Arnhem 1944

An explosive new history of the battle immortalised in A Bridge Too Far where paratroopers fought in vain to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine. On Sunday 17 September 1944, over 2,000 transport aircraft lifted off from airfields across England and set a course for Holland. They were the first wave of the largest airborne operation in history, codenamed Operation Market Garden. Their task was to open a sixty-mile corridor for Allied ground forces from the Belgian border to Arnhem on the Lower Rhine. Nine days later, the remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division were evacuated from a precarious foothold seven miles west of Arnhem having failed utterly. William Buckingham's account, based on new research, unearths the reasons why the attack really failed.