Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "Gavin wasn't to blame? 'New' evidence on Operation Market Garden's failure?" video.
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17:20 - "So Gavin is admitting that he didn't follow orders by giving out pre-drop orders, and we know he really didn't give those pre-drop orders." - Actually we do, but you need a couple of books not on TIK's booklist, which dig deeper into the story and contain first hand accounts by people who were in the final divisional briefing confirming Gavin instructed Lindquist to send a battalion directly to the bridge:
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 –
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
- Chet Graham was also witness to what happened when Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge, because as liaison officer he was the messenger:
Nordyke, Chapter 10 -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
- Based on the timelines, Gavin's intervention to get Lindquist moving, and Lindquist's orders to Warren Shields to get his 1st Battalion out of the line along the Groesbeek ridge and moving into Nijmegen, occurred at 8 PM, around the same time that Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. The first clashes between the two units occured hours later, between 10 PM (when A Company of 1st Battalion moved off from the IP - Initial Point - at the Krayenhoff barracks) and midnight (when the Kanon-Zug of SS-Pz.AA.9 that Gräbner left behind in Nijmegen was withdrawn). The clash occurred at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle, near the railway station, about 1 km from the highway bridge.
The German movements are recorded in Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). Chapter 4 is based on the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and Kampfgruppe Reinhold in charge of the Nijmegen defence).
My conclusion is that Lindquist was a poor field commander, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on the 508th in Normandy bear this out, so the fault is squarely on Lindquist. However, Gavin was his supervisor and was responsible for his divisional plan. He told Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far:
'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days[?] to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
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I find Captain T. Moffatt Burriss to be an unreliable witness. He actually mentions in his own account of 'taking' the Nijmegen highway bridge that he passed an abandoned German anti-tank gun on the riverbank between the two bridges before reaching the highway bridge, just as the 'lead' tanks of the Grenadier Guards crossed over. The anti-tank gun was also mentioned in Grenadier Guards Sergeants Robinson and Pacey's accounts, as it was Pacey's gunner that scored a hit on the gun as he crossed the bridge and forced the crew to abandon it. This was some 45 minutes before Burriss' paratroopers arrived and Carrington's tank crossed over. When Burriss arrived, Robinson and Pacey had gone half a mile up the road into the village of Lent, stopped by an American roadblock (Robinson's tank was hit by an American mine) in the railway embankment underpass. There was also a German StuG III covering the exit of the underpass, preventing any further movement. Neither the tanks or the paratroopers from G Company 504th (who were out of bazooka rounds) were in no position to do anything about the StuG, and it was also well after dark - contrary to the completely false scene of daylight tranquility presented in the Hollywood film that also lacked a burning village, Germans running around everywhere, and mopping up operations.
Carrington's role, as commander of the operation to take the bridge, was to stop at the far end and act as a radio relay between Robinson in Lent and his squadron commander back in Nijmegen. He had no orders to move and had a good technical reason for stopping where he did.
Burriss was understandably emotional after just losing half his men (from I Company 504th) in the river assault crossing, but his lack of dicipline in either threatening Carrington with his Tommy gun or making the story up (it doesn't really make much difference which) does him no credit. Both the Grenadier Guards and the 504th had their orders, and that was to secure the Nijmegen bridgehead, not go to Arnhem. The whole operation MARKET was already compromised on the first day, when the 508th PIR failed to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge while it was still defended by just 18 German guards, and by the time the bridge reinforced with SS panzer troops was finally taken, the Germans had already retaken the Arnhem bridge back from Frost.
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You might get that impression from A Bridge Too Far - book and film, but both are flawed. The book is incomplete and both versions are heavily biased against the British commanders involved. The "single road" in any literal meaning is a myth.
The ground Operation GARDEN involved not a single armoured division but all three Army Corps of British 2nd Army. Their main supply routes were code named after card suites since the Normandy breakout and used all the way to the end of the war terminating in Germany, and were nothing unique to MARKET GARDEN. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were advancing on 'Spade Route' and 'Diamond Route' respectively, while the centre line XXX Corps were on the more famous Guards Armoured Division's traditional 'Club Route', which had many planned diversions named 'Heart Route' if an alternative bridge crossing was needed. The 'Heart Route' was actually used in a couple of instances, one between Grave and Nijmegen via the Heumen lock bridge, because the Honinghutje bridge over the Maas-Waal canal on the main highway 'Club Route' was damaged in a German attempt at demolition and engineers deemed it too weak for the tanks.
You'll appreciate that none of this is explained in the Hollywood film, which only features three bridges in any detail, and a fourth (at Grave) shown for just ten seconds. The Airborne Operation MARKET involved the capture of about 24 bridges in total, so the attention is on just a handful and assumed connected by a "single road".
Even if a "single road" were true, it doesn't explain the failure of the operation, when the tanks of the Guards Armoured Division reached Nijmegen still on time to get to Arnhem in 2-3 days as intended, but then had to stop there because the River Waal bridges were still in German hands - not part of the MARKET plan at all - and this is where TIK has a point in focusing on Gavin and the 82nd Airborne.
The "single road" is simple misdirection - nice try, but people shouldn't fall for it.
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Perhaps you could have read my comment that preceeded yours by just a couple of days, because timing is the missing element in this issue.
I'll deal with the "1,000 tanks" first because that figure was just a ridiculous rumour started by an observation that the Reichswald could hide a thousand tanks, but realistically Allied intelligence estimated Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B) front from the North Sea coast to Aachen, and he was facing Montgomery with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen with another 1,500. We now know that he had 84 listed as operational in the September returns, so the Allied estimate was accurate, and by a stunning coincidence 84 is the exact number of anti-tank guns in the combined establishments of 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Parachute Brigade's Anti-Tank Squadron.
The main issue I want to address is the timeline and sequencing. Montgomery cancelled the original Arnhem operation called COMET in the early hours of 10 September, because he had just received reports II.SS-Panzerkorps with 9.'Hohenstaufen', and presumably 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' under command, had arrived in the Arnhem target area for refit and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with them. Montgomery and Browning then devised an upgraded replacement operation provisionally called SIXTEEN (COMET had been operation FIFTEEN), by adding the two American divisions, which would allow the 1st Airborne and the Poles to concentrate at Arnhem, or wherever the armoured threat was deemed greatest. The outline proposal was put to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their scheduled meeting at Brussels airport later the same day, and then Browning took the approved outline back to 1st Allied Airborne Army in England, where Brereton and Williams were primarily involved in the detailed planning for the operation now officially named MARKET.
My previous comment posted two days ago relates to finding a letter in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, which was a covering letter dated November 18, 1966 from Gavin to Ryan enclosing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree, and how in reviewing these Gavin had just realised the route march of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' had taken it through Nijmegen and Arnhem on its way to the Veluwe region north of Arnhem, where it dispersed to its various billets.
This now tied in with Gavin's recollection that on 10 September he was advised 82nd Airborne were now assigned to Nijmegen, so he went to the British 1st Airborne HQ, where they had been studying the Nijmegen area for COMET. Their intel was that there was "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen (sanitised intel of the reduced condition of the SS divisions) and "very heavy German armoured forces" in the Reichswald, and the British had been preparing their plans accordingly to deal with them.
Gavin had just now realised in 1966 these armoured forces in the Reichswald were in fact the Hohenstaufen in transit, which explains why nothing was there on 17 September when MARKET was finally launched.
So the SS divisions were not missed, they formed the reason COMET was cancelled and MARKET was an upgrade to deal with them, but the Dutch intelligence on the SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel) had only identified the Hohenstaufen from 'H' vehicle insignia and the Frundsberg had not been positively located. It was feared the Frundsberg may still be in the Nijmegen area.
Another factor to take into account is that the 'Ultra' code intelligence was only known to exist down to Army HQ level - that would be Eisenhower, Montgomery and Dempsey. No one in the Airborne (Army) was privvy to the existence of Ultra and any intelligence from this source passed down to the divisions had to be 'sanitised' by stripping out the unit identifications and source, so it appeared to be vague reports from resistance or other sources. The anti-tank batteries sent to Arnhem were given briefings to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day, and this may include Panther and Tiger tanks - a steer that a 1944 panzer division and a corps heavy tank battalion may be involved, but no unit IDs. The paratroopers were surprised by the presence of Bittrich's SS troops, because of the santised nature of the Ultra handling. Ultra was only declassified in 1974 with F.W. Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret, published the same year as Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, so Ryan was obviously not aware of Ultra, or that the SS divisions were known to be in the area, and the same still applied to most of the people he interviewed.
Final point - the reported armour near the landing zones in the infamous aerial photograph taken by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September, showing tanks in the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield, were 10 km (6.2 miles) from the nearest landing zone. These are the tanks dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles, regarded as a scandal by Cornelius Ryan because he only had Major Brian Urquhart's incredulous account to go on. Browning had passed away in 1965 and unable to defend himself, and the photo could not be located. Until 2014 that is, when it was found in a Dutch government archive, and then studied by the Air Historical Branch of the RAF. It was found to indeed show older tanks, ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, and we now know that not only the owners were the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division - but we also know that on 17 September they were located at Wolfswinkel near Son, where they attempted to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne Division) and were duly shot up by escorting aircraft.
The nearest unit of II.SS-Panzerkorps was SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, with an 'alarm kompanie' of 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry and the Werkstatt (Workshop) Kompanie based at the Saksen-Weimar barracks in northern Arnhem, and they had dispersed three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' that survived Normandy and hidden them under trees on Heijenoordseweg in the western suburbs. II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Kranenburg monastery near Vorden, 33 Km (19 miles) northeast of Arnhem, had 16 Mark IV tanks in the 5.Kompanie and 4 StuG IIIG assault guns in the 7.Kompanie. Of more immediate trouble to 1st Airborne Division was the unfortunate fact a known SS training battalion, Sepp Krafft's SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, had been moved out of their barracks in Arnhem before they were bombed and were camped in the woods north of Model's headquarters in Oosterbeek as additional security. Krafft had attended a dinner in which Model was warned by Luftwaffe General Walter Grabmann from Deelen airfield that the fields to the west of his HQ around Wolfheze were ideal landing grounds for airborne troops, but while Model dismissed these concerns, Krafft was the only officer present who took the warning seriously and had his two training companies moved out of their barracks, in an ideal position to counter the first British movements off the drop zones.
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I think you're right in that Gavin was a very quiet, thoughtful man, and was not flattered by Ryan O'Neal's daytime soap scenery-chewing performance in the Hollywood version of A Bridge Too Far. In fact, the one scene where O'Neal's performance would probably have been spot on was a scene that wasn't filmed:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
(Chapter 3, September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus, 2012)
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
(Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012)
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
(Chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012)
I think TIK is on the right track, but he hasn't gone as far as reading these books, judging by his published booklist. I highly recommend them. Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also important backstory for Lindquist's performance during the 508th's first combat operation, and the way the command problems in the 508th were (partially) dealt with by Matthew Ridgway at the time. The fact these problems were not fully resolved when Gavin took over the division in August 1944 before MARKET GARDEN was unfortunate, but also now his responsibility.
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@thevillaaston7811 - a bit more from the same folder - page 95, letter Ryan to Gavin agreeing that the 'King Kong' Lindemans betrayal story is nonsense, but Ryan says he was under a lot of presure from (prince) Bernhard (of the Netherlands) to put it all in his book. Ryan says he had a burr under the saddle about the whole thing (nice turn of phrase).
Most interesting point is about the documents that fell into Student's lap - Ryan didn't know until Gavin told him it was a 101st officer and it was only a resupply schedule not a list of all the objectives, but Student guessed it was Arnhem. Ryan had interviewed Student and said he was quite sore about not being able to communicate the information for 48 hours, so it was that long before Model heard about the document, by which time Runstedt, Model, Bittrich, Harmel and Harzer already knew what all the objectives were.
Gavin also had an artillery officer that took orders into the air because they captured one of their own musette bags from the Germans with the orders still in it, apparently unread, but Gavin had charges proferred over the incident.
Letter also contains Ryan's belief Browning did not listen to his own intelligence officer who is now with the UN (Brian Urquhart), so this is decades before the photo emerged in 2014. Ryan thinks both Brereton and Browning were at fault and although won't commit it to print believes Urquhart (Roy) should not have been in command of an airborne division. In second guessing the decisions made at Arnhem, Ryan says he wondered what would Jim Gavin have done?
Gavin replies that he was amazed by Urquhart's divisional plan and turned to Jack Norton (his G-3) and said "My God, he can't mean it", and thought he should have dropped a 'regiment' south of the bridge. Gavin wondered why Browning did not question Urquhart's plan and assumed it was Browning's lack of airborne operational experience! Obviously Gavin had not studied the terrain and flak in that area and was not aware Browning had proposed glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges and had them deleted by Brereton and Williams. And this was the same Jim Gavin that rejected the British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge!
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Gavin, as the 82nd Division commander, has to take the overall responsibility, but the failure was that of one of his regimental commanders to follow Gavin's divisional plan. I believe TIK's research is correct as far as it goes, but I don't think he's drilled down to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment's combat history - Put Us Down In Hell by Phil Nordyke, 2012:
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Captain Ben Delamater, the [1st] battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
I think that because these senior American officers were still around at the time Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far in 1974, and Browning and Montgomery had both already passed, the latter became convenient scapegoats. It seems that only in the last 10-12 years the details on the events at Nijmegen are starting to become clear. A further complication was that Lindquist had performed badly in Normandy on the 508th's first combat operation and both Matthew Ridgway (CO of the 82nd in Normandy) and Gavin (who had been his Assistant Commander in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist. According to Gavin after the war, Ridgway would not promote Lindquist, despite beieng the senior Colonel in the Division. This may be why Ridgway did not take Lindquist with him as his S-1 (Admin Officer), a role Lindquist has proven to be gifted at earlier in his career before being given a combat command, when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in the month before Market Garden. Gavin took over the 82nd Division and inherited Lindquist, but it's not clear how Gavin regarded him until after the war (perhaps with the benefit of hindsight). Gavin also failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs in the planning and execution of Market Garden, and carried a spinal injury after the jump. Ridgway and US XVIII Airborne Corps did not have a role in Market Garden (it was under Browning's British 1st Airborne Corps), so Ridgway borrowed a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and drove up the Market Garden corridor to visit his two divisions unofficially. When he got to the 82nd CP, he was studying a map on the wall when Gavin returned from dealing with a problem on the front lines and was handed a message about another problem and left the CP to deal with it before either man could acknowledge the other's presence.
I find the whole story quite extraordinary.
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I have just a few notes:
1. Market had failed on the evening of 17 September when the 508th PIR failed to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge before it was reinforced by Gräbner’s SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arriving from Beekbergen, via the Arnhem bridge, when it was only guarded by an NCO and seventeen men. Despite Gavin’s specific instruction to Colonel Lindquist to “move with speed” on it as soon as possible after landing.
2. It was the view of 1st Parachute Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, that they could have received XXX Corps as late as 21 September. As he was an experienced officer and was actually there and I’m not, I don’t feel qualified to say that I know better.
3. The original intention for the XXX Corps advance from Nijmegen to Arnhem was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to lead that sector and they may have deployed into Arnhem-Oosterbeek to assist 1st Airborne to allow Guards Armoured to pass through and attack Deelen, so the way the advance would have developed on 19 September with a clear run through Nijmegen has to be speculative, but Guards were not intended to be leading at this point because of the terrain on the Betuwe.
4. You say you’re reluctant to assign blame and then you assign blame to Browning, the Guards, Urquhart, and the Germans! I think blaming the Germans is a bit unfair as it was actually their job to sabotage Market Garden and not Lindquist’s, but perhaps you just didn’t want your hit list to be all British? I’m only surprised you didn’t blame Frost for not holding on until Arnhem was liberated in April 1945.
5. Browning was awarded the DSO in WW1 as a Lieutenant for an action in which he distinguished himself in taking command of three companies. The DSO was generally given to officers in command above the rank of Captain, and when awarded to a junior officer this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross. I think your assessment of his command career is nothing short of insulting.
6. Montgomery was “hands off” the operation because he was busy planning the next phase of 21st Army Group operations – the opening up of Antwerp by the Canadians and then the next 2nd Army operation, the Ruhr envelopment with US 1st Army. While his Chief of Staff was on sick leave, he was also doing both jobs, so visits were not possible.
7. Much is made of Browning’s Corps HQ taken to Groesbeek, but here’s the thing: Montgomery gets criticised for not visiting the front during the operation and then Browning gets criticised for leading the operation he actually had more of a hand in planning.
8. Browning was not in contact with 101st Airborne during the battle because their liaison officer and his comms team had all been killed in a glider crash near Student’s headquarters at Vught.
9. Browning’s Corps HQ required tugs for 38 Horsa gliders and another 2 to tow WACO gliders for the American liaison officers. Another 4 RAF aircraft towed WACOs to Groesbeek carrying two attached USAAF Fighter Control Teams. Those towing aircraft could not have carried “another battalion” to Arnhem, as that would require aircraft for 60 Horsas, and a Hamilcar glider for their two Universal Carriers.
10. The South Staffordshire Airlanding Battalion was flown to Arnhem in two lifts, the first half in 20 Horsas and the second half in 40 Horsas, and one Hamilcar. The reason why ‘half’ a battalion can be carried by such different numbers of Horsas is because Airlanding Battalions had two Mortar Platoons and Two MMG Platoons in the Support Company, one each using hand carts and the other using Jeeps and trailers. Only the Hand Cart Platoons went with two rifle companies in the first lift, hence only 20 Horsas required, and the Jeep Platoons went with the other two rifle companies in the second lift, hence 40 Horsas.
11. If the aircraft required to tow Browning’s Corps HQ to Groesbeek were reassigned to tow the entire Staffords battalion to Arnhem on the first day, what difference would it have made to the operation? The Staffords’ mission in Phase 1 was to protect Landing Zone ‘S’, more than adequately achieved by the two rifle companies, glider pilots, and the Independent Company (pathfinders), because the zone was not under any significant German pressure during Phase 1. After the second lift arrived, their Phase 2 role was brigade reserve, as the 1st BOrder and 7th KOSB were assigned the role of holding the 1st Airlanding Brigade sector of the divisional perimeter around Arnhem. Their reserve status made them the logical choice to be reassigned in Phase 2 to move into Arnhem to support 1st Parachute Brigade, and the second half of the battalion had arrived to join them during this move. So, it remains that if it wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome of the battle at Arnhem to split the South Staffords over two lifts, then Browning might as well have done what he considered his duty to lead his Corps into the operation from the first day. I maintain point 1, that the operation was compromised at Nijmegen on the first evening, and not at all at Arnhem.
12. The only point on which we might agree, is that a better plan at Arnhem might have been to commit all six and a half battalions landing on the first lift (one of the two Glider Pilot Wings operated as a battalion of light infantry and reinforced the Staffords holding LZ ‘S’) to seizing the town. It might have worked, arguably, and holding the Airlanding Brigade back to hold the zones indeed had the disadvantage of telegraphing intent to the enemy, which is not something that would be done today in modern warfare. That compromise was forced on Urquhart by Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command, because his pilots could not navigate large formations at night, which would be required at both ends of the first day for a double lift. He also made a lame excuse about insufficient turnaround times for maintenance, which I don’t think would have impressed the Battle of Britain veterans in the RAF who had worked around the clock to save their country from a Nazi invasion - something the United States never had to go through.
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18:58 - context on the German tanks - I don't know where the intelligence report on the 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald comes from, except that it was suspected there was a tank depot near Kleve behind the forest, and that the forest could conceal up to 1,000 tanks. The depot was later discovered to be near Münster, the HQ of Wehrkreis VI (military district 6) deeper into Germany. So the 1,000 figure was a rumour, not a serious estimate.
Generalfeldmarschal Model was actually assessed to have less than 100 operational panzers in his Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B) front between Aachen and the North Sea coast, and we now know his 5 September returns actually listed 84 as operational, so the Allied intelligence estimate was actually correct. By a bizarre coincidence, the combined anti-tank gun establishments of the British 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Independent Parachute Brigade was exactly 84 AT guns, as if the universe were trying to tell the naysayers something!
For additional context, Model was facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks, and the US 1st Army at Aachen with another 1,500. This is why confidence in the Allied camp was so high in September of 1944.
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I don't think Gavin simply shelled the Reichswald for the sake of it, he had only one Parachute Field Artillery Battalion and limited ammunition available on the first day, and the 505th did patrol the forest to ascertain the enemy's disposition there at that time.
I have the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intelligence) and G-3 (Operations) documents during their WW2 service downloaded from the PaperlessArchives website for twelve dollars (and change), and is in the form of a single pdf document with 9,333 pages of handwritten notes and messages as well as typed reports in varying degrees of readability due to the fact they are photocopies. My main purpose in studying them is to research the German unit identifications derived from prisoner of war interrogations, but I'm also interested in this question of what exactly went wrong at Nijmegen to compromise the operation.
We know from first hand accounts in September Hope - The American Side of A Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012), and Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 by Phil Nordyke (2012) - both published the year after RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen - that Gavin learned from the 505th that the Reichswald was unoccupied and judged too dense for armoured operations (except along the forest 'rides') at around the same time (about 1830 hrs D-Day) the 508th's liaison officer reported in that Colonel Lindquist was not sending a battalion to the bridge until the drop zone was cleared. According to Nordyke's first hand witness, Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ who delivered Lindquist's report, Gavin was as mad as he'd ever seen him and immediately ordered Graham to come with him by Jeep to the 508th CP to "get him moving."
From the G-2 documents, which gives map references on patrol routes that were taken, the 505th seem to have penetrated the Reichswald to a depth about halfway between the western edge of the forest (which was also the German border) and the main Kranenburg-Gennep road, which in the forest section between the villages of Frasselt and Grünewald the eastern side of that road is the main line of the Westwall in this sector - no more than trenches and log-reinforced dugouts rather than concrete bunkers, and largely unmanned.
By the way, the only radios with an effective range of a few miles were the SCR-300 backpack sets that were issued to Parachute Battalions on a scale of six per battalion on the battalion net. So there was one issued to each rifle company and the other three at battalion HQ, one on the companies frequency and one on the regiment frequency, plus a spare set. Each company had the smaller walkie-talkie SCR-536 (actually called a "handie-talkie" during the war), for communications within the company with the platoons, and a small patrol would reasonably take one of these radios - however, their range was extremely limited and in the Netherlands terrain often reduced to virtually line of sight. As a rule, a patrol would have to report back in person because they would be out of range until they were almost back in the company area.
It's worth noting that in the 508th on D-Day, Colonel Lindquist's pre-flight plan was to send a recon patrol based on Lt Robert Weaver's 3rd Platoon of C Company (Weaver was selected because he had performed well in Normandy), reinforced with Lt Lee Frigo's 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section, a section from the LMG Platoon, and an SCR-300 radio and operator from battalion. Their mission was to recon the main highway bridge in Nijmegen and report on its condition. This was at variance to Gavin's instructions from his final divisional briefing two days before take-off, where he instructed Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and stressed that speed was important and "to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" (Chet Graham, who sat in on the briefing, in Nordyke 2012).
So what happened to the patrol? It got split up in the crowds of Dutch civilians in Nijmegen and lost contact with the point team from the S-2 Section. By the time they obtained a guide from the Dutch resistance, it was after dark and the bridge was reinforced with SS panzer troops, and in the contacts with the enemy had taken some casualties. Contact with Battalion on the SCR-300 failed until Weaver eventually received a message that two companies (A and B) were on the way to the bridge (this was after Gavin's intervention), and he decided to withdraw to rejoin C Company back on the Groesbeek ridge. The three-man point team under PFC Joe Atkins had meanwhile managed to push their way through crowds of celebrating Dutch civilians and reached the highway bridge, taking the southern end and seven surprised German guards prisoner without firing a shot. They waited an hour until dark for the rest of the patrol that never arrived, and then decided they would have to withdraw. As they were leaving they could heavy "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge (Atkins' account, in Zig Borough's The 508th Connection, 2013).
Colonel Lindquist did not interpret his instructions correctly, believing he had to secure the drop zone and his other objectives before sending any large force to the bridge, hence the failure to secure the bridge and Gavin immediately realising the operation was potentially compromised when he received Lindquist's report via Chet Graham. By the time Gavin intervened ("I told you to move with speed" - Nordyke, 2012) and ordered Lindquist to send the 1st Battalion into Nijmegen, it was too late. It took two hours to get A and B Companies out of their extended positions along the Groesbeek ridge line and organised for a move into the city.
TIK is on the right line as far as his reading goes, but he doesn't seem to have drilled down to regimental level and read Nordyke, or McManus' book on the American side of the operation. The 82nd Airborne G-2 and G-3 documents are illuminating, but frustrating at the same time - they did not record map references or the 82nd sub-unit responsible for the prisoners taken, so it's difficult to identify the locations of enemy units as well as determine the disambiguated identity of the unit from the anglicised translation - compare with a British unit war diary where at least map refs are usually always recorded. I think you've overestimated the communications systems they had at the time, and Gavin only received the liaison officer's reports the Reichswald was not a threat (yet) at about the same time he found out his divisional plan had just fallen apart at Nijmegen, possibly fatally.
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Buckingham has form as a well-known advocate of the conventional narrative first established by Cornelius Ryan and followed by so many others with a vested interest in criticising the British commanders. This review on Amazon may be a minority report, but it should not be ignored:
"This is undoubtedly the best detailed narrative of Operation MG, and for that he should be commended. He very much comes down on the side of criticising the British generals and Commanders, without a peep of a criticism of American involvement. He also picks fault with any period of a few hours here and there that British 30 Corps wastes, but 82nd Division spent the best part of two full days achieving little and any blame apparently lies at Browning's feet. And then there is the 2nd reason for the failure of the operation that is given as 1st Airborne's failure to control Arnhem bridge. Staggering assessment, again when you consider 82nd are literally absolved from not giving any real priority to Waal bridge. I certainly don't believe the failure was solely due to the American inaction, and also criticism of British 30 Corps caution and slowness at points is possibly justified, though 30 Corps actually arrived on time at Nijmegen, and in my opinion he falls for the same tired old over-emphasis with blaming them. The commencement of the operation at 2.35pm even gets criticised. For anyone to co-ordinate 50,000 troops and 20,000 vehicles, as well as 408 guns and 11 squadrons of Typhoon attack aircraft with all the supplies required over 3-4 days is no easy logistical task. Especially when Brereton only gave the definite go ahead on the 16th at being 1pm the following day. They only started at 10.25am too, wasting any possible opportunity of two drops in a day which many feel were possible, a decision which affected all operations adversely. Again, no inferred criticism of slowness there by the author. But to leave out altogether the importance of the decision-making, hesitation, lack of direction and lack of priority of Brigadier-General James Gavin at Nijmegen is quite incredible - it feels like there is a chapter missing, just like 508 PIRs official records. No criticism of Gavin for his poor handling of Lindquist. To blame this entirely on Browning is also highly questionable, he may hold some responsibility, but Gavin in the US Official history enquiry states clearly to Captain Westover that it was his sole decision to place emphasis on the Reichswald Heights, and that Browning as Corps Commander merely ratified it. This is a critical statement by Gavin and the author seems to overlook or disregard the responsibility of that key decision, and just deflect it to British command. Hence can only give it a 3. BTW, the Grenadier Guards troops and tanks fought supremely well at Nijmegen.
So overall, a superb detailed account with some great analysis, but compromised by the above weakness, bias, and lack of subjectivity massively."
(nick, verified purchase, reviewed in the UK on 4th January 2023)
What's missing seems to be the material covered by:
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010), Chapter 4: Betuwe
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie (2011, revised 2019)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge
Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014)
Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
Blaming Browning is problematic after Brereton had politically neutralised him during the operation LINNET II affair (Roger Cirillo thesis 2001), so he was unable to object to Brereton and Williams' changes to the plan for MARKET. Browning and Gavin were in agreement that the bridges had priority, but that the Groesbeek ridge also must be secured (there's an excellent analysis by McManus 2012). There is clear evidence Gavin dropped the ball at Nijmegen by selecting the 508th to the mission (Poulussen 2011, McManus and Nordyke 2012), and a recon patrol reached the lightly guarded Nijmegen bridge and took the southern end with just three men until SS armour arrived (Zig Boroughs 2013), proving what could have been achieved if the whole battalion had been sent promptly as Gavin had instructed. The German side of events at Nijmegen corroborate this with a chapter based on the diary of Reinhold's adjutant, Gernot Traupel (Gerritsen and Revell 2010).
The best overall history of MARKET GARDEN so far has to be Swedish historian Christer Bergström's volumes (2019, 2020). He uses unpublished documents and interviews from the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and also debunks the many myths established by the film version of A Bridge Too Far.
By the way, to answer Nick's question in the review - commencement of operation GARDEN at 1435 hrs, an hour and thirty-five minutes after H-Hour for MARKET, was to deconflict their tactical air support from the troop carrier airlift. The skies would have been just too congested - this point is explained by Sebastian Ritchie (2011, 2019). Horrocks also wanted to be sure the airborne operation was not cancelled before committing his ground troops, so seeing the 101st Airborne flying overhead confirmed the operation was on. I doubt Buckingham also included Ritchie's study of the 'missing' aerial photo showing German armour in the Arnhem area (RAF 2016, 2019) - the tanks belonged to a Luftwaffe training unit and not II.SS-Panzerkorps, and on D-Day they were laagered in an orchard opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone north of Son many miles from Arnhem and were duly neutralised by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft.
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@Swift-mr5zi - wow! You certainly got my attention. Reading every book on MARKET GARDEN is certainly ambitious and may not even be possible or desirable, and would probably take a lifetime. Many of the books I have that go into the granular detail I find really interesting are specialist books on German units in particular that had limited print runs and may only be available now secondhand for really silly money. Also, many books on the topic are large 'coffee-table' type books that are expensive to obtain even if you can find a copy these days at a good specialist bookstore willing to sell it at the original cover price. So, it's not an easy task, even over the 46 years I've been reading on this.
I first read Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1974) when I was 15, borrowed from a schoolfriend shortly before the film version was released (it was a 1977 paperback 'film tie-in' edition), and despite its flaws - it is biased and has many omissions due to it being rushed to publication incomplete because of Ryan's terminal cancer - I would still recommend it as the most accessible starting point. Cornelius Ryan was an Irish newspaperman from Dublin who was working for the Daily Telegraph in London as a war correspondent embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army in Europe, so he received the perfect anti-British indoctrination! After the war he became an American citizen and wrote his three acclaimed books on the war.
The next book I would recommend, as the other half of a 'foundation course' to get started, is Robert J Kershaw's It Never Snows In September - The German View of Market Garden and the Battle of Arnhem September 1944 (1990), which was the first real attempt to tell the story from the German point of view. Rob Kershaw was a Parachute Regiment officer in the 1980s British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), which was a Cold War formation based in West Germany, but he was also a liaison officer to the West German army and spoke fluent German, so he was asked by the Royal Military College at Sandhurst to research the German archives on MARKET GARDEN for them. It Never Snows In September is the book that came out of that research. Like A Bridge Too Far, it is flawed and outdated - there are some errors in his German OOB (order of battle) in the appendices that have suffered from being translated into English, rather than my preferred technique of keeping the original German nomenclature and providing readers with a glossary - but it's still essential reading. I have since found many German records online and can see where Rob got his information from and where he went wrong in translation.
It is possible to obtain both of these books for free on the internet - I found a copy somewhere of A Bridge Too Far in a .txt format, and It Never Snows In September as a .pdf document. I'm old fashioned and like to have and to read books in hardcopy, but these digital copies are useful as well because you can search the text for cross-referencing information found in other books. If you do want to obtain Kershaw's book, I recommend the large format paperback (or hardback) which has more photos and maps in it than the standard pulp paperback. The large format book (2004 edition on Amazon) is distinguished by a montage of photos on the cover surrounding the title in a centre panel with the 'Nazi Eagle' insignia, rather than the pulp paperback that usually has a single photo image on the cover (the 2008 edition on Amazon has a StuG assault gun pictured).
Another two good references that can be downloaded for free are:
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University) - this has really interesting background on planning the airborne operations, including Browning's disgraceful treatment during the Operation LINNET II affair that had a lot of influence on MARKET.
Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019) - this is the background to the infamous aerial photo of German armour in the Arnhem area in A Bridge Too Far that did so much damage to Browning's reputation, and this study of the 'lost' photo after it emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2015 provides context to that story, which was based entirely on Cornelius Ryan's interview with Intelligence Officer Major Brian Urquhart (renamed "Major Fuller" in the film), as Browning had already passed away and the photo itself could not be located.
I think those two documents, both are .pdf documents that can be downloaded, show that Ryan's book did not tell the whole story and further investigation can change your whole perception of the operation and the key personalities involved, but A Bridge Too Far is probably enough to get you hooked because that's what happened to me!
An abridged version of the aerial photo study is in the updated edition of Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) by the same author, Sebastian Ritchie, of the RAF's Air Historical Branch. This is also a recommended book on the air planning and lessons learned from previous operations.
Finally, I would recommend Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which are multi-media books - if you like QR codes you can use with a smartphone - which updates A Bridge Too Far and seeks to debunk many of the myths created by the film, using unpublished research in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of documents and interviews held at Ohio State University, and that is a resource you can also review for yourself online.
Good luck - you have a lot of work ahead of you if you really want to do this, and I'll be happy to answer any questions and point to any references that I can. I'll consider an alternative means of communication if I feel it is necessary, but I'm not much of social media person. It's up to you how much help you think you need. Best wishes!
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@Johnny Carroll - there are significant differences between the German situations in Arnhem and Nijmegen, and that led to significant differences in the Allied experience of getting to their objectives. It also, unfortunately, highlights the difference in quality of the standards of leadership in the Allied units in both locations.
At NIjmegen, the city was evacuated by rear echelon troops, primarily the BdO (Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei) which was equivalent to a division HQ that controlled all the German 'Order Police' in the Netherlands under Generalmajor der Polizei Hellmuth Mascus. They were originally in Den Haag and then moved to Nijmegen in 1943 when the Dutch coast became a potential invasion coast. On the afternoon of 17 September when the alarm was raised, they evacuated their headquarters in the old hospital in Molenstraat, first to their trining depot at Schalkhaar (Deventer) and then to Zwolle. The other main headquarters in the area was the NEBO monastery on the Groesbeek road just south of De Ploeg, hosting Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment 1 under Oberst Friedrich 'Fritz' Hencke, and the 1.Fallschirm Oberkommando Ausbildungsstelle under Oberst Günther Hartung, also evacuated and they slipped into the city, and this was the building occupied by the 508th command post that afternoon. And finally at the Hotel Groot Berg-en-Dal was the headquarters of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler's SS-Division zV, controlling the V-2 operations that evacuated presumably to Germany via Kleve, where they had one of their firing batteries firing on Paris and Antwerp.
The city was therefore devoid of any combat units and only had some of these rear echelon troops all trying to escape. I believe one unit left behind was the BdO Musikkorps (the division band!), between 30-40 men left to guard the bridges, according to Gernot Traupel, the adjutant of Kampfgruppe Reinhard (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), they arrived that evening. The actual BdO Infanterie-Stabswache, a protective guard of probably 16 men under Zugwachtmeister Egon Klein, was ordered to leave Nijmegen on 17 September to join the SS-Polizei Lehrkommando (10./SS-Polizei Regiment 3) at Schalkhaar, who were then deployed for security and backup tasks at Arnhem as a reinforcement for Krafft's battalion.
The city was effectively open, but only until the SS-Panzer troops started arriving.
1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem had an effective delay in the form of Krafft's SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-un-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 with two companies already in Wolfheze and Oosterbeek when the landings happened. The 2.Kompanie actually attacked Landing zone 'Z' as a delaying tactic while 4.Kompanie was brought up to form the blocking line along the Wolfhezerweg. Frost managed to outflank this position but he had to deal with a patrol from Krafft's unit, MGs and mortars at Doorwerth, an armoured car at Oosterbeek Laag station, more MGs on Den Brink, before he got into the town. This was after landing 30 minutes later than the 508th and having 3 Km further to march.
There's really no comparison.
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I can recommend 82nd historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). From the first hand witness evidence in the book, it's clear that Gavin tried to instil this fundamental understanding in Lindquist's thinking, but Lindquist still failed to move quickly on the bridge. The reason Roy Lindquist is not a household name, and in a very negative context, is because Gavin seems to have taken responsibility for the failure, and according to the correspondence from Browning in TIK's video, Browning seemed willing to help him out. Hence the arguments over Gavin and Browning being at fault ever since.
Lindquist was an early officer volunteer to the US Airborne forces and excelled as a gifted administrator and personnel officer (S-1) before being given command of the embryonic 508th battalion and raised it to a full regiment. There were command problems in the 508th on its first combat operation in Normandy (see Nordyke's NOrmandy chapters for this) which were only partly dealt with by division commander Matthew Ridgway. According to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan, Lindquist was not trusted by Ridgway, but could produce documentation like you have never seen. He told Ryan that Ridgway would not promote Lindquist and couldn't promote any other colonel in the division because Lindquist had the seniority. This was the division that Gavin inherited when Ridgway was promoted to command XVIII Airborne Corps in August, before Market Garden.
The promotion problems may also explain why Gavin failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs during the planning and execution of Market Garden, and after the jump was doing this while carrying a jump injury to his spine.
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Gavin was not ordered to prioritise the heights over the bridge. Browning's original intent was to have the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges seized by dawn coup de main glider assaults in operation COMET and the expanded upgrade operation provisionally called SIXTEEN. Brereton's decision to make all flights daylight for his MARKET plan effectively removed the glider coup de main assaults as too risky for broad daylight in the middle of the day.
Gavin told Cornelius Ryan the British wanted him to drop a battalion at the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop and the Division disorganised for days. Instead he opted to drop his three regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives.
On 15 September, 48 hours before the jump in the final divisional briefing, he instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge immediately on landing. The next day, in the final Corps briefing, Browning cautioned Gavin “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
I don't interpret this as placing the priority of the ridge over the bridge, and after being frustrated twice on having a coup de main assault on the bridge to seize it quickly, Browning would be the last person in the world to de-prioritise the bridge altogether.
On D-Day, Colonel Lindquist failed to carry out Gavin's instruction, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first before sending a large force to the bridge. Despite getting a first hand report from Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge, Lindquist and 1st Battalion CO Shields Warren launched a recon patrol to the bridge to report on its condition. Lindquist was not a good field commander and had not performed well in Normandy - Gavin told Cornelius Ryan that neither he nor 82nd commander in Normandy, Matthew Ridgway, trusted Lindquist in a fight.
When the first progress reports came in around 1830 hours and Gavin was told that the 508th had not yet sent the battalion into Nijmegen, Gavin was as "mad" as the 508th's liaison officer had ever seen him and ordered the officer into a Jeep to "come with me - let's get him moving." At the 508th CP, Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed." By the time the 1st Battalion was got out of its extended line along the ridge and assembled on the road, it was too late to beat 10.SS-Panzer-Division to the bridge and the first clash was with SS troops at the traffic circle near the rail station a kilometer from the bridge.
The operation was not too ambitious, it was compromised - in the air planning, and in the execution on the ground at Nijmegen.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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I have no idea what you're talking about. Gavin's divisional plan was for the 508th to "move with speed" on the Nijmegen bridge as soon as possible after landing.
The 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ was Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Captain Ben Delamater was the 1st Battalion’s executive officer - "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
When Chet Graham decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge - "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
(Source: Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II, Phil Nordyke, 2012)
Browning had little input after the Corps briefing in England and Gavin drew up his divisional plan. On the afternoon of Monday 18 September, after the safe arrival of the 2nd Lift and the failure of panzers to emerge from the Reichswald, Gavin asked Browning for permission to assault the Nijmegen bridges and was refused (Little Sense Of Urgency, RG Poulussen, 2014). Presumably this was because Browning correctly judged them to be too strongly held and required support from the Guards Armoured Division when they arrived the following morning.
The right time to move on the bridges was on the first afternoon, especially after it was established from the Dutch resistance that the city had been evacuated by the Germans and the highway bridge guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. Just three Scouts from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section managed to surprise the guards at the southern end of the bridge. "We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." (Source: Trooper Joe Atkins' account in The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs, 2013). The heavy equipment was undoubtedly SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 with about 30 vehicles under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner, arriving from Beekbergen via the Arnhem bridge. They left for Elst once elements of Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) with a company of engineers and Euling's panzergrenadiers started arriving to reinforce the bridge defences.
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I think the key to understanding Lindquist is in the earlier Normandy chapters of Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012), Chapter 8:
When Captain Chet Graham, the commanding officer of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion and the acting battalion executive officer, received the attack order he was stunned. "The orders were to cross open ground and take Hill 95, with no information given of enemy strength, nor possible help from our artillery. When I received the orders, I said, 'With WHAT?' (2nd Battalion strength had gone from 640 to 225 with 8 officers.) Anyway that was our job.
"I asked Colonel Lindquist, 'What about Colonel Alexander's plan to advance through the cover of the trees?'
"He said, 'You have your orders.' "
[Alexander had been the 505th's XO and replaced the 508th's XO, who was found to be combat ineffective on D-Day and court-martialled by Ridgway out of the Airborne. Alexander then took over 2nd Battalion when the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Shanley, was critically wounded. Shanley recovered to become regiment XO for Market Garden]
When Captain Graham returned to the 2nd Battalion command post, he found out "that Colonel Alexander had been hit in the lungs by a tree burst and evacuated. So I was it (battalion CO)."
...
On the right flank, Captain Chet Graham and 2nd Battalion jumped off, attacking southwest toward Hill 95. "We moved at 0800 across the area with no cover and were shelled by 88s for most of the two miles.
"F Company was hugging the hill with open ground on its right and being cut up. I pulled them back and planned to move E Company to the right. (Hill 95 had been a Roman outpost. It had a sheltered moat inside the perimeter circling the hill, about ten feet wide. So, we were able to move under cover from side to side.)
"During this time, I was being called back to our big radio to converse with Colonel Lindquist. He told me not to move F Company back. ('We don't give up ground we have taken - get them back.') I explained my troubles and my plan, and told him he should come and see for himself, instead of second guessing from a mile away. I was relieved of command on the spot. Royal Taylor came down and followed the plan."
...
When Lieutenant Colonel Mark Alexander learned of the costly fight for Hill 95, he was angered by the unnecessary loss of life. "They went right across the open space and straight up the hill instead of taking advantage of the woods. There was no reason why they should go across that open valley. I knew if they did they would get their butts blown off. It shouldn't have been that way. They really got nailed and a lot of guys got killed.
"After the war, I asked Captain [Chet] Graham, who took command after I was hit, 'Why did you guys go across the open valley?'
"He said, 'We had our orders to go straight ahead, so we did.'
"Lindquist stayed back in his CP and never did even come up before giving those orders, I found out afterwards. I know he didn't do reconnaissance. It's foolish, in fact. But he was more of a guy that commanded from back a-ways. He always laid back and relied on information from others, and you generally can't do it that way and be successful. Can't do it.
"That operation always bothered me, because I know if I'd been there, a lot of these guys wouldn't have lost their lives."
In his interview with Cornelius Ryan in 1967 for A Bridge Too Far (1974), Gavin was quite open about his criticism of Lindquist, but Ryan didn't follow it up:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.”
It’s interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant to jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - box 101, folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Ryan did not explore this any further and the short passage in the published book has the whole Nijmegen story on the first afternoon and early evening, as told in Nordyke's regimental history, completely missing:
Although General Browning had directed Gavin not to go for the Nijmegen crossing until the high ground around Groesbeek was secured, Gavin was confident that all the 82nd's objectives could be taken on this first day. Evaluating the situation some twenty-four hours before the jump, Gavin had called in the 508th's commander, Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, and directed him to send one battalion racing for the bridge. In the surprise and confusion of the airborne landings, Gavin reasoned, the gamble was well worth taking. "I cautioned Lindquist about the dangers of getting caught in streets," Gavin remembers, "and pointed out that the way to get the bridge was to approach from east of the city without going through built-up areas." Whether by misunderstanding or a desire to clean up his initial assignments, Lindquist's own recollection was that he was not to commit his troopers in an assault on the bridge until the regiment's other objectives had been achieved. To the 1/Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, Jr., Lindquist assigned the task of holding protective positions along the Groesbeek-Nijmegen highway about a mile and a quarter southeast of the city. Warren was to defend the area and link up with the regiment' remaining two battalions to the west and east. Only when these missions were accomplished, Warren recalled, was he to prepare to go into Nijmegen. Thus, instead of driving for the bridge from the flat farming areas to the east, Warren's battalion found itself squarely in the center of those very built-up areas Gavin had sought to avoid.
(A Bridge Too Far, Cornelius Ryan 1974)
And that's how you conduct a successful cover-up between 1974 and 2012, which includes the period in which a Hollywood film is produced.
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Just came across the reason the allied planners thought the Reichswald had German tanks hiding in it, while going through some of the documents in the Cornelius Ryan Collection I came across a covering letter from Gavin to Ryan in which he says he just figured out where the tanks had come from while enclosing some papers from a Dutch researcher. The location of the document is (James Gavin) box 101, folder 9, and the letter is page 48:
November 18, 1966
Dear Connie,
Here's a paper which I received quite a long time ago from T. A. Boeree. On page 4a it gives the route of march of the Hohenstaufen Division to positions north of Arnhem. One of its stops was at Nijmegen and, according to the intelligence we had, in the Reichswald.
As I believe I told you, when I talked to you about Operation Market at one time, the British originally planned to parachute into Nijmegen and they were working with Bestebreurtje on their planning when I was called to Brereton's headquarters on September 10 and given the mission for the 82nd. Immediately following that meeting, I went over to the British headquarters. Their intelligence was that there were very heavy German armored forces in the Reichswald and they had been preparing to deal with them in their plans. It seems obvious, now, that the intelligence coming from the Dutch underground was based on armoured forces in transit to north of Arnhem. I don't think that Boeree's paper will contribute much to an understanding of the outcome of Market, but I thought that you should have it in your papers.
With best regards,
(signed) James M. Gavin
I have Cornelius Bauer's book The Battle of Arnhem (1966, 2012, first published as De Slag By Arnhem, 1963) with Colonel Theodoor Alexander Boeree, and based on Boeree's research since the war. Chapter Two is on the Mystery of the Hohenstaufen Division (10-17 September 1944) and does indeed describe the withdrawal of the division from Normandy to Arnhem, and a map shows the route march from its entry into the Netherlands across the Maas at Maastricht, then through Sittard, Roermond, Venlo, Mook, Nijmegen, and Arnhem, between 4-7 September. His map does not show where it stopped, but Boeree says the division assembled at Sittard after crossing the Maas on 4 September, and then moved north to the Veluwe region (north of Arnhem) on 7 September. He also states the Frundsberg also moved northwards via Nijmegen and Arnhem to the Achterhoek region (east of the river Ijssel), but with no specifics on stops.
It seems to me that the Frundsberg more likely stopped (to assemble?) in the Reichswald, while the Hohenstaufen passed right by in its transit from Sittard to the Veluwe, but Gavin's point I think is basically the answer because the intelligence only reported "armored forces" in the forest and did not identify the unit(s). The 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions had disappeared to Allied intelligence in northern France and did not reappear until the Dutch resistance identified SS troops with 'H' vehicle insignia north of Arnhem and 'Ultra' intercepts had indicated II.SS-Panzerkorps were in the eastern Netherlands.
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@Mulberry2000 - you found the report! Thanks, I will check box 100 folder 3 in more detail today.
I think you might have misunderstood Lindquist's resources - he had three battalions in his regiment. Lindquist's original Field Order No.1, 508 PIR dated 13 September 1944 (reproduced in RG Poulussen's Lost at Nijmegen, 2011, ANNEXES) states:
2. a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ "T", seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589).
3. x. (6) All Bns will be prepared to attack to the N, within their sectors to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633).
(Signed)
LINDQUIST
Commanding
So all three Battalions, except D Company of 2nd Battalion clearing the DZ, were tasked to establish key roadblocks along a line south of Nijmegen, with 2nd Battalion (Otho Holmes) at De Hut blocking the Grave and Gennep highways, 1st Battalion (Shields Warren) at De Ploeg blocking the Groesbeek road, and 3rd Battalion (Louis Mendez) seizing Berg-en-Dal on the Kleve highway. 1st and 3rd Battalions were on the ridge of the high ground overlooking Nijmegen. 2nd Battalion on the left flank were on lower ground nearer the canal and later were to seize Bridge 10 at Honinghutje on D+1.
This deployment looks very defensive, because Gavin had been warned the Nijmegen Dutch army barracks might contain "a regiment of SS" troops (the reduced condition of 10.SS-Panzer-Division) and they might be drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve behind the Reichswald. So Gavin's fears were that the SS troops might deploy from their barracks when he lands and form a blocking line along the Groesbeek ridge to deny him access to Nijmegen, so there could be a big fight for the ridge. And he was also fearful that tanks might be coming out of the Reichswald to attack his rear, so he deployed the 505th to secure Groesbeek and establish a perimeter facing the Reichswald.
Then, by 15 September, Gavin was apparently feeling more confident, perhaps by a lack of any further intelligence reports confirming these worst fears, he decided...
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
(Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945, reproduced p.11 Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011)
He did this in the final divisional briefing, with Jack Norton (Division G-3) and Chet Graham (508th liaison to Division HQ) as witnesses:
At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
(September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012)
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
(Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
You can recognise Jack Norton's language in the report written in 1945 by Norton (Assistant Chief of Staff G-3) and he possibly seeks to explain why things went wrong, but all the other sources are also personal accounts and putting together multiple sources usually gets you to the truth. The outlier in this case is Lindquist, because he fails to acknowledge being told to move on the bridge two days before the jump, he was expecting an instruction ("on Div order") after landing and in position on the ridge, so he didn't seem to realise that Gavin had decided to give the Division order before the jump. That's why I say Lindquist was not a good field commander (ref Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy), and possibly Gavin did not think he made himself clear enough in the briefing when Chet Graham reported Lindquist was not moving.
Personally I think if the ridge was clear, both 1st and 3rd Battalions should have moved immediately into Nijmegen instead of digging-in on the ridge, perhaps each leaving one company behind to roadblock their rear. The 508th plan is a reverse of Lathbury's for 1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem: he directed 1st Battalion (Dobie) to the high ground, 2nd Battalion (Frost) to seize the three bridges, and 3rd Battalion (Fitch) to go directly to the highway bridge to support Frost. Only Frost, Brigade HQ, and C Company of 3rd got through.
Hope this helps.
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Having read through everything in that box (box 100 folder 03: Daily Plans, 82nd Airborne), I note a few things documented here I have mentioned to you in my comments:
Pages 6-7 (Norton's G-3 report pages 2-3), 11 September, Section II. paragraph d., Norton notes the difficulty of dealing with the "inflexible planning of Troop Carrier Command" (i.e. General Paul Williams of US IX TCC):
Their story ran something like this: "We got ourselves set up once to run off Operation 'LINNET'. It's now utterly impossible to re-arrange our plans". (At this time there were approximately five days until "D" Day). They were unable to shift aircraft from one airfield to another, to change serials and their order of arrival over DZ's, to the extent that the ground plan became practically secondary to the air plan.
The interesting thing about Operation LINNET (Tournai) and Brereton's alternative target for "LINNET II" (Liège-Maastricht bridges), they were both three-division airlifts with two flights planned for D-Day. Only by the time MARKET was scheduled two weeks later was it determined there was not enough daylight to conduct two airlifts entirely in daylight hours, but Williams (contributing two of his Troop Carrier Groups) was happy to fly two airlifts for the British COMET plan a week ago. The proposed replacement for COMET was an upgrade to three divisions flying broadly the same schedule, with outbound first lift taking off at night to arrive at dawn and the return of the second lift landing at night. Brereton had made an arbitrary decision to conduct all flights from take-off to landing in daylight, as per LINNET and LINNET II, when it was not necessary or desirable to do so. The frustration was felt in all three divisions because they would all receive their reinforcements over an extended period of several days (and the known clear weather window was only two days).
12 September, paragraph II:
There was considerable difficulty in making our ground attack plan fit in with the Troop Carrier air plan which was originally set up for "LINNET".
Norton makes no mention of the final division briefing on 15 September. Instead he says this on 13 September:
Section III. Final briefing of Unit Commanders and issuance of field order. September 15 was set as deadline for submission of unit field orders.
16 September, Section II, paragraph 1:
General Browning directed General Gavin not to attempt seizure of NIJMEGEN Bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the BERG-EN-DAL high ground was firmly in our hands.
16 September, Section IV:
Meeting of Unit Commanders wherein each commander outlined his plan to accomplish his mission. Colonel Lindquist at this meeting was directed to eize the high ground in the vivinity of BERG-EN-DAL as his primary mission and to attempt to seize the NIJMEGEN Bridge with a small force; namely, less than a battalion.
According to Norton's quote in McManus (2012), he recorded Browning as saying:
“Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
And his recollection in McManus was of an earlier briefing with the unit commanders where Gavin told Lindquist:
"Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Norton's 1945 post-war report does not tally with Gavin's 1945 letter to Westover, Gavin's 1967 interview by Cornelius Ryan, Chet Graham's testimony in Nordyke (2012), and Norton's own testimony in McManus (2012). It seems he conflated the two meetings, or did not recall the final Divisional briefing by Gavin was the day before the final Corps briefing by Browning. Norton's Section IV actually contradicts his own Section II.1, as II.1 suggests the objectives are taken sequentially, while IV suggests possibly both objectives to be secured at the same time.
I think TIK absolutely nailed it when he questioned the veracity of Norton's post-war report. Based on the comments in his covering letter to Ryan, Gavin seemed surprised to find it in his papers.
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Nonsense.
The 82nd failed to take the rail bridge at Mook and the canal bridges at Malden and Hatert - all demolished by the Germans. I'm not blaming the 82nd for these setbacks - the bridges were all on the German MLR (Main Line of Resistance) in the area, with each bridge defended in company strength and all prepared for demolition, including the river Maas bridge at Grave, which was on the German forward outpost line.
But the 82nd also failed to take the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day, which was undefended in a rear area and Gavin had intended it be taken quickly. This was due to a command failure at the top of the 508th PIR, which failed to carry out Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and Gavin had also chosen to dismiss a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, he said because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop.
I'm not aware of the 82nd rescuing a British battalion - you'll have to enlighten me on that fantasy. To the contrary, it was the 82nd's failure at Nijmegen that compromised the entire operation and led to the destruction of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.
More recently, the 82nd begged a British parachute battalion not to go into the centre of Kabul to escort civilians to the airport to evacuate them from Afghanistan, because they had been ordered not to leave the airport and the British unit was making them look bad. The request was politely refused.
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The terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was indeed considered and the plan was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to lead the XXX Corps advance on that sector of the route, before the Guards took up the lead again from Arnhem to Nunspeet. Events at Nijmegen threw this sequencing out of gear, and in fact Gavin's insistence on using his own troops to cross the Waal in a river assault, proposed twice before it was accepted, displaced the default prepared plans for 43rd Wessex to undertake such assaults if required with one or two brigades (operations BESSIE and BASIL respectively). They had a battalion in each of two brigades fully mobilised with DUKW amphibious trucks and assault boats for the follow-up battalions prepared for such operations, and although put on a warning order for operation BASIL, they were not called up because of Gavin's intervention.
The betrayal myth was thoroughly debunked in 1963 by Dutch book De Slag By Arnhem (English edition The Battle of Arnhem, 1966) by Cornelius Bauer and Theodoor Alexander Boeree, based on Ede resident Colonel Boeree's extensive research during the years following the battle.
I don't know why the betrayal myth still persists, it doesn't make any sense. The 9.SS-Panzer-Division only had a few 'alarm units' left in the Netherlands as it was being withdrawn to Siegen in Germany. The reconnaissance battalion was being loaded onto flat cars at Beekebergen station at the time of the landings and had to be hurriedly unloaded and their tracks and guns refitted to make them operational again. They had been removed to render the vehicles administratively non-operational to avoid handing them over to 10.SS-Panzer. The division's dispositions had been in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions on either side of the river Ijssel (the divisional boundary) in support of a defence line being constructed along the river - the last distributary of the Rhine before the German border. They were in the wrong places if they were expecting airborne landings at Arnhem and Nijmegen. I have copies of the G-2 (Intelligence) and G-3 (Operations) documents from 82nd Airborne available as a download from PaperlessArchives, and from prisoner interrogations it was clear the airborne landings achieved complete surprise. The Germans were expecting the British advance to resume from Belgium and they assumed the morning's preliminary bombing on 17 September was a prelude to the ground advance. They had orders to withdraw towards Arnhem and Germany in this event, so airborne troops landing behind their defence lines came as a shock and a surprise.
The only German commanders with any inkling of an airborne attack in the Arnhem area were Luftwaffe Generalmajor Walter Grabmann of 3.Jagd-Division at Deelen airfield, who warned Model his new headquarters at Oosterbeek were next to ideal landing zones around Wolfheze, but Model rubbished the idea, feeling safe behind so many river barriers and too deep behind the lines for an airborne opertion. The only dinner guest to take the warning seriously was SS-Sturmbannführer Sepp Krafft, so he ordered the two training companies of his SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildings-und-Erstaz-Bataillon 16 out of their barracks in Arnhem and had them camped in the woods north of Oosterbeek as additional protection for Model. This placed them in an excellent position to block two of the three battalions of 1st Parachute Brigade advancing into Arnhem on 17 September.
The compromises to the original outline plan (provisionally called SIXTEEN and based on the cancelled COMET) made by Browning and Montgomery have to be laid at the feet of the commanders in 1st Allied Airborne Army, once they got their hands on it. USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams deleted the double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main raids on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. Browning was unable to object after being politially neutralised by Brereton during the LINNET II affair. Gavin also compromised his own divisional plan by discarding "a British request" he received (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and by assigning the critical Nijmegen mission to the problematic (in Normandy) 508th PIR commander instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th.
I agree that the blame has to be shared, complex operations don't fall apart because of a single error, but rule number one on the range is to check your target. Only by persistent digging can you get to the truth.
Sources:
Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011)
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge
Arnhem, a Few Vital Hours – The SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 at the Battle of Arnhem September 1944, Scott Revell with Niall Cherry and Bob Gerritsen (2013, reprinted 2021)
Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021)
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It's actually not relevant. The miscommunication was between Gavin (82nd Airborne Division) and Lindquist (508th Parachute Infantry Regiment). There's evidence in Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - that in the divisional briefing, Gavin instructed Lindquist "to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation", according to Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ and sat in on the briefing. When on the first afternoon of the operation, Chet Graham reported to Gavin that the 508th were dug in on the initial objective (the ridge) and Lindquist was not sending a battalion into the city until the DZ was cleared (Dog Company was left behind to do this job), Gavin was as angry as Graham had ever seen him. He told Graham "let's get him moving" and they drove to the 508th CP. His first words on seeing Lindquist were "I told you to move with speed."
By the time the 1st Battalion started moving into Nijmegen, three men from a recon patrol who had actually captured the southern end of the bridge from the handful of guards there, and after waiting an hour for reinforcements that never came, had to withdraw when it got dark. As they left the bridge, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end. This story is related by Trooper Joe Atkins of the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section in Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013).
Chet Graham was also a key witness in several officer's criticisms of Lindquist's command in the Normandy operation, which is described in Nordyke's earlier chapters. Both Ridgway and Gavin didn't trust him, and Ridgway would not promote him despite Lindquist being the senior Colonel in the Division when Ridgway went up to XVIII Airborne Corps, according to Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan after the war. I think most of this Nijmegen story has only come out in public since the senior people involved have all gone. Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far in 1974, after both Browning and Montgomery had passed, so they became convenient scapegoats for the American commanders who were mostly still around, but Ryan did not tell the full story of the blunder at Nijmegen and the film based on the book implies that the Germans held Nijmegen in strength from the get go - simply not true!
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@nickdanger3802 - the point I thought I had made very clear was that Gavin clearly understood that while the high ground was important to securing the position of the division, the bridges were the key to the success of the entire operation. The problem at Nijmegen was that this was apparently not understood by Lindquist, a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, but clearly not a good combat leader. Perhaps aware of his shortcomings, Gavin took time out to explain what he wanted Lindquist to do, as the book I'm currently reading makes clear, and this is from another American author:
'At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.'
'At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership.'
(Page 64, September Hope - The American Side Of A Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus, 2012).
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@laaston7811- yeah, I probably pointed out the fact that while Burriss claimed he got to the far end of the highway bridge first before Robinson's tank Troop came over, his testimony also notes he passed an abandoned German Pak 40 anti-tank gun on the north bank between the two bridges, and that this was the gun that Sergeant Pacey's tank in Robinson's Troop knocked out while crossing the bridge 45 minutes earlier, so it was Carrington's 'rear link' tank that crossed over as Burriss arrived.
By the way, I'm curently studying the 82nd Airborne G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Operations) documents available to purchase for about 12 dollars (and change) on PaperlessArchives as a pdf download document with 9,333 pages! Lots of raw data in there in terms of PW unit identifications and informtion gleaned from interrogations, and a few translated captured documents. One surprise is that the anti-tank guns the Germans had at Grave (1 x 7.5cm and 2 x 5cm) and at the Maas-Waal canal bridges and in Nijmegen, and probably the gun in Lent seen by Burriss and hit by Pacey, came from the 2.Batterie of SS-Panzerjäger-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Abteilung 2 from Hilversum. Many of the prisoners taken were not identified as SS, but a minority identified the unit specifically as the SS training unit. My theory is that the unit was collecting straggler anti-tank troops from army units shattered in Normandy and collecting them at Hilversum into the SS battalion, but were mobilised and deployed to the Maas-Waal line before they could get new uniforms and dog tags. I always wondered where all these guns marked on the defence overprint maps and in the accounts of the Nijmegen battle came from, and this seems to be the answer.
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@TheNoonish - good question about resupply, as both supply drop zones were outside the city and only one was (just) inside the planned extended perimeter formed by four brigades, and that perimeter would not have been possible with just two brigades on the ground.
The reason the southern end of the bridge was not taken was because of the fires and exploding ammunition (Edit: having read a new book covering this, it appears it was burning fuel from the interdiction of four fuel trucks, probably from Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 supply column) at the north end that made crossing the bridge too dangerous, and the area aound the southern bridge ramp was open flood plain with no cover. It was effectively a kill zone until you get to the winter embankment. The distance from the southern bridge pier and superstructure to the winter embankment and the nearest cover is 300m or 1,000ft - all elevated roadway above the open flood plain. The important end of the bridge is the northern end because that's the end that XXX Corps cannot capture from the south
One correction - all the forces from 9.SS-Panzer-Division sent to Nijmegen, Gräbner's Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, came back to Arnhem because they were only temporarily attached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division and didn't stay, so the whole of 9.SS-Panzer-Division, such as it was, fought in the western suburbs of Arnhem and Oosterbeek against the main body of 1st Airborne Division. It was units from 10.SS-Panzer-Division that were assigned to the Nijmegen bridgehead and started arriving in the evening of 17 September, led by the headquarters of Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) and most of Gräbner's unit then withdrew to Elst for the night. 10.SS-Panzer-Division was also responsible for clearing the Arnhem bridge, because it was on their supply line to Nijmegen, but in order to conserve their own forces for fighting further south, they delegated as much of the task as possible to army reserve units from Germany under Kampfgruppe Knaust.
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An example of Gavin being disingenuous after he knew he was responsible for the failure to secure the Nijmegen bridge on D-Day.
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
(Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945)
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
(September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus 2012)
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
(Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012)
USAAF General Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army commander) had removed Browning's dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges from the proposed operation SIXTEEN outline for the final MARKET plan, the outline Eisenhower had approved on his 10 September meeting with Montgomery. Browning could not protest the changes after already threatening to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation and knew if he tried it again Brereton had planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps. We presume Browning was therefore behind "a British request" to Gavin to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge as an alternative and Gavin discarded it. Since they did not serve in the same army, Browning had no authority to order Gavin to provide a coup de main attack on the bridge, it could only be a "request". Gavin then assigned the critical Nijmegen mission to his weakest regiment, the 508th under Lindquist, instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th. I have one further extract for you on what happened once on the ground:
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
(Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke 2012)
What could Browning have done if he didn't "approve" (remember this is Gavin's word) Gavin's divisional plan, except perhaps advance the transport of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd to the 1st lift in the hope he could influence events once on the ground. For his trouble, Browning is now accused of going on an "ego trip", despite doing everything he could to ensure the success of the operation and wasn't very successful because the Americans always demanded a leadership position within the alliance.
You're trying to have it both ways, and you just can't do that.
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A lot to unpack here.
First, the intelligence picture at Arnhem was remarkably accurate, but Nijmegen was an unknown until Airborne troops had already landed and made contact with the local Dutch resistance.
The intelligence on Arnhem was that there was a local security unit, Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, consisting of WW1 rear echelon troops that were deemed unfit for combat use in the 'Great War' but were deployed at Arnhem and Deelen airfield to guard the bridges and airfield, and the SS battalion 'Germania' was also known to be Arnhem based. In fact the 'Germania' name was out of date, it was renamed SS-Panzergrendier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 12 to train Hiter Youth replacements for the 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' until August, when a change in unit number to '16' was made in anticipation of 1,600 new recruits for the 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Reichsführer-SS' were due to arrive. At the time of the operation, the battalion still had about 300 Hitler Youth finishing up their training, hence the assessment of "old men on bicycles and some Hitler Youth". It was even known that an estimated 400 artillery troops from units shattered in Normandy were in a collection centre at the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital, the reason it was bombed, and this turned out to be accurate.
The presence of the II.SS-Panzerkorps refitting in the eastern Netherlands was also known, as Dutch resistance had reported SS-Panzer troops being accommodated in towns and villages between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, but only the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' had been positively identified from vehicle insignia. Both divisions were known to be each reduced to a regimental battlegroup of 3,000 - 3,500 troops with few if any tanks, because it was British units in Normandy that had reduced them to that condition.
Second, there was a fear that the excellent barracks facilities in Nijmegen could easily accommodate a regiment of troops and it was thought the SS divisions were to receive new tanks from a depot in the Kleve area. So the significance of the Groesbeek heights just south of Nijmegen and north of the 82nd Airborne drop zones was obvious. It also started the silly rumour that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, although Generalfeldmarschal Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400. There was some debate about allocating Nijmegen to 1st Airborne and Arnhem to the 82nd, since British airborne divisions had more anti-tank weapons (83, including 16 x 17-pounders and 15 x 6-pounders in the attached Polish Brigade) than their US counterparts (with 36 x 6-pounders). The US divisions conversely had twice as much field artillery (48 howitzers to 24). The balance of risk seemed to be at Arnhem with the Dutch reports of SS units northeast of that city, so 1st Airborne went to Arnhem.
I don't see how British armour could reach Arnhem any sooner after arriving at Nijmegen still on schedule in less than two days, only to find the Waal bridges at Nijmegen were still in German hands and significantly reinforced with SS-Panzer troops. Tanks can't jump over the widest river in the Netherlands! The 508th had the job of seizing the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon, something they could have easily done after it was known from Dutch contacts on the ground that the city was evacuated and the highway bridge guarded by just an NCO and seventeen men. Instead of moving with speed, as Gavin had instructed, they only sent a recon patrol into the city. Just three Scouts from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section surprised the 6/7 guards at the southern end of the bridge and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived. They had to withdraw when it got dark, and only as they did so they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end. When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving off the ridge, he was as mad as their liaison officer to Division HQ, Captain Chet Graham, had ever seen him. Gavin and Graham drove to the 508th CP and Gavin's words to Colonel Lindquist were "I told you to move with speed." The best sources for this are Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013) for 1st Battalion S-2 Trooper Joe Atkins' account, and Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's two books - Lost At Nijmegen (2011), and Little Sense Of Urgency (2013).
So I do think the 82nd Airborne compromised the operation. The British Airborne secured their bridge at Arnhem and held it for four days, in spite of the opposition, just as Browning had promised Montgomery. They were all let down by the blunder at Nijmegen.
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@pagejackson1207 - the 'Heart Route' detours were alternative routes for XXX Corps on the airborne carpet laid down by Operation MARKET. Many of the blown bridges were on prepared German defence lines - the Wilhelmina canal (both the Son and Best bridges were blown) and the Maas-Waal canal link between the Maas and Waal river defence lines (two bridges were blown at Malden and Hatert). The flanking Corps were advancing without the benefit of airborne troops securing crossings over their water obstacles and the lack of promised logistics also affected them because priority went to XXX Corps.
You might be familiar with Band of Brothers episode 4: Replacements, which was their MARKET GARDEN episode, and this conflated two actions on 19 and 20 September (D+2 and D+3) in which the first was a reconnaissance by the Cromwell tanks of 15th/19th King's Royal Hussars towards Nuenen at Opwetten, and then an attack on Nuenen itself the following day by the Shermans of 44th Royal Tank Regiment, both supported by Easy/506th PIR and conflated into a single episode. The 15th/19th Hussars were the Reconnaissance Regiment of 11th Armoured Division, the lead unit of VIII Corps on MARKET GARDEN's right flank, and they did not have a convenient bridge over the Meuse-Escaut canal like XXX Corps did for the breakout on 17 September. They had to use the XXX Corps 'Club Route' as far as Valkenswaard to get them started the next day, while 3rd Infantry Division built a Class 40 Bailey bridge over the canal at Sint-Huibrechts. Once that bridge was open, VIII Corps had their own MSR to support their operations independently of 'Club Route'. The 44th RTR were part of 4th Armoured (Independent) Brigade in XXX Corps and were attached to 101st Airborne as soon as contact was made for armoured support to help secure the corridor. Their attack towards Nuenen, the main base for Panzerbrigade 107, was designed to protect the Son bridge from attack and to assist VIII Corps in their advance towards Helmond, and once across the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal, VIII Corps' target was Gennep on the River Maas, just south of the 82nd Airborne's area at Nijmegen, which is where they ended up. Widening the corridor at Nuenen helped 11th Armoured in their advance, and the advance of 11th Armoured removed the threat of PB 107 to the corridor. Similar story on the left flank with XII Corps, which had 7th Armoured and 15th (Scottish) and 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Divisions.
It's not the case that the entire operation was supplied via 'Club Route'. It's a misconception. The Airborne were resupplied by air until contact was made with ground forces and their own 'seaborne tail' logistics trains. British Airborne doctrine was that a Division fully resupplied by air could operate independently of the ground forces for a maximum of eight days, so 1st Airborne Division at Oosterbeek holding out for nine days despite most of their resupply falling into German hands after the first two days was a remarkable achievement. In his initial conversations with Montgomery over planning Operation COMET (the British and Polish operation at Grave-Nijmegen-Arnhem cancelled on 10 September), he had asked Montgomery how long it would take his tanks to reach the Arnhem bridge and Montgomery said "two days". He responded that "we can hold it for four", but then then added his famous remark that "we may be going a bridge too far", possibly in reference to Montgomery's preferred option of Arnhem over Wesel in Germany, because Arnhem meant an additional major river crossing.
The flanking Corps' objectives were Gennep on the River Maas for VIII Corps and s'-Hertogenbosch on the Maas for XII Corps. I don't think they could progress beyond that because XXX Corps were held up on the Waal and the logistics were not available for a prolonged campaign - they were expected to be in Arnhem in 2-3 days and then deploy between there and the Ijsselmeer, establishing bridgeheads over the River Ijssel at Deventer, Zutphen and Doesburg with 43rd (Wessex) and 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Divisions.
I'm inclined to agree about the Groesbeek heights. It strikes me that the geography at Nijmegen and Arnhem are very similar but reversed north/south. The British solution was to assign one parachute battalion (1st) to take the high ground north of Arnhem and intercept expected counter-attacks from Deelen-Apeldoorn direction, and have the other battalions (2nd and 3rd) of 1st Parachute Brigade secure the bridges and Arnhem town. Gavin instructed the 508th PIR to secure the high ground south of Nijmegen and send one battalion (1st) directly to the highway bridge. In both cases the priority targets were achieved (the bridge at Arnhem, and the Groesbeek heights), but not the other targets (high ground north of Arnhem and the Nijmegen bridge). There was a difference in approach and I think that affected the outcome.
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I think Gavin bears a lot of responsibility for what went wrong at Nijmegen, for sure, but there were people trying to do something about it. Browning's provisional operation SIXTEEN outline included key features carried over from COMET, like the double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, but these were removed from the MARKET plan by the air commanders.
Browning also selected drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Son bridge on the Wilhelmina canal and south of Eindhoven, so that the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges could be taken quickly on D-Day as part of his 'airborne carpet' concept and assist the breakout of XXX Corps to effect a link-up with the 101st on D-Day. These were also removed by the air commanders over concerns of Flak around Eindhoven, so the Guards stopped at Valkenswaard with an hour of daylight left on D-Day and only another 4 km to Aalst, so if American paratroopers were there then they could have effected the link 24 hours earlier, which means bridging equipment to replace the Son bridge brought up 24 hours earlier, which means link-up with the 82nd at Grave-Nijmegen 24 hours earlier. In the event, the Guards got held up for most of D+1 at Aalst by a pair of 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG asssault gun covering the bridge, wasting a day getting to Son.
Gavin also told Cornelius Ryan "the British" (probably Browning) wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge, and while he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where the Troop Carriers scattered the 82nd over a wide area, Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. Instead, Gavin planned to land his parachute regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out toward their objectives. He instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge after landing, but unfortunately Lindquist was not a good field commander and delayed until Gavin found out he wasn't moving and went to the 508th CP to chew him out, too late to grab the bridge while it was still undefended. Colonel Tucker of the highly experienced 504th "insisted" on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge, so it could be attacked from both ends, and he got it.
The MARKET plan was prepared in a week, but it was built on the previous week of planning for the cancelled operation COMET on the same targets and recycled the three-division air plan for cancelled operations LINNET and LINNET II, so the evolution was two weeks in total. All the right elements were there, but some were willfully removed and they compromised the operation.
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John keeps forgetting the five tanks (three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen') belonging to SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 that were hidden in the western outskirts of Arnhem on Heijenoordseweg, certainly on Friday 15 September, despite me reminding him every time. It's possible they were being put on a train at Beekbergen on Sunday 17 September along with Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 (the last day the division was due to remain in the Netherlands), but the first reported sighting of these tanks appears to be the 5 tanks and 15 half-tracks on the Amsterdam road on the afternoon of 17 September in Dobie's 1st Parachute Battalion war diary. We also know that two of the Panthers were later dispatched with a Gammon bomb and PIAT by 3rd Parachute Battalion in western Arnhem on 19 September, the third tank survived to take part in the siege of Oosterbeek and was also stalked by PIAT, and the two Möbelwagen are well-documented by PK photographers in action against 4th Parachute Brigade on the Dreyenscheweg north of Oosterbeek on 19 September.
The tanks caught on an aerial photograph taken over the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield by RAF Spitfire on 12 September were dismissed by Browning as obsolete models and probably unserviceable - and this proved to be correct when the photo was located in a Dutch government archive in 2014 and studied by Dr Sebastian Ritchie of the RAF's Air Historical Branch. His research is detailed in the pdf booklet Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story (2016, 2019) that was on the RAF website. The unit can now be identified as 2.Kompanie z.b.V. (zur besonderen Verwendung = for special purpose) of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training regiment of the Luftwaffe's only panzer division. After attending a lunchtime lecture given by Dr Ritchie on 17 September to mark the 80th Anniversary of the operation at RAF Cosford, I understand he is planning to publish a 3rd Edition with more data, and is only delayed by trying to find the copyright owner for a photo of a Panzer III wreck at Wolfswinkel he wants to use.
These vehicles had all broken down and were photographed undergoing routine maintenance (turrets were turned to allow engine access hatches to be opened) after being ordered south to Eindhoven on 7 September, and the only three tanks to successfully join the Regiment's II.Abteilung were destroyed at Hechtel in Belgium along by the Guards Armoured Division on the same day - 12 September. By the time MARKET GARDEN started on 17 September, the remaining tanks were laagered at Wolfswinkel in a reserve position near Son on the Wilhelmina canal, and opposite the 506th PIR's drop zone on Zonsche Heide. They were shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft and only one tank that escaped north to bump the 504th's roadblock at Grave caused some casualties to troopers who got out of their foxholes, thinking it was a British tank.
Most of the Arnhem myths have been thoroughly debunked in the literature, but the Hollywood narrative is still the one people seem to think is history.
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It looks to me that Browning's correspondence with Gavin after the war was designed to assist Gavin in establishing the post-war narrative after the fact. Gavin took responsibilty for what happened because it was his divisional plan that was not followed by the 508th at Nijmegen, but he didn't specifically drop Lindquist in it. He appears to have fudged the issue, muddy the waters, and Browning seemed happy to help. After all, the war in Europe was over at the time the July 1945 document was written, and the whole thing was done by the October report.
I'm sure both Browning and Gavin understood the importance of the Nijmegen highway bridge to the overall success of the operation. That seems to be reflected in the understanding of combat officers in the 508th PIR that spoke to Phil Nordyke for his book Put Us Down In Hell (2012). Only Lindquist himself has a poor record in combat, and there may be reasons Ridgway didn't remove him after Normandy (explained by Gavin in his interview with Cornelius Ryan) and the reason Gavin gave Lindquist very specific instructions, even using a map to show Lindquist the route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge.
The Groesbeek heights were an issue because they could potentially be occupied by German troops blocking access to Nijmegen and threatening the division's landing zones, if the intelligence warning Gavin was given that there may be a "regiment of SS" in the Nijmegen barracks proved to be true. This makes perfect sense, because the exact whereabouts of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division were not known, and both the 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions were assessed to be reduced to regimental battlegroups in strength.
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@Johnny Carroll - Lathbury had a proven combat record in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Unfortunate he had a new Commanding General breathing down his neck on the first evening, the only reason I can think for why he refused his Brigade Major Tony Hibbert's request to move one of the battalions down to the river route used by 2nd Battalion and stop for the night instead. At least he had a couple of excuses (Germans and a General to look after). Lindquist had none!
Adams and A Company 508th were sent into Nijmegen far too late. That was the problem with Lindquist's leadership. Battalion commander Shields Warren had no idea his battalion was expected (by his division commander) to be sent to the bridge. In Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell (2012), Adams himself is quoted - “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Adams and his platoon that went to the Post Office in Nijmegen, believed by the resistance to contain detonation circuits for the highway bridge, evaded the Germans after leaving the Post Office and holed up in a warehouse with the Germans unaware of his location. Dover's C Company 2nd Parachute Battalion were under siege in the Utrechtsestraat in Arnhem and only surrendered when they eventually ran out ammunition. Check your facts first before you get so bloody cheeky!
Fullriede recorded more like 240 of his troops, 21.Unter-Lehr-Kommando (NCO training company) of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' under Hauptman Max Runge, were laagered in Hunner Park on his inspection tour, but these were apparently deployed to forward positions on the Maas-Waal canal at Honinghutje and some were at Nederasselt on the near side of the Maasbrug. The troops at Nederasselt immediately came under attack from the 504th and they fell back to the canal bridge. When that bridge came under attack the next day, they then withdrew into Nijmegen. The 21.ULK occupied the Villa Belvoir overlooking Hunner Park to reinforce the 10.SS-Panzer troops, while the survivors of the three companies from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6, the Kriegsmarine 4./Schiffsstammabteilung.14 , and Bau-Pionier Kompanie 434 from the canal defence line formed Kampfgruppe Hencke to protect the Waal rail bridge. It's important to understand they were not in the city on the first afternoon, they were deployed along the canal west of the city, so the 505th and 508th landed in their rear, and the 504th to their front.
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You're absolutely correct in your analysis, which is also done by McManus (see ref below), but the answer to your question is already out there in the literature, but not books on TIK's booklist - he hasn't gone deep enough on this particular subject because he covers a huge range of topics and has only a limited book budget.
I would draw your attention to these sources:
1) Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011) -
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
2) Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) -
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
3) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
4) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 -
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
5) Nordyke op cit, Chapter 10 -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
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The whole chain of command Eisenhower-Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist is culpable, and there was nothing British officers Montgomery (represented by David Belchem), Browning, or Hollinghurst, could do when they protested changes to Browning and Dempsey's original proposals, because the nature of the alliance was that the Americans insisted on being in control. You can examine the mistakes made by all of these officers in detail with a little research, but most of the blame would have to rest with the man in operational control - Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton, and here he was criticised not by the British, but an American:
As a commander, Brereton was responsible for the units over which he had authority, the men he led and the missions assigned to him. He was responsible for the men and aircraft of the Far East Air Force in the Philippines, the 9th Air Force in North Africa and northwest Europe, and the First Allied Airborne Army, again in northwest Europe. He was responsible for important missions assigned to him by MacArthur, Arnold, Eisenhower, Montgomery and other Allied leaders. And as a commander of not just one, but four major Allied failures of the Second World War, he is the worst military commander in history.
(Dr John J. Abbatiello, Chief, Research, Integration and Research Division, Center for Character and Leadership Development, at the United States Air Force Academy, cited in Jennings and Steele, The Worst Military Leaders in History, p. 165)
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@nickdanger3802 - the point I thought I had made very clear was that Gavin clearly understood that while the high ground was important to securing the position of the division, the bridges were the key to the success of the entire operation. The problem at Nijmegen was that this was apparently not understood by Lindquist, a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, but clearly not a good combat leader. Perhaps aware of his shortcomings, Gavin took time out to explain what he wanted Lindquist to do, as the book I'm currently reading makes clear, and this is from another American author:
'At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.'
'At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership.'
(Page 64, September Hope - The American Side Of A Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus, 2012).
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1) Where's your evidence that RG Poulussen has an anti-American bias? I don't understand the attitude that if you're not all "Ra! Ra! Go USA!" then you are anti-American - it's just nonsense.
2) 1000 panzers is a ridiculous number and was only a rumour started by someone who commented that the Reichswald forest could hide a thousand panzers and we wouldn't know they were there. The Allied intel estimate on the number of panzers in Generalfeldmarschal Model's entire Heeresgruppe B front from Aachen all the way to the North Sea coast was just 50-100, and he was facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 and maybe another 1,500 in Hodges' US 1st Army at Aachen. We now know that Model's September 1944 returns listed exactly 84 panzers as operational, which not only vindicates the intelligence at SHAEF but also matches exactly the number of anti-tank guns in the establishments of the British 1st Airborne Division and Polish Parachute Brigade combined. So let's put the 1000 figure in proper perspective - it was always a ridiculous figure that started from a silly rumour.
The intel about the heavy German armour in the Reichswald came from the Dutch resistance (although the Reichswald is in Germany on the Dutch border), and it first came to Gavin's attention when the all-British and Polish operation COMET was cancelled on 10 September and Gavin was told his 82nd Airborne Division was assigned to Nijmegen in the new operation called MARKET. He immediately went to British 1st Airborne Division HQ, because they had planned to drop on Nijmegen for COMET and they had the latest intel on the German armour and were making their plans accordingly to deal with it. Montgomery cancelled COMET because he received the new reports of German SS troops moving into the area northeast of Arnhem and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with this German build-up.
3) Gavin made his divisional plan based on the information he was given, and while he was very concerned about a reaction from the Reichswald, he did plan for a battalion to go for the Njmegen bridge immediately on landing and instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR to send his 1st Battalion to do this. This was something Lindquist failed to do - he was not a good field officer, had not performed well in Normandy, and I would recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) for the full story in Normandy and Nijmegen. I would also recommend American historian John C McManus' book September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012), for more details that compliment Nordyke and an excellent analysis of the whole ridge versus bridge priority debate, which comes to the only logical conclusion that both were the priority and that Gavin and Browning were in agreement on this, but Lindquist simply didn't understand. I want you to understand that I am a Brit recommending two American authors that back up RG Poulussen's research published the previous year in Lost At Nijmegen (2011).
Americans should not have a problem with this story because they love to tell the whole story from Band of Brothers about Herbert Sobel of Easy/506th not being a good field officer and how he was removed to an administrative position after a Sergeant's revolt in the Company and they got a new CO. The same situation existed in the 508th, but there was no revolt, so Colonel Lindquist was never replaced. It's sad, but it's true, he got a lot of good men killed in the 4th of July attack on Hill 95 in Normandy and his failure to move quickly at Nijmegen fatally compromised MARKET GARDEN. The delay while the Guards had to fight for the bridges at Nijmegen they should have rolled straight over was 36 hours, and that's the figure that is incorrectly used by Elliot Gould at the Son bridge in the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far.
So Gavin also bears some responsibility for this because he did not replace Lindquist when he became division commander in August 1944, as Matthew Ridgway was promoted to US XVIII Airborne Corps, and he told Cornelius Ryan (box 101, folder 10 of the Cornelius Ryan Collection online) in his interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that neither of them trusted Lindquist in a fight and Ridgway wouldn't promote him. In fact, he said Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn't really promote any other colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. Gavin had also failed to replace himself as assistant divisional commander when Ridgway was promoted, so it seems Gavin had the same problem.
Gavin's decision to prioritise a defence against the Reichswald by assigning the more aggressive and experienced 505th to that sector was prompted by the intel, and the situation in Nijmegen was unknown. In fact, the Germans had evacuated Nijmegen when the landings began and Lindquist was told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the highway bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men. This was the case until SS panzer troops arrived in the evening, so the opportunity to grab the bridge without barely firing a shot was missed.
Another part of Gavin's correspondence with Cornelius Ryan (box 101, folder 9) is interesting here, because he discovered the source of the Reichswald intel - in a cover letter to Ryan enclosing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree, in which Boeree had researched the withdrawal of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' into the Netherlands, crossing the river Maas at Maastricht on 4 September, assembling near Sittard, then receiving orders on 7 September to go to the area north of Arnhem in the Veluwe. Their route took them through Nijmegen and they apparently made a stop in the Reichswald, and all of a sudden the whole story now fell into place in 1966. It did not get into the book - Ryan was an Irish newspaper journalist apparently biased against the British and did not include anything in A Bridge Too Far that was critical of American officers, and Richard Attenborough wanted to make an "anti-war film" to show the British officer class as incompetent and found Ryan's book the ideal vehicle to adapt. So the blunder of not securing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day is missing, Colonel Lindquist was not cast as a character and neither is there a single 508th trooper shown in the film.
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@gl2773 - still no examples from you of Browning's "ego and flawed decision making" after 3 weeks to think about it, so I take it you've got nothing?
Would you like a list of the flawed decisions made by USAAF commanders Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army and Gavin and Lindquist in 82nd Airborne Division that undid Browning's original proposed plan that was approved by Eisenhower?
- Brereton decided that all MARKET flights would be conducted in broad daylight to improve the US Troop Carriers poor navigation and drop accuracy record, removing Browning's double airlift on D-Day and dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. [4] [7] [8]
- Brereton removed a drop zone for a third brigade of 1st Airborne to drop at Elst between Arnhem and Nijmegen on the grounds of insufficient aircraft, despite Gavin and Taylor both having all three of their parachute regiments available on D-Day with battalions in reserve roles. [2] [8]
- Brereton's Air Transport commander Williams removed drop zones selected by Browning for the 101st Airborne between Valkenswaard and Son to quickly seize the Aalst-Eindhoven-Son bridges and facilitate a linkup with XXX Corps on D-Day, on the grounds of Flak around Eindhoven. A day was wasted with the Guards held up by an 8.8cm Flak battery and StuG assault guns at the Aalst bridge on D+1. [7]
- Browning was unable to object to the changes for MARKET after he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's previous LINNET II operation being scheduled on just 36 hours notice - insufficient time to print and distribute maps to brief the troops - and was in turn threatened with replacement by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ to carry out the operation, which was thankfully cancelled. [9]
- Williams refused to change his view that two flights could not be conducted on MARKET's D-Day after an appeal by Air Vice Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst of RAF 38 Group (and 46 Group under his command). [8]
- Brereton refused to change his air plan even after Montgomery sent his GSO 1 (Ops) officer David Belchem by air to Ascot to impress apon him the need for the double airlift on D-Day. [8]
- Gavin said the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen brudge to take it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop and a division disorganised for days. [1]
- Gavin thought he could secure the Nijmegen bridge quickly by instructing Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion 508th PIR directly to the bridge after landing. Lindquist failed to send the battalion immediately, thinking he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives first, while sending only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge - which got lost in Nijmegen, allowing 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy the city and reinforce the bridges. By the time Gavin found out the battalion wasn't moving, it was too late. [1] [3] [5] [6] [7]
- Brereton blamed the failure of the operation on the slow progress of XXX Corps, despite he and Williams removing drop zones designed to speed their progress, and the Nijmegen bridges found to be in German hands when XXX Corps got there. [3] [5] [6] [7]
Sources:
[1] Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
[2] The Military Life and Times of General Sir Miles Dempsey – Monty's Army Commander, Peter Rostron (2010)
[3] Lost At Nijmegen – A Rethink on operation “Market Garden”, RG Poulussen (2011)
[4] Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden, Sebastian Ritchie (2011, 2019)
[5] September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
[6] Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
[7] Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014)
[8] Aspects of Arnhem – The Battle Re-Examined, Richard Doherty and David Truesdale (2023)
[9] Proposed Airborne Assaults in the Liberation of Europe, James Daly (2024)
All roads on the failure of the operation lead back to Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist, unless you can provide any evidence to the contrary?
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Browning had little choice but to approve of Gavin's divisional plan because all attempts to influence it, and the air plan, had already failed.
Browning and Montgomery had drawn up the outline for provisional operation SIXTEEN as a replacement upgrade for the cancelled operation COMET (British and Polish airborne on Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges) by adding the two US airborne divisions to secure the corridor between Eindhoven and Nijmegen. This was the outline presented to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their scheduled meeting on 10 September, which Eisenhower enthusiastically endorsed, and then Browning took it back to England for detailed planning by 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and US IX Troop Carrier Command (Williams), since the new plan would now be using all of their assets.
The problems began when Brereton and Williams started removing key aspects of Browning's COMET/SIXTEEN concept and broadly based their final MARKET plan on the cancelled LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) operations that also called for airlifting three divisions. One of those key COMET features was a double airlift on D-Day, one at dawn, and the other in the late afternoon or early evening, to deliver as many airborne troops as possible on the first day. Another key feature were dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, replicating the success at the Orne river and canal bridge raids in Normandy, and the same glider pilots were due to lead the raids. Browning had advised Dempsey (British 2nd Army commander) that COMET should not proceed without the glider raids on the key bridges, he thought they were that critical, but they were removed by Brereton and Williams because they considered them too risky in broad daylight, and the double airlift inpractical because of insufficient turnaround time for aircraft maintenance.
Truth be told there were night navigation issues in the US Troop Carrier units and only the lead aircraft in each serial even had a navigator on board the C-47s. The objection to the British glider raids on the main bridges was spuriously deemed too risky in broad daylight, originally planned for dawn in COMET and SIXTEEN, but I suspect the real reason was that Brereton objected to the idea of British glider troops seizing by coup de main the 82nd Airborne's key objectives at Nijmegen and Grave for them. This is only my own opinion, but politics certainly did play a role in MARKET's planning.
Browning was unable to object to Brereton and Williams' changes for MARKET because he had already threatened to resign over the previous Brereton plan for LINNET II, which was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps to the troops. Brereton had planned to accept Browning's resignation letter and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully for everyone involved, that operation was cancelled like so many others when the ground troops overran the landing zones before the airborne troops could take off, so Browning withdrew his letter and both men agreed to forget the incident. Now, Browning was powerless to object to the changes for MARKET, because he knew what would happen if he did. The only thing he could do was advance the transport of his British I Airborne Corps HQ to Groesbeek from the 2nd lift to 1st lift (now on separate days thanks to Brereton), taking aircraft due to tow some anti-tank troop gliders to Arnhem (much to 1st Airborne Division General Urquhart's frustration) in an effort to influence events once on the ground. Browning was obviously more concerned about Nijmegen, and events would prove him right.
Gavin, for his part, also made compromises to his own divisional plan for Nijmegen. He told Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) that 'the British' (I assume Browning) 'wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
Gavin's solution to the coup de main problem was to assign his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission, and to instruct its commander to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing. There are witnesses to the final briefing related in McManus and Nordyke (see sources below) that Gavin emphasised speed and even showed Colonel Lindquist on a map the exact route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. On D-Day, Lindquist failed to interpret Gavin's instructions correctly, thinking he had to clear the drop zone (a job done by D Company of 2nd Battalion) and secure his other objectives on the Groesbeek ridge first. The delay allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to send units from as far as Beekbergen and Vorden to occupy the city and reinforce the undefended bridges, compromising the entire operation.
It's notable that after the operation, Browning fully backed Gavin and said that he was very pleased and proud of the performance of the US divisions under his command. It creates the impression he fully approved Gavin's plans, when all the evidence shows that he tried to prevent or mitigate the changes made to his own outline plan, but was frustrated at every turn. Montgomery writing after the war said he regretted not intervening in the airborne planning to insist on troops being landed close to the bridges, but it was left unsaid that this would have caused another row with the Americans, who seemed more concerned with avoiding any aircraft losses to flak as much as possible with little regard to the needs of the airborne troops themselves. Browning said he was willing to accept 33% losses going in, if it meant the majority of troops landed on the objectives. Even Gavin said he was frustrated at the lack of flexibility from Brereton to make any changes once he was given the air plan resources that limited his options. One concenssion he was able to make was to Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th, who "insisted" on a special drop zone south of Grave to enable the Grave bridge to be attacked from both ends, and he got it.
Again, this is personal observation, but my impression is that the British commanders Montgomery and Browning may have decided it was probably better to let the Americans have their way without an alliance splitting row, and if the operation failed then they would have to own their own mistakes. They probably hadn't calculated that they would still get the blame anyway, at least in many history books and in YouTube comments, although individuals like Gavin are notably quiet on the matter and people like Brereton and Williams rarely seem to be given any consideration at all. The Hollywood film does not feature either of these important USAAF officers, nor a single 508th trooper or any action in Nijmegen on the first day at all.
Sources:
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis)
Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010)
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
Little Sense Of Urgency – an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
The 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem: A-Z Troop volumes, Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Geert Massen, Peter Vrolijk, Marcel Zwarts (2020-2022)
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Browning's portrayal by Dirk Bogarde in A Bridge Too Far (1977) I believe was deliberately conflicted by the actor himself. Browning's widow was deeply upset about the way her husband was portrayed in the film and Bogarde was also dismayed by the script. The scene concerning the aerial photograph of German tanks in the Arnhem area was particularly interesting because Bogarde served in the RAF as a photo interpreter on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets. He knew most of the personalities involved, including Montgomery and Browning.
The actual photograph was 'lost' after the war until the Dutch government digitised its archives and put them online - it transpired the RAF had donated its huge photo library of the Netherlands to the Dutch to help with reconstruction and land use surveys after the war. The RAF's Air Historical Branch found the image in the collection and Sebastian Ritchie wrote a booklet on their study, available as a free pdf download courtesy of the British taxpayer - Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, the 2nd edition is dated 2019.
Study of the image appears to show Mark III and early Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), eliminating a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. We now know that the only unit in Holland on 12 September with such vehicles was the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', reorganised as part of the II.Abteilung and ordered south to Hechtel in Belgium on 7 September. Only three tanks made the journey without breaking down, and they were destroyed by Guards Armoured Division on 12 September, the same day the others were photographed by Spitfire in the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield undergoing maintenance at a supply dump in the woods.
On the opening day of Market Garden, 17 September, they were laagered in an orchard at Wolfswinkel, opposite the Sonshe Heide drop zone of the 506th PIR, where they were shot up by escorting fighter aircraft as they attempted to fire on the drop zone. Two Mark III tanks escaped, one ran the gaunlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode, where it was only hit by unprimed bazooka rounds, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel and bumped the Easy/504th roadblock at Grave, where the lead tank caused some casualties to troopers that climbed out of their foxholes in the belief they were British tanks arriving early. They turned tail and were never seen again.
Dirk Bogarde had the option of turning down the role, but obviously opted to take it, presumably in order to mitigate the script as far as possible in his protrayal of Browning as being somewhat conflicted. The conventional narrative was established only by Cornelius Ryan's interview with Major Brian Urquhart (name changed to "Fuller" in the film to deconflict the character with Sean Connery's Major-General Roy Urquhart), and the aerial photo that might settle the question was lost in a Dutch archive all this time. The photo shown in the film was an inaccurate 'oblique' shot of the type only used for point targets like bridges and barracks.
James Gavin, 37 in March 1944, was portrayed first by Robert Ryan, far too old at 52/53 in the 1962 film The Longest Day, and Ryan O'Neal, 35 in 1976 when A Bridge Too Far was filmed. I believe Gavin was a very quiet understated man, but O'Neal's overstated performance would probably have been accurate if book and film had even told the story of his being informed the 508th PIR were not moving on the Nijmegen bridge after landing, as per his specific instructions in the divisional briefing. This is all detailed in 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). On hearing the news that Lindquist's regiment was digging-in on the Groesbeek ridge, Gavin was as "mad" as the 508th's liaison officer, Captain Chet Graham, had ever seen him. He ordered Graham into a Jeep and said "come with me - let's get him moving." On arrival at the 508th CP, Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed." You will never see this in a Hollywood film, not as long as you can blame Montgomery and maintain the confirmation bias of American audiences.
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@jbjones1957 - the best time to capture the Nijmegen highway bridge was on the first afternoon after the German rear echelon units in Nijmegen had evacuated the city by around 1830 hrs and before Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived as it got dark with 30 armoured vehicles. When the 1st Battalion 508th PIR arrived at their initial objective at De Ploeg in late afternoon, closely followed by the regiment commander, he was met by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted the city and left just an NCO and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge.
Instead of sending the battalion, as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing the previous day, the 508th CO sent only a reinforced platoon, Lt Weaver's 3rd Platoon from C Company, to the bridge to report on its condition. The three-man point team under PFC Joe Atkins of the battalion S-2 (Intel) Section got separated in the crowds of jubilant Dutch from the rest of the patrol, who had taken a wrong turn and got lost, made it to the bridge on their own and surprised the seven guards at the southern end without firing a shot. They waited an hour for reinforcements, but none came. Atkins decided they had to leave the bridge when it got dark and as they withdrew they could hear "heavy equipment" arrive at the other end of the bridge, undoubtedly Gräbner's vehicles arriving from Arnhem. Soon afterwards, elements of 10.SS-Panzer-Division's Kampfgruppe Reinhold started arriving and the bridge defences were built up and reinforced from overnight 17/18 September onwards.
The job of securing the Nijmegen bridges, or a bridge, was the 508th PIR's of 82nd Airborne Division, not the Guards Armoured Division. This was the point at which Operation Market was compromised on the ground and in the planning, because Browning's Operation Comet plan was for glider coup de main asaults on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges to be conducted with a Company each detached from the three battalions of 1st Airlanding Brigade, but after Comet was cancelled and expanded to Operation Market with the American divisions added, the planning was passed to Brereton's 1st Allied Airborne Army. He deleted the glider coup de main assaults, ostensibly because of Flak at the bridges, but this is nonsense, the glider release points were 6 Km away on the same track as the main landing zones. Urquhart attempted to replace the Arnhem coup de main by using his Reconnaissance Squadron and for the Grave bridge Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR demanded a special drop zone for one company at the southern end and he got it.
Gavin made no such arrangements for the Nijmegen bridge and assigned the mission to a regimental commander who had performed badly in Normandy and thought it would be sufficient to instruct him "to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation" and stand over a map with him to show the exact route he expected 1st Battalion to take to the bridge.
You're right about losing time, but it was the first vital hours after landing that are the critical hours for seizing a bridge by airborne forces, which is the whole point of using airborne forces. Guards Armoured arrived in the morning of the 19 September after the bridges had been substantially reinforced by the Germans and several combined armour/infantry attacks over a 36-hour period were required to finally secure both bridges. Gavin knew he had screwed up because he insisted his own troops (the 504th PIR) conduct the river assault crossing on 20 September, when the default plan for this scenario was for the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to conduct a river assault with one or two brigades.
Sources:
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge
Little Sense Of Urgency - an operation Market Garden fact book, RG Poulussen (2014)
Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2021)
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@jbjones1957 - not a problem with the notifications, it happens to me too when the thread gets to about 10 replies.
The 8.8cm Flak gun was on the main Keizer Lodwijkplein traffic circle south of the bridge where it was knocked out, but I'm not at all sure when it was positioned there. The 1/508th S-2 Scouts who got to the bridge in daylight through the Dutch crowds obviously didn't see it on their approach or gave it a wide berth. They captured seven guards and a "small artillery weapon", but without an identification of the weapon it's hard to know what sort of unit it belonged to. I believe the 8.8cm Flak guns positioned for ground combat around the highway bridge are the four guns seen on the defence overprint map down on the polder east of the bridge, and there's a Household Cavalry report that this Flak position was dismantled when they reached the area, which ties in. The account of Gernot Traupel (adjutant of Kampfgruppe Reinhold - II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10) states that they took over the nearby Flak battery when they arrived after Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 and incorporated it into the defence. I got the impression that was when they repositioned the guns, but I may be wrong. If Hees said the gun was already in the ground defence position, then maybe it was sometime between the 11 September overprint date and 17 September.
The resistance headquarters was in a hotel (I forget the name) on Molenstraat, on the corner with Tweede Walstraat - it's now occupied by a pizza restaurant. Ironically, just a few yards down Molenstraat in the old hospital (now redeveloped as a shopping centre called Molenpoort) was the Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei or BdO, this was the headquarters of the German 'Order Police' for the entire Netherlands, equivalent to a division HQ and evacuated from Den Haag in 1943 when the Dutch coast became a possible invasion coast. The HQ was evacuated again on 17 September by 1830 hrs, moving first to the training depot at Schalkhaar (near Deventer) and then to Zwolle. They left behind their Musikorps-zug (band platoon) of 30-40 men, which Traupel notes at midnight were part of the bridge defence, but with all of Gräbner's troops there earlier he may have missed seeing them then.
All I know about the glider coup de main attack for Nijmegen in COMET was that Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork, the pilot who flew the lead glider at Pegasus Bridge in Normandy, was due to lead D Company of the 7th KOSB Airlanding Battalion to the bridge and land on the polder next to the bridge from a release point 6 Km west over the Waal on the same track as the air route to the Arnhem landing zones. It was to be a dawn attack because of the no Moon period and he wasn't looking forward to it.
Kampfgruppe Hencke was deployed on the Maas-Waal canal, which was the link sector of the Maas and Waal river defence lines, and Hencke's headquarters was in the NEBO monastery at De Ploeg. They were incorporated onto the defence of the Nijmegen rail bridge after they had withdrawn from the Maas-Waal canal bridges during the battle. The city itself was evacuated of German rear echelon troops.
The 508th orders containing the "on command of the divisional commander" matches the "on division order" in Lindquist's own Field Order No.1 dated 13 September. Gavin's final briefing according to McManus was the day before the operation, when the plan seemed to be shaping up well - in Gavin's words, so that would be 16 September. It's not in writing, but McManus has Shenley (508th XO) and Nordyke has Chet Graham (508th LO to Div HQ) as witnesses. Together with Lindquist's poor peformance in Normandy (Nordyke's chapter 8 on the Hill 95 attack) I think we can take their words over Lindquist's. I thought McManus' analysis of the bridge versus ridge priorities was very good and I concur with it. It seems that Lindquist struggled to understand this.
I can only speculate that Gavin thought the Reichswald was potentially the greater threat and wanted the 505th on that flank. It certainly looks like a big mistake in hindsight, but then the 508th would have been better suited to a defensive role, which apart from the Mook rail bridge target, was essentially the 505th's role.
I agree with your comment on reserves, he had the engineer Battalion (less A Company) available as well, they were protecting his HQ in the woods west of Groesbeek, with 2/505th on Hill 81.8 behind it.
Just my tuppence ha'penny for what it's worth. Thanks for your own thoughts.
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@jbjones1957 - sorry JB, I didn't get a notification for this either, just scanning through the threads again by chance.
The reason the 82nd and the 101st were switched was only because of the airfields in England. If the 101st based in the southwest of England went to Nijmegen/Grave, they would cross over the flight path of the 82nd based in the west of England going to Eindhoven. That was the reason, nothing sinister. 1st Airborne were based in the East Midlands, so their flight path was clear of the American units but joined alongside the northern approach used by the 82nd. The 101st flew a separate southern route over Allied held territory in Belgium then up the intended corridor.
Some of the planning decisions were a bit baffling, but switching the 82nd and 101st made a lot of sense.
If you do an image search of Market Garden air routes or navigation map, you should find an example.
Could the 101st have done better (at Nijmegen) ?
Quite possibly, but only because the attached parachute regiments in the two divisions had different quality in leadership. The 506th (101st Div) and 508th (82nd Div) were both 'attached' rather than 'assigned', since the US airborne divisions were originally raised with two glider and one parachute regiments in 1942, and then the organisation was reversed because it made more efficient use of the available transport aicraft. You get more troops delivered from the aircraft by parachute (18 on average) than by using the same aircraft to tow a WACO glider (13 troops plus a non-combatant pilot).
The 506th and 508th were both green but well-trained regiments on D-Day in Normandy, but the 506th was led by Colonel Robert F Sink, who performed well from all reports, but the 508th was led by talented administratve officer Colonel Roy Lindquist, who had excelled as an S-1 (Admin and Personnel) officer in the early US Airborne forces and was also one of the very first officer volunteers. A shortage of command officers meant that Lindquist was given command of the 508th battalion when first raised, and then promoted to 'full-bird' Colonel as the battalion was expanded to a regiment.
Lindquist's story, to me, sounds very similar to Captain Herbert Sobel's of Easy Company, 506th - the famous Band of Brothers, who was a strict disciplinarian and hard trainer, but hopeless in the field training exercises. This led to a Sergeants mutiny within the Company before D-Day, all signing a letter resigning their stripes because they did not wish to serve under Sobel in combat. Colonel Sink was furious with them and took some actions such as reducing them in rank and transferring one of them out of the Company, but he also reassigned Sobel to a parachute school in England and Easy got a new CO transferred from (iirc) Bravo Company - Lt. Meehan. Meehan was killed on D-Day and Winters became CO, and the rest is history.
In the 508th, there was no mutiny, and Lindquist remained in command throughout the war, although after some incidents in Normandy, 82nd CO Matthew Ridgway did not trust Lindquist and would not promote him, according to Gavin's 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far. This was the situation Gavin inherited when he took over the division from Ridgway in August. He probably had the same problem with regard to promotions, because Lindquist had seniority in the grade he could not promote another Colonel in the division over Lindquist, and this may be the reason Gavin did not replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was doing both jobs during Market Garden.
So we have Gavin left with a decision to make on assigning his three parachute regiments to the three main objectives in his AO - Grave, Nijmegen, and protecting his landing zones from potential counter-attack from the Reichswald. His decision to assign the 508th to the critical Nijmegen mission looks like a very bad mistake in hindsight, because the Reichswald was basically unoccupied (I do have details on units in the area on D-Day of the operation if you want them). The potential tank threat didn't emerge, at least until later in the operation when Panzerbrigade 108 arrived in the area, but that was after the Guards Armoured had arrived on the Allied side.
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I recommend American historian John C. McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) for the best analysis I've read on the bridge versus ridge debate. The key section from Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’, is as follows:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
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Also, Cornelius Ryan Collection (Ohio State University) Box 101, Folder 10 - James Gavin, Pages 2-3.
I think the important thing to understand is not that the bridge and the Groesbeek heights were an either/or priority. The problem, as I understand it, was that although the presence of the II.SS-Panzerkorps was known to be refitting in the eastern Netherlands, each SS-Panzer-Division (9. 'Hohenstaufen' and 10. 'Frundsberg') were assessed to be reduced by the fighting in Normandy to a regimental battlegroup with few if any tanks, but they could not both be positively identified and located.
The Dutch resistance had done an excellent job of reporting SS troops in various towns and villages in an area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, and had identified a vehicle symbol for the 'Hohenstaufen' and Ruurlo castle as a divisional HQ (but not which division). The fear was that the excellent Dutch army barracks facilities in Nijmegen could easily house a regiment of SS troops and the Panzerkorps could be receiving new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area just across the border behind the Reichswald forest. This led to the silly rumour the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, despite Generalfeldmarshal Model not having even 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400.
So this intelligence assessment, which was still prevailing as late as SHAEF Intel Summary #26 on 16 September 1944, created a fear that 82nd Airborne could face significant opposition, rather than all of it being to the east of British 1st Airborne's area of operations.
The next logical consideration was the high ground - the heavily wooded Groesbeek ridge or "heights" (which are not very high at all) - that lay between the city of Nijmegen (with its River Waal bridges) and the landing zones for the 82nd Airborne Division. If occupied by German combat troops in an easily defensive position, this could present a significant barrier to the 82nd's attempts to get into Nijmegen to seize the bridges, as well as threaten the landing zones required for subsequent airlifts. It's clear that both Gavin and Browning agreed that securing the Groesbeek heights was the first priority, because it secured the Division's airhead, and therefore the initial objective for the 508th PIR assigned to the Nijmegen mission.
Because the intel position was uncertain (in fact, the 10th SS were at Ruurlo and the panzer depot was near Münster deeper into Germany), the 508th were expected to secure the Groesbeek ridge first, and only once that was done, to move into Nijmegen and seize the bridges. Most combat officers in the 82nd Division seemed to understand that, but Colonel Lindquist was a gifted administrator who seemed to think the mission was to secure the heights and wait for a division order to move on the bridges. The absence of a written order from Gavin before the operation seems to lend weight to the conclusions by RG Poulussen (Lost At Nijmegen, 2011) that the detailed plan laid out in Field Order No.1 for the 508th PIR, and repoduced in the appendix of his book, was 'the' plan for the Nijmegen operation. My problem is that Field Order No.1 was signed by "LINDQUIST Commanding" and not by Gavin. It was Lindquist's detailed plan for his subordinate battalion commanders to occupy their initial objectives.
In Captain Westover's Q&A with Lindquist after the war (also in Poulussen's appendix), Lindquist denied receiving an order to move on the highway bridge on landing, he was only given the order to move after they were in position [on the ridge]. This is a lie by ommission, because he omits to mention the divisional briefing, in which Gavin says he emphasised the importance of the bridge to the overall success of the operation, and instructed Lindquist to go for the bridge if he could, and this claim has a witness in Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ, who says he sat in on the briefing. Chet Graham's testimony has only appeared in Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2) which was published the following year in 2012. Based on Graham's and others testimony of Lindquist's poor combat performance in Normandy, as related in Nordyke, and both Ridgway and Gavin not having much confidence in him as evidenced by Gavin in the Box 101 Folder 10 document of the Cornelius Ryan Collection, I think this is ground zero for Market Garden being compromised at Nijmegen.
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Debunked in 1963. Doesn't anybody have any new questions these days? Sorry, but this is one of those myths that simply refuses to die a dignified death.
There's no doubt there were security leaks and at least one report warning of an impending airborne operation in the Netherlands was sitting unread on the desk of a German intelligence chief at the time of the landings, but the specific story concerning Christiaan 'King Kong' Lindemans was investigated by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree in the years after the war and he presented his evidence debunking the theory in his book De Slag By Arnhem (1963), translated into English with journalist Cornelius Bauer as The Battle of Arnhem (1966).
Boeree researched the movements of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' to prove that it was not located at Arnhem to meet an expected airborne attack - it was actually in the process of being further withdrawn to Siegen in Germany for refit and only a few 'alarm' companies remained in the Netherlands on 17 September - another 24 hours and they would have been gone too. In fact, these final movements were frustrated on that Sunday by the Dutch rail strike, which was organised by the Dutch resistance at the request of the Dutch Government-in-Exile based in London to coincide with the operation to hinder German reinforcements.
Gavin had a copy of Boeree's research papers that he sent to Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, because he had been looking into these rumours of a betrayal himself after the war and came to the conclusion it was nonsense. In the correspondence between Gavin and Ryan (box 101, folder 09 in the Cornelius Ryan Collection of WW2 papers at Ohio State University and accessible online), Ryan agreed with Gavin about the King Kong affair (letter on page 95) and thought it was worth "a large footnote and that is all." Ryan complained that "Bernhard has a burr under the saddle about the whole thing and is almost bludgeoning me into doing it in the book." The same letter also debunks the idea the entire operational plan fell into General Kurt Student's hands, it was a supply roster for 101st Airborne, and Student was unable to communicate his deductions on its significance for 48 hours, by which time everyone in the German command already knew what all the objectives were. Gavin's letter of November 18, 1966 (page 48) also reveals that Gavin had only now realised that the Dutch reports of German armour in the Reichswald that had had concerned him so much when making his divisional plan was actually the Hohenstaufen in transit to Arnhem. They must have made a stop in the Reichswald and that generated the Dutch reports.
It's unfortunate that Cornelius Ryan did not give debunking the betrayal myths more print in his book, the result has been to allow them to persist, but the information has been in his papers and in other published works all along. Ryan left a lot of his research you can read in the digital collection out of the book and it is quite misleading as a result. He did give himself a get-out-of-jail-free card by saying he was more interested in the personal experiences of the veterans than writing a comprehensive history, so the reader should not regard A Bridge Too Far as a comprehensive history of the operation. You have to read a comprehensive range of books to get that.
Hope this nails that particular myth for you and for anyone else taking the trouble to read the evidence.
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More than possible for one battalion to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge with a bridghead in Lent, the village on the northern bank, if they had moved quickly. The area around the north end of the bridge was not as open as the southern end of the Arnhem bridge, which was effectively a kill-zone (and the 'Mike One' target for the field artillery in Oosterbeek) between the paratroops on the northern end and the Germans occupying the housing area of Zuid-Arnhem, south of the Rijn flood plain and the elevated southern bridge ramp.
The weakest aspect of this scenario is the fact the 508th PIR had only two 57mm anti-tank guns (the American 57mm M1 was the British 6-pounder made under licence, except the US Airborne used the British Mark III already adapted to fit in the Horsa glider). The 82nd Division only landed one battery of eight guns on the first day and shared these out on a scale of two per parachute regiment and two held back as division reserve. At Arnhem, the 1st Parachute Brigade had five 6-pounder anti-tank guns at the bridge, but only two were deployed to cover the bridge itself and did most of the damage to Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 as it attempted to force the bridge from the south. At Nijmegen it's unlikely they would have attacked the 508th since their mission was reconnaissance, and they only tried to force the Arnhem bridge because the British had cut off their supply line and Gräbner believed the bridge was only lightly held by around 200 paratroops with no heavy weapons.
Gavin held his reserve, which included his Engineer Battalion and the 2nd Battalion 505th (Ben Vandervoort's battalion) in the woods west of Groesbeek around his division CP, but could have sent them into Nijmegen as reinforcements, if a threat to the Lent bridgehead appeared to outweigh that from the Reichswald.
I'm currently reading a series of books on the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem and they include an extraordinary story of the Troop commander of Z Troop, Lieutenant Eustace McNaught, landing in his glider short of the landing zones near Zetten on the Nijmegen island. He claims to have taken his command Jeep and three of his men (leaving another four behind with the glider pilots on foot) and tried to reach the Arnhem bridge, but on reaching the deserted main road with no sign of any Germans and then approaching the bridge from the south, saw an armoured force heading in his direction and decided to turn around to head south to the Americans at Nijmegen. He says he reached the Nijmegen bridge as it was getting dark and managed to drive across it without being challenged before running into some Dutch civillians in the city who were concerned that German units were entering the city and arranged to hide McNaught and his party in a monastery until the city was liberated. On 21 September McNaught made contact with Lieutenant Howe, who commanded the seaborne tail of his Battery, and related this extraordinary story to him before driving off alone in the Jeep, intending to make contact with the nearest SAS section so he could attach himself to it. Howe later learned that McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and then after the war joined MI6 as a military attaché.
The confusing thing about this story is that the Z-Troop 6-pounder guns were flown in on the second lift, but some sources suggest the Troop HQs were flown in on a first lift glider serial, and the story only makes sense if McNaught landed on the first day and was able to cross the Nijmegen bridge before Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 made its reconnaissance from Arnhem to Nijmegen in the early evening of D-Day. The title of the book is A Lost Opportunity - Battery Z Troop by Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk and Marcel Zwarts (2022). "A lost opportunity" is a quote from an angry McNaught who complained that he could have captured the Nijmegen bridge on his own in those first few hours, but he may have crossed the bridge while 1/508th S-2 Section Scout PFC Joe Atkins was there holding seven German prisoners and presumably lying low by not stopping traffic, as related in Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013). Atkins and his two companions decided to withdraw when it got dark because nobody showed up to reinforce him and he could not hold the bridge alone if counter-attacked. As they left, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge.
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@daniellee2343 - you might be right about Gräbner looking for a fight - who's to say? I can only offer my own impression of him as a bit cocky and not at all the hard-bitten Nazi type that seemed to be suggested by the non-speaking cameo actor in A Bridge Too Far (1977). He was an army officer who transferred as an Oberleutnent in January 1943 to the SS to further his career, like many army officers did, because the career prospects for promotion were better in the SS as Hitler did not trust the army and sought to expand the Waffen-SS to eventually replace it. He was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer just two months later. Gräbner had just received his Knight's Cross award on 17 September, at a ceremony held before the luncheon was interrupted by the airborne landings, for an action in Normandy. Gräbner’s Knight’s Cross recommendation reads as follows…
“On the 16.07.1944 the Pz.-A.A. 9, under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner, was subordinated to Grenadier-Regiment 989. The Abteilung had the mission of supporting the I./989 in its ongoing attack that aimed to retake the old defensive line and, additionally, establish firm control over the village of Noyers.
However the I./989 was pushed back by the enemy while the Abteilung was still in the process of being brought up for the attack. Noyers was captured by the English.
SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner made a new decision. He deviated from his original mission and launched a bold attack against the enemy with his Abteilung, driving them back in turn and bringing Noyers firmly back into German hands.
In the following days Noyers would repeatedly stand at the focus of the fighting. The enemy tried to capture the village and thereby force a penetration by any means necessary, and had strong tank and artillery forces available for this purpose. However they were fought off every time, and in the process SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner would distinguish himself through both outstanding leadership as well as inspiring bravery.
The Division points to the combat report of the SS-A.A. 9 as well as the letters of commendation for the SS-A.A. 9 that were written by the commander of the 277. Infanterie-Division and the commander of Grenadier-Regiment 989 as further evidence of Gräbner’s achievements.”
To this was added an informative comment by the commander of the II. SS-Panzer-Korps…
“SS-Hauptsturmführer Gräbner has distinguished himself through particularly notable bravery and prudent leadership. His deed was decisive for holding the positions of the 277. Division at its important boundary with the left neighbouring Korps. I thereby particularly approve of this recommendation.”
(Gräbner, Victor-Eberhard, Traces of War website)
On the single road, I think the problems were exaggerated by the lack of progress after reaching Nijmegen, as the cuts in the corridor and problems moving up 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, were caused by flanking Corps not making adequate progress and continued fighting in Nijmegen even after the bridges fell. The Guards Armoured Division's 'Club Route' was not unique to MARKET GARDEN, but started in Normandy and terminated at Bremen in Germany. There were traffic problems previously on 'Club Route' during the advance from the Seine when the Guards found units of US 2nd Armored Division 'Hell On Wheels' on their road, having strayed across the inter-divisional/corps/army/army-group boundary, and had to be re-directed where to go.
On your question of the Germans not securing the Arnhem road bridge, the bridge did have a bridge guard, apparently 25 WW1 veterans (I think from Kershaw, 1990), which sounds to me like the local security unit - Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, who were WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for front line service even in 1918. The north end did have twin 2cm Flak towers built on top of the toll booths, which were reinforced and had machine-guns installed as bunkers. The Flak towers had been hit by the RAF earlier in the day and at least the one on the east side was destroyed. Frost ordered one of his 6-pounder anti-tank guns to be manhandled up onto the roadway and engage the remaining bunker at point blank range, but could not elevate sufficiently to engage the Flak gun on the roof. Gräbner did leave at least one armoured car on the bridge as a radio relay, and its 2cm kanon plus 2cm Flak guns located on the Winter dijk on the south side of the river, prevented Frost's paratoopers from securing the southern end of the bridge.
I can confirm the Arnhem highway bridge was not prepared for demolition. Key railway bridges in the Netherlands all seem to have had demolitions prepared and a 'sprengkommando' in place since the Normandy invasion - the reason so many rail bridges involved in the operation were so promptly demolished on 17 September. The Nijmegen highway bridge had explosives stored inside the bridge pier storage spaces in specially prepared shaped and numbered boxes that fitted into corresponding numbered locations in the bridge superstructure, and even painted the same shade of green to match! An NSDAP 'Schutzgruppe' of volunteer ethnic Germans living in the Netherlands were drilled every month to install the charges and connect the detonation circuits under the supervision of Oberleutnant Gerhard Bretschneider from von Tettau's pionier staff in the Netherlands military occupation command (WBN). The last drill was mid-August. On 17 September, the Schutzgruppe failed to show up and Bretschneider, who was in Nijmegen, had to wait for the SS pioniers from 10.SS-Panzer-Division to arrive before he had the men to carry out the installation. A similar problem left the Grave Maasbrug intact to be captured by the 504th, landing close by.
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I would recommend September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012), and Put Us Down In Hell – The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 by Phil Nordyke (2012).
McManus does an excellent analysis of the bridge versus ridge debate and draws I think the correct conclusions - Browning and Gavin expected both to be taken as a priority. McManus also compliments Nordyke's regimental history in describing the events where things went wrong in Nijmegen on D-Day, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also illuminating in providing context for Lindquist's poor performance in both operations.
The other reference is free online - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (box 101 folder 10: James Maurice Gavin, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) in which Gavin spoke quite freely about his criticisms of Lindquist and discarding a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge - something that Cornelius Ryan didn't use in the book A Bridge Too Far (1974) and he didn't do any further digging into the Nijmegen story at all.
Panzerbrigade 107 had nothing to do with the reports of armour in the Reichswald. It was on trains destined for the Eastern Front and then diverted to Aachen, and then after the airborne landings diverted again to Venlo for offloading to attack the corridor at Son.
The reports of armour in the Reichswald were much older and were occupying the minds of the British 1st Airborne during planning for operation COMET between 4-10 September, and then gained the attention of Gavin when he was asigned the Nijmegen area for MARKET. If you look in the Cornelius Ryan Collection box 101, folder 09, page 48, you will find a covering letter from Gavin to Ryan enclosing some research papers from Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree, in which he had tracked the withdrawal of the Hohenstaufen Division after it crossed the Maas at Maastricht on 4 September to concentrate near Sittard, and then on 8 September were ordered north to Arnhem and the Veluwe region. Their route took them through Nijmegen and Gavin realised only now (in 1966) that they apparently made a stop in the Reichswald, sparking all the rumours and reports. The division was only in transit and not identified, so when the Dutch identified the division later northeast of Arnhem, the reports from the Reichswald could not be connected and assessed to have moved out.
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Tried posting information on this but YouTube seems to have sequestered my replies, so I will try one more time.
I would presume that since TIK has RG Poulussen's book Lost At Nijmegen (2011) on his list of sources, he probably got it from the ANNEXE copy on page 66 of the Lindquist interview by US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover in Frankfurt, Germany 14 September 1945:
He was asked:
"2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you ordrs to move directly into NIJMEGEN?"
"As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on."
Obviously, this is disingenuous because like a defendant in court he does not recall being given the instruction in the final divisional briefing on 15 September 1944, 48 hours before the jump, so he denies being instructed apon landing, when units would not have yet established communications with Division HQ anyway. Gavin was told Lindquist was not moving on the bridge at around 1830 as the first progress reports were coming in and he went to the 508th CP to chew him out and get him moving. By then it was too late. This episode is detailed in 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's regimental history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012).
Nordyke's source is Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the 508th regimental liaison officer to Division HQ, who sat in on the final divisional briefing in which Gavin gave Lindquist the instruction to move immediately on the bridge with 1st Battalion and was the officer that relayed the message from Lindquist that he was not sending the battalion until the DZ was cleared. This made Gavin as "mad" as Graham had ever seen him, and ordered Graham to come with him in a Jeep to the 508th CP, where Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed."
By this time it was too late to get 1st Battalion into the city before the SS panzer troops.
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@juke699 - it's a very superficial answer and misleading as a result. Anyone with any military knowledge will know that detailed planning is done by the units that undertake operations, and Army Group commanders like Montgomery only devise the strategic plan, not the operational and tactical planning done by the lower formations.
The article you quote (from the U.S. Army Airborne & Special Forces Museum) has a significant error in it where it says [quote] "the plan failed largely because the British XXX Corps did not reach the furthest bridge at Arnhem before German forces overwhelmed the British defenders. This occurred because Allied intelligence failed to detect the presence of German tanks."
There is no date on when the web article was written, but I can tell you this version of events is the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974) and popularised by the 1977 film adaptation. Much of the work that proves this narrative is wrong was published in books in 2011-2012, and the infamous aerial photo showing German tanks near Arnhem was found in a Dutch archive in 2014 and studied by the RAF's Air Historical branch, undermining one of Cornelius Ryan's key witnesses and his one-sided account.
The original Arnhem operation called COMET was cancelled by Montgomery on 10 September after he received reports II.SS-Panzer-Division had moved into the target area. He then proposed a replacement operation (provisionally called SIXTEEN and later given the codename MARKET GARDEN) to Eisenhower during a scheduled meeting later the same day, upgrading COMET by adding the two American divisions to land at Eindhoven-Grave-Nijmegen, which allowed British 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade to concentrate at Arnhem with their considerable anti-tank gun assets.
The 'Ultra' source for code decrypts was not declassified to the public until FW Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published in 1974, the same year Cornelius Ryan rushed his unfinished book (he had terminal cancer), A Bridge Too Far, to publication. So, Ryan was unaware of Ultra, as was everybody else below 21st Army Group and British 2nd Army commanders (Montgomery and Dempsey), and Eisenhower.
People who needed to know were given 'sanitised' intel (stripped of unit identifications), so British anti-tank batteries sent to Arnhem were told to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day, including Panther and Tiger tanks - which is a sanitised reference to a panzer-division or panzerbrigade and heavy tank battalions respectively. Dutch resistance sources had also reported SS troops being billeted in towns and villages in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel), and had identified vehicle insignia for the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen'. There was a concern its sister unit, the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg', was not located, so General Gavin was given a steer that the barracks in Nijmegen may contain "a regiment of SS" (the reduced strength of the Frundsberg) and possibly the Reichswald forest may contain a pool of tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve. This information adversely affected Gavin's divisional planning thinking.
The real reason the plan did not work was because part of Gavin's divisional plan was not carried out. He had instructed the commander of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to send his 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge as soon as practical after landing, and this he failed to do. Colonel Lindquist was not a good field commander and had not performed well in Normandy, yet Gavin assigned the critical Nijmegen mission to the 508th instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th, which he assigned to the Reichswald sector. By the time Gavin found out the 508th battalion was not moving from its initial objective on the Groesbeek ridge, it was too late to prevent the 10.SS-Panzer-Division moving armoured units in from the area north and east of Arnhem, many miles away.
Gavin had also dismissed a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the bridge to seize it by coup de main, because of his experience with a scattered drop on Sicily. The airborne planning after COMET was cancelled had been passed over to 1st Allied Airborne Army, because it now involved American units, and USAAF Generals Brereton of 1st AAA and Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command deleted COMET's double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges, so the British were doing everything they could to maximise the success of the operation, but once in American hands the plan was subject to a number of compromise changes. On occasions I have replied sarcastically to people by asking if they thought Montgomery had chosen every drop zone and planned every battalion route march to their objectives? I think once you get into the weeds, people do start to think a bit about it and take the point.
There are old references to Gavin's instruction to Lindquist that were there all the time:
Letter General Gavin to US Army Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 (reproduced on p.11, Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen 2011)
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Most recent references detailing what went wrong at Nijmegen and ignored by Cornelius Ryan (and the U.S. Army Airborne Museum), and these include first hand accounts from people who were in the final divisional briefing:
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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@juke699
Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." (p.11, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011)
Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ –
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Nordyke op cit, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
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@mikeainsworth4504 - no problem with the response time, but I often find notifications don't always generate on long threads, so you have to be aware of that possibility.
Offhand I would go for RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014) and Sebastian Ritchie's Arnhem: Myth and Reality (2011, 2019). I hesitate to rely on Richie because he's very pro-airforce and therefore more critical of Montgomery and Browning, while Poulussen is Dutch and more inclined to challenge that conventional narrative.
Ritchie says the COMET glider coup de main assaults were timed to arrive at 0545 hrs - before daybreak, with RAF crewed tugs, and the main body of the 1st airlift between 0800-0900 hrs (a USAAF Group dropping the paratroops) and the 2nd airlift between 1730-1830 hrs the same day. The concerns about night navigation were based on the USAAF's previous performance in Normandy, which was regarded as poor, but daylight lifts in Normandy (Operation Mallard on the evening of 6 June) and for Operation Dragoon (south of France) were more accurate. The RAF would be navigating the British glider forces (and the pathfinders flown in RAF Stirlings), but the main airlifts were timed to arrive in daylight hours at both ends of the day because of the concerns over the USAAF aircrews.
COMET was cancelled by Montgomery on the morning of the delayed launch - 10 September - in the early hours as troops were boarding their aircraft, because of reports on the worsening intelligence situation in the Netherlands (arrival of II.SS-Panzerkorps), and Browning flew out to meet Montgomery to devise the outline for an upgraded operation provisionally called SIXTEEN. This is approved by Eisenhower at his scheduled meeting with Montgomery later that day and Browning flies back to England to present the outline to 1st Allied Airborne Army, who would now take over the planning.
Here's where it gets interesting in Poulussen:
[Quote:]
At 1800 10 September, a conference began at 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY's headquarters in Sunninghill Park, England, to discuss the outline plan of the operation. The upgraded version of the British operation COMET would be an Allied enterprise.
Present were 12 members of 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY, 4 of American 18 AIRBORNE CORPS, 3 of British 1 AIRBORNE CORPS, 3 of American 82 AIRBORNE DIVISION, 2 of AMERICAN 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION, 2 of American 9 TROOP CARRIER COMMAND and 1 of British 38 GROUP. The interests of British 1 AIRBORNE DIVISION could not be defended because they had no representatives at the conference.
Brereton announced that Williams was appointed the new air transport commander of 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY, with operational control not only of Williams' American 9 TROOP CARRIER COMMAND but also of British 38 and 46 GROUP and bomber aircraft that might be used for resupply.
[The outline plan is presented with 1st Div to Arnhem, 101st to Nijmegen, and 82nd to Eindhoven]
In "All British" operation COMET two lifts on D-Day had been planned and approved but now American Stearley (senior G3 officer 1 ALLIED AIRBORNE ARMY) argued that "good" counter Flak preparations could not be achieved for a daylight lift and therefore a two-lift operation was negated. Williams stated that - due to the distance involved - a double tow lift was precluded.
[Williams also recommended the 101st and 82nd Divisions switch to avoid their air routes crossing]
Landing gliders close to the bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave was not considered too great a hazard in operation COMET, but Williams - preoccupied with Flak - cancelled the coup de main actions around the key bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen.
Also not without consequence, Williams rejected - again driven by Flak concerns - two suggested drop/landing zones in the area of 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION, namely Valkenswaard and Eindhoven. Browning had proposed these drop/landing zones for 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION so that 30 CORPS could make a good head start on D-Day, by "hopping" from one secured spot to the next, as on an "airborne carpet". Without this "airborne carpet" 30 CORPS would now have to fight its way - for at least 13 miles - through the thickening German crust of defence on D-Day, until they reached Eindhoven, hopefully secured by American 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION.
[End quote]
Poulussen also publishes here a map from the COMET planning that show the airlift routes to Arnhem and Nijmegen (Grave is off the map and he doesn't mention what happened to the coup de main assault there, but we know that Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR insisted on a special drop zone for a parachute company to land there and got it). The glider coup de main flights to the Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges follow the same track to Arnhem as the main body to LZ 'S', but their release points are when they cross the rivers Rijn and Waal respectively, then make 90 degree turns to the right and glide 6 km to their landing zones next to the bridges by following the river in each case. The tug aircraft are therefore not exposed to Flak near the bridges and the gliders make a silent approach. It's hard to understand why Williams objected to the assaults on the grounds of Flak.
I personnally suspect it was Brereton who wanted them deleted, because this was a capability the Americans did not posses in their glider doctrine and it would mean in the expanded operation the British Airlanding Companies assigned to the coup de main assaults would secure the 82nd Airborne's two biggest objectives for them. Brereton had objected to Montgomery's proposed airborne operation INFATUATE for Walcheren to help open Antwerp on numerous grounds, but one of them was that he didn't want to use US troops in an Anglo-Canadian sideshow. His LINNET II plan - not requested by Montgomery's 21st Army Group to which 1st AAA was attached - was his own initiative in case LINNET was cancelled and would land in Bradley's 12th Army Group area to assist his US 1st Army advance across the Maas between Liege and Maastricht. I think American political considerations were driving the conflict between the Allies within 1st AAA. There's no doubt that in the conflict between the airforce and army requirements, the airforce won the arguments, because 1st AAA was dominated by the USAAF and not the RAF or British Army.
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@jrd33 - your timing is perfect. I have just posted a reply on another video on this very question of German armour in the Reichswald because of a recent discovery, so I'll copy and paste the same information here too, if I may:
In the Cornelius Ryan Collection, box 101, folder 9, page 48 - Gavin writes to Cornelius Ryan a covering letter in 1966 to enclose some papers written by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree (I have his book written with Cornelius Bauer called The Battle of Arnhem, 1966 and originally in Dutch as De Slag By Arnhem, 1963), and Gavin had suddenly realised something significant:
November 18, 1966
Dear Connie:
Here's a paper which I received quite a long time ago from T. A. Boeree. On page 4a it gives the route of march of the Hohenstaufen Division to positions north of Arnhem. One of its stops was at Nijmegen and, according to the intelligence we had, in the Reichswald.
As I believe I told you, when I talked to you about Operation Market at one time, the British originally planned to parachute into Nijmegen and they were working with Bestebreurtje on their planning when I was called to Brereton's headquarters on September 10 and given the mission for the 82nd. Immediately following that meeting, I went over to the British headquarters. Their intelligence was that there were very heavy German armored forces in the Reichswald and they had been preparing to deal with them in their plans. It seems obvious, now, that the intelligence coming from the Dutch underground was based on armored forces intransit to north of Arnhem. I don't think that Boeree's paper will contribute much to an understanding of the outcome of Market, but I thought that you should have it in your papers.
With best regards,
[signed] James M. Gavin
- So on 10 September, the situation was that Montgomery had just cancelled COMET because of reports of II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with them, and proposed to Eisenhower an upgraded operation SIXTEEN (later MARKET) that added the US Airborne divisions. They also had these Dutch reports of armour in the Reichswald, but obviously unidentified. Even the later Dutch reports on 13/14 September of SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions north and northeast of Arnhem could only offer an identification of 'H' vehicle insignia identifying the Hohenstaufen Division, and a division headquarters at Ruurlo - but not which division (it was the Frundsberg's). So, by the time MARKET was launched, they knew there were SS panzer troops near Arnhem tentatively identified as the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen', and it was presumed her sister unit the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' was also in the Netherlands, so Gavin was given a 'sanitised' (unit identifications stripped out) warning that the Nijmegen Dutch army barracks might contain "a regiment of SS" (the reduced strength of the Frundsberg) and that tanks may be located in the Reichswald, refreshing from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area (later found to be false and actually located near Münster), but it probably carried less weight than the more recent reports from Arnhem and that best placed 1st Airborne at Arnhem.
The tank depot error I cannot explain as yet, but I think may be a confusion between a local place name that may exist near both Kleve and Münster. There was a similar error made by Tieke (In The Firestorm of the Last Year of the War, Wilhelm Tieke 1975) and copied by Kershaw (It Never Snows In September, Robert Kershaw 1990) that conflated the location of Röstel's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 10 that was detached to 7.Armee in the VALKENBURG area near Aachen, with the town of VALKENSWAARD in the MARKET GARDEN corridor. The StuGs and Jagdpanther seen near Valkenswaard belonged to Heeres schwere.Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and not Röstel's unit, so it's obviously hard for people to be forensic in the detail even with decades of hindsight, never mind during the war.
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@jrd33 - my understanding of the 1,000 tanks was that it was a rumour started by someone suggesting the forest could hide up to 1,000 tanks and we wouldn't know about it. What's interesting about the Hohenstaufen's withdrawal route was that they crossed the Maas upstream and then travelled down the east bank, and there's numerous forested areas in that narrow corrider along the Dutch/German border that could be used for cover against air observation. I had always assumed the movement from Sittard to Arnhem/Veluwe was done in one bound overnight and went straight through Mook-Nijmegen-Arnhem as the map in Bauer's book suggests, but it's of course quite plausible they stopped for a day to shelter in the Reichswald and this stop generated the Dutch reports, or indeed perhaps they didn't go through Mook and transited the Reichswald from Gennep to Kranenburg and then Nijmegen.
As for the depot, there would be a forward depot from which tanks delivered from the factory would be collected and then issued to units. Of course, because of the demand outstripping supply, you won't have much of a surplus awaiting issue. The Frundsberg's Panther Abteilung were not operational until January 1945 precisely because every time they got another five tanks delivered to their training depot they would be diverted or taken off them to replace losses in Normandy! Their training programme was extended because they only had one or two tanks per kompanie to train with for a long time.
During the battle of Arnhem, Model arranged for 20 Panthers to be delivered (in batches of 8 and 12 tanks) direct to II.SS-Panzerkorps from the factory, and it was interesting to follow the debate in the armour forums online on who possibly crewed these tanks, and I concur with the general conclusion that it was the 'alarm kompanie' of 100 Panther crewmen in SS-Panzer-Regiment 9. It makes absolute sense to me that without trained crews waiting to receive them, the tanks would be of little use on their own and Model would arrange for 20 tanks, not 10 or 30, because the Hohenstaufen had that exact number of crews for them. I have Dieter Stenger's book Panzers East and West (2017) on the Frundsberg Division, and it's clear to me that these Panthers were the source for reforming 8./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, originally a StuG Kompanie.
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Another useful reference is RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011), which reproduces Colonel Lindquist's Field Order No.1, dated 13 September, detailing his plan for the occupation of the Groesbeek heights at de Hut, de Ploeg and Berg-en-Dal, by 2nd, 1st, and 3rd Battalions respectively. He only includes in the general orders for the regiment in section 2.a: "hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on Div order". Poulussen also reproduces the transcript of Lindquist's interview with Historical Officer Captain Westover (US Army Center of Miltary History) on 14 September 1945:
2. GENERAL GAVIN said he gave you orders to move directly into NIJMEGEN?
"As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on."
This seems to me to be a lie by ommision, in failing to mention he was instructed in the divisional briefing to move "with speed" on the bridge as soon as practical after landing. I don't have a date for the divisional briefing from Nordyke, but presumably it was before the 13 September Field Order No.1 was written.
Nordyke's earlier chapters in Put Us Down In Hell (2012) on the Normandy campaign, the 508th's first combat operation, details incidents of poor command decisions by Lindquist, based on testimony of Chet Graham and other officers in the regiment. Lindquist's background was that he was one of the first officer volunteers for the new Airborne corps after US entry into the war and was an outstanding S-1 (Admin Officer) for the early Airborne forces. When the force was expanded and more officers were required to fill combat command positions, Lindquist was given command of the 508th Parachute Infantry Battalion on formation, and subsequently promoted to full Colonel when the battalion was expanded to a regiment.
A question arises about supervision by Gavin, Lindquist's superior and Division Commander after Ridgway moved on to command XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944, but Gavin failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander. Not only was Gavin running himself ragged doing both jobs for the planning and execution of Market Garden, but it seems neither Ridgway or Gavin trusted Lindquist enough to promote him. Gavin said after the war that Ridgway refused to promote him, although he was the most senior Colonel in the Division, and could not promote Tucker (504th) or Ekman (505th) over him. This might explain why Ridgway did not take Lindquist with him to XVIII Corps as his G-1, a role he would be ideally suited to, but that would mean promotion. My impression is that Gavin was overloaded and failed to ensure his instructions to Lindquist had been fully realised by Lindquist's regimental plan (Field Order No.1) for the operation, and I would question what was Gavin's rationale for assigning Nijmegen to the 508th and not the more exprienced and aggressive 505th? I can only assume Gavin's concern for possible enemy forces located in the Reichswald drove his decision to have the 505th covering that sector of the divisional perimeter.
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@johnburns4017 - since we're on this topic again, I thought I would take another look at it in the light of one or two books I have acquired since I found the Dutch Heijenoord nugget.
I have a copy of Cornelius Bauer's The Battle of Arnhem (1963) based on the research of Dutch Colonel TA Boeree, he did a lot of work studying the Hohenstaufen's movements to debunk the betrayal myths after the war (why would the division be in the process of being entrained for Germany to refit if it was placed at Arnhem to expect an airborne attack). On pages 102-103 (bearing in mind this is the 2012 paperback edition of the 1966 English translation of the 1963 Dutch book) :
During lunch news came from Beekbergen that Bittrich had put the division in a state of alert. Harzer was able to take measures immediately. He ordered the 'tanks' of Gräbner's reconnaissance squadron to be got ready for action.
The 'tanks' which, contrary to all expectations, were to thwart Dobie's and Fitch's battalions. The 'tanks' whose existence came as a surprise even to Rundstedt, the German supreme commander in the west. The 'tanks' whose presence was later to be cleared up by Harzer himself.
I had assumed when reading this the 'tanks' were a translation of 'panzers' from the SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 (SS armoured reconnaissance battalion 9), since the German word panzer means armoured, but also translates to the English word 'tank'. I still think this refers to the armoured vehicles of Gräbner's unit, but I think arrangements must have been made to transport the three Panthers and two Möbelwagen to Germany as well, so their exact whereabouts at the time of the landings has to be an open question.
Harzer's orders before the airlanding alert was to move the Hohenstaufen division to Siegen in Germany by 23 September, but since six trains left for Germany daily he thought the move could be completed by Sunday 17 September. He had kept the remains of his comabt units, formed into 'alarm' companies in case needed for emergencies, until last, so these would be entrained on the Sunday. However, due to the Dutch railway strike organised by the resistance at the request of the Dutch Government-in-Exile in London to coincide with the MARKET GARDEN operation, many German troops and the equipment of the Hohenstaufen division were being loaded onto trains with no locomotives available to move them. Men from various units were waiting at the Arnhem and Nijmegen stations, and the armoured cars and half-tracks of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 were being loaded onto flat cars at Beekbergen station, with tracks and guns removed to render them administratively 'non-operational' to avoid the order to hand them over to the Frundsberg.
I had always assumed from Dobie's war diary that the five tanks and approximately fifteen half-tracks seen on the Amsterdam road on Sunday afternoon was the five tanks from Heijenoordeseweg and half-tracks from Beekbergen respectively, but it occurs to me that the tanks may have been at Beekbergen being loaded onto the same train as Gräbner's Abteilung. The point is that they were certainly seen together with the half-tracks (fifteen would be about right for Gräbner's 3.Kompanie) in the 1st Parachute Battalion war diary:
17th September 1944
1600 - Moved from RV to Rly Sta 665806 - met OC Recce who stated enemy were to East down Rly (infantry only) and tanks up rd to North. As we could not get tpt along Rly any further - moved North up road. Tanks withdrew.
1700 - R Coy attacked infantry posns astride road at 673816. Enemy withdrew with casualties. R Coy reached rd junc 675820 after more fighting - were heavily engaged at that point by tanks and infantry. R Coy took up posn facing East then attacked again.
1900 - About to advance N to main rd when tanks approached from S.E. along main rd. Altogether 5 tanks and approx 15-half-tracks passes X-rds 691811 (400 yds N of our posn in woods).
2000 - Armd car and some infantry approached our lying up posn. Engaged enemy - they withdrew, we had 6 casualties.
Note the distinction between "_Tanks_" and "_Armd car_" in the diary, so the vehicles seen with the half-tracks on the main road were not the five wheeled armoured cars (SdKfz 231 and 222 series) in Gräbner's 1.Kompanie or the five half-tracked 'armoured cars' (SdKfz 250/9 with a 2cm kanon turret) originally from 2.Kompanie but rolled into 1.Kompanie in the reduced battalion.
So as things stand, the Hohenstaufen had five tanks in Arnhem on Friday morning 15 September hidden on Heijenoordseweg and previously were in the (Saksen-Weimar) barracks, and they were on the main Amsterdam road by 1600 hours on the afternoon of 17 September. I cannot account for their location or movement between those points in time. They could have still been on Heijenoordseweg, loaded on a train at Arnhem, or loaded on a train at Beekbergen would be the possible options.
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1. Montgomery was 21st Army Group commander and responsible for strategy, not detailed planning of operations. Market Garden was a 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and British 2nd Army (Dempsey) operation. Dempsey, at least, was at his headquarters directing his Corps' operations. Brereton was actually sightseeing along the Market Garden corridor by Jeep and could not always be in contact with his headquarters in England. Matthew Ridgway (US XVIII Airborne Corps) was also doing the same thing, visiting his two US Airborne divisions, despite him not having any role in the operation.
2. Air support - generally it was available, except when weather and deconfliction rules grounded 2nd Tactical Air Force in Belgium while the airlifts were in progress. However, when the airlifts were delayed by bad weather in England, 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) failed to inform 2nd TAF in Belgium that they could fly in the meantime.
3. More than one drop on D-Day was part of the plan for the original Operation Comet involving just the British 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Brigade under British I Airborne Corps (Browning). When it was cancelled and replaced by the upscaled Operation Market (using the air plan for Linnet II involving three divisions) the planning was turned over to 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and US IX Troop Carrier Command (Williams) objected to the Comet plan's dawn glider coup be main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges, and also the double airlift on the first day. This was allegedly due to Flak at the bridges, the lack of trained navigators in IX TCC for night flying, and the the maintenance turnaround times between the first and second airlift was deemed insufficient by Williams. Brereton backed him up.
4. I'm not familiar with "jildi", but I think you'll find drive was not lacking in the British Army. Their parts of the operation were working, but the failure to secure the undefended Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon was due to a command failure and lack of drive in the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Their commander was a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) officer and an early volunteer to the US Airborne forces, however he was not a good field commander and the regiment had command problems exposed during its first combat operation in Normandy (Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012).
Gavin inherited the 82nd from Ridgway after Normandy, when Ridgway was appointed commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944. Gavin told A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview that Ridgway did not trust the 508th's CO and refused to promote him. In fact he could not promote another Colonel over him because he had seniority. Gavin probably had the same problem, which may explain why he did not appoint a replacement for himself as Assistant Division Commander, so he was running himself ragged doing both jobs for Market Garden. None of this came out in Ryan's book and the blunder in Nijmegen on the first afternoon is simply ignored. However, the responsibility for his divisional plan not being carried out rested with Gavin and that has partly been well explained in this video, but not in as much depth and with background context that 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke provides in his regimental history of the 508th.
Gavin knew he had made a mistake in entrusting the 508th to the Nijmegen mission, instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, and that explains why he was so insistent on using his own troops (the 504th PIR) in a river assault crossing of the Waal, when the default XXX Corps plan for this scenario was for the British 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to carry out an assault crossing with either one or two Brigades up. The Wessex Division had one battalion in two of its brigades fully mobilised in amphibious DUKW trucks specifically for this purpose. They were also tasked with establishing brigade bridgeheads at Deventer and Zutphen on the River Ijssel, had they been able to deploy north of the Rijn at Arnhem as planned (Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz, 2021).
Blaming Montgomery is misdirection and it seems to come, not surprisingly, from American sources. I think the 90% successful comment by him was a pointed dig at the Americans, since out of the 24 or so bridges involved in the airborne operation, a minimum of 10 on the main supply 'Club Route' are required to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. Missing the bridges at Nijmegen on the first day made Operation Market 90% successful, but it doomed the British Airborne at Arnhem to late relief at best, or as was the case - withdrawal without holding the bridge, which made Operation Garden ultimately 90% successful as well.
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The Germans found that they were able to move around even in daylight, thanks to the main roads in the Netherlands being lined with trees since the Napoleonic era to enable troops to be marched in the shade. Most reinforcements were brought in by rail from Germany to the rail heads at night, and then road marched. Delays were suffered by the Germans due to air attacks, and the ferry operation conducted by the 10.SS-Panzer-Division at Pannerden was constantly harassed from the air when weather permitted during the day, so operations mainly continued under cover of night. I can't answer for how you managed to get the opposite impression.
Air support inside the designated 'boxes' around the airborne divisions were not permitted on an opportunity basis, only by direct communication from the ground, and this was not possible since the 306th Fighter Control Squadron teams attached to the airborne were hastily organised and had their special VHF radios delivered with the wrong crystals and were completely useless.
Air support for the ground forces moving up the corridor was obviously limited by weather, but also by deconfliction rules that grounded the 2nd Tactical Air Force in Belgium while the airborne airlifts were in progress. A command failure on the part of 1st Allied Airborne Army in England meant that delayed airlifts due to adverse weather in England were not communicated to 2nd TAF in Belgium, so the air support was often grounded under clear skies in Belgium unnecessarily while waiting for the transports to arrive.
While these probems were unwelcome, they were not the reason the operation failed. That was due to the Nijmegen highway bridge not being secured in the first vital hours, while it was undefended and the city evacuated by the Germans.
The real problem was poor planning by 1st Allied Airborne Army in making too many compromises to Browning's original Operation COMET concept, in order to avoid the aircraft coming under fire from Flak, and the command failure at the top of the 508th PIR in not sending the 1st Battalion directly to the Nijmegen highway bridge as Gavin had instructed in the divisional briefing. The responsibility rests with Gavin for assigning the problematic 508th to the Nijmegen mission, instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th, and the decision to dismiss a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the bridge was his. TIK hasn't drilled down to regimental level on this, and hasn't read the 508th's backstory in Normandy that informs the politics within the 82nd Airborne, but he's right to be focussing on Gavin. He is at the centre of this.
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@johnburns4017 - yes, this was the march to the initial objective leading 1st Battalion to De Ploeg. In fact that paragraph in Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) begins with the sentence before Adams' quote saying:
'Receiving infomation from the patrols that no enemy was between them and the objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance.'
After Adams' quote saying everything was going well but if they had gone straight to the bridge he still believes they would have had it without a fight, the next paragraph reads:
'Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.” '
What I think is important about this was that Lindquist's regimental plan was to dig-in on the ridge, because that was clearly Warren's understanding of his mission - he was surprised when he ws eventually ordered to move into Nijmegen and it took time to assemble A and B Companies - they were strung out along the ridge, and eventually A Company moved out first alone because they were nearest the road and assembled first, while B Company were further from the road and took longer to come out of the woods and assemble on the road. B Company followed A and HQ Companies into Nijmegen.
On the timings, I think Gavin received the report from Chet Graham about the 508th digging-in after 6:30 pm, because Lindquist arrived at De Ploeg after 1st Battalion, met with Geert van Hees, got the information Nijmegen was deserted and the bridge guarded by an NCO and 17 men, but then set about organising with Warren the pre-planned recon patrol - Lt Weaver's 3rd Platoon from C Company. Nordyke says the regimental CP was established at 6:30 pm, then there's the bit about Chet Graham getting an update from Lindquist of when he intends sending 3rd [?] Battalion to the bridge and Lindquist says "As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that." Gavin got a report from the 505th that the Reichswald was unoccupied at 6:30 pm, so I believe Graham must have reported in with his message soon after. Gavin realised his plan was compromised and they then went to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving:
'At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.” '
The other point to appreciate is that the roadblock position was specifically to guard against German movement SOUTH from Nijmegen - this had NOTHING to do with the Reichswald. A lot of people commenting on YouTube seem to have no appreciation of the geography and think that the Groesbeek heights were a defensive position against attacks from the perceived threat of the Reichswald. That may be true of the 505th PIR positions around Groesbeek and Hill 81.8, but the 508th's initial objectives of the line De Hut - De Ploeg - Berg-en-Dal, were specifically to cut the three roads south out of NIJMEGEN against a potential threat from NIJMEGEN, or indeed the Germans possibly occupying the ridge line themselves if they were barracked in Nijmegen and took up those positions as the Americans were assembling on their drop zones.
The position could have been a mirror of the one at Arnhem if there had been a formation like Battalion Krafft located in the area and able to quickly form a blocking line to prevent or delay access to the city. And the point is that there wasn't. There were no Germans on the ridge and the barracks were avoided by the Germans because of the risk of bombing. The only available combat troops in the whole Nijmegen sector were training units deployed on the Maas-Waal canal defence line.
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@michaelandersen-kk4fc - it was US Army doctrine to delegate tactical judgement to subordinate commanders, but if you read my post on Nordyke's passages that doctrine was underlined by Ben Delamater, the XO of 1/508th:
"The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
My take on the whole story, going back to Normandy in Nordyke's earlier chapters as well, was that Lindquist was not a good combat leader. It's similar to the story of Easy/506th before D-Day as portrayed in Band Of Brothers mini-series (2001) - the Sergeants had so little confidence in Captain Herbert Sobel, an excellent training officer but hopeless in the field, that it sparked a mutiny among the NCOs in the Company and he was transferred out of the Company to a parachute training school. In Roy Lindquist's case, he was a gifted administrator, but on D-Day in Normandy his XO was found to be completely combat ineffective, a diagnosis made by the regimental Medical Officer, who had to escape from German capitivity (he had stayed with some jump casualties) and cross the lines to get back to the 508th CP to make his report. He was amazed to see the XO in the CP, sitting in a chair with his M1 rifle between his legs just staring down at the floor. After making a report to Lindquist, the XO was immediately relieved of command and sent up to Division, where Ridgway court-martialled him and returned him to England and out of the Airborne. The officer was later re-assigned to an infantry division and was killed in the Hürtgen forest battles.
According to Gavin, Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to Brigadier, although he was the most senior of the Colonels, and that may be the reason he didn't take Lindquist with him to XVIII Corps as his S-1, a position that would have suited him perfectly. It's inexplicable Gavin would give the 508th such an important mission as Nijmegen instead of the 505th, but we don't know his rationale for choosing the 505th and the 508th for their respective tasks, only the 504th for Grave because it was on his supply line to XXX Corps and therefore priority number one in his thinking.
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@Mulberry2000 - the MARKET drops were all delivered accurately with only a few exceptions. A navigation error led to 2nd Battalion 505th (Ben Vandervoort's battalion, Vandervoort was played by John Wayne in The Longest Day) arriving over DZ 'N' at the same time as 1st Battalion, so Vandervoort ordered the pilot of his plane leading their serial to fly on to DZ 'T', the 508th's DZ, and they landed near Kamp. This meant they took longer to reach their objectives - clearing the northern half of Groesbeek and Hill 81.8 above the town, where they went into Division Reserve. 1st Battalion of the 501st (101st Airborne) dropped at the wrong place - Kasteel Heeswijk instead of near their objective at Veghel.
The 508th dropped on time around 1330 hours and only the 3rd Battalion missed DZ 'T', but landed together a short distance to the southeast near Wyler where there were a few light Flak guns and some isolated labour troops - they were digging an anti-tank ditch around Wyler. All three Battalions reached their initial objectives at De Ploeg, De Hut, and Berg-en-Dal by early evening, with only 2nd Battalion experiencing any major opposition as they neared the defended Maas-Waal canal area. According to Nordyke's regimental history, Put Us Down In Hell (2012):
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
This was the point where Lindquist stuck to his original plan to dig-in on the Groesbeek ridge and send only a recon patrol to the bridge, instead of sending the battalion as Gavin has instructed in the final briefing.
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@Mulberry2000 - "secure the landing zone and take the bridge with less than a battalion" - no, the orders are for Lindquist, who commands a whole regiment, he was to secure the landing zone (tasked to D Company of 2nd Battalion), take the Groesbeek ridge at Berg-en-Dal (with 3rd Battalion) and take the Nijmegen highway bridge with not more than a battalion (1st Battalion). The remainder of 2nd Battalion (E and F Companies) roadblocked the main highways southwest out of Nijmegen to Grave and south to Gennep.
Where Lindquist went wrong was to have the whole 1st Battalion dig-in on the ridge at De Ploeg, apart from Lt Weaver's 3rd Platoon of C Company, the Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section, and a two LMG Squads from HQ Company. This patrol was detached and sent into Nijmegen, where they got split up, Weaver and most of the patrol got lost and never reached the bridge. The only account of what happened to the three troopers that did reach the bridge is in Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge:
A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’)
The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
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@Mulberry2000 - Lindquist did not deny receiving orders before the drop, he denied receiving them immediately on landing, which is a disingenuous answer as I said.
I find it incredible you misread Norton's account of the orders Lindquist received - do you honestly think he was instructed to execute three major tasks with less than one battalion? That's a ridiculous interpretation. The report definitely does not state he had one battalion available. Even Lindquist himself, a poor field commander based on his performance in Normandy and at Nijmegen, did not make that interpretation given he deployed all three of his battalions to their individual tasks on D-Day.
What Lindquist failed to understand was the urgency of sending the 1st Battalion immediately to the bridge before the Germans could react and send reinforcements. It appears he was still expecting the "Div order" mentioned in his written Field Order No.1 dated 13 September, and had not realised the order he was expecting to receive had already been given by Gavin verbally on 15 September in the final divisional briefing. My interpretation of his behaviour is that he knew he had screwed up, but there was no written order before the jump to prove he had disobeyed orders, so he plays dumb and relies on the theory that Gavin had made up the claim after the fact to cover his own 'ass' and this seems to be the way historians have gone until Norton and Graham's testimony came to light in McManus (September Hope, 2012) and Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012), by which time Roy Lindquist (1907-1986) and James Gavin (1907-1990) had both passed away.
We know from hindsight that the 508th had a window of about one and half hours from 1830 to 2000 hours between the evacuation of rear echelon units from Nijmegen and the arrival of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9. This was the timscale in which Weaver's patrol was sent to the bridge, and all but three men led by PFC Joseph Atkins on point duty got lost and never found found it, when Gavin intended it should have been the whole battalion. Lindquist was even told by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees at De Ploeg (1st Battalion initial objective) that the Germans had evacuated the city and only a non-commissoned officer with seventeen men were guarding the highway bridge. Lindquist still only sent Weaver's recon patrol in spite of this information.
As I have said, there is scope to believe that Gavin thought he had not made himself clear enough in the final divisional briefing and may blame himself for that, but Norton and Graham both seem to think he had and Graham was certainly of the opinion Lindquist was not a good field officer in Normandy having had problems with his orders during the Hill 95 attack on 4 July.
Gavin certainly made a couple of crucial mistakes in not providing for a coup de main assault on the Nijmegen bridge and in assigning the Nijmegen mission to Lindquist, but Lindquist is also at fault for not following Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge. If Ekman's 505th 2nd Battalion (Vandervoort) had been tasked on the bridge, I have little doubt it would have been secured on D-Day.
I thought you would have understood that the drop patterns for MARKET were very accurate with few misdrops, and that many troopers in all three divisions remarked that it was like an exercise. This is recorded in even the most general histories of MARKET GARDEN, so I don't understand why you would dispute this. And the WW2 parachutes did have directional control, but the need or opportunity to use this was often reduced by jumping at a minimal height. This helped to reduce the drop pattern and in broad daylight that accuracy was more easily achieved. The drop pattern maps of the 82nd Airborne are available if you have a look around. There's a map shown on the Battle Detectives page on George Roth's visit to Grave, I'll post the link in a separate comment in case it is blocked. The 508th sticks landing outside DZ 'T' were the 3rd Battalion, but otherwise the division drop was very tight and on target.
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@johnburns4017
Why Lindquist thought he had to wait for a divisional order goes to the character of the man, not a technical reason. He was a gifted administrator and began his airborne career as one of the first volunteer officers to the Airborne forces as the S-1 (Staff officer for admin and personnel) to the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion in 1940, their first experimental parachute unit. In the Spring of 1941 he left the 501st to become S-1 for the Provisional Parachute Group at Fort Benning, Ga. In the Spring of 1942 he was promoted to Major and assigned G-1 (General staff officer for admin and personnel) of Airborne Command at Fort Bragg, NC. In September 1942 he returned to Fort Benning to organise the formation of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which he would command. At this time he was promoted to Lt.Col., and William Ekman (CO of the 505th in Holland) was the Assistant Commander. The 508th was officially activated at Camp Blanding, Florida in October 1942. According to Lt. Chester 'Chet' Graham, temporary CO of 'F' Company, both Regiment S-3 (Operations) officer Major Shanley (Regiment XO in Holland) and Major Louis Mendez (CO of 3rd Battalion) were both "class" officers. "Lindquist was pompous - they were not" (Chapter 1, Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke 2012). After intensive training in the US and England that paralleled the 506th as seen in Band of Brothers and the 507th, the 506th was attached to the 101st Division and the 507th (replacing the 504th left in Italy for Anzio) and 508th were attached to the 82nd Division for the Normandy invasion - their first combat operation for these new units.
"As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured" - this is a reference to 'D' Company of 2nd Battalion that had remained on the Drop Zone to clear it - collecting supply canisters and equipment to establish a supply dump at the Voxhill farm (grid square 7657 on the AMS GSGS map 12 NW GROESBEEK) under the supervision of the Regiment S-4 (Supply) officer. The S-4 has only a very small admin team that are parachute trained and are dependent on Jeep transport and other staff of the Regiment Service Company to arrive by glider and 2.5 ton trucks by sea tail. The remainder of 2nd Battalion had the mission of securing the western end of the Regiment's initial objective at de Hut (7059) on the main highway from Nijmegen to Venlo, while the 1st Battalion secured de Ploeg (7259) on the Nijmegen to Groesbeek secondary road, and 3rd Battalion at Berg-en-Dal (7459) on the main Nijmegen to Kleve (Germany) highway. The horizontal grid line 60 along the top of these grid squares actually forms the boundary between this map and the next map to the north (6 SW NIJMEGEN) where the main bridge targets are located and the Nijmegen barracks that might possibly be host to German combat troops.
I appreciate the post-war quote from Gavin on pre-flight orders, and both Chet Graham (CO of 508th Regimental HQ Company and designated liaison to Division HQ) and 1st Battalion XO Major Ben Delamater told Nordyke they clearly understood that the highway bridge was the main objective and the Groesbeek ridge (it's actually pretty flat but heavily wooded if you check out the locations on Google Street View) battalion positions were the 'initial' objectives. These positions were potentially a defensive blocking line for any German combat troops barracked in Nijmegen, but in the event the barracks were empty and the only combat troops in the area were all deployed along the Maas-Waal canal defence line. The city was effectively open, and Lindquist was told this by Geert van Hees of the Dutch resistance when they both arrived at de Ploeg soon after 1st Battalion got there at 6:30pm. The recon patrol was then planned by "the regimental and battalion COs", according to Ben Delamater (Chapter 10, Nordyke). In order for the 1st Battalion to go straight for the bridge, it could only do so after seizing the initial point at de Ploeg along the way, but instead they spread out along the ridge and dug-in.
I think Nordyke is an essential reference. I also have September Hope by John McManus (also 2012) currently on order, as I believe this book has some detail not in Nordyke.
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@johnburns4017 - I get the distinct impression the Americans knew they had screwed up and sought to cover this by removing the evidence and then blaming Market Garden's failure on everything under the sun, i.e. all the things that normally go wrong with military operations but don't necessarily compromise their success.
I don't know if we have 'Division Order No.1', which should be Gavin's written order for the regimental assignments from which Lindquist developed his regimental plan for the 508th. We do have Lindquist's 'Field Order No.1, 508 PIR', dated 13 September 1944, and reproduced in the appendix of RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011). This Field Order details all the assignments of the 508th, giving specific locations and map references, although an unpublished map overlay is also referred to. It does not contain any specific plan to move on the bridges and only states in the following sections:
2.a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ "T" , seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589).
3.c.x.(6) All Bns will be prepared to attack to the N, within their sectors to seize WAAL River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633).
It's also clear from Poulussen's reproduced transcript interview notes of Lindquist by Westover after the war that Lindquist was being evasive. When put to him Gavin had given him orders "to move directly into NIJMEGEN", he replied "As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on."
Lindquist had ommitted the conditional instruction to move on the bridge straight away if at all possible. This requires judgement in the field, based on the situation and information available. He appeared unwilling to do this, preferring to send a recon patrol (or patrols) and await their results before moving battalions. This was his behaviour in Normandy as well, so there's no inconsistency in Lindquist's behaviour or personality over time. Lindquist was clearly not an aggressive combat leader, and contributors to Nordyke's book from officers within the regiment said as much. He didn't entrust his battalion commanders to proceed on their own intitiative if they did not meet any resistance.
Lt.Col. Shields Warren, the 1st Battalion CO, was "surprised" to be ordered to move on the bridge that evening. He had not expected this order and the battalion was all spread out in a line along the Groesbeek ridge and only 'A' Company got out first because it was nearest the road. They waited an hour for 'B' Company to join them because it was further along the ridge, but they moved into town without waiting any longer. 'B' Company only caught up with 'A' and HQ Companies when enemy contact was made at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle, but since these were troops from SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9, it was obviously too late to reach the highway bridge without a major battle in the city.
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@johnburns4017 - my personal view is that Gavin assigned the wrong regiment (or commander) to Nijmegen and the Groesbeek ridge objectives. In my view (albeit with the benefit of hindsight) the 508th (or specifically their leadership) were ideally suited to a defensive role after seizing their intitial objectives.
The 505th's objectives were the rail bridge at Mook (7152), roadblocking the main Venlo highway at Reithorst/Plasmolen (7450), and patrolling the Reichswald at Grafwegen (7751), all undertaken by 1/505th. Hill 81.8 (7355) on the ridge behind Groesbeek, undertaken by Ben Vandervoort's 2/505th (Division reserve once complete), and clearing the town of Groesbeek (7555) undertaken by 3/505th. I'm sure that Gavin was worried about the Reichswald when he assigned his old regiment, the 505th, to this very defensive role and having his best battalion commander in Ben Vandervoort (played by John Wayne in the film version of The Longest Day) as his division reserve at Groesbeek in case of trouble. I can understand the rationale.
The thing about the 508th, having read Nordyke's combat histories of both regiments, was that the troopers were well trained and highly capable brave men. Comparisons can be made with the more famous 506th formed at the same time. I think Lindquist was perfectly capable of drawing up a plan just as detailed and well thought out for deployments in a defensive line against the Reichswald, and the bridge at Mook was a secondary River Maas crossing that would only be important if Rueben Tucker's 504th failed to secure the highway bridge at Grave. (Note: in the event, most rail bridges in Market Garden were prepared for demolition and were detonated as soon as threatened, while main highway bridges were less ready and the responsible agencies for their demolition either failed to show up or waited in vain for permission from higher authority).
If the 505th's assignments had been given to the 508th, I can see the highly capable 3rd Battalion (Louis Mendez) securing Mook and the Venlo highway on their right flank and protecting the landing zones on their left, with a reserve at Groesbeek in the centre. The 505th's 2nd Battalion could be the prime unit in the centre of the Groesbeek ridge at de Ploeg and would have moved "with speed" on the highway bridge under Ben Vandervoort's leadership as Gavin had wished, I have no doubt.
I think the debate on priorities between the Nijmegen bridge and the Groesbeek heights is misleading, because the same regiment (whichever regiment it was) would be responsible for both, in serial rather than parallel. I think the question of priorities in Gavin's mind was the relative dangers of opposition coming from a regiment of SS troops in Nijmegen and from their tanks in the Reichswald - both unknowns. I think he chose his old regiment to face the Reichswald, because he saw it as being most likely to be the greater danger. This made Nijmegen his Achilles heel.
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@johnburns4017 - apologies for not replying 13 days ago, I don't think YouTube notified me of your replies, which seems to happen when threads get quite long. In answer to other comments today, I posted the following reference, which may also help here:
- the point I thought I had made very clear was that Gavin clearly understood that while the high ground was important to securing the position of the division, the bridges were the key to the success of the entire operation. The problem at Nijmegen was that this was apparently not understood by Lindquist, a talented S-1 (Admin and Personnel) Officer, but clearly not a good combat leader. Perhaps aware of his shortcomings, Gavin took time out to explain what he wanted Lindquist to do, as the book I'm currently reading makes clear, and this is from another American author:
'At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.'
'At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership.'
(Page 64, September Hope - The American Side Of A Bridge Too Far, John C. McManus, 2012).
- so, I think this reference reinforces my view that the personality and character of Colonel Lindquist is the source of the problem at Nijmegen (as it had been in Normandy), although Gavin may be criticised for not giving Lindquist written instructions at the time, maybe he thought that would be taking micro management too far. I get the impression Gavin was not someone who considered writing all of this down contemporaneously to cover his own butt post-war if it all went wrong (like the scene between Sosabowski and Browning), he seemed to prefer taking the responsibility for what happened, and it also explains Gavin's motives for trying to make amends with the assault river crossing by his own division, even though Market Garden's backup plan was apparently for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry to do this (source: Special Bridging Force, John Sliz, 2021).
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@johnburns4017 - it was always intended that 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division would lead the Nijmegen to Arnhem sector of the advance, because of the nature of the terrain. The division had 8th Armoured Brigade under command (4th/7th Dragoon Guards, 13th/18th Hussars), less one Regiment (Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry), which was assigned to 82nd Airborne once contact was made.
Every water crossing to be made in Operation Garden had an alternative plan for each permutation, should a bridge not be secured intact by the Airborne. So each bridge or crossing had a plan for it being blown by the enemy with the site held by the enemy, and another if the site was held by Allied forces, as well as the permutation where the bridge was still intact and still held by the Germans in strength. Each permutation that required a replacement Bailey bridge had an engineering plan and allocated resources.
The engineering plan for Market Garden was therefore very complex, and the reason John Sliz wrote a separate volume in his Market Garden Engineers series of booklets on the Special Bridging Force (2021). The Guards Armoured Division was responsible for every water obstacle up to the Maas River, so that included the Wilhelmina canal, the Willems canal, and the River Dommel. Those are covered in his volume Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers in Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016).
In Special Bridging Force - 'The 43rd Wessex Division would carry out an assault, if needed, on any of the main rivers with the divisional engineers working assault boat ferries and building the folding boat equipment bridge, while army and GHQ troops engineers would construct and operate storm boat ferries, close support and class 40 rafts, and class 40 bridges.' (Page 34, Special Bridging Force, 2019).
The plan was different for each river crossing (and Maas-Waal canal), and each river was assigned an AGRE (Army Group Royal Engineers), so virtually all the engineer bridging resources of 21st Army Group (including those detached from Canadian 1st Army, hence the Canadian storm boats used in the Oosterbeek evacuation Operation Berlin). For a Waal assault crossing there where two columns prepared for either an assault with one brigade up (209 vehicles - 100 RE and 99 RASC), or an assault with two brigades up (419 vehicles - 160 RE and 259 RASC). There was also a planned column for the Ijssel River crossings to be taken and bridged by 43rd Wessex, if the Airborne plan succeeded and XXX Corps deployed north of the Rijn.
Going through all the listed permutations, if the bridges were held by the enemy and columns needed by the 43rd Wessex, for a single brigade crossing of the Waal column 'Bessie' was required, and for a two brigade crossing column 'Basil' would be required. These code names would be used for the crossing operation required. On 19 September, with both bridges in Nijmegen strongly held by the Germans, a two brigade assault by 43rd (Wessex) Division was considered, which would be Operation Basil carried out by 1st CAGRE (1st Canadian Army Group Royal Engineers) with 130 Brigade on the right and 214 Brigade on the left. The brigade boundaries were not clear (the plan was obviously not developed in the event) but the main road bridge was inclusive to the right brigade (130). The RASC supporting 43rd Wessex had been issued sufficient DUKWs to mobilise one brigade, and a plan was being developed to assign these to the assault battalions making the initial crossing, with storm boats used for the following units, or for all units if suitable launch sites for the DUKWs could not be used.
It seems the plan did not go ahead because these resources were simply not called on. It seems that Horrocks was focussed on getting the Americans across the river to take the bridges, so this was the effect of Gavin's intervention and insistence that his troopers could do the job if they had the boats. There's a whole story associated with the assault boats that is described by John Sliz in Bridging The Club Route (2015, 2016), as it appears the Guards had available boats already in Nijmegen the whole time, but the Generals did not think to invite the Guards Division CRE to the meeting and boats were called up from Belgium instead, but as I said - that's a whole other story! This was because the plan actually carried out was an ad hoc one and not the plan prepared for in advance based on all these possible scenarios. The Canadian engineers in 1st CAGRE were sitting around, bored to death with nothing to do, until one company was eventually called forward a week later to provide storm boats (with outboard motors) for Operation Berlin.
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Nobody is wrong automatically. I'm afraid it was a Parachute Infantry Regiment, the US 508th, that fatally compromised the entire operation. The regiment commander, Roy Lindquist, was specifically told to move on the Nijmegen highway bridge with his 1st Battalion as soon as possible after landing and securing his initial objectives on the Groesbeek heights. Lindquist failed to carry out his instructions from his own 82nd Airborne divisional commander, James Gavin, and there were several witnesses at the divisional briefing and their later confrontation at De Ploeg (1st Battalion initial objective and Regiment CP). A key witness to both was Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, commander of the 508th HQ Company and liasion officer to Division HQ. This is detailed in 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), which also details Lindquist's previous unreliable form in Normandy, calling into question the judgement of both divisional commanders Matthew Ridgway in Normandy and James Gavin in Market Garden.
A recon patrol of just three Scouts succeeded in reaching the Nijmegen bridge and secure the southern end and seven German prisoners without firing a shot. They then waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived, and heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer troops) arriving at the other end when they decided they had to withdraw. This testimony of Scout Trooper Joe Atkins of the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section is in John McManus' September Hope (2012) and Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection (2013).
To put the 508th's performance into context, the British 1st Parachute Brigade landed 30 minutes later, had 3 Km further to march, against opposition from machine-guns, mortars and armoured cars, and yet secured their prime objective for four days, as promised by Browning. The 508th were told by Dutch resistance leader Gert van Hees that Nijmegen was evacuated by the Germans and the highway bridge was guarded only by an NCO and seventeen men.
In an operation involving 24+ bridges for multiple redundancy, only 10 crossings minimum were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. Only the 508th Regiment failed to secure a single crossing on their assigned water obstacle - the Waal River - not because there were any Germans stopping them, but because they failed to follow the specific instructions of their divisional commander to "move with speed" and only sent recon patrols, most of which got 'lost' in the crowds of Dutch civilians who were under the impression they were being liberated.
Your statement the "fact that the allies were actually able to capture and hold Nijmegen bridge was already a big success" is totally ignorant of the sequence of events. The Guards had to assist the 504th and 505th against strong SS-Panzer reinforcements after the 508th had already failed to move against virtually zero opposition two days previously.
The "old men and kids" refers to the Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908 security unit and SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 training unit, which consisted of WW1 rear echelon troops deemed unfit for combat in 1914-18 and 435 Hitler Youth recruits and training staff respectively, both known to be based at Arnhem. Intelligence also knew there were 400 artillery troops at the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital in the middle of the British landing zones - the reason it was bombed before the landings. The intelligence was not at fault, it turned out to be remarkably accurate. The presence of II.SS-Panzerkorps in the eastern Netherlands, with 9.SS-Panzer and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions headquartered at Beekbergen and Ruurlo respectively, was not disclosed below Army HQ level as this depended on 'Ultra' code intercepts, and the Dutch resistence reports could not be verified by other means. The Dutch had not identified the 10.SS-Panzer and it was actually feared they may have occupied the excellent Dutch barracks facilities in Nijmegen and drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve across the border. Both fears turned out to be unfounded. The 82nd had a clear run at Nijmegen in the first few hours, but squandered it.
The conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan and filmed by a Hollywood producer is only half true, and has misled many historians and the wider public down the wrong path for decades. Revisionist history is necessary (see TIK's video explaining this) to set the record straight and TIK has gone a long way to doing that. I give Lewis a great deal of credit for his work and you need to read a lot more books if you're going to even catch up with him.
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@Johnny Carroll - yes, John and I have both been pushing back against the ridiculous continuation of the American war of independence 240 years after the Treaty of Paris that ended it, so this is all about history and uncovering the facts and not just dying in a ditch over a fixed position. John didn't give a reference for the Pogue quote, so I have no idea if it's fabricated or not, and he hasn't come back on this thread.
Books are fine if they rely on primary sources, and Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) uses first hand interviews with the people involved, and his account of what happened on the Groebeek heights and in Nijmegen on the first day is first hand from Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - CO of the 508th HQ Company and regimental liaison officer to 82nd Division HQ, the CO and XO of the 1st Battalion - Lt Col Shields Warren and Captain Ben Delamater respectively, as well as Jonathan Adams - The CO of 'A' Company, which was the lead unit to De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge and then later into Nijmegen after Gavin's intervention.
John McManus (September Hope, 2012) has first hand accounts from members of Lt Bob Weaver's (3rd Platoon, 'C' Company) patrol that was sent into Nijmegen with the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section under Lt Lee Frigo, but got split up and lost in the back streets of the city. Only Weaver had a radioman from battalion with an SCR-300 backpack radio on the battalion net capable of operating over the range between Nijmegen bridge and the battalion CP at De Ploeg, but as Weaver never made it to the bridge he could not fulfill his mission of reporting on its condition. After Gavin found out Lindquist had not sent the whole battalion and went to the 508th CP to "get him moving" (Nordyke, 2012), Weaver received a message that two companies ('A' and 'B') were being sent to the bridge, and he decided to withdraw and find his way back to his own ('C') company at De Ploeg.
Zig Borough's collection of letters and stories from veterans in The 508th Connection (2013) contains the remarkable first hand account (in chapter 6 - Nimegen Bridge) of Scout Trooper Joe Atkins of the 1st Battalion S-2 Section. He and two other troopers were on point duty leading the patrol into Nijmegen and they got separated from the rest of the patrol in the crowds of Dutch civilians, who naturally thought they were being liberated. They eventually managed to push their way through and get to the highway bridge, where they surprised and captured seven guards and a small artillery weapon at the southern end without firing a shot. They waited an hour for the rest of the patrol to arrive, but when it started getting dark decided they had to withdraw. As they did so, they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end of the bridge. The thing about this account is that it demonstrated what would have been possible if the whole battalion had been sent, as Gavin had instructed Lindquist at the division briefing (Nordyke, 2012), instead of just a reinforced platoon planned by the plodding Lindquist.
If the 1st Battalion 508th had taken up positions on the bridge, it would have mirrored the situation at Arnhem where Frost had just arrived with his 2nd Parachute Battalion and secured the Arnhem highway bridge, just after Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 crossed over it on their way south to Nijmegen, and we may have had a spectacular battle with Gräbner at Nijmegen bridge that evening instead of the following morning when he returned to Arnhem and tried to force Frost's position.
The problem as I see it after reading Nordyke, which TIK doesn't seem to have done, is that Lindquist was a poor combat leader. This was evident in the 508th's first combat operation in Normandy, but he had previously shown that he was a gifted administrator as an S-1 (admin and personnel) officer in the early days of the US Airborne forces. Nordyke's earlier chapters on the formation of the regiment and action in Normandy are essential reading to understand this important backstory to what happened later at Nijmegen. After the war, in Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Gavin praised Lindquist's abilities as an administrator and said he produced documentation like you'd never seen, but he noted that Matthew Ridgway (82nd Division CO in Normandy) didn't trust him (I assume he meant in combat) and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Ridgway had a problem in that because he wouldn't promote Lindquist, he couldn't promote any Colonel in the Division because Lindquist had seniority. This might explain why Ridgway didn't take Lindquist with him to XVIII Airborne Corps in August as his G-1, which would have been the perfect solution and probably would have shortened the war if his replacement at the 508th was a good combat leader for Market Garden.
Gavin himself isn't without some responsibility in all this, he inherited the division from Ridgway, although it has to be said he failed to replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and was running himself ragged doing both jobs, and after the jump into Holland he was doing that while carrying a jump injury to his spine. Gavin's performnce was undeoubtedly heroic in many respects, but I also think flawed. He tried to mitigate Lindquist's poor combat leadership by giving him specific instructions to "move with speed" to the bridge in the briefing, even pointing out on a map the route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge. He clearly didn't trust Lindquist either, but couldn't or wouldn't replace him before the operation.
This all came to a head at about 1830 hrs on 17 September in Holland, when Gavin received a report from Chet Graham that Lindquist was dug in on the heights and not sending a battalion to the bridge until the drop zone was cleared. Gavin was as mad as Graham had ever seen him and ordered him into a Jeep - "come with me - let's get him moving." His first words to Lindquist were "I told you to move with speed."
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I've not read of Montgomery expressing any view on the Groesbeek heights and I think it's unlikely, as they were a tactical objective and not a strategic one. Browning, on the other hand, had been quite vocal about the heights.
Montgomery and Browning had met at Dempsey's 2nd Army headquarters on 3 September to discuss an airborne operation in support of 2nd Army's crossing of the Rhine in its sector between Arnhem and Wesel. We only know from Dempsey's diary entry for 4 September that he was informed Arnhem in the Netherlands had been chosen as the objective over Dempsey and Browning's preference for Wesel in Germany. Operation COMET, scheduled for 8 September, was to employ 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Brigade at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, so it was 1st Airborne that was originally to secure this area, and after the weather delayed COMET to 10 September, it was finally cancelled in the early hours as troops were boarding their aircraft by Montgomery on intelligence grounds. He had received reports that II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the area northeast of Arnhem and the operation looked like it was not strong enough against this increased opposition.
Browning met with Montgomery again on 10 September to discuss enlarging the operation (provisionally named SIXTEEN), and it was this idea that Montgomery then proposed to Eisenhower in a meeting later at Brussels airport, while Browning travelled to England. The expanded operation was to include the US Airborne Divisions, and after some options based on intelligence grounds for landing one of the US divisions at Arnhem, it was eventually decided to have both the American units secure the corridor and land the British division with the Poles at Arnhem. These changes between the Arnhem and Nijmegen assignments were probably based on intelligence, because the British Airborne divisions were better equipped with anti-tank weapons, while their American counterparts had more field artillery in their establishments, and there was some doubt if the balance of armoured threat was from the known location of II.SS-Panzerkorps northeast of Arnhem or from a panzer depot thought to be in the Kleve area behind the Reichswald where they may be drawing new tanks. You're correct in saying that the 82nd and 101st were then switched because of their airfield locations in England in order to deconflict their airlift routes. 1st Airborne Division planners then briefed their counterparts in the 82nd Airborne for MARKET, because the British Airborne had already been studying the ground between Grave and Nijmegen for a week in preparation for COMET.
I find the best analysis on the Groesbeek heights versus Nijmegen bridge priority is in September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far by John C McManus (2012):
In Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’, he says this -
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- So, this order to Lindquist witnessed by officers in the briefing and recounted in both McManus (2012) and Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), backs up Gavin's July 1945 letter to US Army Historical officer Captain Westover, and confirmed in his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974). It's not clear from the official historical record or Ryan's book that Lindquist failed to carry out this instruction against virtually zero opposition, since it only became clear in Nordyke and McManus more recently (in 2012) that the Germans had evacuated Nijmegen on the first afternoon and the bridge was guarded by an NCO with just seventeen men until elements of II.SS-Panzerkorps started arriving that evening after dark.
McManus also refers to the three-man point team led by PFC Joe Atkins that got separated from a 1st Battalion recon patrol that was sent to the bridge, and took the southern end with seven prisoners without firing a shot, but after waiting an hour for reinforcements that failed to arrive, they had to give it up as it got dark and they could hear "heavy equipment" arriving at the other end. The full account from Atkins is in Zig Boroughs' book, The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge.
There is also a very useful account from SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to Kampfgruppe Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10), in Retake Arnhem Bridge - An Illustrated History of the Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, by Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2014). It fits very well with the accounts we now have from the American side that there were no German combat troops in Nijmegen until SS-Hauptsturmführer Victor Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived there after dark on the first day.
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@jbjones1957 - the plan we're discussing is Gavin's divisional plan, not MARKET GARDEN as a whole. As I said, it's a tactical consideration, not a strategic one. The discussion in this video centres around the 16 September meeting notes at I Airborne Corps HQ in England, where the notation says "1. General Browning directed General Gavin not to attempt seizure of NIJMEGEN bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the BERG-EN-DAL high ground was firmly in our hands." (Box 100, Folder 03, Daily plans, 82nd Airborne in Operation Market Garden, Page 8. Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University).
But I have already provided a more full account than exists in the typed notes on the meeting from McManus, and his witness in that meeting was the Division G-3 (Operations) officer, Lieutenent Colonel Jack Norton, and I'll re-post the first paragraph again -
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
TIK is right when he says (in response to the Clone Warrior [smh] comments on his Beevor video) "the first rule of History Club is that you don't just take a source at face value - you have to scrutinise it first. So we need to think critically here, and we need to ask questions like: what actually is this report? Who wrote these words? When was it written? How believable is this source? Is there any other evidence that contradicts the idea presented in this report?" It turns out that this G-3 report was written by Jack Norton on 5 October 1945.
As TIK says, "this is important, because anyone can write anything after the event." In fact Gavin, in his 1966 covering letter to Cornelius Ryan enclosed with the files he was sending, wrote "I did not realize that I had this in my papers until now and I did not give it to Captain MacDonald when he was doing the Department of the Army Official History. Several years ago I asked Browning about this point and he wrote me a letter, which I sent to Captain MacDonald verfying my memory of Browning's instructions to me. As I said above, this is the first time I have come across this note from Jack Norton."
TIK then goes on to Page 9 - "Colonel Lindquist at this meeting was directed to seize the high ground in the vicinity of BERG-EN-DAL as his primary mission and to attempt to seize the NIJMEGEN bridge with a small force; namely, less than a battalion." This is virtually word for word Jack Norton's recollection in McManus, and 508th liaison officer to Division HQ Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham recounted a very similar account for Nordyke, as he sat in on the meeting as well. McManus has in between these two points in his book gone into a very good (I think) analysis of the debate between these priorities and concluded that both the heights and the bridge were to be secured on the first day if at all possible, but this did not sink in to Lindquist's thinking.
Neither witness to the briefing had stated in their recollections that Lindquist was to wait until all his other tasks were completed before sending the 1st Battalion to the bridge, and that explains why in Chet Graham's account on the first day that "I never saw Gavin so mad" when Graham delivered Lindquist's message that he would send the battalion "as soon as the DZ is cleared and secured."
I suspect, as TIK also speculated, that the post-war narrative was established (allegedly with Browning's agreement, assuming his letter to Gavin exists and supports him), in light of the fact the operation had failed. TIK does not have the regimental history (Nordyke) in his book list, so I'm sure he hasn't drilled down that far. I think it was in order to avoid throwing Lindquist under the bus. This is understandable, because ultimately the responsibility for the divisional plan and seeing that it was carried out, rested with Gavin. I think Gavin was an honourable man, and he did also recommend after the war that the US Army change its policy of replacing officers that made mistakes so they can learn from them and remain in place, so it would be in his character. It might be assumed he was talking about himself with regard to the Army policy, but I think he was already implementing such a policy during the war within his own division. Lindquist remained CO of the 508th throughout the war.
As far as Gavin's letter to Captain MacDonald and the Official History is concerned, I'm not sure if he remembered the name correctly or not. I believe MacDonald was the author of the Official History, but he wrote to a Historical Officer called Captain Westover on 17 July 1945:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
In the Box 101, Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - Ryan notes:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
- The note about Gavin having "three days" to secure the Nijmegen bridge seems contradictory to me, and perhaps another view (Ryan's?) written from hindsight because XXX Corps did actually arrive on Day 3, unknowable at the time of the landings, and it contradicts both the instruction to Lindquist to send a battalion to the bridge directly after landing as confirmed to both Westover and Ryan, and also the British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge to seize it by coup de main. The latter point suggests "the British" (Gavin didn't say who specifically) saw the bridge as a priority, but Gavin eventually dismissed the coup de main idea in order to avoid dispersing his parachute drop.
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@jbjones1957 - SIXTEEN was just an outline plan. In IT terms it would probably look like a requirements document rather than a specification. The detailed planning would be a combination of that already done by 1st Airborne Division for COMET and Brereton's three-division air plan for LINNET/LINNET II.
The parachute coup de main was almost certainly suggested or "requested" after Brereton had deleted the COMET glider coup de main assaults in the MARKET plan. All I know about the glider assaults is that they were modelled on the Orne canal 'Pegasus Bridge' assault in Normandy on D-Day, which was undertaken by D Company of the 2nd (Airlanding) Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiment ("Ox & Bucks"). The units scheduled for the COMET raids were D Companies of the three Airlanding Battalions in 1st Airborne Division (1st Border, 2nd South Staffords, 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers). I know the KOSB's D Company were assigned to Nijmegen and lead glider pilot was Sergeant Jim Wallwork, who flew the lead on the Pegasus Bridge raid. I think (not confirmed) the South Staffords were to assault the Arnhem bridge, which presumably leaves the Border company for the Grave bridge.
Exactly where at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge the battalion parachute drop would take place, I don't know. The area is covered by the houses, farms and orchards of Lent village, with few small open fields between them, so it may have to be some distance from the bridge. If you look at the special drop zone for one Company of the 504th at Grave demanded by Colonel Reuben Tucker, it was actually 2 km from the south end of the bridge. It was an accident that one stick (Lt Thompson's) dropped closer (less than 1 km) because after the green light went on he waited for his plane on the left wing of the formation to clear houses (the hamlet of Velp) before jumping. The rest of the Company landed south of Velp between the hamlet and the Zaalheuvel farm. If you accept a distance of 2 km from the Nijmegen bridge, there's more open ground there around the Visveld farm, but there were also two heavy Flak batteries there on the defence overprint map with 6 and 5 heavy guns indicated, and a light platoon of 3 guns. If this was what Gavin was facing in his planning process, I could well understand Ryan's note that "Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily." I think it's understandable.
Your suggestion of 1st Parachute Brigade landing on DZ 'K' (Malburgsche Polder) in the other comment was deemed unsuitable for the 1st lift because of the heavy Flak positions bracketing the DZ on the Meinerswijk Polder and Malburgsche Polder itself, and the high tension lines (!) crossing the zone from the Arnhem power station near the bridge. The zone was deemed suitable for the Polish Brigade on D+2, only because it was assumed by that time 1st Parachute Brigade would be in control of the area, with the Flak positions neutralised and the HT lines cut. The planned RV for the Royal Engineers after their intitial tasks were completed was the power station, where they would take control of the station and ensure power to the transmission lines were cut. The zone was also ruled out as unsuitable for mass glider landings because of the network of drainage ditches preventing vehicle and artillery extraction (and incorrectly assumed too soft), and only a small coup de main of six gliders landing infantry near the bridge itself was deemed practical.
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@jbjones1957 - not consistent with Taylor's signal to Dempsey on 14 September:
"1. The agreed mission of 101st Airborne in operation 'MARKET' includes the securing of the canal and stream crossings at EINDHOVEN. Since this mission was received, Major General P. L. Williams, Commanding General of Troop Carrier Command, has determined that it is not possible to drop parachute troops south of WILHELMINA CANAL because of the flak about EINDHOVEN. Consequently, the nearest drop zone for this EINDHOVEN mission will be about eight miles from the objectives. Allowing two hours to assemble the regiment and three hours for the approach march it is estimated that five hours will elapse before Airborne troops can reach EINDHOVEN. The present tentative drop schedule places the troops on the ground 1500 D Day. Hence Airborne troops will not be able to reach the bridges at EINDHOVEN until about 2000."
This is a document (barely readable type) shown in RG Poulussen's Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), and his commentary is that "Williams rejected - again driven by Flak concerns - two suggested drop/landing zones in the area of 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION, namely Valkenswaard and Eindhoven. Browning had proposed these drop/landing zones for 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION so that 30 CORPS could make a good head start on D-Day, by 'hopping' from one secured spot to the next, and on an 'airborne carpet'. Without this 'airborne carpet' 30 CORPS would have to fight its way - at least 13 miles - through the thickening German crust of defence on D-Day, until they reached Eindhoven, hopefully secured by Amrican 101 AIRBORNE DIVISION."
This is in addition to the criticisms that Williams had removed the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem and Nijmegen (and presumably Grave) bridges, as well as the double airlifts on D-Day - key components of Browning's COMET plan.
It was certainly in Gavin's case he had planned his divisional deployment on a "power center" concept in response to his experience in Sicily, and this was his rationale (per Cornelius Ryan interview) for dismissing a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge.
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@thevillaaston7811 - Browning and Montgomery certainly had an earlier meeting on the 10 September before Browning flew to England to brief 1st Allied Airborne Army, and Montgomery met Eisenhower at Brussels airport, and this was after Montgomery had cancelled operation COMET at the last minute in the early hours. Troops were boarding their planes and gliders, but Montgomery had received intelligence that II.SS-Panzerkorps had moved into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET would need reinforcement.
Quite possible that earlier meeting was at Dempsey's headquarters. The early discussions for COMET between the three men was at Dempsey's 2nd Army HQ on 3/4 September, and according to Dempsey's diary he went to bed and left Browning and Montgomery still assessing the relative merits of Arnhem vs Wesel as the Rhine crossing point. They informed him in the morning of 4 September that Arnhem was decided on, but there's no indication of the reasons.
I believe both Browning and Dempsey had preferences for Wesel, but Sebastian Ritchie (Arnhem: Myth & Reality, 2011, 2019) suggests that Montgomery may have chosen to avoid the north-easterly axis of an advance to Wesel as it was close to the US XIX Corps boundary, and he might have been wary of possibly having to share a Rhine crossing with the Americans. So Arnhem was the chosen final bridge for the airborne attack when detailed planning for COMET started.
COMET was originally scheduled for 8 September and was delayed by weather to 10 September, when it was cancelled at about 0200 hours. Montgomery had also received the previous day a report on the first V-2 rockets landing on London that were thought to be launched from sites on the Dutch coast, so there was a cable from London asking when Montgomery expected that general area of the western Netherlands to be roped off (by the northwards advance to Arnhem and the Ijsselmeer cutting the supply lines). Montgomery used the V-2 intelligence at the Eisenhower meeting to help sell the COMET upgrade with the two US airborne divisions added, which at this stage had the provisional name SIXTEEN.
Eisenhower was already sold on the northwards Arnhem advance because COMET was a done deal and was within minutes of being launched when Montgomery cancelled it, so Eisenhower readily endorsed the SIXTEEN proposal. The arguments earlier in the same meeting were on the single thrust versus broad front strategy that they had been discussing in cables for several weeks, and that cme to a head before the meeting turned to current operations. Too many people think the arguments were about MARKET GARDEN and after A Bridge Too Far was published EIsenhower had to publicly state for the record that “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.”
The Groesbeek heights were a tactical consideration for Gavin. Montgomery's responsibility was strategic, and the operational responsibility was Browning and Dempsey. There's a video on YouTube explaining the different levels of military planning and the thumbnail says it all - STRATEGIC - OPERTIONAL - TACTICAL - on the blackboard from top to bottom. I recall making a remark in a comment reply that I didn't think Montgomery was burning the midnight oil pouring over maps in his caravan to plan Johnny Frost's route march to the Arnhem bridge. That was not his job.
I think on this point of Gavin's planning, Cornelius Ryan's interview notes are very informative:
'We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University. Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967)
John C McManus' book September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012) has, I think, the best analysis on the Groesbeek heights versus Nijmegen bridge priorities, and I have posted that passage many times before. Browning and Gavin expected both to be taken on the first day and only Colonel Lindquist seems not to have understood that speed was required to achieve that.
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@imperialcommander639 - I've not seen this much of the Westover letter and I note that it contains some factual errors, so Gavin certainly isn't infallible. The Groesbeek high ground is not the only high ground in all of the Netherlands - there is very similar terrain north of Arnhem called the Veluwe that extends all the way to the Ijsselmeer coast at Nunspeet - the final planned destination of Guards Armoured Division, and there are other large deposits of glacial moraine to the west of Arnhem extending northwestwards from Rhenen. There are others in the northern provinces, all glacial moraines and often used as military training areas by the Dutch army and the German occupation alike.
The highest spot height in the Nijmegen area is marked on the contemporary AMS maps (modern surveys often make more accurate measurements) as 95.6 meters at Berg-en-Dal, the objective of 3rd Battalion 508th PIR. The highest spots north of Arnhem on the Veluwe is the Galgenberg at 104.6 meters at Terlet near Deelen airfield, and the 109.9 spot height on the Rozendaalsche Zand, the locations of the 'Teerose I' and 'Teerose II' radio direction stations respectively established by the Germans, and manned by the Luftwaffe Kampfgruppe Weber force of signals staff that allegedly attacked the British landing zones in the first hours. Highest spot height I can find in the Reichswald is Stoppel-Berg at 91.4 meters just outside Kleve, and the highest spot height on the western edge overlooking the landing zones is the Pyramide at 78.7 meters. I think Gavin was very much focused on his own area and wasn't studying the geography of the entire Netherlands.
Tactically, the ridge line to the north overlooking Nijmegen (although 'overlook' is an exaggeration) was between the drop zones and the city, and needed to be secured as a defensive measure before any foray into the city, because the ridge was also a potential defensive position for the Germans. Gavin's concern must have been the sanitised 'Ultra' intel he was given that "a regiment of SS" may be occupying the Dutch army barracks in Nijmegen, because 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' (reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength) had not been positively located by the Dutch resistance in the Achterhoek region northeast of Arnhem, only the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' in the Veluwe region to the north. The Dutch had identified Ruurlo as a divisional headquarters, but not identified the division. It was not appreciated that both divisions were together in these regions, with the River Ijssel as the inter-divisional boundary. The SHAEF intelligence assessment was that the II.SS-Panzerkorps were refitting and may be drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area (I don't know how this happened as the Wehrkreis VI depot was actually near Münster), and since the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks, it generated the silly rumour that as many tanks may actually be there. That figure was never a serious one, but some sort of reaction was expected from the Reichswald and undoubtedly affected Gavin's thinking as he was drawing up his divisional plan.
At the time, Model was assessed to have less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front from Aachen to the North Sea coast, and the true figure was officially 84 operational panzers in the September returns. For context, a fully equipped 1944 panzer division would have 160 panzers (79 Panther, 81 Panzer IV), times two for the two divisions would be 320, and a schwere panzer abteilung assigned to the Korps would have 45 Tigers. So 365 for the Panzerkorps at full theoretical strength, but something never achieved during the war and not a realistic proposition given Germany's production problems under Allied bombing and the fact the II.SS-Panzerkorps had only just arrived ten days before MARKET GARDEN. Facing Model was Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks and the US 1st Army at Aachen with about 1,500. By a bizarre coincidence, the British 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Brigade had 84 anti-tank guns between them, exactly matching Model's official panzer returns for September, although 83 were actually sent by air to Arnhem.
So, faced with this tactical problem, Gavin chose first to assign his best regiment - the 504th - to Grave to secure his supply line to XXX Corps, the problematic (in Normandy) 508th to Nijmegen, and the more aggressive and experienced 505th to Groesbeek town facing the Reichswald sector.
Gavin's instructions to the 508th are therefore critical. According to the part of his letter to Captain Westover I am familiar with - "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
His interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far confirms all of this:
'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
(James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967)
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@imperialcommander639 - cont. So what happened to that instruction? TIK has only gone as far as RG Poulssen's book, Lost At Nijmegen (2011) in identifying Gavin and Lindquist's possible miscommunication as the direct cause of the Nijmegen mission, and therefore the entire operation, to fail. He has not, as far as I know, read a couple of books that drill down a bit further:
September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: ‘Foreboding’ -
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9: 'Put Us Down In Hell' -
Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation."
Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg, Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.”
Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s 1st Battalion arrived at De Ploeg at around 6:30 p.m., about five hours after landing, without encountering any significant resistance. Warren ordered his troopers to dig in and strengthen the roadblock on the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway to prevent German movement south from Nijmegen. Meanwhile, Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south."
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6: Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen Bridge -
A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge. At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles. They covered me as I jumped up and yelled, ‘Hände hock’ (‘Hands up!’)
The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
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@imperialcommander639 - cont.
Nordyke, Chapter 10: 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets' -
Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' "
At about 8:00 P.M., Colonel Lindquist ordered Lieutenant Colonel Warren, the commander of the 1st Battalion, to seize the Nijmegen highway bridge. It was an order that Warren wasn’t expecting. “This was the first time the battalion was told it was to secure this bridge. By the time the battalion minus [Company C, one section of 81mm mortars, and one section of machine guns] was assembled from its rather wide defensive positions, it was well after dark.”
“A Dutch Underground worker [Geert van Hees] who had contacted regimental headquarters had stated that the highway bridge over the Waal River was defended by a noncommissioned officer and seventeen men. This Dutch patriot also volunteered to guide the battalion into town.”
[end quotes]
I don't see where TIK is a liar, disingenuous or otherwise.
I find McManus' analysis of the bridge versus ridge priorities debate to be very comprehensive and I agree with what he says. The problem with not getting the bridges in the first vital hours is that the Germans may demolish them (the Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for immediate demolition and had to await engineers to arrive from 10.SS-Panzer-Division), but the Groesbeek heights (which are not that high and only really overlooks ground to the flood plains to the northeast of Berg-end-Dal) were not going anywhere and could be recaptured by XXX Corps if lost to the Germans.
The combat history of the 508th PIR by Phil Nordyke is the real key to understanding what went wrong on the ground, and reading the earlier chapters on Normandy (the 508th's first combat operation) shows that Colonel Lindquist was not a good field commander and explains Gavin's comments to Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview.
I think if you try to argue that the Groesbeek heights were the top priority from the outset and were not a post-war narrative to explain why the operation failed, you have the weight of evidence against you. A further conflation was made with Browning's rejection of Gavin's proposal to make a second attempt on the bridge on D+1, but this order was only after the first failed attempt on D-Day and Browning considered the bridge was now too strongly held and the armour of XXX Corps would be needed to support any attempt to take the Nijmegen bridges by force.
I think TIK, as far as he's gone, is on the right track with this video, but the literature I've quoted only further supports this line.
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@imperialcommander639 - my copy of Beevor's useless book of recycled conventional narrative was donated to the charity bookstore, so you'll forgive me if I can't recall what he said about Browning and Gavin. I've seen two people comment that Beevor wrote for the American market, which hadn't occurred to me, but it does explain why he wrote his book with the same anti-British bias as Cornelius Ryan.
I find Ryan's research that didn't make it into A Bridge Too Far more interesting and would recommend Swedish historian Christer Bergström's work - Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020) - which used unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection and debunked a lot of the myths perpetrated by the film version of A Bridge Too Far. You have to understand that not only did Ryan rush his book to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer, but he was also born in Dublin and spent the European campaign embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army - both premier colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of historical philosophy.
What TIK has uncovered is Browning's support for Gavin, rather than pointing the finger. I find both to be honourable men who were reluctant to throw a junior officer under the bus, at least publicly. Gavin also wrote a post-war recommendation to the US Army that they reverse their policy of replacing officers that made serious mistakes and argued that leaving them in place allowed them to learn from their mistakes. Many might think he was talking about himself, but I think he was already practicing this policy within his own division during the war and Lindquist remained as commander of the 508th until it was inactivated after the war. Based on Nordyke's later chapters in Put Us Down In Hell (2012), there didn't seem to be any serious command problems in the regiment during the Battle of the Bulge, so this may be the basis of Gavin's recommendation.
I personnally think if you go back to Lindquist's performance in Normandy, especially after D-Day and the way the combat ineffective regiment XO had to be court martialled by Ridgway, and Lindquist's order to attack Hill 95 (Saint Catherine near La Haye) on 4 July 1944 over open ground that got a lot of troopers killed, were grounds for removing Lindquist. The outcome at Nijmegen might have been very different if a good field commander like Lt Col Mark J Alexander had been in command. Alexander had been XO of the 505th and transferred by Ridgway to the 508th "to shake things up over there" after the court martial. Alexander had to take over the 2nd Battalion when its CO became a casualty, and then was seriously wounded himself while Captain Chet Graham was at Regiment receiving the controversial orders from Lindquist. When Graham returned to the battalion CP he found he was in command of what was left of the battalion and had to take the attack in over open ground instead of the covered approach planned by Alexander. When he pulled back Fox Company, which was getting a pasting, to slip Easy Company over to protect its flank, he got called back to the radio and chewed out by Lindquist for pulling the company back. Graham suggested he come down and see the situation for himself instead of second guessing from a mile away and was relieved of command on the spot. Another officer took the attack in on the original plan. Alexander survived his wounds but was unable to return to the regiment. Chet Graham went from 2nd Battalion liaison to Regiment HQ in Normandy to 508th liaison officer to Division HQ for MARKET, where as I've already detailed he was again first hand witness to Lindquist's mishandling of the regiment. Alexander was replaced by Shanley, who didn't seem to be any better than Lindquist, based on his comment about Gavin's pre-flight instruction not being clear in McManus (September Hope, 2012).
I have no idea what's in CAB 106-1133, but I would guess it has more to do with maintaining the Anglo-American alliance post-war than it had with actually winning the war as quickly possible while it was still happening.
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@jerbs5346 - I have September Hope (John C McManus, 2012) and found the reference. The only problem I have with it is that he doesn't name any of the glider passengers or crew and I have not come across any accounts of survivors (he says taken prisoner) telling their story, so there's no source cited for this account at all. I rely on McManus quite a bit to tell the story of the operation's failure point at Nijmegen, because this is based on first hand accounts from people he interviewed and ties in with other corroborating first hand accounts from Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012), published around the same time.
The Corps HQ crashed glider story, which I have no doubt happened, remains very sketchy on the details as a result of lacking any first hand accounts. We really only have Student's account of what he found in the documents, and he said it was a resupply schedule for 101st AD that was potentially the most useful.
I have a copy of the I Airborne Corps report on MARKET GARDEN and it has a few clues. On the signals it has this:
'The Major on the CSO's staff and one attached US Signal officer failed to arrive. The former eventually reached ARNHEM on D + 1 where he had to remain and the latter is known to have landed near TILBURG in enemy held territory.'
The glider loading manifest in the document only lists the first 14 gliders (Horsa) carrying the Corps Advance HQ, it does not list the Royal Signals gliders, which would account for the rest of the 32 Horsas, or the six WACO gliders carrying the two air support teams from 306th Fighter Control Squadron (2 WACOs each) and the two liaison officers from 82nd and 101st Divisions (1 WACO each).
I have Glider Pilots At Arnhem by Mike Peters and Luuk Buist (2009), and the appendices list the gliders going to Arnhem and Corps HQ (LZ 'N' near Groesbeek). It does not indicate any aborted WACOs, but does list three aborted Horsas from the first serial, Chalk Nos.413, 414, 421. Chalks 413 and 414 probably correspond to gliders 8 and 9 in the Corps report, because glider 8 carried the CSO (Corps Signals Officer) and glider 9 carried his ACSO (Assistant CSO, probably the Major who went to Arnhem on the 2nd lift). Chalk No.21 probably corresponds to glider 15, which unfortunately is the next glider after the 14 detailed in the Advance HQ report manifest, so I have no idea who it carried, but this could be the crashed glider. There's no details in this book on these particular aborted gliders.
I do know from recently reading a new series of books on the Anti-Tank Batteries at Arnhem, by Nigel Simpson et al, that some of their Chalk Numbers got re-arranged and were different to the official records, which were not amended to reflect last minute changes, so the changes made to move Browning's Corps HQ up to the 1st lift required changes made to the 1st Anti-Tank Battery lift, bumping some of their gliders back to the 2nd lift, so their Chalk Numbers are known to be incorrect. It makes getting to bottom of some of these questions very difficult, to say the least.
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Not many, if any at all. Responsibility for the western Reichswald sector between Grünewald (exclusive to Füsilier-Ersatz-Bataillon 39) and Kranenburg (or as far as Millingen aam Rijn on the map I have) was Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I./6, which had three companies detached to defend the Maas-Waal canal bridges and only two companies somewhere in the Groesbeek-Kranenburg area, with Bataillon HQ at Haus Kreuzfurth on the border southwest of Kranenburg. 82nd Airborne claimed to have run Lds.Ausb.Btl.I/6 out of Groesbeek on D-Day, so a company may have been in the village. Füs.Ers.Btl.39 was headquartered in Grünewald on the southern edge of the forest, where there was a cluster of bunkers, but had forward companies between Gennep (exclusive to Bataillon 'Klein') and Mook (inclusive to E39) on the river Maas to tie in with the defence line along the canal.
The day before the operation started (16 September), saw the arrival of Luftwaffe-Festungs-Bataillon XVII at Kranenburg, one of a number of such battalions raised from surplus air force personnel to man the Westwall, and it is possble Lw.Fest.Btl.17 was assigned to man the Westwall in the Reichswald, which had the main line on the east side of the Frasselt-Grünewald road consisting of no concrete fortifications and just trenches and dugouts reinforced with logs. Half a kilometer to the west there was an outpost line along the western edge of the forest on the border, but I/505th PIR patrols on 17 September reported the trenches and watch towers (dating from 1939-40) were unoccupied, and tree density too thick for armoured operations. I don't know how far the US patrols penetrated the forest on D-Day, so they may not have gone as far as the Westwall MLR along the Frasselt-Grünewald road and therefore no information on whether it was manned or not.
After the landings, Division 406, which had responsibility for the northern end of the Westwall between Roermond and Kleve, brought in additional security and training units, joining remnants of Lds.Ausb.Btl.I./6 combined with Füs.Ers.Btl.39 as Kampfgruppe Stargard, Lw.Fest.Btl.17 as Kampfgruppe Greschik, in the first counter-attacks from the Reichswald on the morning of 18 September. The additional units for that attack were III./Sicherungs-Regiment 66 reinforced by a Kompanie of armoured cars and half-tracks from Panzer-Aufklärungs-Ausbildungs-Abteiling 6 as Kampfgruppe von Fürstenberg, and elements of Wehrkreis-Unteroffizier-Lehr-Schule VI (Military District NCO School 6 aka Regiment Bremer); specifically one company from each of I., and II./Lehrgang of the school and Sicherings-Bataillon (O) 1224, ('O' for Ohren or 'Ear' Battalion' as Kampfgruppe Göbel. The additional units had come from the rear area security of Division 406 in the case of III./SR 66 (possibly deployed between Kranenburg and the Rijn), and the Westwall sector between Roermond and Venlo in the case of the WK.U.L.S.VI.
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Further to John's reply, you're right that it's ridiculous to say Gavin wouldn't carry out his primary objective and it's clear from the books John cited, which I also have, that Gavin specifically instructed Lindquist to send 1st Battalion to the bridge as soon as the Groesbeek heights were secured. The main source is 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), but further details are in American historian John McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012). These are American histories using primary sources, but just dug a little deeper than TIK's references.
The evidence of a three man point team from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section reaching the bridge and taking seven prisoners without firing a shot (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge) proves that the whole battalion could have done it, just as Frost's 2nd Battalion at Arnhem had secured their primary objective at about the same time, trapping Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 between the two bridges. The fact that Gräbner's unit was badly shot up trying to force Frost's position at Arnhem the following morning suggest's Warren's 1st Battalion 508th could have done the same thing if Gräbner had tried to force the issue at Nijmegen. Instead, Gräbner's unit was able to reinforce Nijmegen uncontested that evening because Lindquist only sent a patrol into the city, which got lost, and only three men reached the bridge an hour before Gräbner arrived.
Your assertion that the 82nd could not have held the Nijmegen bridge against German armour is most likely false, because it was demonstrated to be false at Arnhem by Frost, who held out for 3-4 days. Ample time for XXX Corps to reach Arnhem if only they had not been blocked at Nijmegen.
The intel about "old men and kids" (actually old men on bicycles and some Hitler Youth) related specifically to Arnhem and not Nijmegen, and proved to be very accurate. The local security unit was Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, a unit of WW1 veteran logistics troops deemed unfit for combat in 1914-18, and its companies located as follows:
1.Kompanie at Doesburg bridge on the River Ijssel.
2 and 3.Kompanie defending Deelen airfield.
4.Kompanie at the (Fort) Westervoort bridges on the River Ijssel.
A detachment of 25 men formed the Arnhem bridge garrison.
The Hitler Youth recruits were being trained as replacements for 12.SS-Panzer-Division by SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 (aka 'Bataillon Krafft') with just the 2 and 4.Ausbildungs (training) companies near the British landing zones, and a 9.Marsch (march) company was formed during the battle by combining the depot 7.Stamm (reception) Kompanie in the Arnhem barracks and the 8.Genesenden (convalescent) Kompanie in Velp. Total of 435 men. This unit did the most to delay 1st Parachute Brigade's advance to Arnhem bridge, not the exaggerated influence of II.SS-Panzerkorps.
Nijmegen only contained rear echelon troops before the operation, and they evacuated as soon as the landings began. The only combat troops in the Nijmegen area were weak forces along the Maas-Waal canal defence line. Unlike Arnhem, Nijmegen was an open city and only a few guards were on the bridges.
Gavin is not a scapegoat, but he was the man responsisble for his divisional plan not being carried out, and as Lindquist's supervisor (the man actually to blame for not following Gavin's instructions) he has to bear responsibility for what happened at Nijmegen. Other units involved in this operation were making it work, but the unforced error at Nijmegen compromised the entire operation. When Gavin found out Lindquist was on the heights and not moving a battalion into the city, he was as mad as the regiment's liaison officer had ever seen him, and ordered the officer into a Jeep - "come with me - let's get him moving."
Gavin's subsequent behaviour makes more sense as a result. He knew the entire operation was potentially blown by his division and tried to make amends after the 508th's failure. When XXX Corps arrived, he insisted his own 504th Regiment be used to conduct the river assault, despite the fact that the pre-planned backup for this scenario of the Nijmegen bridges being held in strength by the enemy was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make the assault crossings with either one or two Brigades up. My source for this is John Sliz's volume on the Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Market Garden (2021). Gavin was trying to fix his own mistake, not some perceived failure of planning that happened in Montgomery's caravan - that's an American trope and a prejudice that's not based on any of the established facts.
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The officer was his Dutch advisor and head of the Jedburgh Dutch Commando Team 'Claude' mission (to contact Dutch resistance on the ground) attached to 82nd Airborne, Captain Arie Bestebreurtje, known as "Captain Harry" to the Americans as they had trouble with his last name. Gavin did indeed crack his spine when he made a hard landing, I think on a dirt road, but I don't find much fault in Gavin's decision-making after he landed. The decisions that contributed to the failure of the operation were taken before landing, and this included Gavin dismissing a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen highway bridge to seize it by coup de main after toying with the idea for a while, and this was because of his experience in Sicily where the Troop Carriers were spooked by Flak and dropped his 505th Regiment over a huge area. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan he had landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days, so for MARKET he planned to land his three patachute regiments in the centre of his area of operations and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The one exception was that the very experienced Colonel Tucker of the 504th insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the Grave bridge, and this was granted.
In place of a coup de main on the Nijmegen bridge, Gavin instructed the commander of the 508th Regiment to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge as soon as possible after landing and seizing the initial objectives on the Groesbeek ridge, but Colonel Lindquist was not a good field commander and failed to interpret his instructions correctly. By the time Gavin found out the battalion wasn't on the bridge and went to the 508th CP to get them moving, it was too late to prevent the Germans from reinforcing the city and its bridges. Why he chose the 508th for this critical mission seems to be because his best regiment, the 504th - still recovering from the Anzio operation in Italy - he chose to secure the Grave bridge, because it was on his division supply line to XXX Corps. The 505th were also more aggressive and experienced, and he chose to assign them to the southern sector facing the Reichswald, where he anticipated the strongest counter-attacks. It seems he thought that giving Lindquist a clear instruction, and also showing him on a map the exact route he wanted the 1st Battalion to take to the bridge, would be enough.
Another point worth making was that both Gavin and his predecessor Matthew Ridgway (82nd Airborne CO in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist in a fight - this was in Gavin's 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far (1974). He said Ridgway wouldn't promote him and actually had a problem in that he couldn't promote any other Colonel in the division because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. It may be for this reason that when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944 and Gavin inherited the division, Gavin also did not replace himself as Assistant Division Commander, so for MARKET GARDEN he was running himself ragged doing both jobs while carrying the spinal injury. The irony is that Ridgway had no role to play in the operation being conducted under Browning's British I Airborne Corps, the staff in US XVIII Airborne Corps back in England were being used to organise the resupply logistics, so Ridgway 'borrowed' a Jeep from a motor pool in Belgium and travelled up the MARKET GARDEN corridor to visit his divisions in an unofficial capacity. Gavin returned to his CP after dealing with a crisis on the front lines and found Ridgway in the CP studying a map on the wall, and before either man could acknowledge the other's presence Gavin was given a message about another problem and immediately left to deal with it.
These would all have made interesting and dramatic scenes in the film, making good use of Ryan O'Neal's scenery chewing acting, but you can always rely on Hollywood to avoid the true story when no one would believe it and would rather pay their $5 to see a British officer get blamed for the disaster or go and see Star Wars for the 19th time.
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I believe Gavin cracked his spine when he landed on a dirt road after his jump, but he was certainly already stressed in running the division he inherited from Matthew Ridgway. In his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Ryan made the following notes [my own added in square brackets]:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats [polder] to the east.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
- Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
Gavin went on to explain that Ridgway had a problem in that because he wouldn't promote Lindquist, he couldn't promote any other colonel in the division over him because Lindquist had seniority in the grade. It also explains why Gavin had not replaced himself as Assistant Division Commander when Ridgway was promoted to command US XVIII Airborne Corps and Gavin moved up to Division CO - he would have had the same problem - so throughout the planning and execution of MARKET GARDEN Gavin was doing both jobs.
Gavin's claim he instructed Lindquist to send a battalion directly to the bridge was not followed up in further digging by Cornelius Ryan, who seemed to prefer the narrative the British were at fault in his book, and this was further emphasised by anti-establishment British director Richard Attenborough in the Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far (1977), which also benefitted from having an American screenwriter in William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) to write the highly entertaining script. The claim is backed by more recent research using first hand accounts from Division G-3 (Operations) officer Jack Norton in McManus (September Hope - The American Side of A Bridge Too Far, 2012) and 508th liaison officer to Division HQ Chester 'Chet' Graham in Nordyke (Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, 2012), both officers sat in on the final divisional briefing before the operation. Chet Graham also describes in Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy that Lindquist had not performed well during the regiment's first combat operation, which links back to Gavin's comment to Cornelius Ryan about neither divisional commander trusting Lindquist in a fight.
The MARKET GARDEN plan certainly was compromised. Brereton compromised Browning's original Operation COMET concept and had already politically neutralised him during the LINNET II affair, so Browning could not make any strong objections. Montgomery's role was to order the operation, not plan it, and he wrote after the war that he regretted not intervening to insist on troops being landed closer to the bridges - can you imagine the drama with the Americans if he had? Eisenhower's only criticism from British quarters was the lack of support for the operation, support which Montgomery had been assured after (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff) Bedell Smith's visit on 12 September - but "absolute" priority in supplies apparently means different things in English and American.
Gavin was responsible for his divisional plan, and he must take responsibility for his decision to dismiss the British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, which probably came from Browning to compensate for Brereton's removal of the dawn glider coup de main assaults planned by Browning for the three big bridges in COMET. The highly experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR (still recovering from detachment for the Anzio operation in Italy) rightly insisted on a special drop zone for a company to land south of the River Maas bridge at Grave, and this was granted by Gavin. Lindquist was the weak link in the division and Gavin's decision to assign the Reichswald sector of his front to his old regiment, the 505th, reflected his concern of an armoured threat from the Reichswald being greater than the possibility of mission failure at Nijmegen. The fact that the division reserve after Groesbeek was cleared was Ben Vandervoort's (John Wayne in The Longest Day, 1962) 2nd Battalion 505th, sitting on Hill 81.8 behind Groesbeek, would seem to support the idea Gavin was concerned primarily about the Reichswald.
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@johnlucas8479 - The 43rd (Wessex) Division were waiting to be called forward when required, they were not due at a specific time until they were called up. According to John Sliz in Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Operation Market Garden (2021), General Thomas of the 43rd was in contact with 1 CAGRE (1st Canadian Army Group Royal Engineers), who were responsible for any bridging operations in the sector covering the Maas-Waal canal and the River Waal, warning that Operation BASIL (crossing of the Waal by the 43rd west of Nijmegen with one or two brigades) may be required, as it was learned that the Waal bridges were intact but still held by the enemy - one of the scenarios that BASIL was designed for.
This was early on 19 September, when the link-up was first made with 82nd Airborne. Late on the same day, after two unsuccessful attemts to force the bridges with the Guards and the 505th PIR, there was another conference in which Gavin had persuaded Browning and Horrocks to put his own troops in assault boats, if the boats could be found in Horrocks' engineer column.
According to Cornelius Ryan, Gavin had first suggested his plan at the link-up, but Browning had rejected it. Browning and Horrocks were now persuaded to go with Gavin's idea, but one of the gaps in Cornelius Ryan's research and filled in by John Sliz is that the Wessex and 1 CAGRE plan was ready to be implemented if called upon.
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I think most of the story can be extracted from 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR in WW2 - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). He relies on Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, the commander of the 508th HQ Company and liaison officer to Division HQ, who sat in on the divisional briefing and was witness to Gavin giving Lindquist clear instructions to send a battalion to the highway bridge as soon as he could if he was able to secure his initital objectives on the Groesbeek ridge overlooking the city. I think it's important to point out that the Germans could have used the ridge as a blocking line if they had a substantial garrison in the city and could quickly occupy the ridge line after being alerted by the landings. Gavin was told there may be "a regiment of SS" troops in the city because the exact location of the reduced 10.SS-Panzer-Division had not been identified. In the event the city was evacuated of rear echelon units and the ridge easily occupied by the 508th with no opposition. When Chet Graham relayed a message back to Gavin that Lindquist was not sending a battalion until the drop zone was cleared (D Company was left behind with the regiment S-4 to do this task), Gavin was as angry as Chet Graham had ever seen him and immediately told Graham "come with me, let's get him moving". Gavin's first words to Lindquist at the 508th CP were "I told you to move with speed."
This story is supported by a parallel book also published in 2012 (notably after Lindquist in 1986 and Gavin in 1990 had both long passed away) by American historian John C McManus, September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far. His witness at the divisional briefing was Lieutenant Colonel Jack Norton, the Division G-3 (Operations) Officer, who also witnessed Gavin's instruction to Lindquist, and he also dated the briefing as the day before the operation, and also says that Gavin made a point of showing Lindquist on a map the exact route he wanted the 1st Battalion to take to the bridge.
My thoughts about Gavin's post war statements are that he was reluctant to throw a subordinate officer under the bus and accepted he was responsible for his divisional plan not being carried out - both honourable sentiments, but unfortunately it didn't inform historians. He was apparently assisted by Browning in this and they are perhaps both responsible for muddying the waters regarding the priorities over the Groesbeek heights versus the bridge.
None of this came out in Gavin's 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for Ryan's book A Bridge Too Far (1974), except that Gavin told Ryan that Matthew Ridgway (the Division CO in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist and refused to promote him. In fact he had a problem in that he couldn't promote another Colonel in the Division over Lindquist because Lindquist had seniority. That may also explain why Gavin, who inherited the Division after Ridgway was promoted in August 1944 to command US XVIII Airborne Corps, did not replace himself as Assistant Division Commander and was running himself ragged during Market Garden doing both jobs. The lack of trust in Lindquist as a field commander was probably based on his poor performance in Normandy, and Ridgway had only partially dealt with the command problems in the regiment in Normandy by replacing the Regiment Executive Officer, an interesting story in itself related in Nordyke's earlier chapters on the Normandy operation.
This calls into question why Gavin had not assigned the Nijmegen mission to the more experienced and aggressive 505th PIR, but this may be because he was more worried about the potential armoured threat from the Reichswald and wanted the 505th covering that sector.
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I'll have a go at answering. Firstly, one correction: the Poles did not suffer significant casualties on their parachute drop at Driel. It was contested at a distance from the Germans firing in Elden and Elst, but the zone itself was clear. The myth about the high casualty rate was because the Polish Brigade was actually sent a recall message due to bad weather reports, but only the plane leading the 1st Battalion serial received the message and turned around. They dropped days later on the 82nd Airborne's zone at Overasselt and then marched north to join the Brigade. The rest of the Brigade arrived at Driel with only two battalions and had no idea why the 1st Battalion were missing.
Why the whole division didn't land there was because it was unsuitable for the gliders. The polder land consisted of small fields bordered by deep drainage ditches, which would also inhibit vehicles from unloading. All the gliders had to land on the north bank of the river, and since these carried support units, the bulk of the division they supported also had to land on the north side of the river. It also makes sense that you cross the river by air and form a bridgehead on the north side.
The original panned drop zone for the Poles south of the Arnhem bridge had two disadvantages: proximity to two of the four heavy Flak positions surrounding Arnhem - each battery had 6 captured French7.5cm Schneider M.36 guns, plus a platoon of 3 x 2cm auto cannon. In addition, if that's not hairy enough, the zone was crossed by high tension lines (!) from the Arnhem power station. It was assumed that by the time the Poles were due to arrive on D+2, the area would under the control of 1st Parachute Brigade, so the Flak would be cleared and the lines cut. This was why the zone had to be rearranged for Driel to help the division in Oosterbeek, because their original mission to cross the Arnhem bridge and occupy the eastern sector of Arnhem was no longer possible.
In the Operation Comet plan, cancelled and then replaced by Market, it was planned that all three main bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave, would be seized by small glider coup de main attacks carrying an airlanding company each, just as Pegasus Bridge was captured in Normandy. A small glider force carrying only infantry and no vehicles was deemed possible on the polder. This idea was deleted from the upgraded Market plan because the American Troop Carrier Commander (Williams) objected to the possible aircraft losses towing gliders within range of the Flak at the bridges.
I hope that's helped. Sebastian Ricthie's book, Arnhem: Myth and Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2019) goes into great detail about all these planning considerations, and after reading it I realised that all the armchair alternatives proposed for the operation with the benefit of hindsight is just pie in the sky that doesn't really work. The failure that compromised the entire operation was the failure to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon, when it could have been done without hardly firing a shot. For that story you have to read 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012).
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@johnburns4017 - the 508th jumped at around 1330 hrs and 1st Battalion got to de Ploeg at about 1730 hrs, so I think that's plenty of time for a regiment of SS troops based at the Krayenhof and Prins Hendrikkazerne to deploy to those woods and oppose the 508th's movement to the north. I think the concern was that kampfgruppe 10.SS-Panzer-Division possibly occupied the barracks and might even be training in the area.
It so happens they weren't, and were located miles to the northeast of Arnhem, but a similar scenario did play out at Arnhem where the wooded ridge between the landing zones at Wolfheze and the Arnhem bridge was occupied by two companies of SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, which their commander had moved out of the Willem III and Menno van Coehoorn kazerne in Arnhem for fear of them being bombed, and one of those companies was actually on training manoeuvres around the Hotel Wolfheze when gliders started landing practically in their laps. Frost still got to his bridge, though.
The story of S-2 Scout Trooper Joe Atkins (in Zig Boroughs' The 508th Connection, 2013) reaching the Nijmegen bridge an hour before dark, with just two other men, and occupying the southern end of the bridge without firing a shot before SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 get there at dusk, is proof that Warren's battalion could have done the same.
The only combat troops in the area were three companies detached from Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I/6 (a home guard training battalion) deployed along the canal guarding the bridges, and the 29.(Unter-Lehr-Kommando), the NCO training company of the Luftwaffe's Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', with 240 men at the Honinghutje canal bridge and forward deployed at Nederasselt (Grave bridge). When these two bridges came under attack on 17 and 18 September, they withdrew to the Villa Belvoir near the Nijmegen bridge to make their last stand with Euling's SS battalion. Survivors of the Landesschützen companies were incorporated into the Nijmegen rail bridge defence.
The barracks in Nijmegen were actually completely unoccupied as a precaution against air raids. Even the training battalion normally based there, Grenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 365, had moved their companies into various schools and monasteries in the city until the 'Valkyrie' mobilisation of the Reserve Army in the first week of September had them sent to Aachen to fight the Americans.
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I think the "1000 tanks" was a rumour started by an observation that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks. The report in question was SHAEF Intelligence Weekly Summary #26 dated 16 September 1944, which was a more guarded assessment than the previous week's more optimistic report, but it included:
"9 SS Panzer Division, and with it presumably 10, has been reported withdrawing altogether to the ARNEHM area of HOLLAND: there they will probably collect some new tanks from the depot reported in the area of CLEVES."
Cleves (Kleve) in Germany is right behind the Reichswald forest on the German border, which accounts for the concern and the supposition that the extensive forest area could potentially hide a large number of tanks, but even two fully equipped 1944 panzer divisions have no more than 320 tanks (158 Panther and 162 Panzer IV). The depot believed to be there was actually later identified in the area of Münster, the main base for Wehrkreis VI (Military District 6).
Patrols from the 505th PIR on the first afternoon of the operation reported no tanks and empty trenches in the Reichswald, and the tree density was judged unsuitable for armoured operations. I don't know how deep the patrols penetrated the forest but it seems unlikely they went as far as the Grünewald-Frasselt road (8248-8153), which is the line of the Westwall through the Reichswald. There were bunker complexes at Grünewald (8248) and Nütterden (8455), but in between the Westwall was nothing but trenches and some dugouts built from logs.
As for the troops that were in the area, there were two battalions present, part of the defence line along the rivers Maas and Waal and the inter-connecting canal:
First, Landesschützen-Ausbildungs-Bataillon I/6 (a Home Guard type training unit belonging to Wehrkreis VI) under Major Ahlemeyer and normally based at Grave, was headquartered at Haus Kreuzfuhrt (7954) with five kompanien, three (3?, 4., and 5.) were detached to defend the bridges on the Maas-Waal Kanaal, and the 1.Kompanie, and presumably the 2.Kompanie, were probably in the Reichswald area - 1.Kompanie was reported at Grafwegen (7751) the next day.
Second, the next sector in the Maas defence line between the kanaal and Gennep (incclusive) was defended by Füsilier-Ersatz-Bataillon 39 (an infantry replacement unit) under Hauptmann Grüneklee with just three kompanien normally based at Kleve, it was headquartered at Grünewald (8248). The Genesenden (convalescent) Kompanie (usually the 8.Kompanie) was stationed in Mook, where the rail bridge (7152) over the River Maas was blown up as 505th troopers attempted to seize it. I don't have information on the other kompanie locations or identifications, but I think Gennep and the bunkers around Grünewald would be a reasonable assumption.
The general dispositions/sectors are from a Korps Feldt map I have from an online source of their records (I don't have a note on the website), which also seems to be the source for Robert Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September (1990), and I was able to correct his misidentifications caused by his annoying habit of translating the German names into an English equivalent, making further study very difficult. By the second day, 18 September, these two battalions were combined into a single battalion under a Hauptmann Stargard after Grüneklee was dismissed as combat ineffective during the counter-attack that day and I believe Ahlemeyer was missing after being ordered to make a reconnaissance patrol in the direction of Nijmegen. That's about it as far as I know.
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@sean640307 - appreciate your very reasonable reply - that's unusual on YouTube! My own conclusions are only based on the balance of evidence and I only quoted from two sources in my comment here, McManus and Nordyke (both 2012). Overall, I draw from several, so I'll go through them.
The other aspect that many people forget is that things change over time, so the initial written orders are dated 13 September, and we have Lindquist's Field Order No.1 of that date, but not Gavin's - one has to ask why - but the verbal orders date from the final divisional briefing (Gavin says "48 hours before take-off"), which would be 15 September, and Browning's final Corps briefing on 16 September, when he told Gavin “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” (McManus, 2012).
So the oldest piece of evidence is Lindquist's Field Order No.1 dated 13 September, which should reflect Gavin's Field Order No.1 of the same or earlier date that we don't have. Lindquist's reads in part:
'2. a. 508 Prcht Inf will land during daylight, D Day, on DZ "T", seize, organize, and hold key terrain features in section of responsibility, be prepared to seize WAAL River crossing at Nijmegen (714633) on Div order, and prevent all hostile movement S of line HATERT (681584) - KLOOSTER (712589).'
(source: ANNEXES p.67, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011)
The next piece we have is Gavin's letter to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city."
(source: p.11, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011)
This was the final divisional briefing on 15 September, and I think the important thing is that it does constitute the "Div order" that Lindquist was expecting in paragraph 2. a. of his own Field Order No.1 of 13 September. The divisional briefing was attended by Division G-3 (Operations) officer Lieutenant Colonel Jack Norton, whose testimony that Lindquist was given the order is quoted in McManus (2012), and by 508th liaison officer to Division HQ Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham, who also confirmed the order and is quoted by Nordyke (2012).
I find Westover's 14 September 1945 interview with Lindquist unsatisfactory (I was trained as a systems analyst, so I'm a trained 'interviewer' in the business world) in the inprecise nature of his Question 2, and the answer Lindquist gives I find disingenuous to the point that MRD applies, and unfortunately Westover had given him enough wiggle room with his loose question to do this:
"2. GENERAL GAVIN said that he gave you ordrs [sic] to move directly into NIJMEGEN?
As soon as we got into position we were told to move into NIJMEGEN. We were not told on landing. We were actually in position when I was told to move on."
(Source: ANNEXES p.66, Lost at Nijmegen, RG Poulussen, 2011)
'MRDA' is a legal term you may not be familiar with if you're not a British lawyer or old enough to remember the 1960s and the Profumo scandal. While giving evidence at the trial of Stephen Ward, charged with living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, Rice-Davies (18 years old at that time) made the quip for which she is now best remembered: when the defence counsel, James Burge, pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or having even met her, she retorted "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" (often misquoted as "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?").
This became immortalised as "Mandy Rice-Davies applies" or MRDA. It's used to point out that the subject of an accusation has essentially no credibility when denying the accusation, because it's obviously in their own interests to deny it regardless of whether that denial is true.
The next point of interest is Gavin's interview with Cornelius Ryan for his book A Bridge Too Far (1974), which was conducted in Boston, January 20, 1967. Ryan's notes read in part [my square brackets]:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.”
It’s interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant t jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him.
(Source: James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
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@johnburns4017 - just an update on the topic of German tanks at Arnhem in light of Dutch expert on German armour Marcel Zwarts' new book Einsatz Arnheim (2024) that was finally released in February of this year and I have studied it very closely. Marcel believes SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 possibly had 5 Panthers withdrawn from Normandy, 2 operational and 3 'In kurzfristiger Instandsetzung (bis 3 Wochen)' - 'Short Term Repair (Ready within three weeks)' on a return dated 3 September. He even has an officer named in command - SS-Untersturmführer Harry Fuhrmann of 4./SS-Pz.Rgt.9. This would account for two being disabled or knocked out by B Company 3rd Parachute Battalion in western Arnhem on 19 September by PIAT and Gammon bomb, but a Panther shows up on the Oosterbeek perimeter later in the siege and no Panther wrecks were found in Arnhem in 1945, so it appears the two casualties were recovered.
If the repair estimate on the 3 in Short Term Repair was accurate, any Panthers seen in Oosterbeek from 24 September could be the three week repair jobs, or indeed detached from the 20 new Panthers Model had delivered on 20 September and crewed by Kampfgruppe Harder's Alarm Kompanie (SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Harder was commander of 7./SS-Pz.Rgt.9) with 100 Panther crewmen who had lost their tanks in Normandy. I believe the survivors (five were knocked out in the Elst area after the bridge was retaken) ended up being transferred to the Frundsberg as 8./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10.
My Dutch source for the tanks hidden under trees in the Heijenoord area on Fridat 15 September does not mention how many tanks were there, so it's a useful bit of information on location, but not numbers and type.
On the Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' - two are in the photo record operating on Dreijenseweg in Oosterbeek against 4th Parachute Brigade on 19 September and assumed to be from SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, but Marcel thinks this is now incorrect. He has unearther two delivery reports for new Panzer-Regiment Flak-Zug with 8 new Möbelwagen each for SS-Panzer-Regiments 9 and 10 arriving by train on 7 September at Antwerp (which must have been diverted because the British had taken Antwerp on 4 September) and Venlo respectively. Marcel thinks the Möbelwagen showing up in Oosterbeek on 19 September just in time to stop 4th Parachute Brigade breaking through the Dreijenseweg line of Kampfgruppe Spindler were the 8 Möbelwagen of SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 under SS-Oberjunker (officer candidate) H. Gertner. Marcel has tied a report from 10th Parachute Battalion (4th Brigade) that saw five tanks laagered at the pumping station on Amsterdamseweg he believes must be the Flakpanzer IV Möbelwagen. The whereabouts of SS-Pz.Rgt.9's new Flak-Zug is unknown and presumed gone to Siegen (Germany) where the Hohenstaufen Division was planned to be refitted.
So, the answer to the question of how many tanks in Arnhem on 17 September? I think still possibly 5, with two operational Panthers (hidden under trees on Heijenoordseweg) and 3 probably still in Short Term Repair (with the Regiment Werkstatt Kompanie in the Saksen-Weimar barracks), or preparing to depart for Germany and already loaded on rail flat cars.
1st Parachute Battalion reports of "5 tanks" and about 15 half-tracks seen on Amsterdamseweg on the afternoon of 17 September clearly refers to Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 for so many half-tracks (3.Kompanie), but the "tanks" could be anything, including the 5 wheeled armoured cars or the 5 half-tracked (and turreted) armoured cars in Gräbner's 1.Kompanie. The fct there were up to 5 Panthers available in Arnhem only adds to the possibilities.
A further intriguing think to come out of Marcel's book is that von Allwörden's SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 9 may have had up to 8 Jagdpanzer IV/L48 vehicles at Apeldoorn, and not just 2 that were apparently the only survivors of its 1.Kompanie. These vehicles had apparently been earmarked fro transfer to 116.Panzer-Division at Aachen and so far only the crews had arrived, while the Hohenstaufen would presumably be completely refitted in Germany. It's not clear how many vehicles were operational on 17 September, according to Kershaw (It Never Snows in September, 1990), an unspecified number clattered their way south to Arnhem on 17 September, so were they crewed by the unhorsed crews in the Alarm Kompanie, we don't know the details.
The book also suggests that all 31 vehicles in StuGbrigade 280 were at Arnhem, not just 10 veteran crews initially selected to form a composite Batterie as previous sources suggested (the unit has just refitted and most crews were inexperienced). Again, it's not clear, but the whole Brigade did go to Arnhem.
My impression from this book is that 1st Airborne were up against more armour than previously thought, so their stand is all the more impressive, but as always it's hard to nail down exact numbers and a timeline.
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