I have heard Market Garden described my uncle a paratrooper himself, as one of the biggest "military screw ups ever, and Montgomery missed the mark." Found this rather cryptic to be honest, and he never explained it. Anyone shed any light on this mystery?
Operation Market Garden (September 17–September 25, 1944) was an Allied military operation in World War II. Its tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands by large-scale use of airborne forces together with a rapid advance by armored units along the connecting roads, for the strategic purpose of allowing an Allied crossing of the Rhine river, the last major natural barrier to an advance into Germany. The planned rapid advance from the Dutch-Belgian border into northern Germany, across the Maas (Meuse) and two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine), would have outflanked the Siegfried Line and made possible an encirclement of the Ruhr Area, Germany's industrial heartland. The operation was initially successful with the capture of the Waal bridge at Nijmegen on September 20. But it was a failure overall since the British XXX Corps failed to relieve the 1st Airborne Division, who did not secure the road bridge at Arnhem, but managed to hold near the bridge far longer than planned. The Rhine remained a barrier to the Allied advance until the offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945. Due to the Allied defeat at Arnhem, the north of the Netherlands could not be liberated before winter and the 'Hungerwinter' took thousands of lives, particularly in the cities of the Randstad area.
Jeremy Clarkson - who hosts the car programme "TopGear" - made a documentary about world war II. His first documentary was about his father in law, Major Cain, who was awarded the Victoria Cross after Market Garden. He was the only one (our of five Victoria Cross winners) who survived the battle. It's an amazing story and Clarkson tells of how Maj Cain kept this to himself for many years and how it came as a big surprise to him when he first heard of the story. Its a very good programme which tells how Maj fought with the inapt PIAT. http://www.war44.com/forum/war-heros-their-stories/754-major-robert-henry-cain.html
Swan, at least the man (Montogomery) tried, and made a tactical decision and stood by it. Nowadays, too many politicians run the show, not the men who should.
If MArket Garden had succeded it could have knocked months off of the war, and saved tens of thousands of lives, so it was a risk worth taking. It's easy to judge decisions with the benefit of Hindsight - how differently would we look at Operation Overlord if the Germans had been better prepared?
Who runs the show Sadly, that is true. The politicians need to stay out of it and let the men who know what they are doing run things.
op m.g. i think we need to look right back to feb 44,when 40 or so lst and lsi were stripped away to the med.this pushed overlord from may to june. imagine the stores,PETROL,ammo etc,that those lst and lsi could have landed over the beaches,while mullberry was being construckted.and the capture of cherbourg,quickley may have helped as well.17pdr.
