Part 2 - A Bridge Too Far (1977) First Time Reaction & Review 

And Dickie Attenborough was, explicitly, making an _anti-war_ film. Those who have experienced it, never want it to happen again.

one inaccuracy in the portrayal is Hopkins running... Frost walked. Normal practice for British officers was NOT to run in such circumstances because it upset the mens morale

In Cornelius Ryan's book, the episode with the young para pulling out his flute happened in the tennis court at Oosterbeeck, which was being used as a casualty collection station. During a lull in the shelling, he stood up, and began playing "British Grenadiers". Other paras got up, and they had an impromptu parade. Then the shelling resumed. Attenborough, determined to make an anti-war film, turned the incident over 180 degrees. He took an episode demonstrating the Paras' unbreakable resolve and morale, and turned it into a dirge. I admit, seeing this in theaters during the first run, that I was sorely disappointed with the liberties the director was taking with the truth here, and for his own political agenda.

Terrifying!

And in real life they never actually took the Nijmegen road bridge. They got across the river and then inland to the railway viaduct about 1km north of the road bridge at Lent. It was actually four tanks of the Grenadier Guards, lead by Sgt Peter Robinson who raced across the bridge and took it, around dusk. He then met the 82nd men at Lent. Contrary to the myth there were not lots of tanks and tank men sitting around drinking tea and doing nothing after crossing the bridge. Only five tanks got across the bridge that night (Captain Carrington followed in the 5th tanks a bit later) and two of these were damaged in the fight, and their orders were to take the bridge and prevent the Germans taking in back that night. They couldn't disobey orders and blindly swan off to Arnhem leaving the bridge unprotected. The film makes it look like they were just sitting there in broad daylight drinking tea.

That is amazing!

@@alexachipman He also survived the battle, managed to contact the Dutch resistance, was given a fake ID, and spent a lot of time cycling round under the Germans noses. I'm not sure how long it was, but I believe it was measured in weeks. He spent his time gathering other survivors, plus one or two escaping allied POWs. He eventually re-crossed the Rhine to the allied side with 135 men, after the war he bought a farm in Kenya, and pioneered the idea of photographic safaris. How do I know so much about him? He was born in the small Shropshire village where my sister was postmistress many years later. Kate Ter Horst, who gave up her home for use as a hospital, was forever after known as "The Angel of Arnhem". Many of the troops she helped to nurse would regularly visit her. Sadly she was killed in the 70s by a drunk driver outside her home, but I don't think it was a TAXI. Btw, if you've ever seen Jurassic Park, this film was directed by John Hammond, owner of said park, AKA Sir Richard Attenborough.

@@alexachipman I don't know if it was clear, but the real Major Tatham-Warter actually survived Arnhem and the war (which I imagine was why the producers changed the name of the character, when they had him die at the end). So a little bit of an unexpected happy ending :).

Only carrying the umbrella was based on Digby Tatham-Warter. The character was played as an upper class twit by the actor, probably the reason the character's name was changed, like many others in this film. In reality, Tatham-Warter was an extraordinary soldier who led 'A' Company and the whole 2nd Battalion into Arnhem with considerable verve and ingenuity, having to deal with machine-guns, mortars, and armoured cars on the route not shown in the film. At one point on entering Arnhem, they found their way blocked and Digby's solution was to knock on the door of a house and ask the resident if they could pass through to the rear garden. The whole company filed through the house and then climbed over several rear garden fences to outflank the German roadblock, which prompted the Germans to withdraw (they don't like being surrounded) and the battalion continued on its way without further delay. As you say, he wasn't killed during the battle, but was wounded and like many prisoners recovering in the St Elizabeth Hospital he was able to simply walk out when the German guards weren't looking. He was instrumental in organising the operation PEGASUS evacuation of Arnhem escapers and evaders shown in Band of Brothers episode 5, cycling around the area to make contact with small groups of evaders hidden by the Dutch, while dressed in civilian clothes and ringing the bell on his bicycle to clear German soldiers out of his way. The man had an absolute nerve.

Nice, that’s an excellent film.

*John Addison. He was in the 23rd Hussars, an armoured regiment (Stuart and Sherman tanks) and part of 11th Armoured Division that liberated Antwerp on 4 September, and during MARKET GARDEN led the advance of VIII Corps on the right flank of the XXX Corps advance to Arnhem. Not in the Airborne forces at all.

There are far better modern books. A Bridge Too Far is historically inaccurate in many ways.

After the release of the film A Bridge Too Far, based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, in which her late husband was portrayed in a less than flattering light, Daphne du Maurier was incensed & wrote to the national newspapers, decrying what she considered unforgivable treatment.

​@@dukeemzworth3005The real life Roy Urquhart also told her he was very angry at the way Browning was treated.

That one never happened, though.

*Son bridge. The Grave bridge (at the time it was the longest multi-span bridge in Europe) was captured intact, but it's only seen in the film for 10 seconds as the XXX Corps tanks pass across it.

Yeah that was a silly moment. In fact by the time British tanks were across the Nijmegen bridge the Germans had already strengthened in Arnhem with Tiger tanks and Stug III assault guns and had an anti tank gun defence at Ressen. XXX Corps got ambushed by this anti tank gun defence when they moved towards Arnhem. The lead British tanks got annihilated and blocked the road.

Tora, Tora, Tora is an absolute masterpiece!

@@alexachipman Dead right.

Incorrect. They were standard equipment with the Royal Engineer's Field Companies and Squadrons (16 per unit carried in two trucks) and could be used for different purposes, including reconnaissance and carrying out assault crossings. The name of the type used was Assault Boat Mark III - the clue is in the name. While US Airborne Engineers from C Company of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion attached to the 504th were given instruction in operating the boats, the Royal Engineers also provided and operated two Assault Rafts, to enable the 504th to take their Jeeps and anti-tank guns with them across the river. The assault rafts were also used in *Bailey construction and the assault boats were only all they had in the film, because the film is propaganda and not entirely historically accurate at all.

The way he say Germans 😂, but his character is Polish.

He a supposed to be Polish as he the Colonel of the Polish Airborne Brigade

Market Garden was no more of a failure than the Americans campaigns in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine, Operation Queen and Alsace.

Makes a good 'story', much like newspaper journalist Cornelius Ryan's book, but it's not history.

@stevegauthier9838 It didn't sink without trace; it made money despite its 25 million dollar budget. It's true that it was lazily dismissed by critics and others with glib labels like "confusing"and "a film too long" but it's been rightly reappraised since as a classic. As Alexa says, it's not difficult to follow at all.

It suffered in the United States because its release was during the Summer when Star Wars fans were still lining around the block for the 19th time and also came just two years after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, and American theatre audiences were not interested in seeing another Allied defeat. In the UK, Star Wars didn't open until after Christmas, leaving A Bridge Too Far to be the big Summer hit. I remember seeing it in around August time during the school holidays after borrowing the paperback 'film tie-in' edition from a schoolfriend during the previous school term.

Good pioneering work, but now unfortunately out of date (1990) with a lot of errors in it. I would recommend as a foundation course before doing further reading with specialist books. It badly needs updating and I thought Anthony Tucker-Jones' The Devil's Bridge (2020) was that update, but unfortunately I did not learn anything new from it and my copy was donated to a charity bookstore. The best overall update on both Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and the German side of the battle is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), which uses unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University (and can be viewed online), and he also debunks the many myths from this film.

Many many times; I used to be a WWI reenactor and we often did timelines together with WWII.

@@alexachipman Thank you sharing that. I should have guessed.

The film is propaganda and distorts many of the facts, including the two you cited: 1. Although the script does have Sean Connery (General Urquhart) asking "what about the special VHF sets?" and he's told they were delivered with the wrong crystals, it's not clear this only applied to two radio sets that were issued to two American air control teams sent to Arnhem from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron for contacting aircraft. This unit was assembled and organised in haste without time to properly test and train with the equipment, hence the screw-up. The implication that this blunder affected more than just a couple of sets and that they were British equipment belonging to British units is misleading the audience. Other teams from this unit also went with the US 82nd Airborne to Nijmegen and presumably to the US 101st as well, most likely with the same problem, so it was not a problem unique to the British Airborne Division at Arnhem. Thir own radios were working normally, but ranges were greatly reduced by the local sandy hills of glacial moraine, which have a high iron content. The Germans had the same problems at Arnhem, but this is not mentioned, of course. 2. Proper river assault boats is what they were - standard equipment in British Royal Engineer Field Companies in every Division, normally 16 boats available to each Field Company, and an Armoured Division had two Field Companies to supports its two Brigades (one armoured and one infantry), while Infantry Divisions had three Field Companies of Royal Engineers, one to support each of the three Infantry Brigades. For MARKET GARDEN, a huge engineering organisation was assembled with three Army Group Royal Engineers (one was borrowed from the Canadian 1st Army) providing many additional Field Companies and bridging columns, with dedicated resources for each bridge crossing on the major rivers should a bridges be demolished or other scenarios in which engineer resources may be required. The default plan for the scenario of the river Waal river bridges at Nijmegen remaining intact but still in enemy hands was for the 43rd (Weesex) Infantry Division to make an assault river crossing of the Waal to the west with either one Brigade up (operation BESSIE) or two Brigades up (operation BASIL). The 43rd Division had an infantry battalion in two of its Brigades fully mobilised in amphibious DUKW trucks for this purpose, and the idea was that these would be used to make the initital assault crossing and the two remaining Battalions in the Brigade would follow-up in assault boats, or if suitable launching and landing ramps for the DUKWs were not available, then all three Battalions would make the crossing in assault boats. These contingency plans are described in Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2021), and is part of his MARKET GARDEN series of books on engineer units involved in the operation. The reason this prepared plan was not implemented was because General Gavin of the US 82nd Airborne wanted to use his own troops to make the crossing, no doubt trying to make up for the blunder by his 508th Regiment when it failed to secure the bridge on the first day while it was still undefended by the Germans. However, Airborne Divisions are not equipped with boats, and that's why he was asking for boats from XXX Corps. He first made this suggestion of using his own troops as soon as the link-up with XXX Corps was made and the Welsh Guards took over defence of the Grave bridge, enabling Gavin's 504th Regiment to become a division reserve, but General Browning rejected the idea, preferring to try a frontal assault with the 505th and Guards tank support first. Only when this attempt failed did Gavin press again for a river crossing with the 504th and the idea was accepted. It's unfortunate the Royal Engineers were not invited to the conference, so Gavin's intervention was unexpected and the prepared default plannning was therefore by-passed. It was also assumed, incorrectly, the assault boats would have to be brought up from the vast engineer stores stockpiled in Belgium, so the senior commanders were unaware that the Guards Armoured Division's Royal Engineers, already at Nijmegen, had their own 32 boats, plus two more borrowed from another unit to equip a reconnaissance section of two half-tracks, bringing their available total to 34. What appears to have happened was that the boats being ordered up the corridor from Belgium were delayed by the German bombing of Eindhoven on the night of 19/20 September, and an attack on the corridor during the following day. On the morning of 20 September, the Guards Division CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) was telephoned and asked if he had any boats, and he replied 32 serviceable. One of the four trucks carrying the boats was hit by a shell, reducing the number of boats available to 26 for the crossing, so either two boats were salvaged from the hit truck, or the two reconnaissance boats were also made available, as the boats brought up from Belgium probably never arrived in time for the assault. The Royal Engineers also made available and operated two Close Support Rafts, which enabled the 504th to transport Jeeps and anti-tank guns across the river in support. The assaults boats were to be operated by the US Airborne Engineers of C Company 307th Combat Engineer Battalion, who normally supported the 504th regimental combat team. Details of these engineering problems at Nijmegen are from Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2015, 2016). So the film does imply incorrectly that contingency planning for these scenarios was not done, either because of a lack of historical research, or quite likely because Richard Attenborough wanted to make his "anti-war film" to show the British 'officer class' as incompetent, and the American screenwriter ensured his countrymen were shown in a more positive light, with Gavin chewing the scenery trying to salvage a magnificent British disaster. I reality, the problems at Nijmegen began with poor planning choices made by senior USAAF officers at 1st Allied Airborne Army over Browning's head (he was only deputy commander and politically neutralised by his American boss), by Gavin's poor divisional plan to assign his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission, and that regiment's commander failing to carry out Gavin's instruction to move on the Nijmegen bridge immediately after landing, allowing the SS panzer troops to move into the city and reinforce its bridges. It's significant that Gavin was the only character cast of the four officers in his chain of command responsible for the failure of the operation. Theatre audiences are not going to blame characters they are unaware even existed.

@@davemac1197Great analysis. All films distort facts. That isrthe natuer of commerical film. They have to limit the scope to tell a specific story. Even the much heralded Saving Private Ryan & Gettysburg must tell a story that focuses on a narrow narrative. The problem with Market Garden was mission creep and the fact it was laid on too quickly. Audacity needs one of 2 things to succeed. Either a simple plan that can be executed by well trained forces or a complex plan that has either a lot of previous battle experience behind it or has been well rehearsed.

@@JeffreyCantelope - Hollywood can do a good job of telling history if that is the intent of the director/producer. A study of some films produced in the 2010s decade found Selma (2014) was 100% historically accurate as a biopic of Martin Luther King Jr., while The Imitiation Game made in the same year was deemed 42.3% true, because the filmmaker's intent was not a historical telling of how the German Enigma codes were broken but to rehabilitate Alan Turing's character in the light of today's moral codes. In the case of A Bridge Too Far, the source book is a biased account by Irish newspaper journalist Cornelius Ryan, who hailed from Dublin and was embedded with Patton's US 3rd Army during the European campaign. I can think of no finer colleges of the anti-Montgomery school of military philosophy than Dublin and Patton. Ryan later emigrated to the US, where he wrote his three books, A Bridge Too Far being published unfinished due to his terminal cancer. As a filmmaker, Richard Attenborough was a pacifist, he served in the RAF recording bombing raids on film, and said he wanted to make an "anti-war film" to show the British officer class as incompetent. He landed on Cornelius Ryan's book as suitable source material for a film adaptation, while Hollywood producer Joseph Levine responded to complaints of historical inaccuracy with "I pay to make entertainment, not history", and screen writer William Goldman's best known work is probably comedy western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). I would refute two points you just made - "mission creep" was not a factor - the operation failed to terminate on the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) coast as intended, so it fell short of its ultimate objectives - primary was a Rhine crossing, secondary was to cut off all German forces in western Netherlands, and tertiary to cut the V-2 rocket supply lines to the Dutch coastal launch sites. Laid on too quickly? - Seven days for MARKET GARDEN was actually quite generous. Browning had previously threatened to resign over a previous Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) operation called LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges), scheduled too soon to print and distribute maps. Brereton planned to accept Browning's resignation as his deputy and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully the operation was cancelled, Browning withdrew his letter, and both men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning was now politically neutralised and could not influence the planning for MARKET. The origins for MARKET actually began a week earlier on 3/4 September when Browning and Montgomery met to discuss a Rhine crossing and devised operation COMET (1st Airborne and Polish Brigade on Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges), originally scheduled for 8 September, it was delayed by weather to 10 September, when Montgomery cancelled it after receiving reports of II.SS-Panzerkorps moving into the Arnhem target area and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with it. Browning flew out to meet Montgomery and they devised an outline for an upgraded operation by adding the two US Airborne divisions to hold the corridor, allowing the British and Polish units with their more substantial anti-tank gun resources to concentrate at Arnhem (the US units had more field artillery). This outline plan provisionally called SIXTEEN (COMET had been FIFTEEN) was presented by Montgomery to Eisenhower at a scheduled meeting later the same day and then Browning took the approved outline back to 1st Allied Airborne Army in England for detailed planning, where it was butchered by Brereton and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) to protect their air units from flak. Browning had been willing to accept 33% casualties on COMET going in, if it meant the troops could be landed close to their objectives, but Williams and Brereton objected to a double airlift on D-Day and the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges were now deemed too risky for broad daylight. Both were features of COMET that was going ahead until the last minute cancellation, and then carried over into the SIXTEEN proposal. Browning had even told Dempsey (British 2nd Army) that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults. He was now in a position of having his whole COMET concept compromised by the USAAF Generals and instead suggested to Gavin (now responsible for securing Nijmegen and Grave) that he drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge as a coup de main. Gavin told Cornelius Ryan that he toyed with the idea, but eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily with a scattered drop. Instead, Gavin assigned his least aggressive and experienced 508th Regiment to the Nijmegen mission and instructed Colonel Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and this he failed to do, believing he had to clear the drop zone and secure his other objectives on the Groesbeek ridge first. When Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving, he was as "mad" as the 508th liaison officer had ever seen him and they both went directly to the 508th CP, where Gavin told Lindquist "I told you to move with speed." This was the scenery chewing scene that was not in the film, or the source book, but unearthed by 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012). Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy also bear out Gavin's comment to Cornelius Ryan that neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight, as Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy. Complex plans are not a problem if they are broken down into simple tasks carried out by the various sub-units. The critical area where MARKET GARDEN broke down on the first day was at Nijmegen, where ultimately the internal politics of 82nd Airborne caused the plan to come apart. Gavin said Ridgway had a problem in that he wouldn't promote Lindquist (as a gifted administrator I think he would have made an ideal S-1 in Ridgway's XVIII Corps) and he couldn't easily promote any other Colonel in the division over him as Lindquist had seniority in the grade. I believe Gavin had a similar problem and this was the reason he didn't replace himself as Assistant Division Commander when Ridgway moved up to Corps, and Gavin inherited the Division having to do both jobs. Compared to this nonsense, I think it's simple enough when you get on the ground, but MARKET GARDEN was compromised by politics within 1st Allied Airborne Army and in 82nd Division. Saving Private Ryan I liken to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg tells a true story by using the device of fictional characters and events), and Gettysburg is at least served by being made in mini-series format in three parts, but A Bridge Too Far should be a ten part mini-series to tell this story!

Thank you so much! 💙

Not exactly. The British radios were working normally, but suffered greatly reduced ranges because of the local terrain, which was sandy glacial moraine with a high iron content. The Royal Artillery sets were more powerful than the battalion communications and despite suffering the same problem they were still able to be used at the maximum gun ranges from the batteries at Oosterbeek to support the troops at the bridge, but they were normally too busy to carry other traffic for the battalions. Two special VHF radio sets belonging to the two American 306th Fighter Control Squadron teams sent to Arnhem for contacting aircraft had been delivered with the wrong crystals, due to the unit being put together in haste without proper time to test and train with the equipment. This is not explained in the film and many people believe the British sets had the wrong crystals and was a more widespread problem than just two radio sets. The Dutch civilian telephone system was normally monitored by the Germans and in some instances were used by the Dutch operators to put Allied forces in touch with each other when there were no Germans at the switchboards, but there is no way for the troops to know this unless they are contacted first and they trust the operator. The Dutch resistance in the province of Gelderland did have access to an internal telephone network belonging to the local PGEM power company, which was an advanced sustem the Germans were unware of. This became useful afater the battle as a means of communication between the north that remained occupied by theGermans and the liberated south. The resistance had lost some cells after being penetrated by German counter-intelligence, so they could not be trusted until they had been vetted by Dutch commandos who had been attached to all the airborne units as guides and translators. You have to be careful not to let the Hollywood mythology mislead you. The reality was more complex.

Definitely worth a watch.

Market Garden was actually the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period. British armour moved 100km in 3 days. This was far more than American armour was moving in the Lorraine and Hurtgen Forest at the same time. How long did Patton take to move 20 km to Metz? Three months? The American campaigns in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Alsace and Operation Queen all failed just as Market Garden did and suffered far more casualties. The Lorraine alone was 52,000 battle casualties. Operation Queen is next to forgotten because it was an American operation. It was a similar operation, to try and get a bridgehead over the Roer River in November. It failed in its objectives. American forces never got anywhere near the Rhine until late February 1945 and were thrown back into a retreat in the Ardennes before that. So your post is bizarre. Stop believing Hollywood.

@@lyndoncmp5751 A lot of truth in that, though to be fair the Americans still beat the Germans in the Ardennes battle which contributed greatly to victory overall.

@@chrisgibbings9499 - the Germans ran out of petrol but they had penetrated the US forward combat zone and rear communications zone in the central 5.Panzerarmee sector. They ran out of fuel just as the spearhead of 2.Panzer-Division met the forward outpost line of the British XXX Corps positions that had been hurriedly established on the Meuse.

How would American armor have been different? They were constrained by the fact the Nijmegen bridge was not secured on the first day while it was guarded by just eighteen men. The Patton fans never seem to come back with an answer.

​@@chrisgibbings9499They did (with Montgomery's help as he commanded US 1st Army) but suffered nearly 100,000 casualties just to get back to the start lines they were already at 6 weeks before. If that happened to the British we'd never have heard the end of it from American commanders, historians and internet critics today. 😉

I think you may be confusing Arnhem Bridge with Pegasus Bridge. Pegasus Bridge, across the Caen Canal, on the eastern flank of the D-Day beaches, was taken a few minutes after midnight on D-Day, 6th June 1944, by British glider troops (the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, the Ox and Bucks). This action was portrayed in the film, "The Longest Day", in which the CO of the Ox and Bucks, Major John Howard, was played by the actor Richard Todd. Lt Richard Todd, in real life, had himself landed by parachute near-by to aid in the defence of the Bridge while they waited to be reinforced by troops with heavy weapons who had come ashore on the beaches. At one point, Lt Todd carried a message to Maj Howard, so they actually met on the day.

Eisenhower was both the C-in-C of all ground forces and was Supreme Commander. It was Eisenhower's folly. In truth, it wasn't as big a failure as the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Ardennes.

@@lyndoncmp5751 Eisenhower at least took on board his responsibility for it as Supreme Commander; Montgomery didn't know anything about taking his share of responsibility, either for Market Garden or for the failure to exploit the capture of the port of Antwerp intact by immediately organising the clearing of the Scheldt estuary in early September.

Patton's Lorraine campaign cost 52,000 battle casualties and was a far bigger failure. 3 months trying to take Metz?

@@lyndoncmp5751 That's right. Patton, for all his talent and ability, has had too easy a ride over the years.

​@@chrisgibbings9499 The moment Patton actually had to face German opposition he never achieved anything of note.

@@lyndoncmp5751 I'll have to check up on that one.

Patton didn't do any better than Monty when faced with actual German resistance.

Not at Arnhem, they didn't. The Arnhem scenes were shot at another Dutch town called Deventer as they found that the authorities wouldn't shut the Arnhem bridge for the filming needed even for five minutes.