Operation Market-Garden 1944 (3)

Book excerpt: Field Marshal Montgomery's plan to get Second British Army behind the fortifications of the German Siegfried Line in 1944 led to the hugely ambitions Operation Market-Garden. Part of this plan called for a rapid advance from Belgium through Holland up to and across the lower Rhine by the British XXX Corps along a single road already dominated by airborne troops. Their objective along this road was the bridge at Arnhem, the target of British and Polish airborne troops. Once XXX Corps had reached this bridge it would then make for the German industrial area of the Ruhr. The operation was bold in outlook but risky in concept. Using specially commissioned artwork and detailed analysis, Ken Ford completes this trilogy on Operation Market-Garden by examining this attack which, if successful, could have shortened the war in the west considerably. Yet it turned out to be a bridge too far.