Operation Market-Garden, the failed attempt to liberate much of the Netherlands and seize a direct route into northern Germany, was the greatest airborne operation in history. But it was an ill-fated undertaking from the outset. The planning began just after Montgomery had stopped the advance of the XXX Corps north of Antwerp. An advance of just another 10 kilometers would have put the whole of the German Fifteenth Army in the bag and prevented most of that army's participation in the late September battles. As early as September 5 and 6, Ultra decrypts had uncovered the fact that the Germans were planning to redeploy the 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions in the Arnhem area for rest and refit -- a fact that the Dutch underground and aerial reconnaissance confirmed during the week immediately before the operation was to begin.  The final ingredient in the recipe for disaster was the appointment of Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning, the worst kind of supercilious British officer, to overall command of the operation. Browning received the appointment over the far more experienced American Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, one of the war's great divisional commanders, for reasons that to this day are not clear. Browning's position in the British army was largely due to British prejudice based on tradition and prestige: Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, apparently felt the need to appoint a Guardsman to a corps command. As the countdown to the start date of September 17, 1944, continued, the Allies seemed to provide their own obstacles to success. The more experienced American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions were assigned easier roles in seizing the bridges on the way to Arnhem, and the most difficult task was left to the British 1st Airborne Division, which had no combat experience. Planners for the 1st Airborne Division then let the RAF air transport commander talk them out of using the fields immediately south of Arnhem as the main drop zone, because of German anti-aircraft gun concentrations. Instead the 1st Airborne dropped into areas that were six miles from their target. General Gavin later commented that if he had been in charge of the Arnhem drop, he would have taken the RAF's refusal to drop the troops closer all the way to Eisenhower. Moreover, there was not enough air transport to carry the whole division, so it was decided that only half would drop the first day and half the second day. The lack of sufficient airlift was made even worse by Browning's decision that he and his headquarters would fly in by glider on the first day and would require no fewer than 34 gliders, all of which came out of the hide of the combat forces. Finally, annoyed at one of his intelligence officers for squawking about the possibility that the German armor might be present in force in the Arnhem area, Browning fired the offending officer and then failed to pass along his warning to the 1st Airborne, which might at least have taken along more anti-tank mines as a precaution if it had been notified of that threat.  The errors continued when the jump was made on the 17th. One of the German commanders in the immediate area was General Kurt Student, the German airborne pioneer, who quickly recognized what the Allies were up to. His Fingerspitzengefuhl (hunch) was soon reinforced when German troops recovered the plans for the operation that an American lieutenant colonel (probably part of Browning's headquarters) had carried with him on a glider that crashed. None of the British radios worked on landing, and Maj. Gen. Roy Urquhart, the British 1st Airborne's commander, got trapped in Arnhem while his colonels argued about who should be in charge. Despite all the command failures and mishaps, the performance of the airborne troops was magnificent. Two moments in the fighting stand out in my mind: the holding of the north end of the Arnhem bridge by Colonel John Frost's 2nd Parachute Battalion of the 1st Airborne and the seizure of the main bridge over the Waal River at Nijmegen by the 82nd Airborne's 504th Parachute Infantry.  However, there was not much that fighting skill could do to overcome the effects of planning incompetence and bad luck. The troops from the German Fifteenth Army caused nothing but headaches as the British XXX Corps drove north to link up with the isolated airborne divisions and secure the land route over the Rhine. British armor simply did not move with the requisite speed. As always, the Germans reacted with the audacity and ruthlessness that their doctrine called for. By the time that the Guards Armored Division reached Arnhem, all that could be done was to pull out the remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division, which had suffered more than 8,000 casualties, a stark contrast to the 1,500 casualties that XXX Corps had suffered in its too leisurely drive north. As Allan Millett and I have suggested in our book, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945, "Market-Garden's dismal showing reflected the systemic and conceptual mistakes of Allied leaders, their inability to grasp war on the operational level, and the inherent difficulties of the Western Front in September 1944. In the largest sense Montgomery's strategy was territorial in nature, aimed at gaining a bridgehead over the Rhine and then fighting a battle on the north German plain. But there was no discernable operational objective...." The Allied airborne divisions were to experience considerable fighting over the remainder of the war, but with the exception of the great airborne drop in support of Montgomery's crossing of the Rhine against negligible resistance, those battles did not involve airborne operations. The one great battle that did not occur was the grudge football match between the 101st and the 82nd, which was scheduled for late December, but was called off for the obvious reason that the divisions were the only reserves available to the Allies when the Germans attacked in the Ardennes on December 16, 1944. So what did the airborne forces achieve in World War II? From the German point of view, airborne troops were a cheap investment that yielded significant dividends, particularly in a psychological sense. Their military role in the 1940 campaigns was impressive. The 1941 Crete invasion was costly, but it was of considerable strategic importance. The operation denied the British the use of a very important base from which they could have attacked the Romanian oil fields. On the Allied side, the resources expended on the development of airborne forces were considerable -- but then the Americans had plenty of resources to expend. The airborne's contribution to the success of the Normandy landing was impressive and important. For the first two days it provided a shield that allowed the reinforcement and expansion of the beachheads to go forward with very little interference from the Germans.  But in the largest sense the spirit of the airborne represented the determination of the American and British people not to allow tyranny to hold sway over the great cities and homes of European civilization. And as we stand at the dawn of the 21st century, we should not forget the cost that those young men paid to guarantee our freedom. For some their reward was a burial plot in a far-off land; for others it was the burden of terrible memories and the pain of never-healed wounds; for still others it was the pain of losing friends and family members. Those "bands of brothers" paid a price for us that is our burden and our children's burden. Let us never forget. |
