligence “ignored”. It was evaluated. The truth is that as late as the 16th September SHAEF’s Summary report (No.26 if memory serves) did NOT know where in Holland the II.SS-Panzerkorps (9. And 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions) were actually located. Sub-units were distributed over a wide area and only some units from the Hohenstaufen (9.SS) were identified by Dutch resistance sources to be in the area Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Zutphen. The Dutch reports could not be verified and because of German counter-intel successes in the past they could not be relied on, and the Summary report speculated that they may be drawing tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area and possibly hidden in the Reichswald near the 82nd Airborne’s landing zones. The thesis was written after Ultra was declassified, but before the Dutch digital archive of donated RAF aerial photos was made public.
The aerial photo showing tanks in the Arnhem area I have already discussed before, and the 2016 analysis by Sebastian Ritchie (Air Historical Branch RAF) exonerates Browning’s judgement that they were no major threat. He was right, they did not belong to a Panzer Division and the obsolete tanks were near the 101st Airborne’s landing zones on 17th September and no longer near Arnhem in any case.
You also cite authors like Hastings and Buckingham. Their books are also out of date and recycle old myths. Your argument is like the “pre-911 thinking” about OBL. I’ve been studying this subject for 44 years and still reading new books on it now. Of the authors you cited, only Kershaw, as far as I am aware, did primary research on the German records, and his work for It Never Snows In September I regard very highly as a pioneering work in that area. However, even his book is now out of date, contains many errors, and he’s not a German armour expert, so he gets his assault guns and tank destroyers mixed up, which leads to misidentification of the units they belong to. Almost every other author since has replicated his errors, unfortunately. Beevor’s book is a shameful money for old rope tome – I only learned one new thing from it, and that was a joke (“the reason it’s called Market Garden is because we’ve all bought it”). Anthony Tucker-Jones’ recent book The Devil’s Bridge is exactly the same kind of wasted space – I only learned one thing from that, and that was a reference to Jacob Moll’s unit in Mook, something I later found was an interview listed in Cornelius Ryan’s bibliography but not used in his text, so apart from that miniscule tidbit Tucker-Jones is also recycled wood pulp. If you don’t have any new information to contribute, then you are recycling old prejudices and myths, and many of them have already been proven to be wrong.
The four Grenadier Guards tanks that crossed the Nijmegen bridge were stopped in one case by an anti-tank gun (actually an 8.8cm Flak gun) at the North end of the bridge, Captain Carrington’s tank was the radio relay link back to his Squadron commander in Nijmegen and had to stop at the far end of the bridge, so only Sergeant Robinson’s surviving two tanks passed through Lent and were stopped by an anti-tank gun (probably a StuG III) when they tried to pass under the railway overpass. The American paratroopers they met at that location (G/504th PIR) did not seem interested in dealing with the anti-tank gun, but it was clear that infantry were needed to continue the advance, and it was doctrine that tanks did not operate at night.
Your list of Airborne Divisional objectives is obviously designed to be deceptive, and you’ll have to be far smarter than that. I listed the individual bridge objectives, many of them at separate locations around a single named location, for example the four bridges around Veghel. Clearly the 101st had more to do over a larger area, that is correctly stated in many text histories on Market Garden. You cannot escape the fact that the 101st did their job, despite two bridge demolitions, and Market Garden was still on schedule when XXX Corps passed from their AO to that of the 82nd Airborne on 19th September.
Perhaps the best contemporary authority on the subject are the German commanders themselves. They correctly identified Nijmegen as the keystone to Market Garden, and as with Caen in Normandy, they made Nijmegen their “schwerpunkt” (point of main effort) in defeating the operation. Their analysis was correct.
Interesting that you cite an article on RT (Russia Today) written by a conspiracy theorist. It repeats the myth that Market Garden was behind schedule when the Guards reached Nijmegen after 40 hours. They were not expected to be in Arnhem in 40 hours unless the operation was going better than expected - it was 48 hours. At Nijmegen, they were less than 8 hours’ drive from Arnhem, but ONLY IF the 82nd Airborne had done their job and taken the Nijmegen bridges, or a bridge. Had they done so, there is little doubt they would have reached Arnhem in 48 hours, as planned, because the Germans had very little on the Betuwe (‘island’) with which to stop them. Only the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion were on the Betuwe, and it had been virtually destroyed and their commander killed at Arnhem bridge on the morning of Day 2.
The fact remains that Cornelius Ryan, and the film based on his book, left out the critical narrative: what happened in Nijmegen in the first 40 hours? Ryan’s research, not published in his book, but in Christer Bergström’s 2019 revision, reveals the inaction of the 508th PIR on the first day. That failure, and not Montgomery’s underestimation of II.SS-Panzerkorp’s capabilities, was the reason Market Garden failed, subsequent Allied operations in Holland were compromised, and possibly the early ending of the war delayed. If just one Parachute Battalion had secured the Nijmegen highway bridge on Day 1, there was very little that 10.SS-Panzer-Division could have done to stop XXX Corps reaching Arnhem in 48 hours.
I’ll happily take your personal abuse as a subconscious admission that you’ve already lost the argument, just as your choice of handle is a subconscious admission that you were always going to be a troll on this channel with nothing in the way of new information to contribute. I think you’ve got some growing up to do as well as some reading, and I wish you the best of luck.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@craftingpeople7097 - appreciate the distances, but I'm sure they knew what they were expecting of themselves.
The problem with the Poles was that they were only attached operationally to the British Army but remained the responsibility of the Polish Government-in-exile, so pensions etc., were not the responsibility of the British government. That's not a very satisfactory arrangement on either side, but the real fault was on the other side of the Iron Curtain after the war. There's a principle in government that you don't change the rules for one or two people, you would have to change the rules for everyone in similar circumstances, and that would bankrupt the country.
Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski after Market Garden to thank him and his Brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. It was then he received reports from Browning and Horrocks about Sosabowski being difficult to work with and insubordinate at Valburg. It prompted Montgomery to write to Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to ask for the Polish Brigade to be removed from his command and suggest it be transferred to Italy to serve alongside other Polish units there.
It seems Montgomery changed his attitude and did not regard the Poles and Sosabowski as great fighters and a commander. Even the Germans complained that their medics were being fired on by the Poles, contrary to the Geneva Conventions and a surprise to them, because they first thought the Brigade was another British unit and their experience was that the British usually allowed them to remove their dead and wounded from the battlefield. If you examine the history of the Polish Parachute Brigade, you'll see that it was formed as a regular infantry rifle brigade, and it was a conceit of Sosabowski's that an airborne unit would be more likely to be employed in an operation to liberate Poland, and indeed they hoped they would be used in the Warsaw uprising.
Looking at Browning's role in all of this, I find the criticisms of him to be unfounded. His dismissal of the aerial photo showing German tanks near Arnhem has been proven to be the correct decision since the photo itself came to light in a Dutch government archive in 2015 and analysed by the RAF. Cornelius Ryan's story of this episode rested entirely on his interview with Brian Urquhart (Browning's Corps Intelligence Officer), and since the photo was 'lost' at the time and Browning passed away two years before Ryan began his research, he was unable to defend his decision.
Browning's also implicated in the decision to prioritise the Groesbeek heights over the Nijmegen highway bridge, but it seems that decision was made by Gavin after the war and supported by Browning because Gavin did not wish to throw a subordinate officer under the bus. The 508th PIR failed to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon after it is now known the CO was instructed at the divisional briefing to do exactly that as quickly as possible with his 1st Battalion.
Finally, the other main charge against Browning was the decision to take his own headquarters to Groesbeek, using glider tugs that could have been used to take the remainder of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment to Arnhem on the first lift. If you examine the Staffords' Phase 1 task, it was to hold Landing Zone 'S' until the second lift arrived on D+1, and for Phase 2 they were the Brigade reserve. The zone was not put under any serious German pressure during the Phase 1 period and indeed Brigadier Hicks released them from that task early on D+1 to move into Arnhem to reinforce 1st Parachute Brigade. By the time they reached the western suburbs of Arnhem, the second lift had arrived and the second half of the battalion had caught up with the leading companies. So, the question would be: what difference would it have made if the whole battalion had gone to Arnhem on D-Day and the Corps HQ to Groesbeek on D+1, except for Browning opening himself up to a charge of not leading his own command into action?
The idea that Montgomery and Browning messed up seems to be an American invention to cover their own problems. That's not acceptable behaviour from an ally, but one we've got used to from the Americans. It seems that classes at West Point are taught that the war of independence is still ongoing...
1
-
@craftingpeople7097 - thank you for the appreciation. I'll take each of your points in turn:
1. I can't pretend to know what was in Montgomery's mind when he changed his attitude to the Poles after receiving reports on their conduct, but I would imagine he would think (and I certainly take the view) that ignoring the Geneva Conventions by not respecting red cross insignia does make for bad fighters and would not be acceptable behaviour in the British Army.
The German troops involved in this complaint presumably came from those facing the Poles at Driel, and these were units in 'Sperrverband Harzer' ('blocking line Harzer' named after the commander of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division Walther Harzer), but the units were mixed Heer, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe, under the Heer's Oberst Egon Gerhard of Panzergrenadier-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 57 that supplied the Bataillon 'Schörken' at the northern end of the sperrverband at the demolished Oosterbeek rail bridge. The other units in the line were Kriegsmarine (2 and 3./Schiffsstammabteilung 14) and Luftwaffe (4./Werftabteilung 119/XI), and the unit at the southern end of the line at Elst were Dutch SS (III./SS-Grenadier Regiment 1 'Landstorm Nederland'), which blocked the main road to XXX Corps with the tanks of Kampfgruppe Knaust.
2. Browning's dismissal of the armour in the aerial photo was correct, because the tanks were obsolete and mostly unserviceable, just as he assessed. I didn't go into much detail, but when the photo eventually emerged from the Dutch government archives in 2015 and subjected to analysis, they were found to show the older Mark IV models with the short 7.5cm L24 gun and obsolete Mark III tanks. This rules out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, so it was clearly a training unit using older tanks. On D-Day, they were laagered at Wolfswinkel just north of Son and directly across the road from the 506th PIR's drop zone. They attempted to fire on the zone but were immediately attacked by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft, destroying two tanks and the other two escaped to the north. One ran the gauntlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode, who could only score hits with unprimed bazooka rounds in their haste, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel to bump the 504th roadblock at Grave. After causing a few casualties to troopers coming out of their foxholes, thinking they were British tanks arriving early, they turned around and were not seen again.
The unit has since been identified - the Reserve Panzer Kompanie from the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division currently fighting in Poland, while the training regiment based at Utrecht in the Netherlands had sent its three battalions to the Albert canal line in Belgium, after the 'Valkyrie’ Plan mobilisation of the Reserve Armee in the first week of September 1944. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie based at Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast was ordered on 7 September to move south to join the II.Abteilung at Eindhoven, but only three tanks (one Mark III and two Mark IV) made the journey without breaking down, and were all destroyed along with most of the II.Abteilung, by the Guards Armoured Division at Hechtel in Belgium on 12 September. That was the same day the breakdowns were photographed by RAF Spitfire while undergoing maintenance at a supply dump near Deelen airfield north of Arnhem.
Browning's Intelligence Officer was trying to find evidence to support the Dutch resistance reports of SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions, but Browning was correctly not convinced this photo was confirmation of that at all. Montgomery (21st Army Group) and Dempsey (British 2nd Army) were aware of the II.SS-Panzerkorps in the Netherlands from 'Ultra' code intercepts the day before Montgomery cancelled Operation Comet on 10 September, and replaced it with Market by adding the American divisions. The existence of 'Ultra' could not be made known to Corps or Division commanders for security reasons, but I'm currently reading a book on 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem and they were briefed to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks and even Panther and Tiger tanks. The people who needed to know, were told, and those people were not given unit identifications, but rather 'sanitised' intel that did not reveal the source.
1
-
@craftingpeople7097
3. The story of the Nijmegen bridge and Groesbeek heights on the first day is the contentious one at the heart of why the operation failed. The conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan’s research for his 1974 book A Bridge Too Far was based on his 1967 interview with James Gavin, but Browning had already passed two years earlier and could not give his view. Gavin did not tell the whole story and only gave a clue there were political problems within the 508th PIR by saying Ridgway (82nd Division CO in Normandy) did not trust Colonel Lindquist (508th CO) and wouldn’t promote him. In fact, Gavin said Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn’t promote any other Colonel in the Division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the rank. The interview is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of documents and interviews held at Ohio State University and accessible online.
I think Gavin was talking about Ridgway’s promotion to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944, because he could have taken Lindquist with him as his G-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, since Lindquist had shown a talent as an S-1 in the early US Airborne organisation (he was one of the first officer volunteers). Gavin told Cornelius Ryan that Lindquist produced documentation like you wouldn’t believe, but more recent books have shown he had since performed badly as a field commander during the 508th’s first combat operation in Normandy. I also think Gavin inherited the same problem as Division Commander succeeding Ridgway, because he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, and was running himself ragged doing both jobs during Market Garden.
Since Gavin and Lindquist have now passed, it seems more junior officers at the time now feel able to speak out and have informed both Phil Nordyke’s combat history of the 508th – Put Us Down In Hell (2012) and John C McManus’ September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), as witnesses to the final divisional briefing on the eve on the operation, in which Gavin clearly instructed Lindquist to move on the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing the initial objectives (on the Groesbeek ridge). Captain Chester ‘Chet’ Graham, the 508th liaison officer to Division HQ, said Lindquist was told to “get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" (Nordyke, 2012). Lt Col Jack Norton, the Division G-3 (Operations), recorded Gavin's clear instructions to "seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion" (McManus, 2012).
McManus has an extensive analysis on why both bridge and ridge had priority, but the bridge was ultimately more important, and I agree wholeheartedly with it and the reasons he gives. It’s interesting that McManus says Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him the exact route he wanted 1st battalion to take to the bridge. The bridge could be demolished in German hands, but the Groesbeek ridge wasn’t going anywhere and could be retaken by the Guards Armoured Division if lost to a German counter-attack. Browning seems to have had the same nuanced appreciation of this, but it seemed to be beyond Lindquist’s tactical ability.
It should also be noted here that the Market Garden plan was for the Guards to lead XXX Corps as far as Nijmegen and then pass 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division across the bridges to Arnhem. Once over the Arnhem bridge, the 43rd would go on to Apeldoorn, giving the attached Dutch Prinses Irene Brigade the honour of liberating the Royal Palace Het Loo, while the Guards took a left hook to Deelen airfield and then on to Nunspeet on the Zuider Zee coast. Because the Guards would pause at Nijmegen while 43rd Division passed over the Nijmegen bridges to Arnhem, they would be available to assist 82nd Airborne in securing their position on the Groesbeek heights, if necessary. They would be relieved of that task by the arrival of 8th Armoured Brigade, with the Sherwood Rangers battlegroup being assigned to 82nd Airborne for armoured support.
Why didn’t the 508th take the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon? Hard to answer that, but it was not Gavin’s decision, it was contrary to Gavin’s instructions, at least until after the war. Lindquist seemed to be waiting to be told when to move, and in the meantime was securing his initial objectives. When Chet Graham asked Lindquist when he intended to send a battalion to the bridge “his answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed' " (Nordyke, 2012).
Proof that a battalion could have reached the bridge and secured it before SS panzer troops arrived is a recon patrol sent from 1st Battalion under Lt Weaver and led by the S-2 (Intel) Section. The patrol got separated from the three-man point team under PFC Joe Atkins (1st Battalion S-2 Scout) and got lost in the back streets, but the point team made it to the bridge, surprising seven guards at the southern end, taking them prisoner. They waited an hour for reinforcements until it got dark and then decided to withdraw. As they did so, they could hear “heavy equipment” arriving at the other end of the bridge (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs, 2013). McManus also confirms Joe Atkins’ story and has details on Weaver’s problems and eventual withdrawal, when he couldn’t get to the bridge after dark.
This, I am convinced, is where Market Garden was fatally compromised, and Browning had no part in it, but Gavin was responsible as Lindquist’s supervisor to see his divisional plan was carried out. It also explains why Gavin was so insistent on his own troops (504th PIR) being used for the river assault crossing, when the default plan for this scenario of the bridges being held by the Germans was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make an assault crossing to the west with either one or two brigades up. Gavin was clearly trying to make amends for his division’s blunder. The 43rd had one battalion in two of its brigades fully mobilised with DUKW amphibious trucks and the other battalions would follow in assault boats provided by the Royal Engineers for this precise eventuality (Special Bridging Force – Royal Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz, 2021).
1
-
@tonyolivari2480 - no, Gavin didn't have to follow his orders and they weren't "stupid". Military discipline cannot cross national boundaries, so Browning could only make suggestions and Gavin didn't have to agree with them. I'll even give you an example from Gavin himself, when he talked about the Nijmegen with A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan:
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - box 101, folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
This was Browning's second attempt to get the bridge secured by coup de main after Brereton had decided against Browning's proposed two airlifts on D-Day, putting the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the three main bridges beyond their window of feasibility. Browning was unable to protest the changes to the provisional air plan after he had threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation being scheduled on 36 hours notice (and people criticise MARKET being planned in a week?), 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 HQ for the operation. Ridgway had committed himself, Taylor and Gavin, to following whatever orders were handed down to him and making them work without knowing he was not gig to get any maps of the target area. That meets my definition of stupid! Thankfully, the operation was cancelled.
How stupid is someone posting comments without fact checking them first?
1
-
If, as you suggest in your thought experiment, everyone had done their job as planned, then XXX Corps would have found the Nijmegen bridges in American Airborne hands and just rolled straight through to Arnhem, which they probably would have reached on schedule, in 48 hours.
When Gavin found out that the 508th were digging-in on the Groesbeek ridge instead of moving into Nijmegen to secure the bridges, he was absolutely furious. The 508th's Liaison Officer (who had delivered the news) said Gavin was the most angry he had ever seen him. By the time he got them moving, it was too late. They were beaten to the bridge by the recon battalion of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division moving down from Arnhem.
The fault was a command failure at the top of the 508th, detailed in Phil Nordyke's combat history of the unit - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). It first manifested in Normandy, when the Executive Officer was relieved by Division commander Matthew Ridgway and sent home. His replacement was killed shortly thereafter. The real problem was the Regiment commander, an excellent administrator, but not a combat leader. Gavin inherited this problem and may not have been aware of it, but clearly he should. I would also question if the assignments of the 508th and 505th should have been swapped, if the 508th Regiment was a formation more suited to a defensive role than the more experienced and aggressive 505th. I think ultimately this was an American problem, and not one that Browning, a British officer, had much authority over. The ultimate reponsibility, as TIK also beilives, is James Gavin's, and I think he knew that when the 508th LO delivered his bad news. I think he knew the operation was screwed, right there.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1