Why Bridge Too Far attempt was doomed

[Kit Hildreth]

Although not under his command I think Bradley made it clear he'd rather not have American troops doing the most dangerous job in what was mostly a British Operation. Monty as his sensitive self acquiesced.

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Indeed, that was always the role assigned to the British, not only by the School Master but also the Germans, who put almost all their best units in against the British, Canadians and Poles. it enabled the Americans to finally break out: per the School Master's strategy right from the beginning.

[Kit Hildreth]

My whole point is that the Channel isn't that wide, nor is the run to the coast in Blighty, nor from Dutch coast to DZs.

 

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Don't forget King, the storm that destroyed the US end of Mulberry because the Seabees(?) skipped a few vital installation items which the British included in theirs; why the latter lasted until alternatives came on stream. That "little" Channel is one of the roughest and unpredictable stretches of water on the Planet. I know, I've sailed on it. Had the US Mulberry been built as designed, the logistics - leaving sheer distance aside - would have been much improved. Brad' would not have had to reply entirely on the British Mulberry harbour and Air Supply to support 1st and 3rd Armies. It wasn't the lack of supplies but the bottleneck created by the "...not so big..." You're not the first that dismissed the English Channel as nothing...until they had to navigate it....!

As for the DZ's, the XXX Corp problem goes for most of Holland until you actually approach Germany. Holland is largely reclaimed land..

[KingSargent]

Indeed, that was always the role assigned to the British, not only by the School Master but also the Germans, who put almost all their best units in against the British, Canadians and Poles. it enabled the Americans to finally break out: per the School Master's strategy right from the beginning.

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Bovine excrement! The 'SchoolMaster's' strategy 'right from the beginning' was to take Caen on Day One. That didn't happen for various reasons (no blame games, please!).

 

The idea that "Monty Always Planned It That Way" comes from his memoires and contemporary statements that were intended to produce the "Monty The Infallible Planner" legend. I will give Monty the benefit of the doubt and say that he promoted the legend to raise morale in a beaten 8th Army in 1942.

 

But he started to believe his PR. Monty was a good general, but things didn't always go as he planned - "No plan survives contact with the enemy". IMHO, his ability to redirect battles when things went wrong was his greatest attribute. It is greatly to his discredit that he LIED and denied his ability to master a battefield by claiming that he had ALWAYS "planned things that way."

 

Who got the right and left flanks in Normandy was mostly dependent on where the units were based in Blighty. The British Army had been in the East Counties since 1940, when they were anti-invasion defences. The Americans were based in the West Country because that was where they got off the boats and there was room left for their camps. To try to make the invasion work so Yanks were on the left flank and CW troops on the right would have been insane; even more so than crossing transport wave approaches during M-G - masses of landing craft can't choose different altitudes to avoid collisions... .

 

Not to mention that the Brits did not like to stray too far from the sea - staying close to a coast was almost a reflex (one is never more than sixty miles from the sea in Blighty), they never even thought about it. They had spent four years near the coast in WW1. The Yanks had spent their short term in the Late Great Hate in North Central France, and many were still familiar with the territory, having studied it in staff college exercises for a generation if they had not actually been in action there.

 

The Brit 2nd Army was facing the main transport hub in Normandy, the US 1st Army was crawling through hedgerows. Naturally the German concentrated against the Brits, if they concentrated against the Yanks they risked being cut off by a Brit Breakout. Which almost happened at GOODWOOD and came even closer when Hitler sent the Panzers to Mortain-Argentan and allowed the 21st AG a little more fighting room.

[Rickshaw]

Would have made a nice mess of the GdsAD forward elements too! 1-2000 meters? that would not have done much to the Dutch polders let me tell you! In any case, Blue on Blue was always a risk when bombers supported an opening offensive. I hate to say this but the USAF might have done a better job: certainly in the accuracy stakes from what I gather. Hull down, battening down hatches   In any case, smoke always heralds an op and the Germans were past masters of pulling back at the psychological moment to re-emerge in the rear...

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Parafrags would hav ehad nill effect on the polders. They are designed to explode above the ground, suspened on a parachute. They'd have scythed through any infantry and AT guns though. The smoke would have obscured any AFVs advancing up the road, making it difficult to sight on them from a distance.

[KingSargent]

Parafrags would hav ehad nill effect on the polders.  They are designed to explode above the ground, suspened on a parachute.  They'd have scythed through any infantry and AT guns though. The smoke would have obscured any AFVs advancing up the road, making it difficult to sight on them from a distance.

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ParaFrags were an SWPA idea of Kenney's (or his staff's) - I doubt the idea was even HEARD of in the MTO/ETO.

 

It boggles the mind to imagine the impact on WW2 if Kenney (the USAAC's 'Attack Specialist') had been turned loose with carte blanche to establish CAS P&Ps.

[BillB]

I doubt it would be as simple as you think (in fact, I know it wouldn't), but why even bother?

 

The solution was to remove Brereton and fly two lifts on Day One. All the problems stemmed from the "My pilots will get TIIIIRED flying more than one lift" whining of Brereton.

 

For those who like to game things out, just put in two lifts on Day 1 and watch the Germans fall apart. If you really like onesided games, fly the 52nd ID into Arnhem on Day 2.

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Tell me, King, does this wargaming include the problems of a huge fleet of transport aircraft with not a lot of daylight flying training and insufficient navigators taking off and forming up over blacked out land in the dark, and returning in the dark?

 

You keep banging on about this with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, while the planners at the time were basing their actions on recent history and experience. They had trouble with night flying in the Med, and they had even worse trouble in Normandy. If you had been on the spot with responsibility for the outcome resting squarely on your shoulders, would you have been so confident? I know I wouldn't.

 

Besides, they could have pulled it off with the single lift had they addressed some problems that hd nothing to do with the single lift business. I note nobody has yet picked up another factor too - what about the German night fighters and early warning system? Your two lifts in a day would have left the transports vulnerable to that on the way in and/or on the way back after the second lift because the route flew straight into the German EW cordon. The Nachtjagers would have had a very happy time given a target like that, I think.

 

Finally, ref your insistence that the divs were allocated to their targets by geography - do you have anything official to back that up, or is it just personal opinion? I ask because all I've ever seen is an unfounded assumption that was the case by Gavin, IIRC. I also don't think your predictions of doom had they sent the 82nd Airborne to Arnhem hold water. Have a look at the actual air plan - it is reproduced in Middlebrook, p.84. The 82nd and 1st Airborne took off from the same area (British east Midlands), and flew exactly the same route over the North Sea and into Holland until just before Nijmegen, when 1st Airborne veered away north. However, the Brit glider lift actually crossed the 101st stream NE of London to RV with the Arnhem/Nijmegen stream over Alderburgh on the Norfolk coast.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[Rickshaw]

ParaFrags were an SWPA idea of Kenney's (or his staff's) - I doubt the idea was even HEARD of in the MTO/ETO.

 

They were used extensively in Italy, I seem to remember seeing photos of their effects on Italian airfields.

 

It boggles the mind to imagine the impact on WW2 if Kenney (the USAAC's 'Attack Specialist') had been turned loose with carte blanche to establish CAS P&Ps.

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Kenney wasn't that great. Like many under Macarthur's wing, his memoires were a bit self-serving.

[KingSargent]

They were used extensively in Italy, I seem to remember seeing photos of their effects on Italian airfields.

Kenney wasn't that great. Like many under Macarthur's wing, his memoires were a bit self-serving.

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AFAIK, Kenney's only fault in his memoires was sticking to the inflated claims put up by his pilots during the war.

[KingSargent]

Tell me, King, does this wargaming include the problems of a huge fleet of transport aircraft with not a lot of daylight flying training and insufficient navigators taking off and forming up over blacked out land in the dark, and returning in the dark? I fail to see why the land would be blacked out. If they knew the a/c would return after dark (I fully agree that leaving at Odark30 would be a no-go) they could have made arrangements to light up selected areas to use as navigational beacons and lit up the airfields, like Mitscher lit up his fleet to get the late strike home at the Philippine Sea. The planes probably wouldn't find their way to their own airfields, but most would get down safely somewhere.

 

You keep banging on about this with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, while the planners at the time were basing their actions on recent history and experience. They had trouble with night flying in the Med, and they had even worse trouble in Normandy. If you had been on the spot with responsibility for the outcome resting squarely on your shoulders, would you have been so confident? I know I wouldn't. There is the slight difference that in the Med and at Normandy the whole mission was conducted in the dark. A second lift at M-G would have had only to return in the dark.

 

Besides, they could have pulled it off with the single lift had they addressed some problems that hd nothing to do with the single lift business. Which problems were these that could not have been solved with another injection of troops? With two more brigades I think the 1st could have gotten to the bridge even if they did use three routes.

I note nobody has yet picked up another factor too - what about the German night fighters and early warning system? Your two lifts in a day would have left the transports vulnerable to that on the way in and/or on the way back after the second lift because the route flew straight into the German EW cordon. The Nachtjagers would have had a very happy time given a target like that, I think. Which is why interdiction of the NJG's bases would have been on the cards, if the whole thing had been properly planned.

 

The planning, IMHO, was the weak point. So many drops had been aborted that M-G became a pick-up game using planners who didn't think it would happen. M-G was one of the most hastily-planned operations in NWE.

 

Finally, ref your insistence that the divs were allocated to their targets by geography - do you have anything official to back that up, or is it just personal opinion? Nothing official, you are the one with access to that stuff. I have seen it mentioned in a couple of secondary sources. I ask because all I've ever seen is an unfounded assumption that was the case by Gavin, IIRC. I also don't think your predictions of doom had they sent the 82nd Airborne to Arnhem hold water. Have a look at the actual air plan - it is reproduced in Middlebrook, p.84. The 82nd and 1st Airborne took off from the same area (British east Midlands), and flew exactly the same route over the North Sea and into Holland until just before Nijmegen, when 1st Airborne veered away north. However, the Brit glider lift actually crossed the 101st stream NE of London to RV with the Arnhem/Nijmegen stream over Alderburgh on the Norfolk coast.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[Kit Hildreth]

Bovine excrement! The 'SchoolMaster's' strategy 'right from the beginning' was to take Caen on Day One. That didn't happen for various reasons (no blame games, please!).

 

The idea that "Monty Always Planned It That Way" comes from his memoires and contemporary statements that were intended to produce the "Monty The Infallible Planner" legend. I will give Monty the benefit of the doubt and say that he promoted the legend to raise morale in a beaten 8th Army in 1942.

 

But he started to believe his PR. Monty was a good general, but things didn't always go as he planned - "No plan survives contact with the enemy". IMHO, his ability to redirect battles when things went wrong was his greatest attribute. It is greatly to his discredit that he LIED and denied his ability to master a battefield by claiming that he had ALWAYS "planned things that way."

 

Who got the right and left flanks in Normandy was mostly dependent on where the units were based in Blighty. The British Army had been in the East Counties since 1940, when they were anti-invasion defences. The Americans were based in the West Country because that was where they got off the boats and there was room left for their camps. To try to make the invasion work so Yanks were on the left flank and CW troops on the right would have been insane; even more so than crossing transport wave approaches during M-G - masses of landing craft can't choose different altitudes to avoid collisions... .

 

Not to mention that the Brits did not like to stray too far from the sea - staying close to a coast was almost a reflex (one is never more than sixty miles from the sea in Blighty), they never even thought about it. They had spent four years near the coast in WW1. The Yanks had spent their short term in the Late Great Hate in North Central France, and many were still familiar with the territory, having studied it in staff college exercises for a generation if they had not actually been in action there.

 

The Brit 2nd Army was facing the main transport hub in Normandy, the US 1st Army was crawling through hedgerows. Naturally the German concentrated against the Brits, if they concentrated against the Yanks they risked being cut off by a Brit Breakout. Which almost happened at GOODWOOD and came even closer when Hitler sent the Panzers to Mortain-Argentan and allowed the 21st AG a little more fighting room.

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EQUINE EXCREMENT! the old classic of confusing strategy with tactics. Monty formulated the strategy for the Invasion and subsequent operations in Normandy right from the beginning. As Pip Roberts pointed out, overall Normandy went to the original pre-Normandy skedool, if not in detail; which is in truth is what you're really arguing about. Very unstrategic. Of course no battle plan survives contact with the enemy - unless one's name is Alexander(the Invincible. rather than the Great). But again that is a question of detail.

I'm not defending Monty but it WAS his strategy that won the Battle of Normandy. That IMO is the only credit he deserves. He was only capable of winning with overwhelming force in the field. If he didn't have it, his performance was marginal (as with the Desert or Italy) or poor - MG.

If you've read my posts you'll see "The Schoolmaster: is not one of my favourite senior British commanders. I'll give anybody else the benefit of the doubt except him. Give me Bradley any day and anybody but Monty to lead a dash into Germany. But you know, if you read memoirs like Pip Roberts - or even Spike Milligan's(Bluebottle! The other Limeys'll fill you in- right lads?!) all of them understood his numerous faults, but overall, for them, Monty was the right man for the job on the Limey(being half-Yank I can say that!)side. The mistake he made was playing the same game as the Americans. Monty couldn't resist shooting his mouth off or, to put it more succinctly: engaging mouth before brain - a fault I consider more American than Britiish, but, bye the bye. The last straw was the Ardennes, but then Monty had had it up to here with American carping and wanted his own back. Tit for Tat.

Normandy? Well yes indeed the Americans were squirming around the hedgerows, but it was the country and a competent(even the German, mostly second-line formations, facing the Americans were at least that) opponent that held them up.

If THEY'D been facing the FULL STRENGTH Panzer elite like the British, would they have faired any better in hedgerow country? Slightly better because of the more flexible approach to battlecraft of the Americans, possibly; but not a great deal though IMO. The Ardennes proving my point. We shouldn't have taken an entire month to halt 'em and throw 'em back. The German formations - particularly the W-SS weren't a patch on those facing the British, Canadians and Poles in Normandy.

But I think it was the essential doggedness of the British that whittled the Germans down. In a recent article about "Goodwood" the author emphasised that the British lost 275 to to the Germans' 75 MBTs. However, since it usually required the loss of 4-6 non-Firefly "Tommy cookers" to brew up a single Tiger or Panther - and MkIV's for that matter - the German losses were both comparable AND worse, irreplaceable, even with the brilliant efforts of the german field recovery crews. While the British replaced all theirs within a month I believe. Not to mention that in consequence, the German forces then available for Mortain were quite inadequate to ensure success - ignoring the omnipresent air power for a moment.

But the fact was that at that stage the Germans foolishly rated the British the greater threat(despite the post-war Hollywood hokum trying to make out otherwise!) and arraigned their forces accordingly. Your argument as to a reversal of assignment of German forces falls down since it was primarily air-power killing the German power of manouvre - which had kept them in the field in Russia so long - that won the battle. In small unit terms, the Germans either won or it was stalemate at best until "The Carpet Chomper" started interfering in his inimitible fashion with the Mortain/Argentan cods-up! The apalling after-battle state of the elite german formations attest to the effectiveness of both Air power and the British effort. I know the dash of Patton across France against minimal and second rate opposition coddled the folks back home in the States, and made them feel superior to the British, but it was the British effort in terms of strategy on the part of Monty and those of the Troops in the field that made victory possible.

I'm sure I've not convinced you but I assure you the converse applies equally in this corner. When all is said and done, it was a team effort. Alone, neither the Americans nor the British were capable of defeating the German Army in the field, but together, with each to balance the strengths and weakness of the other, the Allies wiped the floor with the Jerries and enabled the Soviets/Russians to actually take Berlin, which they couldn't have without us!

[KingSargent]

re Kit: Porcine Poop! (we have a lot of animals to go, here)

 

If you are going to say that the long delay in taking objectives that were supposed to have fallen on Day One means nothing against the "fact that Monty's Strategy worked eventually if not in detail", then I submit to you that the Combined Chiefs of Staff would have been surprised to discover that they were not actually handing the Strategic side of the war.

 

After the Avranches Breakout plans were mostly scrapped anyway, and very little in the Normandy Campaign happened as Monty planned, or when he planned for it to happen. That IMHO precludes giving him credit for "always planning it that way." The battle of Normandy was won by GIs and Tommies more than generals.

 

I will agree with you and Roberts et al that Monty was the best man there was for the job, but who were the other candidates? AlanBrooke wanted Ike's job so bad he could taste it, and snivels a lot in his diary about Churchill "promising" him SHAEF on three separate occasions. Aside from the fact that the Yanks would have packed up their marbles and gone home rather than serve under him, I see nothing in AB's record to suggest he was any kind of a master of the battlefield.

 

At one point The Unspeakable Anderson was considered for 21st Army Group (this was when they were trying juggle things to have Monty remain in the Med). What a FUBAR THAT would have been....

 

AB campaigned hard to keep Alexander out of the NWE command slot, and IMHO it was his machinations and writings that promoted Alex's 'historical judgement' of being mentally negligible. I think Alexander could have handled 21st AG just fine and the Yanks would have been a lot happier. But that would have put Alex too close to Blighty (and incidentally AB's job ).

 

Monty took, and is given, credit for expanding the COSSAC plan for a three-division landing to what actually occured. However Ike and Bradley were just as horrified as Monty, and even COSSAC didn't like it, but three divisions were all they could plan for given the resources they were told they had. I think it is safe to say that any command team seeing COSSAC's plan would have changed it. In fact what's-his-name in charge of COSSAC wanted it changed but he didn't have enough clout to shake more resources out of the PTB. Monty and Ike had the power to get the stuff COSSAC had wanted.

 

Over to you.

[Dave Clark]

I picked up a copy of David Fraser´s memoirs in UK last week. He served in Guards AD during the war and makes a few interesting comments about Market Garden. I´m OCRing the relevant section and will post it up over the next couple of days. The first part (below) deals with Guards AD activities between the liberation of Brussels and the start of MG and has some interesting observations on why the British advance had begun to stick.

 

After we had entered Brussels on 3rd September - and left it sharply next morning, driving towards Louvain, where our Battalion had taken up positions in the ill-fated May of 1940 - the character of the campaign changed. The previous fortnight had been extraordinary: pursuit, excitement, periodic battle, a sense that surely the end of the war could not be far away. Now, as we moved east and north-east from Brussels, there was a sense that the days of exhilaration might be behind us.

 

And so it was. There have been many reasons adduced why the pursuit of the German armies beaten in Normandy was allowed to become bogged - with winter literally bogged - and end in a painful and expensive winter campaign. Certainly to us the impetus seemed irresistible up to and beyond Brussels. So far it was a hunt - whips out and only the best line to find. I can see the road running into Louvain as we approached - a squadron of the Household Cavalry already there, and sporadic shooting sounding from the town. We had harboured in the gardens of the Royal Palace of Laeken the previous night, we had covered a hundred miles the previous day, nothing could stop us.

 

As we drove up to a road fork on the west side of Louvain we could almost picture the last German vehicle leaving the eastern bounds of the town. There was a small cheering group of Belgians standing beside the road, several of them priests or seminarists, and they seemed in a state of high excitement. One, huge, red-haired, and yelling his head off with enthusiasm, was pointing down the right hand of the road fork and managed, cassock flying, to get a foothold on the leading tank.

 

´Come on, boys, you're right up with him!' There was no doubt about it from voice and demeanour. This was an Irishman.

 

But very soon thereafter we came to a series of great water obstacles, the Albert Canal, the Escaut Canal. There were blown bridges, and bridging sites covered by German fire. There were even reports of German mobile columns on the march towards our flank. We crossed in open order the heathland near the mining town of Bourg Leopold and lost our leading tanks to well-deployed anti-tank guns. We were told that SS troops were in position. There were large woods along the main roads from which ambush parties could operate only too effectively. The awful suspicion began to dawn that the party over.

 

It was. Henceforth the campaign was going to be a matter of deploying and attacking small parties of the enemy holding, with skill and courage, key points on our route; or, laboriously, of our finding a way round. This was to set the pattern of the advance through northern Belgium, Holland and Western Germany. lt is a form of warfare in which small bodies of troops, in defence, can inflict disproportionate casualties and impose disproportionate delay; and the terrain was Well suited to it. Much of the ground astride the roads was soft polder in which tanks bogged. Roads were easily covered from woods and banks. Deployment for operations was laborious. Infantry were at a premium and the enormous mass of vehicles which constituted an armoured division and its logistic train often seemed to impede rather than  exploit mobility.

 

We trundled on towards the Dutch frontier. We crossed the Albert Canal. By the night of 11th September, a week after leaving Brussels. we were approaching the Escaut Canal up a long, straight, tree-lined road. The Irish Guards were across the water and holding a shallow bridgehead on the far side, but it looked as if onward movement was liable to be astonishingly sticky. lt seemed to us extraordinary. How had the Germans - surrendering in such huge numbers only a week or so earlier - recovered?

 

Montgomery has given his own reasoning in his memoirs. The Allies, he said, should have `acted quickly in the middle of August, using the success gained in Normandy as a springboard for a hard blow which would finish off the Germans and at the same time give us all the ports we needed ... To do these things we had to have a plan and concentration of effort. We had neither ... had we adopted a proper operational plan in the middle of August and given it a sound administrative and logistic backing we should have secured bridgeheads over the Rhine and seized the Ruhr before winter set in.' This leads to the (by now familiar) complaint that Eisenhower dissipated Allied strength and that the objective could have been attained had Montgomery and his 21st Army Group been given sufficient strength. Instead, allegedly, there was an uncoordinated advance on several fronts from north to south, sufficiently strong nowhere.

 

I disagree. The advance in the northern part of the warfront, by Montgomery's Army Group, was not inhibited by absence of concentrated effort. That would imply lack of strength at the critical point, strength diverted to the Americans further south. There was no lack of strength, if by `strength´ is meant troops, equipment, firepower. There here may have been, at the level and from the perspective of Army logistic planners, impending shortage of supplies, particularly petrol, but we certainly didn't suffer from it up to the point when our advance was checked, not by lack of fuel but by the Germans. Thereafter I accept that the Montgomery thesis is tenable - that the fuel situation (other supplies created negligible difficulties by that stage) might have forced a decision between north and centre if the ultimate advance was not to stall. That lay well in the future. In the autumn of 1944, had Montgomery been given what he asked - command of a `thrust by forty divisions' north of the Ardennes - it is difficult to believe things would have moved noticeably better or faster.

 

Because the first truth is that by then the Allies had such a mass of vehicles, both tracked and wheeled, that rapid progress was absolutely dependent on a large number of parallel and interconnecting roads, and in the Low Countries these could not possibly carry the traffic involved. Lack of road space limited the force which could be deployed. Deployment off roads was difficult because of the terrain. The Armies were vehicle-bound. Infantry were absolutely necessary for the fighting, when it occurred, but nobody marched, although henceforth the distances were not great. A vehicle-bound army generates correspondingly greater demand for fuel - and more fuel-carrying vehicles. Internally and organizationally the Army, and every unit in it, was wastefully devised, and slow and laborious to move. This penalty was insufficiently offset by greater firepower and tactical mobility at the sharp end.

 

The second truth is that the Germans (Field Marshal von Rundstedt, with a a cool, experienced strategic head, had been brought back in overall command in the West, having been sacked by Hitler during he Normandy campaign) had recovered something of their balance. The experienced, skilful staffs of the Wehrmacht had somehow assembled new troops, organized the disorganized, sorted out priorities, assigned tasks and ably distributed the very scarce resources. I can see that long, straight road running through woods towards the Escaut Canal on 11th September. Night was falling. A tank was burning beside the road. Other vehicles were on fire here and there. lt was going to be necessary to move some forces through the woods, to get round the obstruction, the fires, covered as they were by German anti-tank and machine gun fire; and this was, in fact, done by the Irish Guards. But we were no longer facing a beaten army. We had, I think, relaxed somewhat, lost impetus. I suspect there may have been a few days at the end of August when a sufficiently vigorous thrust somewhere, taking risks, remorselessly driven, might - conceivably - have kept the Germans on the run. Patton, perhaps, might have done it - it needed a real thruster, backed from above. But I suspect that by the end of the first week of September the chance had gone.

 

The third truth about the situation, the slowing of the great post Normandy pursuit and the failure to end the war in 1944, was, I consider, faulty planning. Nobody in my humble position could form any idea on such things at the time but I have had plenty of opportunity to think about them since. The bad planning was exemplified by out next operation, the operation which took us across the Escaut Canal and into Holland, the operation which was meant to see us over the Rhine and (according to Montgomery) to enable the Allies to encircle the Ruhr before winter. lt was called MARKET GARDEN.

 

I can see out harbour area before the launch MARKET GARDEN, immediately south of the Escaut, over which the Irish Guards had captured their bridgehead a few days previously - at once named `Joe´s Bridge´in honour of the unforgettable Joe Vandeleur. We - and they - had been at rest for a blessed interval, maintaining our tanks in pleasant meadows near the Army Corps and Divisional centre-line, which was to run from a place called Hechtel behind us (stubbornly defended by the SS against the Welsh Guards Group) over `Joe´s Bridge´, and through Eindhoven to the lower Rhine at Nijmegen (called the Waal at that point); and then to the northern arm of the great river (the Neder Rijn) at Arnhem. Advance up this centre-line was to be as rapid as possible since it would be proceded by a great drop of Állied´airborne forces: the whole of the 1st Airborne Corps, led by our own General Frederick'Boy' Browning, who had commanded our Battalion until 1939, and whose Corps now included the British 1st Airborne Division, the 82nd and 101st US Airborne Divisions and a Polish Airborne Brigade. We relaxed in glorious sunshine, enjoying a certain issue of German Army champagne captured from their special wine store in Brussels, relishing a few hours and days of comparative leisure and uncurtailed sleep.

[BillB]

I picked up a copy of David Fraser´s memoirs in UK last week. He served in Guards AD during the war and makes a few interesting comments about Market Garden. I´m OCRing the relevant  section and will post it up over the next couple of days. The first part (below) deals with Guards AD activities between the liberation of Brussels and the start of MG and has some interesting observations on why the British advance had begun to stick.

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I hope it's better than his "We Shall Shock Them". From what I've seen of his work it is notable more for what it skims over and/or ignores than anything else. Like most of the stuff written by Brit officers. I thnik they must get training on it at Sandhurst.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[BillB]

I fail to see why the land would be blacked out. If they knew the a/c would return after dark (I fully agree that leaving at Odark30 would be a no-go) they could have made arrangements to light up selected areas to use as navigational beacons and lit up the airfields, like Mitscher lit up his fleet to get the late strike home at the Philippine Sea. The planes probably wouldn't find their way to their own airfields, but most would get down safely somewhere.

Come on King, let it go, you are grasping at straws. The place was blacked out due to the fear of German bombers and intruders, who were a lot more active even that late in the war than folk realise IIRC. Besides, think how much civilian bureaucracy would have to have been co-ordinated to overcome the blackout, which was enforcable by law. Look at the rigmarole they had at Tatton Park just to get permission to drop a few trainee parachutists. Ref the comparison with the Philippine Sea, not in a million years with pilots and navigators with little to zero night flying experience. As for the bit about folk getting down safely anywhere, think about what you are saying. You are advocating putting more troops on the ground, and then delaying the third lift for at least a day and, more importantly, resupply flights while everybody got themselves sorted out. That would have been no better than what was done, and quite possibly worse as you are going to have transports with minimal night flying charging about all over the place, and then the survivors doing the same with inexperienced navigators in daylight the next day.

 

There is the slight difference that in the Med and at Normandy the whole mission was conducted in the dark. A second lift at M-G would have had only to return in the dark.

Er no. Two get two lifts in you have to have a dark o'clock take off and forming up, which is why the idea was canned I think, nothing to do with complaints that the pilots might be tired. The essential point is the poor navigation and subsequent chaos that ensued in the dark at both places, irrespective of whethere the whole mission was carried out in the dark or not.

 

Which problems were these that could not have been solved with another injection of troops? With two more brigades I think the 1st could have gotten to the bridge even if they did use three routes.

As I've shown, the single brigade could have got to the bridge with a bit more application. I'll grant you a bit more combat power might not have gone amiss, but two para brigades would have been no more bullet proof than one when they came up against Grabner's light recce armour and the heavier armour with Kampfgruppes Spindler and Harder. What they needed was something to counter the armour, and there was nothing. Also, you are assuming that two brigades would have moved faster, but there is no reason to assume any such thing, or that the SS reaction would have been any slower.

 

Which is why interdiction of the NJG's bases would have been on the cards, if the whole thing had been properly planned.

If they couldn't quell the NJG to assist the higher priority strategic bombing campaign what makes you think they were willing or indeed able to do it on behalf of a one off airborne op that was going to be taking place mainly in daylight anyway?

 

The planning, IMHO, was the weak point. So many drops had been aborted that M-G became a pick-up game using planners who didn't think it would happen.  M-G was one of the most hastily-planned operations in NWE.

Sorry, I don't think this line about all the aborts really holds water, not least because it is used as an excuse for the failings of 1st Airborne Div by Urquhart. I also think you are overplaying the hasty planning bit too. They had several days to put the thing together, and the respective staffs were paid to do that kind of thing full time. The flaws aren't to do with poor planning , with the arguable exception of the RAF planners choice of DZs, but because competent planning was laid on flawed assumptions and/or practical limitations. The drops went like clockwork and most of the objectives were attained as planned, remember.

 

Nothing official, you are the one with access to that stuff. I have seen it mentioned in a couple of secondary sources.

I asked because I've seen nothing to support it except Gavin's off the cuff comment, and in any case the air plan doesn't support it as I've already pointed out.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[KingSargent]

Come on King, let it go, you are grasping at straws. The place was blacked out due to the fear of German bombers and intruders, who were a lot more active even that late in the war than folk realise IIRC. And do you think that the intruders would be flying over Blighty when M-G was distracting them? Besides, think how much civilian bureaucracy would have to have been co-ordinated to overcome the blackout, which was enforcable by law. Look at the rigmarole they had at Tatton Park just to get permission to drop a few trainee parachutists. Is true, but that was local bureaucracy at its dimmest. I think that had Churchill told them to bluntly the Home Secy could have gotten the lights turned on. Ref the comparison with the Philippine Sea, not in a million years with pilots and navigators with little to zero night flying experience. The Army had more basic night training than Navy carrier pilots (except the night specialists of course). The pilots thought it could have been done.

 

As for the bit about folk getting down safely anywhere, think about what you are saying. You are advocating putting more troops on the ground, and then delaying the third lift for at least a day and, more importantly, resupply flights while everybody got themselves sorted out. I am fully aware of that, but if you get Day One AND Day Two's lifts in on Day One, then you can use Day Two to sort it out. I doubt the whole lift would be coming in after dark, the first serials probably could have made it in by dusk, and to their own fields.

Especially with weather being uncertain, the more you get on the ground on Day One the better off you are. And very possibly if 1st Abn had enough men on the ground to hold a bigger DZ, the supply flights wouldn't have given all the goodies to the Germans...

That would have been no better than what was done, and quite possibly worse as you are going to have transports with minimal night flying charging about all over the place, and then the survivors doing the same with inexperienced navigators in daylight the next day.

Er no. Two get two lifts in you have to have a dark o'clock take off and forming up, which is why the idea was canned I think, nothing to do with complaints that the pilots might be tired. The essential point is the poor navigation and subsequent chaos that ensued in the dark at both places, irrespective of whethere the whole mission was carried out in the dark or not.

 

As I've shown, the single brigade could have got to the bridge with a bit more application. I'll grant you a bit more combat power might not have gone amiss, but two para brigades would have been no more bullet proof than one when they came up against Grabner's light recce armour and the heavier armour with Kampfgruppes Spindler and Harder. What they needed was something to counter the armour, and there was nothing. Also, you are assuming that two brigades would have moved faster, but there is no reason to assume any such thing, or that the SS reaction would have been any slower. More troops means more options. They just might have managed to get more recce jeeps and AT in. Given another lift I would have sent some abn light tanks in. They would have been worthless against heavy German armor, but they could shoot up light recce armor quite successfully, and most of the ad hoc German units had no armor at all.

Two brigades might not have moved faster, but they could put more punch into more routes. The Germans wouldn't have to move slower if the British had the power to overrun them.

 

If they couldn't quell the NJG to assist the higher priority strategic bombing campaign what makes you think they were willing or indeed able to do it on behalf of a one off airborne op that was going to be taking place mainly in daylight anyway? Because they would be told they would face a firing squad if they didn't? Air Force lack of cooperation was endemic, but put a few careers on the line and I think the RAF (had to be them, USAAF night capability was limited) could have kept a corner of Holland near the coast clear.

Sorry, I don't think this line about all the aborts really holds water, not least because it is used as an excuse for the failings of 1st Airborne Div by Urquhart. Just because you don't like Roy and would roast Boy over a slow fire if given the opportunity, does not mean that Urquhart's 'excuse' does not hold water. After all,some of the planners who botched it were his... I also think you are overplaying the hasty planning bit too. They had several days to put the thing together, and the respective staffs were paid to do that kind of thing full time. Bill, every other op of this magnitude - essentially another invasion - had months to plan and prepare. The flaws aren't to do with poor planning, with the arguable exception of the RAF planners choice of DZs, but because competent planning was laid on flawed assumptions and/or practical limitations. The drops went like clockwork and most of the objectives were attained as planned, remember. Right. They just weren't strong enough to do everything. IMHO, that was because the planners counted on there being no resistance, either to the airborne landings or to 30 Corps' advance.

I asked because I've seen nothing to support it except Gavin's off the cuff comment, and in any case the air plan doesn't support it as I've already pointed out.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[Dave Clark]

I hope it's better than his "We Shall Shock Them". From what I've seen of his work it is notable more for what it skims over and/or ignores than anything else. Like most of the stuff written by Brit officers. I thnik they must get training on it at Sandhurst. 

 

all the best

 

BillB

282702[/snapback]

 

Bill, I appreciate that it's hardly a primary source, but I thought it might be interesting to give a feel of the atmosphere at the time and the views of one who was actually at the sharp end. Perhaps I was seduced (!) by the cover photo (the Guards crossing Nijmegen bridge) and the dustcover blurb, but it was only 6 pounds being remaindered so it wasn't a major investment. I must admit to being somewhat disappointed by the fairly short coverage of MG which did not quite live up to the blurb.

[cheese possessed]

A very good primary source Is "Arnhem Lift" by Louis Hagen. Hagen was a glider pilot who landed in the second wave, and then went on to fight in the "Glider pilot house" on the west side of the Oosterbeeck pocket. His account is very "fresh", as he wrote it shortly after the battle (he was fed up with having to repeat his story so many times!).

 

[A chapter also describes the experiences of his friend Maj Winrich Behr - who was adjutant to Model during the Arnhem battle.]

 

The book contains a great deal of detail about the actual battle inside the pocket, but what makes this account exceptional is that Hagen was actually a native German Jew (he'd escaped to England after a spell in Nazi prison): on many occasions during the battle he was in earshot of the Germans, and was able to understand exactly how they were reacting. He also interrogated prisoners, and was frequently summoned to Div HQ.

 

Hagen clearly illustrates the enormous difference in morale and fighting aggressiveness between the British/Polish airborne troops and the Germans, whom he observed to be of very poor quality and motivation (and it was SS troops he was describing). Despite their overwhelming superiority in arms, the Germans displayed extreme timidity - at least in the battles on Hagen's street. He describes the poignancy of the British frequently discovering opportunities to roll back the Germans (eg patrols discovered that the Germans withdrew from their battle positions by night, to a rear location that could have been interdicted), but lacking the resources to exploit them.

 

Behr also describes how incredulous he and Model were that the German units were apparently unable to snuff out the very weak British force.

 

Although Hagen stresses that this account was his personal experience at the tactical level, his insight into the German side of the battle leaves one with the conclusion that, had The Bridge been reached by a sizeable part of the British/Polish force, it could undoubtably have been held until the arrival of XXX Corps - albeit at high cost.

[Dave Clark]

Here´s part 2 which covers the period of MG:

 

And then, in the early afternoon of 17th September, we saw overhead the great fleet of aircraft - troop carriers, gliders, escorts. They had come from England and were helding towards Arnhem and Nijmegen - at both of which a substantial bridge spans the river, so that both needed capture if the Army was to meet Montgomery's aim of crossing the Rhine and launching an offensive to encircle the Ruhr. The aircraft, in impressively huge numbers, moved northward. This meant that at a certain hour, I cannot remember how long afterwards, We would be on the move ourselves. The Guards Armoured Division was the spearhead of General Horrocks's XXX Corps for Operation MARKET GARDEN, intended to link up with the airborne forces. Two other British Corps, VIII and XII, were to attack to widen the corridor driven northward by XXX Corps, on its east and west respectively.

 

The advance of our Division was preceded by a deafening artillery preparation - the Division's movement was supported by seventeen artillery regiments and heavy mortars from several other divisions.Then there was a delay, of a very familiar kind - we were at immediate notice to move, but `something' in front was holding things up. It was nearly dark by the time we moved across `Joe's Bridge' and it was already clear that the race to Arnhem via Nijmegen would be liable to delays. A significant number of Irish Guards tanks - the Irish Guards Group had been nominated as leaders - were burning beside the road.

 

Progress, therefore, was slow. At frequent points the north-running road crossed a minor waterway and a well-placed demolition was enough to cause delay to an armoured column with its heavy vehicles. Our engineers were admirable but it took time to bring the armoured bridging equipment to the right point (and time to find that point, and reconnoitre the approaches to it) and there wasn't an infinite amount of bridging - or time. Nevertheless I remember the impressive silhouette of the long bridge across the Maas (Meuse) at Grave. This had been captured by the American airborne troops and took us across the first main water obstacle at about ten o'clock in the morning of 19th September. By then the operation had been running for over forty hours and was already well behind schedule. I didn't see him at that moment but friends told me that Boy Browning - immaculate as always - was standing on the bridge when our tanks arrived. The leading squadron commander was Alec Gregory-Hood. He dismounted and. covered in dust, unrecognizable, went up to the general and saluted.

 

`Who are you?'

`Sir, it's Alec!' Alec had been a subaltern in Boy Browning's Battalion.

`Good God!' was the characteristic response. `I always said it would be cleaner to come by air!' And by then Boy Browning must have been fretting painfully about the timetable.

 

The next picture I have is of a Dutch cafe in the outskirts of Nijmegen, a few miles up the road north of Grave. There a quick conference was being held at midday on 19th September and orders were being given out. Beside our own people American uniforms were everywhere. Members of the Dutch Resistance were buzzing around us like bees, with information (we hoped) of where the Germans were. Our task and our hope was that an armoured column could smash their way through the town, using the main road to the Waal, and cross the enormous road bridge - Nijmegen lies entirely on the south bank. That would mean the southern arm of the Rhine in Allied hads, and a short drive - about thirteen miles, no more - up a broad, hard-surfaced, raised road to the northern arm of the river, the Neder Rijn, at Arnhem thereafter. Then the Allies would be across the Rhine.

 

The American 82nd Airborne Division, whose mission had included capture of the Nijmegen bridge, had been dropped some distance away to the south-east and west. They had then advanced into the town, on the south bank, and found it strongly defended. The Germans had prepared effective defences, had fired a large number of houses near the bridge and were in considerable force. The road approaches were covered by anti-tank gun and machine gun fire. The Americans had had a hard fight and suffered considerable casualties. Like the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem they had been waiting for two  days and nights for the relieving force of the British Second Army led by ourselves. Meanwhile Nijmegen was in German hands.

 

A group from Alec Gregory-Hood's squadron and a company of the 1st Battalion, in their lightly armoured troop carriers, was composed and set off. Another group was directed on the railway which crosses the river a short way to the west of the road bridge and which was being used by the Germans for vehicle traffic, sleepers having been laid between the rails. Yet another small group - a troop of our tanks and two 1st Battalion platoons with some American nfantrymen - was simultaneously sent to try to reach the main Nijmegen Post Office, where information (untrue) was that the Germans controlled remote firing mechanisms which could demolish the bridge; and the bridge was what mattered. Street maps of Nijmegen were distributed. We soon heard that the ftirst group, aiming at the road bridge, was held up, that our troop leader, John Moller, had been killed and that the town south of the bridge was stiff with Germans. Similar reports came through from the party moving towards the railway bridge, who were eventually halted, not far from the southern bank, and surrounded by Germans; they spent uncomfortable hours, isolated from the rest of us. The group directed on the Post Office actually got there. Communications were near-impossible in the built-up areas with the radio sets of those days. To discover where people were and what had happened generally needed physical contact and a visit.

 

By nightfall on that first Nijmegen evening, with our groups at various points in a town strongly held by the Germans, it was evident that Nijmegen would have to be cleared methodically, and that that would take time. This was grim news - the operation had now been running about fifty-five hours. Our hopes of rushing a bridge across the enormous Waal had been frustrated. The bridge itself had not been blown, but to cross the river would need a battle.

 

And so it proved. More recently I have seen many films and television programmes dealing with MARKET GARDEN, in some of which it was suggested - sometimes by distinguished commentators - that the delay in reaching the bridge at Arnhem (being defended by 1st Airborne Division with great gallantry) was caused by sluggardly conduct or procedural niceties. I have even heard that `there was nothing to stop them [our Division]- nothing there' (between Nijmegen and Arnhem). Such comments are fantasy. Nijmegen was full of German troops, street-fighting is a slow, laborious business, and before it was sufficiently advanced there could be no further attempt on the bridge. The attempt by John Moller's troop on our first afternoon had been frustrated.

 

The fighting in the streets, therefore, was likely to go on throughout the next day, 20th September. I was sent by Eddie Goulburn to see our Brigade Commander, Norman Gwatkin, and to give him details of the plan to clear Nijmegen. I arrived at Brigade Headquarters, just outside Nijmegen, at about four in the morning. Norman Gwatkin was a man of enormous character. A Coldstreamer, with a high colour, a choleric expression, a loud and infectious laugh, he was loved by our Grenadiers and known as were few senior officers. `There's the Brigadier!' they would say, chuckling, and I remember one Sergeant adding, `and he's an inspiration to the men!' - a rare, articulate observation. He cheered all men, wherever they were and whatever the circumstances: and when an advance was held up by German defensive posts and the situation was obscure the column would generally be passed by the Brigadier, driving himself in a jeep, small pennant flying, pipe in mouth, heading for the front, for the tip of the spear, to see what was up.

 

On this occasion I stumbled in the darkness round the vehicles of Brigade Headquarters and was told the Brigadier was asleep in his caravan. 'So you'd better go and wake him up!' said the Brigade Major, Miles Fitzalan-Howard, with an unsympathetic smile. I found the caravan steps, climbed, knocked and entered. Norman Gwatkin turned on a light and opened an eye. I explained I had brought Colonel Goulburn's plan for the battle of Nijmegen and the capture of the bridge, if not blown.

 

`Shall I show it to you, Sir?´I had marked a town map.

`No, thank you,' he said, very kindly. ´Í´m sure if Colonel Eddie is satisfied with it, it's an excellent plan. Please thank him. Goodnight´ He turned out his light and was no doubt asleep again by the time I was down the caravan steps. Another good lesson of its kind.

 

Earlier in the evening I had been sent to try to make contact with our group which had aimed at the Post Office. Communications had failed utterly and nobody knew where they were or if anything had happened. I eventually discovered the Post Office, without harassment by Germans, and found our Troop commander´s tank outside it. The Troop commander was Jim Scott, later to be a neighbour and dear friend in Hampshire.

 

Jim, who had been trying to make contact wth Battalion or squadron headquarter as indomitably as we had been trying to get through to him, was curled up with his radio headset on the turret floor of his Sherman, as far down as it was possible to get, hoarse with shouting. He had found, he said, that the intolerable radio interference in his earphones was marginally better in that position and he had adopted it. Now, after a taxing hour yelling into the ether in this exceptionallv uncomfortable position, he looked up and saw me at the turret hatch.

 

He told me long afterwards that it was a great disappointment. He was sure - or almost sure - that he had managed to make some sort of contact, and now I'd spoiled it bv turning up in person. He was out best Troop commander and a man, throughout life, trusted and loved by all who had dealings with him. Now he explained that, as far as anybody could discover, there was no detonation plunger mechanism n the Nijmegen Post Office. No importance at all in the Post Office, in fact.

 

Throughout the next day, 2oth September, fighting continued and the clearance of Nijmegen proceeded. Towards the end of the afternoon the Valkof was attacked by the King's Company, supported by the tanks of James Bowes-Lyon's squadron. The Valkof was a high wooded mound, an ornamental public park with mock fortifications and many tunnels. It commanded the final approaches to the main road bridge and the Grenadiers of the King's Company climbed the very steep slopes to its summit while our Sherman tanks poured in fire from between houses on the other side of the moat. Vicary Gibbs, the King's Company acting commander, and several more were killed but eventually the approaches to the Waal seemed clear.

 

At seven o'clock on that evening of 2oth September a column of our tanks, commanded by Peter Carrington, rushed the bridge. It was an exciting moment, with, at any moment, the possibility of a mighty explosion, the bridge sundered and the adventure over. Then we heard, listening to our radio sets, that there had been no explosion. We were across the Waal.

 

Next morning, 21st September, I accompanied our Commanding Officer, Rodney Moore, to the far side. The huge structure was in our hands. Without the bridge at Arnhem it was of little operational significance, but we didn't know what was happening at Arnhem and to us it seemed that we, the Grenadiers, were over the Rhine. A few destroyed vehicles, a few corpses in field grey lying by the bridge approach, and then the mighty river. On the north bank Peter Carrington was in control, brisk and assured as usual, but annoyed by a German high-velocity gun, I expect an 88, which was firing shells at our little bridgehead.

 

Further west our group aiming at the railway bridge reached it at 9 o'clock that morning. Rodney Moore sent me to make contact with the group commander. This was Johnnie Neville, Alec Gregory-Hood's squadron second-in-command. He was a delightful man, tall, saturnine, an exceptional soldier (a businessman in civilian life), with a sardonic sense of humour and a kindness of heart he ineffectually tried to conceal. Affecting a good deal of admiration for most things American (which experience of business had to some extent inculcated in him) he was only slightly older than me and my contemporaries, but in sophistication he seemed a whole generation senior and we held him in awe. He was downright, brave, witty and

competent.

 

He was standing on the south end of the railway bridge, having spent by now two nights and a day surrounded by elements of the Wehrmacht, and wore his usual rather mocking grin as he told me what had happened. What had happened, as he explained with his usual economy of language, was that after a considerable fire fight the Germans had decided to pack it in. They'd moved - fast. He hadn't lost a man; about 150 enemy dead were counted. I remember it as an occasion - there were many and they always struck me with surprise - when the entire German defensive position on the bridge and by the southern ramp up to it was covered by a vast mass of paper - army forms of one sort and another, returns,indenting forms, report forms. were blowing in all directions. Paper is, or was, a considerable element in the detritus of war.

[Colin Williams]

I hope it's better than his "We Shall Shock Them". From what I've seen of his work it is notable more for what it skims over and/or ignores than anything else. Like most of the stuff written by Brit officers. I thnik they must get training on it at Sandhurst. 

 

all the best

 

BillB

282702[/snapback]

 

Personally I enjoyed Fraser's memoirs. He is a good writer with an fascinating (to an American at least) family and an interesting personal and professional history that runs from the years immediately following WW1 up to the 1970s. Fraser certainly reflects his background as a Guardsman and does not go out of his way to destroy the reputations of those he fought with. On the other hand, he shares with Michael Carver the unusual and valuable perspective of one who saw WW2 as a junior officer in both staff and frontline positions and then rose to high rank in the postwar years. Neither Carver nor Fraser spend as much space on their WW2 experiences as one would like, but of course those years represent relatively small fractions of their military careers. Still, I appreciate their ability to view their youthful battlefield experiences from the perspective of seasoned officers of long service and high rank. Fraser also has some insightful observations on the career of this father, who was an officer in both a Highland and Guards regiment (roughly a Monty contemporary), had commanded a battalion in WW1, reattained battalion command in the 1930s (commenting that he felt he had a better grip on the job the first time) and then rising to brigadier in command of the Guards brigade in Norway before falling out of favor and being shunted off to retirement. There are many other aspects of the book worth discussing, but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you!

 

I agree that "And We Shall Shock Them" is a little dull, but it is fairly unique as a Anglocentric survey of campaigns in WW2. "Alanbrooke" is a first rate work.

[baboon6]

Anybody here read David Kershaw's It Never Snows In September? Is it worth getting?

[JohnB]

On the other hand, he shares with Michael Carver the unusual and valuable perspective of one who saw WW2 as a junior officer in both staff and frontline positions and then rose to high rank in the postwar years.

 

 

Mike Carver commanded 4th Armoured Brigade from late June '44 onwards from 1st RTR.

Edit. The youngest Brigadier in the Army at 29?

 

http://www.warlinks.com/armour/4th_armoured/chapter_5.html

Edited February 16, 2006 by JohnB

[Colin Williams]

Mike Carver commanded 4th Armoured Brigade from late June '44 onwards from  1st RTR.

Edit. The youngest Brigadier in the Army at 29?

 

http://www.warlinks.com/armour/4th_armoured/chapter_5.html

287216[/snapback]

 

And before that he served as a Captain on the staff of 7th Armoured Division from the beginning of the war in the desert, moved up as a Major to the staff of XXX Corps during Crusader and Gazala, and became GSO1 in 7th Armoured Division during Alamein to Tunisia. By the end of the war he'd seen more first hand than just about any serving brigadier, and he kept getting in trouble with divisional and corps commanders 20 years his senior who, in his opinion, were ignorant of how to command a higher formation and fight the Germans.

[BillB]

Anybody here read David Kershaw's It Never Snows In September? Is it worth getting?

287209[/snapback]

Yes, it's worth getting. Gives the German side of the story with a lot of stuff from German primary source stuff. Not perfect, it jumps about a bit, a careful reading throws up some contradictions and his conclusion is a bit conventional IIRC (don't have my copy to hand) but still well worth getting hold of.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[Dave Clark]

Personally I enjoyed Fraser's memoirs. He is a good writer with an fascinating (to an American at least) family and an interesting personal and professional history that runs from the years immediately following WW1 up to the 1970s. Fraser certainly reflects his background as a Guardsman and does not go out of his way to destroy the reputations of those he fought with. On the other hand, he shares with Michael Carver the unusual and valuable perspective of one who saw WW2 as a junior officer in both staff and frontline positions and then rose to high rank in the postwar years. Neither Carver nor Fraser spend as much space on their WW2 experiences as one would like, but of course those years represent relatively small fractions of their military careers. Still, I appreciate their ability to view their youthful battlefield experiences from the perspective of seasoned officers of long service and high rank. Fraser also has some insightful observations on the career of this father, who was an officer in both a Highland and Guards regiment (roughly a Monty contemporary), had commanded a battalion in WW1, reattained battalion command in the 1930s (commenting that he felt he had a better grip on the job the first time) and then rising to brigadier in command of the Guards brigade in Norway before falling out of favor and being shunted off to retirement.  There are many other aspects of the book worth discussing, but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you!

286969[/snapback]

 

Thanks for that , Colin. Encouragement enough for me to post Part 3!

 

On that morning of 21st September the Irish Guards Group took up the lead, and tried to get up the road to Arnhem. They couldn't get far, losing tanks to enemy fire almost immediately. The road runs on raised dykes, deployment for armour off it is impossible and it resembles an attempt to drive in the face of the enemy through a tunnel on one-vehicle front. By this time troops of the American 82nd Division, crossing the wide river further downstream in borrowed and unfamiliar British flat-bottomed assault boats with canvas sides - and crossing it under fire, an outstandingly brave performance - had joined up with us on the north bank. An infantrv division was brought up and later reached the south bank of the Neder Rijn, but by then our our Airborne troops at Arnhem had been worsted. It was all over - had been over since early morning that day when the gallant remnants of the British parachute battalion holding the north end of the Arnhem bridge were overwhelmed.

 

The tactical flaws in MARKET GARDEN have been discussed frequent1y and I can add little. The command and communications set-up was peculiar. Boy Browning had command of his 1st Airborne Corps Divisions after they dropped or landed, yet the land battle would inevitably lie with XXX Corps (General Horrocks), under which were the advancing divisions, including our own. When artillery is required to support another formation (and the main weight of artillery would inevitably be with XXX Corps) such things matter.

 

Clearly there can be dispute until the end of time about the dropping zones for the airborne divisions, and their distance from the key objectives, the Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges; such disputes generally turn on factors of time, space, securitv and likely enemy reactions, and no doubt some judgements, with hindsight, could have been better made. There has also been plenty of argument about whether more could have been made of the comparative effectiveness of glider-borne troops (which land united rather than scattered and are thus more quickly and effectively deployed) over parachutists for the key objectives where time was of the essence. Also discussed incessantly has been the intelligence available to the airborne commanders and their deductions from it. It has been suggested that the presence in the Arnhem area of 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions - resting from the Eastern front, depleted in numbers but being refitted and always formidable - was or could have been known. 1st Airborne Division was dropped into something of a hornets' nest.

 

lt also seems curious that no airborne forces were dropped south of the Arnhem bridge - between the two bridges - until 21st September, when the battle for Arnhem was already lost. This was attributed to weather but it was surely crucial to the concept. The ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen was wholly unsuitable for rapid advance by armoured forces unless an intermediate force could be got into Position.

 

Overlaying all these points was the timetable for the ground forces' advance, in relationship to the amount of time the airborne forces would need to hold their objectives. This timetable was impossibly optimistic and implied a bad appreciation of terrain by planners. Furthermore the Nijmegen bridge - key to any attempt to drive to Arnhem - was perhaps not given a sufficiently decisive priority as an airborne forces objective. The British XXX Corps, the relieving force, therefore found two major rivers ahead of them after crossing the Maas, with bridges over both all or partly in German hands and with the town of Nijmegen thick with German troops. Not a situation lending itself to rapid solution.

 

Then there is the question of why the operation was aimed at Nijmegen and Arnhem - at two rivers - in the first place. To aim - if there was to be such an attempt at all - further upstream, at somewhere like Wesel, or Rees, where the Rhine was ultimately crossed, would have meant concentration on only one crossing. lt has been said that this would have exposed the airborne invasion to dangerously heavy flak from the air defences of the Ruhr - it would have taken place some thirty miles nearer the latter. Thirty miles? I find the argment unconvincing. And our airforces had plenty of experience, by then, at blanketing off anti-aircraft fire with the weight of their preliminary bombardment if that was the need.

 

But, in my opinion, more fundamental than any of these operational questions was the concept, the object, the overall purpose. This was defined by Montgomery - and Eisenhower supported the operation, and had assumed authority after Normandy as land forces commander- as to debouch from the Rhine, encircle the enemy forces in the Ruhr, isolate it, and thus make it improbable that Germany could continue the war into the winter. It must be self-evident that for this enormous advance by a most circuitous route the supply line of communication woUld have to be adequate. Huge tonnages would need to be shipped into the theatre and transported forwards. This placed an absolute premium not only on transport vehicles but on port and road capacity. Yet in the autumn of 1944 much of the Allies' supplies were still coming from Normandy. The critical port was Antwerp, with huge capacity and suitably placed for an advance to or round the Ruhr; and Antwerp was not yet usable because the Germans had left strong forces on the bank of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea and they were still active.

 

Without Antwerp MARKET GARDEN might have succeeded operationally, had every factor or decision which turned out wrong gone the other way; but without Antwerp, I do not believe that MARKET GARDEN could possibly have been exploited for the (only) purpose for which it was devised. Some might rejoin that the existing lines of communication might have still done the job (that is, enabled M0ntgomery's 21st Army Group to advance deep into Germany from Arnhem) had the American Armies further south been reined in. I doubt it - and doubt even more the strateglc and political practicability of reining in General Patton, whose Third Army was racing towards the Southern Rhineland. As it was, the alleged reluctance of Eisenhower to give priority to Montgomery's thrust had no effect whatsoever on the way things went. Operation MARKET GARDEN was, in an exact sense, futile. It was a thoroughly bad idea, badly planned and only - tragically - redeemed by the outstanding courage of those who executed it.

[larrikin]

And before that he served as a Captain on the staff of 7th Armoured Division from the beginning of the war in the desert, moved up as a Major to the staff of XXX Corps during Crusader and Gazala, and became GSO1 in 7th Armoured Division during Alamein to Tunisia. By the end of the war he'd seen more first hand than just about any serving brigadier, and he kept getting in trouble with divisional and corps commanders 20 years his senior who, in his opinion, were ignorant of how to command a higher formation and fight the Germans.

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It didn't help who his step-father was, either.