Market-Garden slide. Arnhem was a bridge too far in that a Rhine crossing at Arnhem would not have succeeded under any conditions.
One of my favorite movies. Wasn’t Arnhem just by luck where they moved a Panzer Division back away from the front randomly for rest. Seemed like bad luck. Favorite line “it just like Monty to plan a bridge too far” or something like that.
In my WW II library there’s a big chunk about Market Garden. The biggest failure, breaking Ike’s and Patton’s first rule was, was trying to depend on a one-lane road to supply the Op. As soon as a tank got on it the trucks were frozen. Even without the heavy vehicles the RedBall guys simply couldn’t deliver enough ammo, etc. to sustain a river crossing on the other side. Just in supply terms alone the bulldozers should have been used to build a real road. We already knew that but Monty was in such a hurry Ike let him go.
I can’t say “A Bridge Too Far” was one of my favourites because so many people died and, unlike fictional movies, I knew those men really did die. Your recollection of the line about the mission being ‘a bridge too far’ is probably more accurate than my recollection of something I saw or read almost 50 years ago. I do recall being on the edge of my seat throughout the last half hour of the film waiting for the turn towards a win because I didn’t know history well enough then to know the mission wasn’t going to succeed.