In the second of a two-part series, Duncan Glen joins the XXX Corps Liberation Task Force Tour 2019 from Son and Breugel to the banks of the Rhine
By September 18, 1944, several flaws in the planning of Operation Market Garden were becoming apparent. Despite the almost complete surprise of the British 1st Airborne landings at Arnhem on the previous day and successes in capturing some of the key bridges on the XXX Corps route by the American 101st and 82nd Airborne, not everything was going to plan.
German resistance was stiffening, and XXX Corps had taken a pasting a few minutes after beginning their headlong dash to relieve their airborne comrades up the narrow 64-mile corridor that would become known as Hell’s Highway.
The Irish Guards lost nine tanks in two minutes causing significant delays to the plan. It is notable that, during the 1930s, the Dutch Army staff college set its officers a remarkably similar strategic exercise to the 1944 plan and if the cadets’ solution followed the approach that Operation Garden would take, they would fail the course. The lack of liaison by the British with their Dutch counterparts at the planning stage would turn out to be one of the many failings in the plan.
It …
