Operation
Market-Garden was proposed by General Bernard
Montgomery soon
after the D-Day invasion. The combined ground
and airborne attack was designed to gain crossings over the large
Dutch rivers, the Mass, Waal and Neder Rijn, to aid the armoured advance
of the British 2nd Army.
On 17th
September 1944, three divisions of the 1st Allied Airbourne Corps
landed in Holland. At the same time the
British 30th Corps advanced from the Meuse-Escaut Canal. The bridges
at Nijmegen and Eindhoven were taken but a German counter-attack created
problems at Arnhem. Of the 9,000 Allied troops at Arnhem, only 2,400
were left when they were ordered to withdraw across the Rhine on 25th
September.
(1)
Orders for the Second British Army
for its part in Operation Market Garden was issued by General Bernard
Montgomery on
14th September, 1944.
(1) The
first task of the Army is to operate northwards and secure the crossings
over the Rhine and Meuse in the general area Amhem-Nijmegen-Grave.
An airborne corps of three divisions is placed under command Second
Army for these operations
(2) The Army will then
establish itself in strength on the general line Zwolle-Deventer-Arnhem,
facing east, with deep bridgeheads to the east side of the Ijssel
river. From this position it will be prepared to advance eastwards
to the general area Rheine-Osnabruck-Hamm-Munster. In this movement
its weight will be on its right and directed towards Hamm, from which
place a strong thrust will be made southwards along the eastern face
of the Ruhr.
(3) The thrust northwards
to secure the river crossings will be rapid and violent, and without
regard to what is happening on the flanks. Subsequently the Army will
take measures to widen the area of
the initial thrust, and to create a secure line of supply.
(2)
Message sent by the commander of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem
(24th September, 1944)
Must warn you unless physical contact is made with us early 25 September
consider it unlikely we can hold out long enough. All ranks now exhausted.
Lack of rations, water, ammunition, and weapons with high officer
casualty rate. Even slight enemy offensive action may cause complete
disintegration. If this happens all will be ordered to break towards
bridgehead if anything rather than surrender. Any movement at present
in face of enemy is not possible. Have attempted our best and will
do so as long as possible.
(3)
Major General R. E. Urquhart, message sent to all troops involved
in the attempt to take Arnhem (28th September 1944)
(1) I want to express to you personally, and to every officer and
man in your division, my appreciation of what you all did at
Arnhem for the Allied cause. I
also want to express to you my own admiration, and the admiration
of us all in 21 Army Group, for the magnificent fighting
spirit that your division displayed in battle against great
odds on the north bank of the Lower Rhine in Holland
(2) There is no shadow
of doubt that, had you failed, operations elsewhere would have been
gravely compromised. You did not fail, and all is well elsewhere.
I would like all Britain to know that in your final message from the
Arnhem area you said: "All will be ordered to break out rather
than surrender. We have attempted our best, and we will continue to
do our best as long as possible." And all Britain will say to
you: "You did your best; you all did your duty; and we are proud
of you."
(3) In the annals of the
British Army there are many glorious deeds. In our Army we have always
drawn great strength and inspiration from past traditions, and endeavoured
to live up to the high standards of those who have gone before. But
there can be few episodes more glorious than the epic of Arnhem, and
those that follow after will find it hard to live up
to the standards that you have set.
(4) So long as we have
in the armies of the British Empire officers and men who will do as
you have done, then we can indeed look forward with complete confidence
to the future. In years to come it will be a great thing for a man
to be able to say: '"I fought at Arnhem"
(5) Please give my best
wishes, and my grateful thanks, to every officer
and man in your division.
(4)
Private Ivor Rowbery of the South Staffordshire
Regiment wrote a farewell letter to his mother before he took part
in Operation Market Garden. He was killed at Arnhem on 17th September
1944. The letter was included in Last Letters Home, a book
edited by Tamasin Day-Lewis.
Usually when I write a letter it is very much overdue, and I make
every effort to get it away quickly. This letter, however, is different.
It is a letter that I hoped you would never receive, as it is verification
of that terse, black-edged card which you received some time ago,
and which has caused you so much grief. It is because of this grief
that wrote this letter, and by the time you have finished reading
it hope that it has done some good, and that have not written it in
vain. It is very difficult to write now of future things in the past
tense, so I am returning to the present.
Tomorrow we go into action.
As yet we do not know exactly what our job will be, but no doubt it
will be a dangerous one in which many lives will be lost - mine may
be one of those lives.
Well, Mom, I am not afraid
to die. I like this life, yes - for the past two years have
planned and dreamed and mapped out a perfect future for myself. I
would have liked
that future to materialise, but it is not what I will but what God
wills, and if by
sacrificing all this I leave the world slightly better than I found
it I am perfectly willing
to make that sacrifice. Don't get me wrong though, Mom, I am no flag-waving
patriot, nor have I ever professed to be.
England's a great little
country (the best there is) but cannot honestly and sincerely say
that it is worth fighting for. Nor can fancy myself in the role of
a gallant crusader fighting for the liberation of Europe. It would
be a nice thought but I
would only be kidding myself. No, Mom, my little world is centred
around you and includes Dad, everyone at home, and my friends at Wolverhampton.
That is worth fighting for and if by doing so it strengthens your
security and improves your lot in any way, then it is worth dying
for too.
Now this is where I come
to the point of this letter. As I have already stated, I am not afraid
to die and am perfectly willing to do so, if, by my doing so, you
benefit in any way whatsoever. If you do not then my sacrifice is
all in vain. Have you benefited,
Mom, or have you cried and worried yourself sick? I fear it is the
latter. Don't you see Mom, that it will do me no good, and that in
addition you are undoing all the good work I have tried to do. Grief
is hypocritical, useless and unfair, and does neither you nor me any
good.
I want no flowers, no
epitaph, no tears. All I want is for you to remember me and feel proud
of me, then shall rest in peace knowing that I have done a good job.
Death is nothing final or lasting, if it were there would be no point
in living; it is just a stage in everyone's life. To some it comes
early, to others late, but it must come to everyone sometime, and
surely there is no better way of dying.
Besides I have probably
crammed more enjoyment into my 21 years than some manage to do in
80. My only regret is that have not done as much for you as I would
have liked to do. I loved you, Mom, you were the best Mother in the
World, and what I failed to do in life I am trying to make up for
in death, so please don't let me down, Mom, don't worry or fret, but
smile, be proud and satisfied. I never had much money, but what little
I have is all yours. Please don't be silly and sentimental about it,
and don't try to spend it on me. Spend it on yourself or the kiddies,
it will do some good that way. Remember that where am I am quite O.K.,
and providing I know that you are not grieving over me shall be perfectly
happy.
Well Mom, that is all,
and I hope I have not written it all in vain. Goodbye, and thanks
for everything. Your unworthy son, Ivor.
(5)
General Dwight
D. Eisenhower,
Crusade in Europe (1948)
On the extreme left the attack against Arnhem went off as planned
on the seventeenth. Three airborne divisions dropped, in column, from
north to south. The northernmost one was the British 1st Airborne
Division, while farther southward were the American 82nd and 101st
Airborne Divisions. The attack began well and unquestionably would
have been successful except for the intervention of bad weather. This
prevented the adequate reinforcement of the northern spearhead and
resulted finally in the decimation of the British airborne division
and only a partial success in the entire operation. We did not get
our bridgehead but our lines had been carried well out to defend the
Antwerp base.
When, in spite of heroic
effort, the airborne forces and their supporting ground forces were
stopped in their tracks, we had ample evidence that much bitter campaigning
was still to come. The British 1st Airborne Division, in the van,
fought one of the most gallant actions of the war, and its sturdiness
materially assisted the two American divisions behind it, and the
supporting ground forces of the Twenty-first Army Group, to take and
hold important areas. But the division itself suffered badly; only
some 2400 succeeded in withdrawing across the river to safety.
(6)
General
Bernard
Montgomery wrote
about Operation Market Garden in his autobiography,
The Memoirs of
Field Marshal Montgomery
(1958)
Operation Market Garden was duly launched on the 17th September
1944. It has been described by many writers. I will not go over it
all again. We did not, as everyone knows, capture that final bridgehead
north of Arnhem. As a result we could not position the Second Army
north of the Neder Rijn at Arnem, and thus place it in a suitable
position to be able to develop operations against the north face of
the Ruhr. But the possession of the crossings over the Meuse at Grave,
and over the Lower Rhine (or Waal as it is called in Holland) at Nijmegen,
were to prove of immense value later on; we had liberated a large
part of Holland; we had the stepping stone we needed for the successful
battles of the Rhineland that were to follow. Without these successes
we would not have been able to cross the Rhine in strength in March
1945 - but we did
not get our final bridgehead, and that must be admitted.
There were many reasons
why we did not gain complete success at Arnhem. The following in my
view were the main ones.
First. The operation was
not regarded at Supreme Headquarters as the spearhead of a major Allied
movement on the northern flank designed to isolate, and finally to
occupy, the Ruhr - the one objective in the West which the Germans
could not afford to lose. There is no doubt in my mind that Elsenhower
always wanted to give priority to the northern thrust and to scale
down the southern one. He ordered this to be done, and he thought
that it was being done. It was not
being done.
Second. The airborne forces
at Arnhem were dropped too far away from the vital objective - the
bridge. It was some hours before they reached it. I take the blame
for this mistake. I should have ordered Second Army and 1st Airborne
Corps to arrange that at least one complete Parachute Brigade was
dropped quite close to the bridge, so that it could have been captured
in a matter of minutes and its defence soundly organised with time
to spare. I did not do so.
Third. The weather. This
turned against us after the first day and we could not carry out much
of the later airborne programme. But weather is always an uncertain
factor, in war and in peace. This uncertainty we all accepted. It
could only have been offset, and the operation made a certainty, by
allotting additional resources to the project, so that it became an
Allied and not merely a British project.
Fourth. The and S.S. Panzer
Corps was refitting in the Arnhem. area, having limped up there after
its mauling in Normandy. We knew it was there. But we were wrong in
supposing that it could not fight effectively; its battle state was
far beyond our expectation. It was quickly brought into action against
the 1st Airborne Division.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
