There is, however, another factor to consider when attempting to analyse Montgomery’s thinking in the immediate run-up to MARKET GARDEN. That factor is the role played by the Deputy Commander of the 1st Allied Airborne Army, Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning. Browning was present at 21st Army Group HQ on 10 September, and the popular view is of him waiting dutifully for Montgomery to return from his meeting with Eisenhower, receiving instructions and then racing back by air to report to his superior Lieutenant-General Lewis H. Brereton at 1st Allied Airborne Army HQ, before briefing the senior Air and Airborne commanders.32 According to one account, Browning also asserted that the British 1st Airborne Division would be capable of holding the Arnhem bridges for a maximum of four days, to which Montgomery responded by insisting only two days would be necessary. This is then alleged to have prompted Browning’s oft-quoted comment that MARKET GARDEN might be ‘going a bridge too far’.33 This version of events accords with the recent tendency to saddle Montgomery with the blame for subsequent events in Holland, but there is a bit more to it. According to the commander of the 1st Airborne Division, Major-General Robert Urquhart, the meeting between Browning and Montgomery actually took place on Saturday 9 September, the day before Montgomery’s meeting with Eisenhower, and in Montgomery’s caravan at 21st Army HQ.34 This also accords with the fact that Browning appears to have received the go ahead for MARKET on 10 September from the commander of the British 2nd Army, Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey, rather than Montgomery.35 This version of events makes much more sense and is a much better fit for the timeline, given that Browning was back at British 1st Airborne Corps HQ at Moor Park by 14:30 on 10 September and was presenting a detailed briefing on MARKET to the assembled Air and Airborne commanders and their staffs there at 18:00.36 According to one account, Browning was summoned to Belgium on 10 September on Montgomery’s orders, and with no prior notice of the purpose of the summons.37 This, however, seems unlikely. Had Browning met with Montgomery on 9 September as Urquhart claims, then he would have had a pretty fair idea of the reason for his summons. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that Montgomery would have tried to sell his scheme to Eisenhower on 10 September without a detailed plan for MARKET and all the relevant Airborne facts and figures at his fingertips, and as his interaction with, and thus knowledge of, Airborne matters was limited, he had little option but to seek advice. Given that he had prior contact with Browning, going back at least as far as his machinations for the elevation of his protégé Urquhart to command the 1st Airborne Division at the beginning of 1944, through the string of aborted missions slated after 6 June 1944 – to say nothing of the fact that he held the penultimate Allied Airborne command – it therefore made perfect sense for Montgomery to make Browning his primary source of Airborne information and advice for Operation MARKET. This also fitted with the tendency for the upper echelons of the British Army establishment to behave as if they were members of a close-knit club rather than a military organisation.
This leads to the question of what exactly passed between Browning and Montgomery on Saturday 9 September 1944, and there are two problems with the received version of the event. First, there does not appear to be any official record or verifiable eyewitness accounts to the exchange, and only two subsequent accounts refer to it explicitly as an important meeting in its own right. The first passing mention appears in Urquhart’s 1958 account but with no citation, and he cannot have heard it first-hand because he was in the UK at the time. Cornelius Ryan’s account, which takes Browning’s alleged comment as its title, appeared sixteen years later and cites the whole conversation in quote marks but again with no reference, and claims it took place after the meeting with Eisenhower to boot. It is of course possible that a third party recorded the conversation, but given its prophetic nature it is curious that they have never come forward or been named. There is also the fact that the precise wording of Browning’s caveat varies between sources. According to Ryan for example, Browning said ‘I think we might be going a bridge too far,’38 whereas Harvey’s more recent work renders the sentence as ‘I think we might be going one bridge too far.’39 Given this, it is legitimate to question whether or not Browning actually said anything of the kind, a point raised by both Harvey’s and Urquhart’s biographer, who suggested that the observation might well have actually come from Montgomery.40 Whatever the truth of the matter, the key point is that Browning was fully aware that failure to seize any one crossing rendered the whole of MARKET GARDEN redundant and pointless. Consequently, if he really did believe the Operation was going a bridge too far, he should have been arguing strenuously against launching it at all, rather than making platitudinous excuses for future mitigation.
Second, received wisdom and virtually all accounts invariably present Browning as the dutiful and compliant subordinate, standing by to carry out the wishes of his superiors without question. However, this view is somewhat at variance with the reality of Browning as a ruthless, ambitious and manipulative empire-building bureaucrat par excellence, and it is also important to acknowledge that he also had a vested interest in MARKET going ahead. Despite being appointed to fight the Airborne bureaucratic corner at Whitehall, Browning had adroitly expanded his role to encompass the operational aspect too, turning British Airborne Forces into his personal barony in the process and using it as a platform to attain the second highest operational post in the Allied Airborne establishment. The problem was that by September 1944 political acumen and connections were no longer sufficient to sustain such a key appointment because there was no shortage of airborne officers with operational combat experience. Browning’s arch rival and commander of the US 18th Airborne Corps, Major-General Matthew B. Ridgway, comes immediately to mind, but he was by no means alone. Major-General Richard Gale MC, who had been instrumental in the conversion and expansion of the British Airborne Force from a small-scale raiding force and who had commanded the 6th Airborne Division in the Normandy invasion was also a strong candidate. In short, Browning urgently needed to address his total lack of operational experience in order to justify his position, and personally commanding the largest Allied airborne operation of the war would bolster his position in the Allied Airborne hierarchy, and by extension, his position in the post-war British Army.
Browning was fully aware of the precariousness of his position, not least from having it pointed out in no uncertain terms by his immediate superior Brereton during the preparations for Operation LINNET II. As we have seen, this envisaged dropping the 1st Allied Airborne Army in the region of Maastricht on the Dutch-German border and resulted in a dispute of uncertain provenance between Browning and Brereton; British accounts claim Browning was concerned over a lack of maps for the troops, whereas at least one US commentator claims Browning was really acting in support of Montgomery’s effort to secure additional resources for his northern axis of advance. Whatever the truth of the matter, when Brereton overruled his objections Browning threatened to resign and put his intentions formally in writing, to which Brereton responded by placing Ridgway on stand-by to assume Browning’s post. The cancellation of LINNET II on 5 September removed the immediate source of friction, but the episode left Browning in no doubt of the shakiness of his position on the Allied airborne ladder, or of his expendability.41 From Browning’s perspective it was therefore vital that MARKET went ahead, and viewing matters with this in mind casts things in a different light. Given that he was Montgomery’s chief and presumably only adviser on Airborne matters, Browning was in a prime position to forward his own interests by subtly weaving them into the larger scheme of things. It thus takes no great effort of imagination to see him putting the best interpretation on things to Montgomery, playing up the benefits and minimising the risks inherent in laying an Airborne carpet across sixty miles of German-held territory, especially given Montgomery’s general lack of familiarity with the technicalities and realities of Airborne operations. This scenario certainly provides a plausible explanation for Montgomery’s otherwise inex
plicable and short-lived embrace of high risk, and also for his reticence after the fact. On the surface it seems perhaps a little far-fetched to extrapolate so much from a couple of unminuted meetings and some contradiction and/or confusion over dates and places in secondary accounts. However, as we shall see, Browning went on to make a series of decisions in the run-up to the launch of MARKET for which there is no real explanation apart from a determination that the Operation should go ahead at all costs.
Events moved quickly in the Airborne camp once Dempsey relayed Montgomery’s authorisation for MARKET on 10 September. Browning’s aircraft landed on the golf course at Moor Park, his British 1st Airborne Corps HQ, at 14:30. From there he travelled to 1st Allied Airborne Army HQ at Sunninghill Park, Ascot, where he reported the go-ahead for MARKET and presented an outline plan drawn up by either Montgomery or Dempsey to the Army commander, Lieutenant-General Lewis H. Brereton.42 Brereton then handed formal control of the airborne side of MARKET to Browning, and placed the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions under his command for the Operation. Browning then issued summonses to the Divisional commanders involved, along with other staff and commanders, to attend a formal preliminary briefing for Operation MARKET at Sunninghill Park at 18:00; this was to be followed by a conference to sort out the airlift details at US 9th Troop Carrier Command at Grantham the following day, Monday 11 September, and another conference for the divisional commanders to brief back their plans at Moor Park on Thursday 14 September. The audience for the initial MARKET briefing on 10 September numbered thirty-four and included the commander of the British 1st Airborne Division, Major-General Robert Urquhart and that of the attached 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade, Major-General Stanislaw Sosabowski; Brigadier-General James M. Gavin and Major-General Maxwell D. Taylor commanding the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions respectively, the former having been promoted to his command on 16 August; Major-General Paul L. Williams, commanding the US 9th Troop Carrier Command; and the commanders of RAF Nos. 38 and 46 Groups, Air Vice-Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst DFC and Air Commodore Lawrence Darvall respectively. Browning opened the briefing by presenting the undated outline plan he had brought back from Brussels which divided the sixty-mile airborne corridor into three sections, each of which was allocated to a specific Airborne division. The first twenty miles or so was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, which was to secure a total of six bridgesL two bridges over the Wilhelmina Canal just north of Eindhoven, another over the River Dommel at St. Oedenrode, two more across the Willems Canal near Veghel and another over the River Aa in Veghel proper. Next, the 82nd Airborne Division was tasked to seize the road and rail bridges over the River Maas near Grave and Mook respectively, four crossings over the Maas-Waal Canal and the major road and rail bridges across the River Waal in Nijmegen. The most northerly objectives, the road, rail and pontoon bridges over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem, were allotted to the 1st Airborne Division, also given the subsidiary mission of securing an airfield north of the city at Deelen to permit the British 52nd (Lowland) Division to be flown in as reinforcements.
The plan, while ambitious, was therefore relatively straightforward apart from the allocation of divisional tasks, which gave the least experienced and arguably least battleworthy formation the key and most remote objective. It may have been because on paper at least the 1st Airborne Division was fresh, whereas its two US counterparts had suffered heavy casualties in Normandy. It may also have been intended to give the least experienced formation the least complicated mission; the three objective bridges at Arnhem were in close proximity on a single watercourse, whereas the US Divisions’ objectives were spread over several watercourses and a considerable distance in relative terms. The precise reason for the MARKET prioritisation is unclear however, even among the senior commanders at the time. According to Urquhart the rationale was political, and was intended to offset the repercussions of a British ground force failing to relieve an embattled US Airborne formation in what was essentially a British operation.43 While feasible, this explanation seems rather heavily coloured with hindsight, and the fact that both US Airborne formations were misused as conventional infantry under British command for a considerable period after the failure of MARKET suggests that concern for US casualties or sensibilities did not figure highly in Montgomery or Browning’s calculations. Gavin’s explanation was more pragmatic, and assumed that the divisional tasks were linked to their base locations in the UK relative to the objectives in Holland.44 Again, this makes a certain amount of sense, but overlooks that the key factor was the location of the airfields from which MARKET was launched, rather than the areas in which the individual formations were billeted. While the 1st Airborne Division’s parachute units launched from airfields near the Divisional billets in the English East Midlands for example, the Division’s glider element was lifted from airfields the farthest away from Arnhem, fifty miles or more west of London.
According to one account the divisional tasks were actually allotted by Dempsey when drawing up the outline plan, but it is doubtful he had the necessary authority as an Army-level commander to dictate such matters to an equivalent level of command.45 Any such decisions must therefore have been Montgomery’s, and as he had neither the experience nor detailed knowledge of the formations it is perfectly possible that Browning was in fact responsible and had recommended the allocations to Montgomery during their meeting on 9 September. Given the tribal nature of the British Army it is also possible Browning was seeking to give his former command the bulk of the kudos for MARKET; placing a formation commanded by one of Montgomery’s protégés in the forefront of the action would do nothing to harm his post-war prospects with the British Army’s most senior soldier either. Furthermore, having British troops on the ground at the tip of the springboard for further exploitation was in Montgomery’s best interests, and given the trouble he took to secure Urquhart command of the 1st Airborne Division there was again the seasoning of advancing a protégés’ career in the process. Whatever the reasoning for the divisional tasking, after presenting the outline plan, Browning handed over to Brereton, who insisted that all seventeen bridges had to be seized ‘with thunderclap surprise’ and stressed that time constraints meant any arrangements agreed at this stage had to be binding, before promptly imposing a series of conditions and constraints that tended to run counter to those aims.46 He began the latter by announcing that MARKET was to be launched in four days’ time on Thursday 14 September, an extremely short and unrealistic lead time that possibly betrays Brereton’s lack of Airborne experience. While the 1st Airborne and Polish Independent Brigade had at least some preparation in hand from the aborted Operation COMET, there was still an immense amount of work to be done and the US divisions were approaching MARKET from scratch. Consequently, and unsurprisingly, Brereton’s announcement drew vociferous opposition from the assembled Airborne commanders, to the extent that he relented and put the launch date back three days, to Sunday 17 September. This decision created additional problems however, for while 14 September fell in a period of waning moon, pushing the launch date back to 17 September put MARKET into a no-moon period. This meant that the initial MARKET insertion had to be made in daylight, because large-scale Airborne landing were simply not viable in moonless conditions. Both parachutists and glider pilots required a degree of natural illumination in order to judge height, orientation and rate of descent, and landings without at least some moonlight virtually guaranteed a large proportion of landing accidents with the attendant injuries, lost or damaged equipment and probably fatalities.
This basic truth is frequently overlooked in criticism of the MARKET plan, which often assumes that a night landing was a simple panacea for other flaws in the scheme. It also overlooks the fact that night insertion had not been the Allied norm hitherto because it was a superior method in its own right. Rather, it had been a pragmatic response to the Luftwaffe threat during the formative period of the Allied Airborne operations or, as with the D-Day landings, a necessity di
ctated by other operational factors. Whatever the underlying reasons, large-scale night landings had not proved to be a success. The various Allied landings on Sicily in 1943 were badly scattered, as were those in Normandy, where an unexpected cloudbank disrupted the inbound US transport formations so badly that few US paratroops or gliders were actually delivered to the correct landing zones; some were dropped up to twenty miles astray and a few may have landed in the English Channel.47 The British 6th Airborne Division suffered similarly, with some sticks being dropped over ten miles or more from their assigned landing zone.48 One Horsa glider was released over the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy, a navigation error of fifty miles east in a notional fifty-mile flight.49 In the event, the daylight landing on 17 September proved to be one of the least costly and problematic aspects of MARKET; Gavin later commented that the drop was ‘better than had ever been experienced’.50
It is unclear whether it was dealt with during the initial 10 September briefing or at the conference at 9th Troop Carrier Command HQ the next day, but Brereton’s next point concerned the MARKET air plan and aircraft allocations, and had far more wide-reaching implications and repercussions. Fifty-eight squadrons of transport aircraft were available for MARKET, forty-three from 9th Troop Carrier Command, nine from No. 38 Group and six from No. 46 Group, approximately 1,575 aircraft in all.51 Of the RAF contribution, only No. 46 Group’s six squadrons were equipped with purpose-built Douglas C-47 transports, dubbed the Dakota in British service. No. 38 Group’s squadrons employed obsolete Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle, Handley Page Halifax or Short Stirling bombers pressed into service as glider tugs or makeshift parachute transports.52 In the event, the RAF contribution was insufficient to carry even the 1st Airborne Division’s first lift and an additional 130 C-47s from the US 61st and 314th Troop Carrier Groups had to be drafted in to deliver the 1st Parachute Brigade.53 That aside, the crux of the problem was that there were simply not enough aircraft to lift three Airborne divisions simultaneously and Brereton therefore prioritised the first lift allocation from south to north. This was both logical and sensible, for prompt relief of the formations holding the central and northern portions of the Airborne Corridor was reliant on the first, vital link in the chain. Neither was the disparity in allocation especially marked, with the 101st Airborne Division being allotted 550 aircraft, the 82nd Airborne Division 515, and 1st Airborne Division 480.54
Arnhem Page 11