MARKET-GARDEN, Allied operation conceived by
Montgomery, and launched on 17 September 1944 (see Map 67). It was designed to outflank the German defensive line known as the
West Wall, by establishing a bridgehead across the lower Rhine at the Dutch town of Arnhem. It was hoped that this would place the Allied armies at the threshhold of the Ruhr and possibly bring the war to an early conclusion.
The supreme commander,
Eisenhower, endorsed Montgomery's strategy on 10 September and offered him
Brereton's First Allied Airborne Army. Later, he agreed to divert supplies from other fronts to Montgomery's Twenty-first Army Group, so setting the scene for one of the Allies' most disastrous errors in north-west Europe: the failure to clear immediately the approaches to the vital port of Antwerp (see
Scheldt Estuary).
As the codename implied, the operation, commanded tactically by a British Army officer,
Lt-General Browning, was divided into two: MARKET, the employment of airborne troops to seize bridges across eight water barriers; and GARDEN, the advance of
Horrocks's 30th Corps across them. Speed was essential, with Horrocks having to cover in three days the 95 km. (59 mi.) to Arnhem from his starting line on the Meuse–Escaut Canal. To aid the operation the Dutch
government-in-exile called for a railway strike. This brought German military supplies to a halt but also led to German reprisals that caused a terrible famine that winter.
To capture the bridges the 101st US Airborne Division landed between Eindhoven and Veghel; 82nd US Airborne Division dropped around Grave and Groesbeek; and 1st British Airborne Division dropped near those at Arnhem—but not near enough. The initial drop of 16,500 paratroopers and 3,500 troops in gliders was completed with unprecedented accuracy, but from that high point the tactical execution of Montgomery's bold strategy deteriorated.
The remains of two
SS Panzer Divisions, 9th and 10th, were refitting in the area and had just completed an exercise on how to repel an airborne landing. Indications of their presence before the landings had been ignored and their alertness—plus the loss of 1st Airborne Division's armoured jeeps and the capture of a US officer in improper possession of the operational order—put MARKET-GARDEN immediately in jeopardy. It took four hours for British paratroopers to reach the bridges on foot, by which time German resistance was already stiffening. The railway bridge was destroyed and the British, their forces already scattered and pinned down by a stout German defence, were only able to capture the northern end of the road bridge. The final blow came when bad weather delayed reinforcement by the Polish Parachute Brigade. Some were dropped at Driel, but the Germans prevented them from crossing the river.
Stubborn German resistance also delayed the land forces. The 30th Corps was already late when it linked up with 101st Airborne Division near Eindhoven and the construction of a Bailey bridge (see
engineers) at Zon, to replace one destroyed by the Germans, put Horrocks 33 hours behind schedule. The advance of the British 8th and 12th Corps on either side of the narrow corridor being carved out for 30th Corps was also, as Montgomery admitted, ‘depressingly slow’ and their tardiness exposed 101st Airborne Division to increasingly intense flank attacks which cut the Eindhoven–Nijmegen road (‘Hell's Highway’) more than once.
The 82nd Airborne Division occupied the Groesbeek Ridge to block any counter-attacks, and captured the bridges leading to Nijmegen, but was then forced to wait for 30th Corps as bad weather delayed its reinforcements. Its arrival gave the Americans the additional fire-power they needed and on 20 September a battalion made the perilous trip across the River Waal in assault boats. Both Nijmegen bridges were soon captured, but it took 30th Corps another 24 hours to start its move to Arnhem. By then the British there had been driven from the bridge, allowing German artillery to move across it and reinforce a roadblock at Ressen which had halted Horrocks's advance yet again. Men were diverted to Driel, but it proved impossible to cross in any strength.
On 25 September the British pulled back their surviving paratroopers to the river for withdrawal that night. Although 2,163 men of 1st Airborne Division, 160 Poles, and 75 men out of the 250 who had managed to cross from Driel escaped, the Germans took more than 6,000 captive, nearly half of whom were wounded. The losses of the two US airborne divisions, which stayed in the line for another two months, totalled 3,532.
Though the attempt to gain a bridgehead across the lower Rhine failed, the Allies retained a valuable salient from which Operation
VERITABLE was launched during the
battle for Germany in February 1945.
Bibliography
Fairley, J. , Remember Arnhem (Aldershot, 1978).
Middlebrook, M. , Arnhem: The Airborne Battle (London, 1994).
