Part 1 - A Bridge Too Far (1977) First Time Reaction & Review 

I prefer the longest day, but there are so many classics

Thank you for sharing!

Montgomery had no jurisdiction over First Allied Airborne Army, USAAF and RAF so there was nothing he could do about the air part of Market Garden. He made certain suggestions, such as double missions flown on day one, but these were rejected by the air commanders and there was nothing he could do about it. Eisenhower as Supreme Commander should have taken a more active role as he had full jurisdiction over everything, and should have argued against the caution of the air generals but he did not. He stayed in his chateau near Cherbourg some 600km away from the front.

He also (iirc from what I've read) somehow visited Rome earlier on to touch base with the Italian leaders who had deposed Mussolini regarding an Italian surrender to the Allies.

@@chrisgibbings9499 For what it's worth, I read that too. He was still alive when "A Bridge Too Far" was made. I wonder if it amused him that the surname of the actor who played him (Paul Maxwell) was the same as his given name.

You can point to a whole load of things the film overlooked but it is, after all, a film rather than a documentary and limited to three hours!

Even kinder to Brereton and Williams, who get away scott free because they aren't even mentioned, yet it was their decision to not fly double missions on day one and to spread the drops over three days which was the biggest mistake made by the allies in the operation. The Germans also concluded that in a post battle appraisal. Instead, Montgomery off screen and Browning on screen are chosen as the 'villains'.

Yes, Adventures in the Screen Trade is a very good book.

@@brettpeacock9116 Yes, it shows it in the film: Field Marshal Model.

Model was both OB (Oberkommando) West and Army Group B commander until von Rundstedt's return to OB West shown in the film on 3 September - the day Brussels was liberated by the Guards Armoured Division. Model stepped down to remain Army Group B commander, and that headquarters withdrawing from Normandy had ended up in Oosterbeek a few days before MARKET GARDEN. Fun fact: Model had hosted a dinner at his new HQ at which the commander of the Luftwaffe 3.Jagd-Division at Deelen airfield, Generalmajor Walter Grabmann, had tried to warn him that the fields to the west of his headquarters around Wolfheze were ideal landing grounds for airborne troops, but Model dismissed the idea as being too far beind the lines for an airborne operation and behind too many river barriers. The one officer who took the warning seriously was Sepp Krafft, the commander of the SS-Panzergrenadier training battalion 16 based in Arnhem - they were finishing training some Hitler Youth replacements for 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' - and he took the step of ordering his two training companies out of their barracks in Arnhem and had them camped in the woods north of Oosterbeek as additional security for Model. This placed them in an ideal location to delay 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions moving into Arnhem, but the line was not wide enough to stop Frost slipping past on the river road with his 2nd Battalion. The only other unit in the area was Sicherungs-Infanterie-Bataillon 908, a security unit composed of WW1 logistics troops deemed unfit for combat duty in 1914-18, and they had two companies defending Deelen airfield, and the other two defending the Ijssel bridges at Doesburg and Westervoort. They probably also provided the 25-man Arnhem bridge garrison, which was asleep on the job and not alert to Frost's approach to the bridge. These two units are the source of the intelligence brief that the local opposition were "old men on bicycles and some Hitler Youth."

They were decimated on the Western Front after being withdrawn from Ukraine due to the Normandy invasion, for which they had been raised and trained in counter-airborne warfare in France in 1943. They fought in the battles around Caen and held the Falaise gap open to allow the remnants of the 7.Armee to escape before being withdrawn across the Seine and eventually into the Netherlands to refit. The 1st Airborne was not dropped on top of them - the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' were located in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions on the west and east banks of the River Ijssel respectively, north and east of Arnhem, while the 1st Airborne dropped west of Arnhem. 1st Airborne was destroyed because the Nijmegen bridge was not secured on the first day by the 82nd Airborne and there was a 36 hour delay while XXX Corps had to fight to secure the bridges, fatally delaying their progress to Arnhem. I have not heard of one the SS divisions adopting a windmill insignia unless it was unofficial. You may be confusing this with the heer (army) 347.Infanterie-Division, which had the windmill as its official insignia since it was a static division stationed on the Dutch coast during the occupation. The Hohenstaufen insignia was a letter 'H' bisected by a vertical sword inside an escutcheon (shield), while the Frundsberg insignia was a letter 'F' bisected with a diagonal oak leaf inside an escutcheon.

@@davemac1197 You're probably right. My memories are from fifty plus years ago. I do distinctly remember the windmill though being adopted as an alternative tactical insignia though.

@@place_there9104 - I think I've found it - the 'Spearhead' Hohenstaufen 9th SS Panzer Division book by Patrick Hook and published by Ian Allen seems to have a page (66) headed 'Equipment, Markings and Camouflage' with both standard and windmill symbols on it. It says the windmill variant was adopted in 1945. Good memory! It also means I've found a source to obtain this rare book, so many thanks for prompting my search - I'm very grateful! Cheers, Dave.

Not nearly as stupid as the plan to attack into the fortress of Metz in a frontal assault. Market Garden in the end only cost 17,000 men compared to the Battle of Metz which cost 55,000.

Browning was a bit part player. General Lewis Brereton was the commanding general of First Allied Airborne Army. Brereton, and Williams of the USAAF, made the cautious decision to not fly double missions on day one and Hollinghurst of the RAF made the decision to not drop closer to Arnhem. These were the main decisions for Market Garden. Browning was against all of them but had no jurisdiction to do anything. Apparently the real life Roy Urquhart was outraged how Browning was treated in the film and wrote to his widow, the novelist Daphne du Maurier telling her he was sorry it happened. Brereton and Williams were completely left out of the film.

@@lyndoncmp5751 Fair enough but I've also read negative accounts of Browning (mainly relating to his apparently highly strung personality) from more than one WWII historian. Basically, though, Market Garden was too risky as a whole. There were too many things that could, and did, go wrong.

The problem was that Goldman often conflated or amalgamated or contracted various incidents together and none of them played out quite the way they are shown in the film. A good example was Sergeant 'Eddie' Dohun and his rather nervous Captain. James Caan was offered the role of Captain LeGrand 'Legs' Johnson (CO 'Fox' Coy 502nd PIR, but named in the credits as Captain Glass) but liked the role of Eddie Dohun better because it was more heroic, so the characters were reversed to suit Caan and get him on board the project. In reality, Johnson was 10 times the man Dohun was, according to people who knew both men, and was awarded the Silver Star in Normandy for bravery. The incident in which Dohun found badly wounded Johnson in a 'dead pile' and drove him to the field hospital actually involved several other casualties as well as Johnson, and Dohun pulled his pistol on a medical Major who was doing triage outside the hospital in order to get him into surgery, where he was operated on by the Division Surgeon. He was then court-martialled by his battalion commander and arrested for ten seconds and not by the doctor. If the characters had been properly cast and the drama played out true to life, it would have been even more unbelievable. This is a made in Hollywood problem. I also recently saw a video interview with Freddie Hunt, son of late 1976 British F1 champion James, about how he was annoyed by Chris Hemsworth's portrayal of his father in the film Rush (2013) as "a bit of a tw@t." He said Hemsworth made no effort to contact the family to do research and only spoke to people in the McLaren team. At the London premiere, Freddie got a chance to speak to director Ron Howard (yes, Ritchie Cunningham in '70s sitcom Happy Days) and asked him why make so many changes? When Howard said "aw man, if we had told the true story, no one would have believed it", Freddie said he nearly slapped him. Browning was badly treated by Cornelius Ryan, who researched his book after Browning had passed in 1965 and could not defend himself. The infamous aerial photo was found in a Dutch archive in 2014 and found to show obsolete tanks that were known to be miles away near the 101st Airborne's landings on D-Day of the operation and were shot up by the USAAF. Ryan's account rested on Major Brian Urquhart's interview alone (name changed to Major Fuller in the film). I've researched the Airborne Corps HQ establishment and found the Inteliigence Officer should have been a GSO I (Lieutenant Colonel), while his assistant would be a GSO II (Major), with a couple of GSO III Captains. Some of the staff positions in Browning's Corps HQ were not filled and there was no GSO I (Int), so Brian Urquhart was obviously out of his depth in such a position. After the war he was in the Civil Service and helped set up the useless and corrupt United Nations organisation, serving as its first Under-Secretary-General for 'Special Political Affairs' - apparently a euphemism for peacekeeping operations. I am not impressed with Brian Urquhart's service any more than I am impressed with Ryan's penchant for stopping digging as soon as he has found his 'story'. Ryan was a newspaperman from Dublin and was embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army during the war. I can't think of two finer colleges of anti-Montgomery military philosophy than Dublin and Patton. Dirk Bogarde served in the RAF and was on Dempsey's British 2nd Army staff during MARKET GARDEN selecting bombing targets from aerial photographs (honestly!) - he said he knew all the main players, including Browning, Dempsey and Montgomery, and thought Browning was badly served by the script. He had the option of turning down the role but obviously decided to take it, being the first A-list actor cast, and tried to mitigate the script by playing him somewhat conflicted at least. His performance still upset Browning's widow, the famous writer Daphne du Maurier. It seems that the bereaved get hurt twice.

The small number of obsolete German tanks were not ignored. They were rightly deemed irrelevant, because they were. They were from a small training and replacement battalion. The Germans had next to no available modern tanks in the area when the paras dropped on the 17th. It was German army units that were quickly sent into the Netherlands from deep inside Germany in the days that followed which did the damage. No intelligence knew anything about these. British 1st Airborne actually had far more anti tank guns than the Germans had tanks in Arnhem on the 17th.

​@@lyndoncmp5751 There were the admittedly, remains, of two Waffen SS panzer divisions in the area, with Stugs still available to them in low numbers but same 75mm gun as on the Mrk IV, plus panzer grenadiers. With the major issue being XXX Corp coming up one road and the fact that 1st Airborne might have to hold till much later than expected, if you view Jeremy Clarkson's VC for Valour, you'll see 1st Airborne units getting a tremendous hammering from German mortars, artillery and Stug's the day after the landings. This being the main body of the divison trying to break through to help Frost's battalion. The film misses this cause 'trailing about with Urquhart.

Fifteen cancelled operations. British I Airborne Corps gave them provisional numbers, so the original Arnhem operation COMET was provisionally FIFTEEN, and when that was cancelled Browning and Montgomery proposed the expanded operation SIXTEEN outline, which then became MARKET.

@@davemac1197 I did the maths on that a long time ago and recalling it from memory I was one out. It was illustrated on Band of Brothers with Lipton telling Easy their off back to France at the end of Ep 3. the Seine bridges operation I believe, there was no real eplanation of why still in England at the beginning of ep4. Also your use of caps suggests you need to chill.

@@666johnco - I'm going from documentation that SIXTEEN was the provisional name drawn up by Browning and Montgomery to replace COMET, and one document I've seen actually has SIXTEEN in type on the heading and crossed out with 'Market' written by hand over it. The operations drawn up by I Airborne Corps were given numbers as provisional codenames, and 1st Allied Airborne Army had only nine operations on its books at this time and didn't use the same system for codenames. I use caps for the operation names for clarity, because it's the standard used in the military and the way they are usually documented - I'm not intending to shout.

Films made during WWII were noticeably more egalitarian, with a "were all in this together" vibe.(Think of films like "The Way Ahead") It wasn't until after the war that movies became more classist and focussed on leading actors (who always played officers)

British war films are the best Yank ones are nothing short of a joke, America won the war type crap

There are plenty of 'normal' accents depicted in 1st British Airborne Division away from the officers. I hear cockney and Welsh for example.

@@davidfrost779 Some US ones aren't so good but some are. And you'd expect by and large an American war film to focus on American contributions to the war effort, same as you'd expect a British one to focus on the UK effort.

@@chrisgibbings9499 Yes and Britain done more for the war than the yanks what they went through was a drop in a very deep ocean compared too what Britain and of course the rest of Europe went through

Thank you!

It is such a catchy song!

@@alexachipman Do you know We'll meet again? (Vera Lynn). I hope you sing that in part 2.

Thank you!

It was only Montgomery's broad idea. It was expanded from Operation Comet into Market Garden with far more paratroopers added after reports of more German armour. The planning wasn't done by Montgomery. It was taken over and planned by the air commanders. This was the problem. The caution of the air commanders lead to its failure, even though it still took 100km of German held ground in just 3 days. This was the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period.

Or vica-virsa.

No, I am a former dancer, though!

It wasn't Montgomery's plan. The flawed planning was done by Brereton, Williams, Hollinghurst and the individual airborne commanders. Montgomery only had the broad idea, which was pretty well liked and militarily quite sound. It was a better idea than going into the Hurtgen Forest or wasting months trying to take Metz. Or falling asleep in front of the Ardennes.

Sometimes, not always!

@@chrisgibbings9499 But certainly most of the time Yank war films are mostly Gung Ho! America won the war bollocks

British crew, British anti-British director, American producer, and American screenwriter, based on a book by Irish/American anti-British journalist. Thanks to William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) it's hugely entertaining, and the crew did a fantastic job with period details and locations, but it's mainly Hollywood propaganda made for an American audience.

@@davemac1197 Big spread of accusations! But was Cornelius Ryan anti-British? He seemed to give credit wherever it was due in his books including A Bridge Too Far. He could hardly avoid concluding that Market Garden was a failure but he certainly gives a positive spin to the fighting skills of the British at various stages especially mentioning that their advance from the Seine to Antwerp in early September '44 was one of the fastest advances in history, rivalling even Patton's Third Army at that time.

@@chrisgibbings9499 - compare his research material in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, held at Ohio State University and accessible online, with what he put in his book and you'll find he omitted every possible criticism of American commanders, leaving British commanders to take the blame for the failure of the operation by default and implication. The Hollywood film adaptation was even more selective. Theatre audiences are not going to blame Brereton, Williams, and Lindquist, when they're not even cast as characters in the film - most people won't know these people even existed, never mind what impact their decisions made on the outcome of the operation. Gavin, although cast with actor Ryan O'Neal, has his bad decisions omitted from the film as well. About the only time O'Neal's daytime soap scenery chewing acting style would have been appropriate (Gavin was a very quiet considered man in person) was the scene in which he found out Lindquist was not moving on the Nijmegen bridge as instructed in the final divisional briefing, and then went to the 508th CP to chew him out - but it wasn't filmed and there isn't a single 508th trooper in the film at all. It's as if they've been excised from history. 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) is quite revealing, including the Normandy chapters in exposing Colonel Lindquist's poor performance during the regiment's combat operation and the command problems that were not fully resolved before MARKET GARDEN. Cornelius Ryan was a classic newspaper journalist, he has a story he wants to tell and he ignores any element not convenient to his narrative. He didn't write fiction, and his research for the book is impressive in size and scope, but the story that was told was created very much in the edit, both book and film. The online collection of interviews and documents are hard to navigate, but it is well worth the effort if you're interested in getting to the truth. Gavin was quite open and honest in his interview with Ryan, but Ryan totally protected him by not publishing anything negative about him. Box 101, folders 9 and 10 are the Gavin correspondence and interview respectively, and I recommend you take a look.

Patton had already stalled trying to take Metz and still couldn't do it for another two months. Patton's Lorraine campaign was the biggest failure of autumn 1944. 52,000 battle casualties and objective still not achieved.

@@lyndoncmp5751 Well said. Patton has had far too easy a ride over the years.

@innercircle341 Superior plan? What you mean attacking into the teeth of the Siegfried Line defences in a FRONTAL assault? What is this World War one now? At least Montgomery had the actual sense to FLANK the German positions. Sorry but I would disagree.