Operation Market Garden

70 years ago a gigantic cock up occured, cant put it any other way, for one generals vanity many were lost. I understand that the Referendum takes centre stage but we should never forget

 

If I were wearing a hat Id doff it wow what a guy

 

Always makes me think what turns ordinary people into the extra Ordinary?

 

Nothing to do with vanity but a bold attempt to end the war earlier. If it had succeeded then we'd have been across the Rhine in September '44 as opposed to March '45. Yes mistakes were made but that's war for you. I've been to the Arnhem military cemetery - a very moving experience.

 

Hindsight is a wonderful thing as someone who wasn't around in 1944 maybe Im being bit harsh I still think Monty cocked up though

 

Unfair to put the blame at the door of one man. Suggest you read a bit about the whole operation and events leading up to it. As for hindsight - the plan was to cross the Rhine in September 1944 and break out into the northern German plain, surround the Rhur and thus deprive the Wermacht of further supplies of weapons etc. and thus bring the war on the western from to an end. No hindsight involved there but as one general said, plans seldom survive first contact with the enemy and so it proved on this as well as many other occasions.

 

It was a cock up in as far as inteligence had not until it was too late known that there was an SS battlegroup in the drop area refitting, and some of the paras dropped in the wrong place , had the planners known about the SS units , and delayed the drop after dealing with that problem, it may well have worked as others had said, plans only last as far as 1st contact, after that its a case of make it up as you go along, Monty and Patton did not see eye to eye on how to liberate europe and it was because of this that market garden failed,

 

Quite agree it's unfair to place all the blame on Montgomery, due to circumstances beyond his control. Bear in mind another catastrophic plan/action from the 1st World War.... Gallipoli. And a certian Mr Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty was responsible for that debarcle. Many Austrailians and New Zealanders didn't think too highly of him after that. Yet Churchill went on to become one of the most revered Wartime Leaders with the Allies.

 

My late Mother saw some of the 1st casualties when a glider crashed in a field between Hallatrow and Paulton in Somerset,I believe a memorial service is still held on the site every year.I was there with my brother,I was 2 and my late brother 2 months so obviously have no memory of the crash.

 

Oosterbeek cemetery is indeed a sobering place. A poor lad who shares the family surname (its unusual, though common in Kent) is buried there, although he died in the lesser-known Second Battle of Arnhem on 15 April 1945. As far as I have been able to ascertain, he was not a direct relation, but he tragically left behind a wife and child, and only needed to survive another three weeks to reach the end of the war. All death in war is tragic, but death happening so close to the end always seems to carry particular poignancy about the waste of it all.

As for Market Garden, the airborne units of all sides tried their best against unspeakable odds. Mention must be given to the Polish Brigade, who fought hard to cover the withdrawal of the British 1 Airborne Division; their commander, General Stanisław Sosabowski might have expressed initial misgivings about the operation, but was given shabby treatment after the battle despite believing that it could have been won if XXX corps provided more reinforcements for crossing the Rhine from Driel. Instead, this became one of the great 'what ifs' of the war, in a similar vein to Hitler stopping the Wehrmacht short of Dunkirk. Of the whole operation, the strategic principle was good, but the tactical element proved too tough a nut to crack in practice.

 

I think that the full inteligence on the 9th SSPanzer didnt come in until it was very close to the operation start date, and the planners underestemated the number and state of the unit, they thought that they had been destroyed as a fighting force and and such would have possed less of a problem, they did not expect to find a fully rearmed and functioning panzer battlegroup waiting for them .