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Robin Neilland’s ‘The battle for the Rhine 1944’ has a number of chapters on Operation Market Garden, he goes through each bridge in turn and describes the operations to capture them pointing out the mistakes made during the planning of the drops on them.

The chapter on Nijmegen is interesting

In his book, he suggest that Generals Gavin and Browning became obsessed with the capture and retention of the Groesbeek Ridge and regarded them as their first priority, rather than the Nijmegan Bridge and so missed the chance to both ends of the bridge at the same time.

The Groesbeek heights lie just south of Nijmegan overlooking the country between the Einhoven-Nijmegan road and the vast forest of the Reischwald, which lies to the east, just across the German border.

He says that according to Gavin, the problem at Nijmegan and the need to take and hold the Groesbeek Ridge arose from intelligence reports claiming that large German armoured forces were building up in the Reischwald. Should these forces surge west to cut the Einhoven-Nijmegan road, only the Groesbeek Ridge provided ground where they could be resisted. According to Gavin, to defend the road and the Nijmegan bridges against an attack from the Reichswald, it was essential to take and hold the Groesbeek Ridge.

Gavin claims these intelligence reports came form the British but Neilland has been able to find nothing to suggest that the British were concerned about the Reischwald at this time or had reported the presence there of ‘considerable German armour’.

‘Considerable’ in this case is 1,000 tanks…

Neilland goes on to say

‘According to the US official history, the 505th PIR, having sent a patrol into the Reischwald, reported that ‘no tanks could be seen’. This report confirmed other information, obtained from Dutch civilians, that ‘the report about the 1,000 tanks in the Reischwald was false’.


What if both ends of the bridge had been taken at the same time?
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