Bridge Too Far (11 page)

The uncharacteristic but seemingly genuine apology was not the end of the matter.  Doggedly, though with less acrimony, Montgomery continued to argue for his “single thrust.”  Eisenhower listened intently and with sympathy to the arguments, but his own view remained unchanged.  His broad-front advance would continue.  He told Montgomery clearly why.  As Eisenhower was later to recall, [To the author.] he said, “What you’re proposing is this—if I give you all of the supplies you want, you could go straight to Berlin—right straight to Berlin?  Monty, you’re nuts.

You can’t do it.  What the hell!  If you try a long column like that in a single thrust you’d have to throw off division after division to protect your flanks from attack.  Now suppose you did get a bridge across the Rhine.  You couldn’t depend for long on that one bridge to supply your drive.  Monty, you can’t do it.”

Montgomery, according to Eisenhower, replied, “I’ll supply them all right.  Just give me what I need and I’ll reach Berlin and end the war.”

Eisenhower’s rejection was firm.  Antwerp, he stressed, must be opened before any major drive into Germany could even be contemplated.  Montgomery then played his trump card.  The most recent development—the rocket attack on London from sites in the Netherlands—necessitated an immediate advance into Holland.  He knew exactly how such a drive should begin.  To strike into Germany, Montgomery proposed to use almost the entire First Allied Airborne Army in a stunning mass attack.

His plan was an expanded, grandiose version of Operation Comet.  Montgomery now wanted to use three and a half divisions—the U.s. 82nd and 101/, the British 1/ Airborne and the Polish 1/ Parachute Brigade.  The airborne forces were to seize a succession of river crossings in Holland ahead of his troops, with the major objective being the Lower Rhine bridge at Arnhem.  Anticipating that the Germans would expect him to take the shortest route and drive northeast for the Rhine and the Ruhr, Montgomery had deliberately chosen a northern “back door” route to the Reich.  The surprise airborne attack would open a corridor for the tanks of his British Second Army, which would race across the captured bridges to Arnhem, over the Rhine and beyond.  Once all this was accomplished, Montgomery could wheel east, outflank the Siegfried Line, and dash into the Ruhr.

Eisenhower was intrigued and impressed.  It was a bold, brilliantly imaginative plan, exactly the kind of mass attack he had been seeking for his long-idle airborne divisions.  But now the Supreme Commander was caught between the hammer and the anvil: if he agreed to the attack, the opening of Antwerp would temporarily have to be delayed and supplies diverted from Patton.  Yet, Montgomery’s proposal could revitalize the dying ad- vance and perhaps propel the pursuit across the Rhine and into the Ruhr.  Eisenhower, fascinated by the audaciousness of the plan, not only gave his approval, * but insisted that the operation take place at the earliest possible moment.  * Eisenhower told Stephen E. Ambrose, according to his book, The Supreme Commander, p. 518 fn.: “I not only approved … I insisted upon it.

What we needed was a bridgehead over the Rhine.  If that could be

accomplished, I was quite willing to wait on all other operations

…”

Yet the Supreme Commander stressed that the attack was a “limited one.” And he emphasized to Montgomery that he considered the combined airborne-ground operation “merely an extension of the northern advance to the Rhine and the Ruhr.”  As Eisenhower remembered the conversation, he said to Montgomery, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Monty.  I’ll give you whatever you ask to get you over the Rhine because I want a bridgehead … but let’s get over the Rhine first before we discuss anything else.”  Montgomery continued to argue, but Eisenhower would not budge.  Frustrated, the Field Marshal had to accept what he called a “half measure,” and on this note the conference ended.

After Eisenhower’s departure, Montgomery outlined the proposed operation on a map for Lieutenant General Browning.  The elegant Browning, one of Britain’s pioneer airborne advocates, saw that the paratroopers and glider-borne forces were being called upon to secure a series of crossings—five of them major bridges including the wide rivers of the Maas, the Waal and the Lower Rhine—over a stretch approximately sixty-four miles long between the Dutch border and Arnhem.  Additionally, they were charged with holding open the corridor—in most places a single highway running north—over which British armor would drive.  All of the bridges had to be seized intact if the armored dash was to succeed.  The dangers were obvious, but this was precisely the kind of surprise assault for which the airborne forces had been trained.  Still, Browning was uneasy.  Pointing to the most northern bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem, he asked, “How long will it take the armor to reach us?”  Montgomery replied briskly, “Two days.”  Still intent on the map, Browning said, “We can hold it for four.”  Then he added, “But sir, I think we might be going a bridge too far.”

The embryo concept (which thereafter would bear the code name “Operation Market-Garden”—“Market” covering the airborne drop and “Garden” for the armored drive) was to be developed with the utmost speed, Montgomery ordered.  He insisted that the attack had to be launched in a few days.  Otherwise, he told Browning, it would be too late.  Montgomery asked: “How soon can you get ready?”  Browning, at this moment, could only hazard a guess.  “The earliest scheduling of the operation would be the fifteenth or sixteenth,” * he told the Field Marshal.  * Minutes of the first planning meeting, First Allied Airborne Army operational file 1014-1017.

Carrying Montgomery’s skeleton plan and weighed with the urgency of preparing for such a massive mission in only a few days, Browning flew back to England immediately.  On landing at his Moor Park Golf Course base near Rickmansworth on the outskirts of London, he telephoned the First Allied Airborne headquarters, twenty miles away, and notified the commander, Lieutenant General Brereton, and his chief of staff, Brigadier General Floyd L. Parks.  The time was 2:30 P.m., and Parks noted that Browning’s message contained “the first mention of “Market” at this headquarters.”

The airborne commanders were not the only officers caught unaware.  Montgomery’s daring plan so impressed and surprised the Field Marshal’s greatest critic, General Omar N. Bradley, that he later recalled, “Had the pious, teetotalling Montgomery wobbled into SHAEF with a hangover, I could not have been more astonished.  … Although I never reconciled myself to the venture, I nevertheless freely concede that it was one of the most imaginative of the war.”  * * General Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, p. 416.  Bradley also added, “I had not been brought into the plan.  In fact, Montgomery devised and sold it to Ike several days before I even learned of it from our own liaison officer at 21/ Army Group.”

It was, but Montgomery remained unhappy.  He now prodded

the Supreme Commander even further, reverting to the cautious, perfectionist thinking that was characteristic of his military career.  Unless the 21/ Army Group received additional supplies and transport for the “selected thrust,” Montgomery warned Eisenhower, Market-Garden could not be launched before September 23 at the earliest, and might even be delayed until September 26.  Browning had estimated that Market could be ready by the fifteenth or sixteenth, but Montgomery was concerned about Garden, the land operation.  Once again he was demanding what he had always wanted: absolute priority, which to his mind would guarantee success.  Eisenhower noted in his desk diary for September 12: “Monty’s suggestion is simple—“give him every thing.”” Fearing that any delay might jeopardize Market-Garden, Eisenhower complied.  He promptly sent his chief of staff, General Bedell Smith, to see Montgomery; Smith assured the Field Marshal of a thousand tons of supplies per day plus transport.  Additionally, Montgomery was promised that Patton’s drive to the Saar would be checked.  Elated at the “electric” response—as the Field Marshal called it—Montgomery believed he had finally won the Supreme Commander over to his point of view.

Although opposition before Montgomery’s troops had stiffened, he

believed that the Germans in Holland, behind the hard crust of their

front lines, had little strength.  Allied intelligence confirmed his

estimate.  Eisenhower’s headquarters reported “few infantry reserves”

in the Netherlands, and even these were considered to be “troops of low

category.”  The enemy, it was thought, was still “disorganized after

his long and hasty retreat … and though there might be numerous small

bodies of Germans in the area,” they were hardly capable of any great

organized resistance.  Montgomery now believed he could quickly crack

the German defenses.  Then, once he was over the Rhine and headed for

the Ruhr, he did not see how Eisenhower could halt his drive.  The

Supreme Commander would have little choice, he reasoned, but to let him

continue toward Berlin—thus ending the war, as Montgomery put it,

“reasonably quickly.”  Confidently, Montgomery set Sunday, September

17, as D Day for

Operation Market-Garden.  The brilliant scheme he had devised was to become the greatest airborne operation of the entire war.

Not everyone shared Montgomery’s certainty about Market-Garden.  At least one of his senior officers had reason to be worried.  General Miles Dempsey, commander of the British Second Army, unlike the Field Marshal, did not dispute the authenticity of Dutch resistance reports.  From these, Dempsey’s intelligence staff had put together a picture indicating rapidly increasing German strength between Eindhoven and Arnhem, in the very area of the planned airborne drop.  There was even a Dutch report that “battered panzer formations have been sent to Holland to refit,” and these too were said to be in the Market-Garden area.  Dempsey sent along this news to Browning’s British I Airborne Corps, but the information lacked any back-up endorsement by Montgomery or his staff.  The ominous note was not even included in intelligence summaries.  In fact, in the mood of optimism prevailing at 21/ Army Group headquarters, the report was completely discounted.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s high-risk gamble to rescue the

remains of General Von Zangen’s encircled Fifteenth Army in the Pas de

Calais was paying off.  Under cover of darkness, ever since September

6, a hastily assembled fleet consisting of two ancient Dutch

freighters, several Rhine barges and some small

boats and rafts had been plying back and forth across the three-mile mouth of the Schelde estuary ferrying men, artillery, vehicles and even horses.

Although powerful coastal guns on Walcheren Island protected against attack from the sea, the Germans were surprised that Allied naval forces made no effort to interfere.  Major General Walter Poppe expected the convoy carrying his splintered 59th Infantry Division to be “blown out of the water.”  To him the one-hour trip between Breskens and Flushing “in completely darkened ships, exposed and defenseless, was a most unpleasant experience.”  The Allies, the Germans suspected, completely underestimated the size of the evacuation.  Certainly they knew about it.  Because both Von Rundstedt and Army Group B’s commander, Field Marshal Walter Model, desperately in need of reinforcements, were demanding speed, some daylight trips had been made.  Immediately, fighters pounced on the small convoys.  Darkness, however unpleasant, was much safer.

The most hazardous part of the journey was on the Schelde’s northern bank.  There, under the constant threat of Allied air attack, Von Zangen’s forces had to follow a single main road, running east from Walcheren Island, across the Beveland peninsula and into Holland.  Part of the escape route, at the narrow neck joining the mainland, was only a few miles from Antwerp and British lines on the Albert Canal.  Inexplicably the British even now made no serious effort to attack north, spring the trap, and cut the base of the isthmus.  The escape route remained open.  Although hammered by incessant Allied air attacks Von Zangen’s Fifteenth Army would eventually reach Holland—at a most crucial moment for Montgomery’s Market-Garden operation.

While the Fifteenth Army had been extricated more by calculated design

than by luck, now the opposite occurred: fate, the unexpected and

unpredictable, took a hand.  Some eighty miles away the battered

armored units of Lieutenant General Wilhelm Bittrich’s elite, veteran

II SS Panzer Corps reached bivouac areas in the vicinity of Arnhem.  As

directed by Field Marshal Model on September 4, Bittrich had slowly

disengaged the 9th and 10th SS

Panzer divisions for “refitting and rehabilitation.”  Model had chosen

the Arnhem area.  The two reduced, but still tough, divisions were

fanned out to the north, east and south of the town.  Bittrich assigned

the 9th SS to a huge rectangular sector north and northeast of Arnhem,

where most of the division’s men and vehicles were on high ground and

conveniently hidden in a densely wooded national park.  The 10th was

encamped in a semicircle to the northeast, east and southeast.  Thus;

camouflaged and hidden in nearby woods, villages and towns

Beekbergen, Apeldoorn, Zutphen, Ruurlo and Doetinchem—both divisions were within striking distance of Arnhem; some units were within a mile or two of the suburbs.  As Bittrich was later to recall, “there was no particular significance in Model choosing the Arnhem vicinity—except that it was a peaceful sector where nothing was happening.”

The possibility that this remote backwater might have any strategic value to the Allies was obviously discounted.  On the morning of September 11, a small group of Model’s staff officers was dispatched in search of a new site for Army Group B’s headquarters—in Arnhem.

One of Model’s aides, his general headquarters administration and transportation officer, thirty-five-year-old Lieutenant Gustav Sedelhauser, later remembered that “we visited the 9th and 10th SS division headquarters at Beekbergen and Ruurlo and General Bittrich’s command post at Doetinchem.  Then we inspected Arnhem itself.  It had everything we wanted: a fine road net and excellent accommodations.