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
Q: Could you give us a little personal background before we talk about your war experiences?
SIMS: I was born on April 29, 1925, at Sheffield in Yorkshire. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
Through the long, lovely days of the summer of 1940, almost two years before Operation Biting or the “Bruneval Raid,” Royal Air Force Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes turned back the might of the Luftwaffe over southern and southeastern Britain. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
“In the years to come everyone will remember Arnhem, but no one will remember that two American divisions fought their hearts out in the Dutch canal country,” wrote U.S. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
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
Operation Market-Garden
Shortly after midnight on Monday, June 5, 1944, the dark skies over the coast of northern France were filled with thunder. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
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
Operation Market-Garden
By the autumn of 1944, German resistance in the West was quickly crumbling as the British and Americans approached the German border 233 days ahead of schedule. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
Donald Malarkey’s comrades thought highly of him as a warrior and as a man. Staff Sergeant William “Wild Bill” Guarnere considered him his hero. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
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
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
With his troops in a bitter fight with German forces in northern France in the late summer of 1944, General Omar Bradley, commander of the Allied 12th Army Group, could not believe his ears. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
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
Darrell “Shifty” Powers was a soft-spoken machinist who never aspired to greatness. He was born, grew up, got married, raised his family, worked, retired, and died in Clinchco, a remote mining town in southwest Virginia. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
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
Something about the series Band of Brothers struck a chord with television viewers all over the world. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
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
Operation Market-Garden
By mid-August 1944, roughly one month before the now-famous Operation Market Garden, the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had been fighting off and on for over a year. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
On the veranda of his temporary headquarters in a Dutch country house outside Veghel, Holland, renowned Luftwaffe General Kurt Student played lunch host to an old comrade, the chief of staff of the German Seventh Army. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
It was a beautiful September day over Holland. Gradually, a faint rumble began to grow, and the sunny sky was darkened. Read more
Operation Market-Garden
The city of Nijmegen, in the southeastern part of Holland and about six miles from the Dutch-German border, is believed to be Holland’s oldest city, going back some 2,000 years. Read more
