Operation Market-Garden

Operation Market-Garden was the code name for a failed Allied air-ground offensive into the Netherlands in September 1944, during World War II. Operation Market-Garden involved a direct ground thrust by XXX Corps up a single road to relieve troops of the U.S. 82nd and 101st and the British 1st Airborne Divisions ordered to capture and hold key bridges across rivers until relieved. Operation Market-Garden is remembered popularly as the offensive that attempted to reach “a bridge too far,” in reference to the unsuccessful attempt to capture the bridge across the Lower Rhine at Arnhem.

Operation Market-Garden

WWII Spies: Oreste Pinto

By Robert Whiter

Two men were seated on either side of a paper-strewn table inside an office of MI5, the British intelligence service, in the Royal Victoria Patriotic School at Clapham, London, shortly after the fall of France in the spring of 1940. Read more

British paratroopers of the 1st Airborne Division, who were tasked with the highway bridge over the Nederrijn at Arnhem, land in an open field at the outset of Operation Market Garden.

Operation Market-Garden

Hellish Fight at Arnhem

By John E. Spindler

As the clock struck 8:00 p.m. in Arnhem, Holland, Lt. Col. John Frost’s British 2nd Parachute Battalion captured the north end of the road bridge over the Nederrijn River. Read more

Operation Market-Garden

From D-Day to VE-Day in a C-47

By Kevin Hymel

High over Normandy, France, eight paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division charged out the rear door of their C-47 Skytrain aircraft. Read more

Operation Market-Garden

The Bridges at Nijmegen

By Christopher Miskimon

Lieutenant Colonel Ben Vandervoort’s 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (2/505) was fighting its way through the Dutch town of Nijmegen on September 19, 1944. Read more

Operation Market-Garden

A Screaming Eagle’s Journey: The Story of Lud Labutka

By Richard Beranty

In an effort to calm his nerves just before he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, Lud Labutka thought it might be a good idea to accept the drink being offered from the paratrooper sitting across from him on their C-47 transport as it crossed the English Channel. Read more

Operation Market-Garden

The Guns of Finger Ridge: Airborne Artillery on the Defense in Market-Garden

By Joseph S. Covais

On September 17, 1944, a massive but hastily planned airborne invasion of the Netherlands was launched. Codenamed Market-Garden, the operation called for three Allied airborne divisions (British 1st and American 82nd and 101st) to land along a narrow corridor reaching from advanced positions along the Dutch-Belgian border to a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Rhine River at Arnhem. Read more

Cronkite and General Eisenhower tour German bunkers in Normandy after the war.

Operation Market-Garden

Walter Cronkite: The War As He Saw It

by Eric Niderost

Walter Cronkite is the acknowledged dean of American journalists, an icon whose distinguished career spanned 60 years. Cronkite is best known as the anchorman and managing editor of The CBS Evening News, a position he occupied from 1962 to 1981. Read more

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