Operation Market Garden: History’s Greatest Airborne Assault

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The 73-day battle of ‘Hell’s Highway was perhaps the most savagely fought single action in the history of the U.S. Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions — and the least publicized. It is the story of a road, its bridges, and the men who fought and died to keep it open.

For the airborne troops fortunate enough to return from the assault on Normandy, the rear bases in England were utopia. Most of their buddies had come out on stretchers or were interred in the fertile soil of the French coast. The 82nd and 101st were well known to the British, who realized the sacrifices they had made in Normandy and responded to the survivors with kindness and respect. The troopers were glad to find people they could understand and, after a few days, they swarmed over the island on passes to London, Scotland and the familiar towns they had known before the invasion.

Once the divisions returned to their bases, the re-equipping, reorganizing and training began. All weapons were fired on the range: carbines, M-Is, submachine guns and Colt 45s. New equipment and men joined the units. It was a summer of alerts and dry runs. Troops received rehearsal briefings and assault equipment three times before being moved to a marshaling area. On September 11, 1944 (six days before the invasion of Holland), the unit commanders of the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions received a briefing on their next parachute assault operation.

The code name of the mission was Operation Market Garden. Early in the hectic week of planning, from September 10 to September 17, Lt. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, made one bold decision that changed the whole character of the operation. It would be a daylight jump. That was a gamble on Allied superiority in the air. The objective area was northeast of the major Belgian seaport of Antwerp. The airborne effort was designed to assist the advance of the British Second Army into Holland so it could attack eastward over the Neder Rhine River into Germany. It was essential that the British armor advance rapidly. The British would drop their 1st Airborne Division, assisted by a brigade of Polish paratroopers, at Arnhem on the other side of the Rhine. The decision on H-hour was to be made 72 hours after receipt of photographic intelligence.

The major advantage to be gained from the Market Garden operation was apparent. A thrust north across the Rhine River would flank the Siegfried Line and allow the Allies to launch armored assaults across the Westphalia Plain. The British Second Army was not capable of such an offensive at that time. Its supply lines stretched 250 miles from the Normandy ports. Antwerp had been captured but was not operating as an Allied port because German troops still dominated its approaches. All Second Army transport was being used at full capacity in order to sustain the fighting of one corps. General Bernard Montgomery insisted that airborne assistance was essential to the plan. The airborne would initiate the invasion and unroll a security carpet on the road before the advancing ground forces.

It was not a long road in comparison with some of the tremendous distances of the war, running 70 miles through Holland from the Belgian border north to Arnhem. The 101st sector was much shorter: 20 miles or less from Eindhoven through Zon and St. Oedenrode to Veghel. Twenty miles of road is more than a division is supposed to defend, especially when the road is a passageway inviting attack from both sides, a corridor that threatens to cut off a desperate enemy whose available resources of men and material were much greater than those of the Allied forces in Holland. The First Allied Airborne Army was to drop from the skies behind enemy lines and hold that corridor open at all costs. If Operation Market (the airborne part of the overall plan) was successful, the airborne would control the key bridges and strategic points and the British XXX Corps could roll in with maximum speed and complete the Garden (ground) phase of the operation. The British corps had to reach Arnhem in 48 hours, because airborne troops could not be expected to hold out longer than that without standard artillery, tanks and effective resupply.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Airborne Operations, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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