The 101st Airborne descends on Eindhoven
Operation Market Garden
September 17 – 25, 1944
In warfare, as in life, there is a fine line between risky and reckless. With the 20-20 vision afforded by history, I think we can say that Operation Market Garden fell toward the reckless end of the scale.
In June 1944 the Allies successfully invaded Normandy and by September they had cleared France and Belgium of their Nazi oppressors. But then the Allies got stuck. They had outrun their supply lines, they faced much more difficult territory to the north and east, and the Germans had built a massive defensive system, the Siegfried Line, along their border.
The British conceived Operation Market Garden, the greatest airborne operation ever undertaken. Three full airborne divisions would fly in and capture three major cities along a north-south road in Holland in a dramatic coup de main. These cities stood on the rivers that were blocking the Allied advance. Arriving without warning the airborne troops could prevent the Germans from destroying the bridges across the rivers. A British armored corps would then drive up the road, across the bridges, and relieve the lightly armed airborne troops before the enemy could counterattack.
Highway 69 runs 60 miles north from the Belgian border to Arnhem on the Rhine in Holland.
- The American 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles, under the command of Maxwell Taylor would take and hold Eindhoven and three key bridges to the north of it.
- To the north of Eindhoven, the American 82nd All American Airborne under the command of Jumping Jim Garland would take Nijmegen and its vital bridges.
- Finally, to the north of Nijmegen and situated on the Rhine, the British 1st Airborne under Roy Urquhart, reinforced by the Polish 1st Independent Paratroop Brigade under Stanislaw Sosabowski, would take and hold the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem.
- Thus the Allies would leapfrog the natural obstacles ahead of them and the road eastward into Germany would swing open.
No less than 34,000 paratroops, approximately 20,000 by parachute and the remainder in unpowered towed gliders, dropped from the sky, delivered by approximately 2,000 aircraft and 2,000 gliders, an aerial armada on a scale never attempted before. The three divisional drops were planned to occur simultaneously, overwhelming the German defenders on the ground before they could detonate the bridges.
At the same time as the first drops, on the afternoon of September 17th, the British XXX Corps under Brian Horrocks, led by the tanks of the Irish Guards under Joe Vandeleur, crossed the Dutch border and began to fight their way north toward Arnhem, 60 miles away.
For those of you who are interested in the operational details, I would urge you to listen to my podcast on the subject, which you can find here. It’s an amazing story of heroism among the troops and incompetence among their commanders.
To oversimplify a complex situation, during the next four days XXX Corps was able to fight its way north and reach the 101st and the 82nd and hold the cities and bridges at Eindhoven and Nijmegen, but could not reach the British at Arnhem, which therefore became known as ‘a bridge too far.’
The Bridge Too Far
They were able to capture the northern end of the bridge but not the southern end. After 4 days, having sustained 80% casualties and out of ammunition, Frost and his men were forced to surrender.
The Waal Bridge at Nijmegen
but too late to reach Arnhem
Winners and Losers
Following this battle, the Rhine was not crossed, nor was Arnhem taken, for another six months. The Germans punished the Dutch civilian population by starving them. (The movie star Audrey Hepburn, then a child, survived by eating tulip bulbs.)
I would note these glaring deficiencies in the plan:
- The British did not tune and test their radios in advance and could not communicate. Indeed, the first message out of Frost’s beleaguered force in Arnhem was brought by carrier pigeon. The RAF did not know exactly where 1st Airborne was and was dropping in plenty of supplies and ammunition—into German hands.
- The 1st Airborne landed on the northern side of the Rhine and therefore could not escape southward toward XXX Corps.
- The plan depended on a single country road, 20 feet wide at best, through marshy country that was too soft to support tanks. Every time a vehicle broke down, the entire XXX Corps advance was stalled. The road became a 50-mile-long traffic jam; it took 30 hours to bring up the boats used to cross the Waal.
- The British had dismissed intelligence reports of SS troops in the Arnhem area.
Whether or not the results justified the effort, and whether the plan was clearly too ambitious and should not have been attempted, remain subjects for debate. Indeed, the debate began immediately, as I imagined in this snippet from my novel Dangers and Difficulties.
SHAEF Forward, Granville near Liege, Belgium
25 September 1944, 2230 Hours
“I think we can all agree that Market Garden has been a notable success, a notable Airborne victory,” Percival said. “Obviously our 1st Airborne got knocked about a bit, but we all knew, and agreed before we started, that this was a risk worth taking.”
The latest reports from Arnhem were that the last remnants of the British and Polish troops north of the Rhine had finally run out of ammunition and were surrendering to the enemy.
Now that the situation north of Nijmegen had congealed into an impasse, and the few surviving British and Polish remnants of the 1st Airborne had been evacuated south across the Rhine, the process of assigning credit and blame was in full swing, and the fight had moved from the real world of facts and figures to the world of history books. This was a crucial migration, Eleanor thought: not only reputations were at stake but also promotions, medals, and, on the British side, even knighthoods.
Percival was speaking in a stilted manner, as if he were a schoolboy making an elaborate excuse for not doing his homework, and Eleanor guessed that he had rehearsed this speech. Perhaps this was the first draft of the official British report—perhaps also the first draft of his own memoirs.
“As Boy Browning said before we started, Arnhem was probably ‘a bridge too far,’ as he eloquently put it, and events have proved him right. Of course, had the Poles been more effective, we might have held on, but let us not cast aspersions among . . . I’m sure they tried their best, even if . . . But no matter: we have the bridges at Nijmegen, and that was always the main target.”
So this was to be the official story, Eleanor thought. It turned out not only that Browning had advised against his own plan but also that the failure at Arnhem was all the Poles’ fault anyway, even though the Poles had not been flown in until after the battle for the Arnhem bridgehead had already been lost.
“Monty does feel, I must add, that SHAEF could have been more—a lot more—supportive . . . but, no matter.”
Ah, Eleanor thought, it was Ike’s fault as well. Beetle Smith raised his eyebrows but did not respond.
“Still, 30 Corps is firmly in control in Nijmegen,” Percival hurried on. “We’re ready to move forward.”
The fact that Nijmegen had been taken by the American 82nd Airborne, not by 30 Corps, seemed to have slipped from Percival’s analysis. In a similar manner, Eleanor knew there were no plans to push further north; the enemy had done an excellent job of building defenses between Nijmegen and Arnhem. The Airborne divisions were exhausted, and 30 Corps was still trying to secure the flanks of the highway from Eindhoven. The SS Panzer divisions, which Percival had dismissed as on their heels, had won the battle at Arnhem.
“Any comment, Eleanor?” Beetle Smith asked. On this occasion, she could see he had his temper firmly under control, but hers was not.
“Approximately 10,500 men of the 1st Airborne landed near Arnhem, sir,” Eleanor said. “Approximately 1,500 have been killed, and 6,500 were taken prisoner. The remaining 2,500 have been rescued, of whom a third are wounded, leaving just 1,600 out of the original 10,500 capable of fighting. I would say—”
“The weather was against—” Percival began, adding God to the Poles and Eisenhower on the list of those to blame, but Eleanor did not let him interrupt her.
“I would therefore say, sir, that we cannot afford another ‘notable Airborne victory,’ to borrow your expression.”
“That’s not fair! I—”
“‘Getting knocked about a bit,’ as you put it, is a novel description for losing eighty-five percent of one’s forces in less than a week.”
“There’s no need to be—”
She thought of using Tennyson’s phrase, “shattered and sundered,” but she doubted he would know the allusion.
“Be that as it may, let us move on,” she said.
“I agree,” Percival said, evidently relieved she was not going to press the point.
“Let us consider the effects on the Dutch people.”
“What effects?”
“The Dutch civilian railway workers went on strike, at great personal peril, at our request,” Eleanor said. “They succeeded in preventing the enemy from moving reinforcements and ammunition up to the front, doubtless saving many British and American lives at the cost of some of their own.”
“I scarcely see how—”
“Now, in retaliation, the enemy has announced that all shipments of food to and within Holland are strictly forbidden. There are already severe shortages in the west of Holland, and winter is coming. There may be famine. People, perhaps many people, will starve to death this winter, or get ‘knocked about a bit,’ as you might prefer to put it.”
“I still don’t see—”
“I therefore doubt the Dutch people can afford another notable Airborne victory either.”
