Making A Bridge Too Far

By Simon Lewis

A Bridge Too Far, released in 1977, proved to be the last epic WWII movie made in the Hollywood studio system. Its ambitious goal: to recreate the doomed Allied plan called Operation Market-Garden in September 1944. Market-Garden' s goal was to surprise the Germans with a mammoth parachute drop behind their lines and bring a quick end to the war, but the plan became a disaster for the Allies, with the battle for the Arnhem bridge vicious as the “ Red Devils” of British First Airborne held out against overwhelming odds. Producer Joseph E. Levine packed his cast with the top stars of the 1970s, including Anthony Hopkins, Robert Redford, Sean Connery, James Caan, Michael Caine, Elliott Gould, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Olivier and shot the film on location in and around Arnhem. Making A Bridge Too Far' answers all the questions WWII buffs have had about the production, as author Simon Lewis interviewed many in the cast and crew and uncovered a genuinely entertaining story about bringing WWII to life in sleepy 1976 Holland with vintage tanks and aircraft, legions of stunt men and paratroopers, all led by determined director Sir Richard Attenborough. Making A Bridge Too Far' will prove a delight for armchair generals and lovers of old Hollywood. Fun facts: Dutch survivors of the war had no patience for actors dressed as German soldiers; Dirk Bogarde was a British war veteran who had participated in Market-Garden and bore the mental scars to prove it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: GoodKnight Books
• Release date: May 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989567003

Simon Lewis

Simon Lewis has been teaching African and Third World Literature at the College of Charleston since 1996. A former long-time director of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) program at the College, Dr. Lewis is the coeditor of three volumes of essays in USC Press’s Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World series: The Fruits of Exile: Central European Intellectual Immigration to America in the Age of Fascism, Ambiguous Anniversary: The Bicentennial of the International Slave Trade Bans, and The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War. He is also the author of two monographs on African literature and numerous refereed articles primarily on South African writers. He was recognized in 2021 with a Governor’s Award in the Humanities from South Carolina.

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Preface

Just south of the noise and roar of London lies a charming seventeenth-century mansion house in the Palladian style. Surrounded by a rolling estate with lush gardens and a world-famous championship golf course, it is called Moor Park.

During the 1970s I would stay with my grandparents for a week during the summer holidays. My grandfather was a keen golfer and a member of the prestigious club. On each Sunday of my visit, he along with my grandmother and me, all dressed in our best, would troop up to the mansion clubhouse for a pre-lunchtime drink. While the grown-ups talked, I would wander off around the plush building with its impressive murals of cherubs and angels up high on the ceiling. Outside, at the foot of one of the imposing entrance columns, sat a small plaque bearing an insignia of a blue-winged Pegasus ridden by the Greek warrior Bellerophon wielding a spear, set against a maroon background. Next to it were the words commemorating the occupation of this clubhouse by the headquarters, the First British Airborne Corps from February 1944 to October 1945. Not mentioned was that it had been the birthplace of the dramatic events over three weeks in September 1944.

Despite a hazy four-decade-old memory, I’m sure I first noted the plaque during the summer of 1977. In late June that year I was at boarding school, and during term-times we were allowed two Ex-eats, or weekend passes to non-Latin scholars. During one, my father picked me up and drove us to the nearest cinema some 20 miles away. I was given a treat—A Bridge Too Far. It made a huge impression on my 11-year-old mind. On the following morning I woke up early and hastily constructed my own Arnhem bridge out of some wooden toy roadblocks. To defend it amid a motley assemblage of buildings was a group of green plastic HO-OO Airfix British Commandos. To dislodge them, accompanied by my whistling sound effects, I deployed an assortment of model Airfix German tanks. Almost half a century later, the smell of the cordite from that impromptu game still lingers in my memory.

While many of my contemporaries were excited about the Bay City Rollers, Evel Knievel, and the skateboard craze, my passion was history—and its spectacular reconstruction on film. I recall the excitement of reading about A Bridge Too Far in a free preview magazine. Without my knowing it, research for this book had already begun. I still remember one bit of trivia: in the filming of the first scene with American troops (probably with James Caan as Sergeant Dohun), the U.S. army expert, Colonel Frank Gregg, pointed out that officers and NCOs had simple white markings on the backs of their helmets. The article explained how a crew member suggested using strips of white gaffer tape used by the camera team, to save the day.

My love of history and cinema has continued, albeit on often parallel lines. Making a career in TV production as an editor, director, and video journalist, I also achieved one ambition and directed a feature film, Jackals, in 2011. While my interests in the movies are truly eclectic (inspiration for future books), the historical epics of the ’50s and ’60s have a special place in my heart. Indeed, six months before seeing Bridge, I saw the TV premiere of Waterloo (1970). This extraordinary spectacular caught my imagination and never left. It formed the subject of my first book in 2021.¹ The central point I argued in that book—and will in this—is that a filmmaker or dramatist must obey the tenets of drama before the facts of history.

This is at odds with historians of all stripes who often bemoan, Why can’t they just stick to the facts? For the same reasons book adaptations are routinely altered, the tight structure of most screenplays, with a max of three hours, demands simplicity and erudition. It is a truism to say that not a single dramatist from Homer through Shakespeare and beyond ever began penning a historical tale and said: How can I tell this as accurately as possible? Instead, all have said and will continue to say: How can I fashion these facts as dramatically as possible? Once one accepts this, it’s time to enjoy a book, play, or movie and judge it as drama—not history. That said, most talented writers try to honour the spirit of the history as far as narrative demands allow. One such was William Goldman with his script for Bridge. His work is a textbook example of how to distil a vast historical canvas with a multitude of incidents and characters into an easily understandable but also deeply moving piece. As we will see, his screenplay was often in the front line of criticism.

Bridge has its detractors. First, critics shoot down the inaccuracies, but as this book will show, many changes were deliberate by telescoping and amalgamating elements of Cornelius Ryan’s source book. Some are less excusable, but one must remember that movies like this cost such eye-watering sums of money that compromises are inevitable. This brings up the other contentious issue—the use of stars. I hope to show how such charismatic talent, immediately identifiable, works to the film’s benefit.

And what of the film’s virtues? Primarily, it is the extraordinary realism. Except for a handful of optical effects, everything on the screen was done not just for real but also full-size. Much of the book will look at how these visual marvels were created.

The predominantly British crew was a team of exceptionally skilled individuals at the top of their game. Most are legendary within the industry but little known to the general public. While the stars receive their due respect, I make no apologies for giving equal weight to the unsung heroes who collectively have contributed to a host of other much-loved and highly regarded films. (This narrative will make occasional pauses to profile certain individuals; the choice is arbitrary and personal with omission implying no disrespect.)

Behind the superstar talent and the visual splendour was director Richard Attenborough’s brilliant experiment. Running like a seam of silver, 50 young actors became believable soldiers. Like instruments in an orchestra, they were not intended to be identified individually but instead to create a rich texture of believability. Their collective contribution forms the heart of the movie. You will meet some of them and see why this experience in the hot summer of 1976 has continued to resonate in their lives.

This is a story of cooperation. What you will not find in these pages is tittle-tattle, gossip, and clashes of ego. Inevitably, filming long hours in arduous situations frayed tempers and personalities, but almost none of these spats have survived the passage of time. What remains is a tale of extraordinary hard work and dedication by a group of supreme professionals, all coalescing under the inspired leadership of Sir Richard Attenborough.

When this film was conceived and filmed in 1976, it seemed unthinkable that full-scale warfare would ever scourge Europe again. The film bears Attenborough’s unmistakable liberal and compassionate values, which imbue every frame with a heartfelt anti-war message.

For me, these sentiments morphed into a different hue the very day I signed the contract for this book: 24 February 2022. Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine marked a dark historical turning point. I, like millions of others, was shocked and revolted by this action. At first, I felt reluctant to write anything about war. But if people can be mobilised to fight, a group amassing together in pursuance of art (albeit with some commerce) surely is a positive act of human endeavour. And that’s what this book desires to celebrate.

And the film’s superlatives?

Often, writers of movie books cannot resist inflating their beloved subject as the greatest, the most iconic, or whatever, but these subjective terms simply make eye-catching cover blurbs. To define the greatest war film is perhaps much harder than for any other genre: the subject is too vast and complex. It’s worth remembering that movies have grown up alongside bloody, state-sponsored, industrial slaughter. Cinema has tried to adapt and reflect a reality that is often beyond human understanding. Only by the end of the twentieth century was the medium able to show the visceral nature of combat. Does that make the previous, more refined works of less value?

Let’s take a sniper’s eye view at the genre up till 1977.

The First World War yielded few cinematic gems as the medium was still finding its feet. Arguably, Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) was the original war masterpiece of the sound era. It contained some harrowing combat footage before the censor’s scissors adjudicated with good taste. Its strong anti-war theme was in tune with the times, although warmongering Nazi Germany disagreed—and banned it. Ten years later, films were pro-war as the major powers recognised the enormous emotional reach of cinema. Thus, outpoured hundreds of exhortations to fight. Sahara (1943) and The Way Ahead (1944) are excellent examples, both stressing the need for a collective effort and the will to win.

In British cinema, post-war grieving was soon replaced by celebratory tales of pluck and derring-do, perhaps the most notable being 1955’s The Dam Busters. This decade-long cottage industry helped to form a potent myth that pervades British society to this day. Hollywood, at the same time, dealt instead with the more recent Korean War and a perceived threat from communism. This all changed in the 1960s when the war film became a spectacle in living colour and CinemaScope.

There are two main strands to the portrayal of war on film. One is the fictional action adventure, kicked off with the Oscar-winning Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and followed by The Guns of Navarone (1961), described, to quote Quentin Tarantino, as the original guys on a mission movie. This would prove to be an immensely popular strain, even borrowing from the then-current James Bond phenomenon with Operation Crossbow (1966) and Where Eagles Dare (1968).

The other strand, and more pertinent to this book, is the rarest: the historical war epic. Leslie Norman’s Dunkirk (1958) was one of British cinema’s few homegrown epics, an impressive reconstruction of a defeat that spawned a national myth of survival, Operation Dynamo. Despite a limited budget, the Ealing production did an admirable job of conveying the scope and scale of the miracle, as over 350,000 men were lifted from the bombed beaches by an armada of ships. With the turn of the decade, Hollywood felt it was time to recreate the glories of the recent past.

Darryl F. Zanuck’s recreation of D-Day for Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day (1962) remains an outstanding achievement. The production was decked with nearly 50 stars, and several directors filmed their respective nations’ contributions. British Ken Annakin’s four-minute single-take helicopter shot of the storming of a German-held casino is still jaw-dropping. American Andrew Marton expertly handled the Omaha Beach sequence, upon which rested the fate of the operation, while Bernhard Wicki imbues the German defenders with a rarely seen humanity. The ultimately uplifting story of an Allied victory proved an enormous success and swelled the studio coffers.

Is Paris Burning? (1966) was a less-successful French (but American-backed) account of the recapture of the city in August 1944. Ken Annakin was a last-minute replacement to direct Battle of the Bulge (1965), a hugely spectacular if inaccurate epic of a pivotal encounter. Hampered by copyright issues corralled by a rival company, the script had to fictionalise all the characters, and it heavily telescoped events, which outraged ex-president and wartime commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite its limitations, Battle of the Bulge remains a splendid piece of entertainment for the giant 70-mm Cinerama screen, helped by liberal use of the Spanish army.

These films that attempted to show the scale of their subjects were complex and expensive. Certainly, the biggest and worst was the Russian seven-hour Liberation (1970), which told a highly partisan account of the Eastern Front. Despite outstanding action using a division of the Soviet army, the heavy propaganda and leaden direction doomed it as entertainment. Back in the West, the decade bowed out with two worthy attempts to encompass huge historical events: Battle of Britain (1969) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).

The bloody Vietnam War in Southeast Asia blunted the thirst for these movies. The genre seemed to be consigned to history. The early 1970s would see a paucity of war films, and the few made, Operation Daybreak (1975), The Eagle Has Landed (1976) and Midway (1976), were not crowd-pleasers. To buck this trend, a maverick producer came out of retirement to stake much of his personal fortune on the biggest film of his career. Hell or high water, Joseph E. Levine had a promise to keep and hoped to lure back the public with a war epic to top them all.

So far, we have considered only combat stories. Many films of note relate the civilian experience from the Blitz to the Holocaust. Schindler’s List (1993), Two Women (1961), and Elem Klimov’s harrowing Come and See (1984) surely show the true horror of conflict.

Where does that leave A Bridge Too Far ? I contend it is a great war movie and will go further to suggest it is top of the class of all the sprawling historical war epics. It conveys the facts and the history with painstaking economy and fastidious fidelity to authenticity, almost without parallel.

The film’s poignant legacy is how it has been adopted by the Dutch people. Despite the terrible privations Montgomery’s bold plan engendered, the Dutch continue to honour the sacrifice every September. The movie, which was filmed entirely in their country, helped to not only boost the economy but also tell the world about the fearful cost and importance of Operation Market Garden.

It is impossible to tell this movie story without describing the history of the battle. As the film is essentially an adaptation of a book, I have chosen to consider Cornelius Ryan’s original as the bible. While subsequent works have challenged elements of Ryan’s early 1970s research, screenwriter William Goldman would not have been privy to them. So, I have resisted more recent accounts.

As for the film’s production in 1976, I chose a detailed article written 10 years later by Colonel John Waddy, the film’s historical advisor, as the bedrock of facts. When you meet this consummate soldier later, it will be obvious why he can be trusted implicitly as a source. This book makes copious use of cast and crew recollections, but after almost half a century, memories can be hazy. Scenes often are filmed out of order and even spread over months; for the sake of this narrative, I have conflated some reminiscences. Where there were contradictions, I trusted surviving production paperwork, Waddy, or my own assessment. Considering the hundreds of people involved in this movie, of which only a relative handful are given a voice, I do not describe this book as definitive. Instead, I have striven to give a flavour of the effort the cast and crew expended during a hot summer in Holland in 1976.

Introduction

Market Garden 1944

On 5 September 1944, three months after the Allies stormed the Normandy beaches on D-Day, the Germans were in headlong retreat in what was later dubbed Mad Tuesday. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s British and Canadian army had taken Brussels and was poised to drive north into Holland. Far to the south, Patton’s American Third Army was charging full pelt through France and knocking on Germany’s back door. The Allies scented victory, and all dreamed of being home for Christmas.

The supreme commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, suffered a dilemma. He didn’t have enough supplies, which had to be manhandled from the Normandy coast, for both advances. Montgomery presented a daring plan that, he was convinced, would win the war. Operation Market Garden involved dropping three divisions of airborne troops to seize a series of bridges in Holland. The paratroopers would lay an airborne carpet for the British Second Army, led by XXX Corps, to punch through 64 miles to Arnhem’s bridge across the Rhine. Once taken, Arnhem’s position on the river would allow the Allies to pivot into the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr.

Given the go-ahead, Montgomery allowed his subordinate, General Frederick Browning, head of the First Airborne Corps, just seven days to plan Market at his Moor Park HQ. Dapper and sophisticated, this Old Etonian and former Olympic athlete was a popular leader. During the First World War, while serving with the elite Grenadier Guards, he had won the DSO and the Croix de Guerre amid the hell of the Western Front. To lead the British First Airborne Division, a fresh unit untested in combat, he appointed his friend Major General Roy Urquhart, an experienced and adept infantry officer, but who had never commanded parachute troops. Urquhart was well-served by battle-scarred airborne officers, including the highly capable Colonel John Frost.

Ordered to take bridges around Nijmegen was the U.S. 82nd All-American Airborne led by the youthful Brigadier General James Jumpin’ Jim Gavin. Promoted as divisional commander at age 37, he was the youngest U.S. general since the Civil War. Gavin always jumped with his men, and his unit had already been bloodied in the chaotic drop on the eve of D-Day. The same was true of the other American unit, the U.S. 101st Screaming Eagles led by Major General Maxwell D. Taylor, who had orders to take and hold the bridges around Eindhoven and be the first to be relieved by British XXX Corps.

Although the PAN (Dutch Resistance) reported that the headlong retreat had now stilled, Browning believed the Germans were unlikely to offer much opposition. To stem the rout, Hitler had appointed the elderly Field Marshal General Gerd von Rundstedt as overall commander in the west. It was a wise choice. The veteran general quickly and pragmatically organised his forces by regrouping disparate units into flexible battle groups. Their whereabouts were almost unknown to Allied intelligence, who knew only that General Bittrich’s crack Waffen-SS II Panzer Corps had been withdrawn to Arnhem. This unit, with only a few serviceable tanks, had been tracked all the way back from Normandy, where it had been severely mauled. Entrusted with the defence of Holland was Field Marshal Otto Model, who had chosen the Tafelberg Hotel as his HQ together with the nearby Hartenstein Hotel, both in Oosterbeek—directly on the route of the British First Airborne’s proposed advance to Arnhem bridge.

On the morning of 17 September 1944, scores of airfields dotted across southern England shook to the roar of hundreds of transport planes, including the versatile C-47 Dakota. Tens of thousands of men packed into what became a vast 90-mile air armada flying towards Holland. Eventually, after the planes fanned into three giant columns, thousands of parachutes drifted down to earth, and hundreds of gliders landed on the bright Sunday afternoon. Almost everywhere, the men landed with little opposition. The Germans had been taken completely by surprise.

On the Belgian–Dutch border, 350 artillery pieces pounded the enemy front line. Then at 2:10 p.m., tanks of the Irish Guards, led by Colonel J.O.E. Vandeleur rolled forward for Garden. They were part of the Guards Armoured Division, spearhead of XXX Corps, which totalled over 100,000 men and 20,000 vehicles. Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks commanded. Known as Jorrocks, he had proved a popular commander but was now showing the strain after months of fighting since Normandy.

Within hours, the U.S. 82nd had taken the Grave bridge and pressed forward towards Nijmegen. Unfortunately, the first hiccup occurred when the U.S. 101’s objective at Son was mined before the bridge could be seized. Despite light German resistance, XXX Corps managed only seven miles before darkness fell. What was happening at Arnhem? Browning, who had travelled with the U.S. 82nd, had received no information.

With drop zones eight miles west of Arnhem, Urquhart’s British had landed unopposed. But almost immediately, things unravelled. Many of the radios worked only intermittently, severely hampering communication. The crucial strike force of Colonel Freddy Gough’s jeep squadron had been badly shot up—there would be no lightning strike to the bridge. As the various detachments hoofed it along the cobbled road, they were at first mobbed by ecstatic locals before being pinned down by German fire. It took only a handful of motivated Waffen-SS soldiers to site machine guns at strategic positions and blunt the advance. All except one battalion.

Hugging the Rhine was Colonel Frost’s Second Parachute Battalion, who, discovering the railway bridge blown, pressed on to the main road crossing of the Rhine. Finding the north end of the Arnhem Road bridge unguarded, Frost immediately dispersed his men to various houses on each side of the roadway. In the fading light, an attempt to take the south end failed. An exploding ammunition dump caused the bridge superstructure to burn brightly over a city now aflame.

The Germans, who had been caught on the back foot, quickly reorganised, helped by a stroke of fortune. Two gliders belonging to Browning’s HQ were lost during the drop, and on one someone had brought along a complete set of plans for the entire operation. This found its way to the Germans. Hitler, far away in his East Prussian lair, was incensed by the attack and directed vast resources to Holland. Also, the Luftwaffe that had been cleared from the Normandy skies still had some fight left and entered the fray. Within hours, Bittrich’s badly mauled Panzer Corps was reequipped and ready for the fight. Bittrich ordered SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel and his SS-Kampfgruppe Frundsberg to concentrate around Nijmegen while SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Harzer’s SS-Kampfgruppe Hohenstaufen battled it out in Arnhem.

Over the next few days, the two American divisions, the 82nd and 101st, fought hard to consolidate their captured bridges. For 36 hours, XXX Corps waited at Son while engineers threw a Bailey bridge across the canal. At Arnhem, a spirited attack by Haupsturmführer Viktor Gräbner’s lightly armoured SS Recce unit of Harmel’s Frundsberg was repulsed, allowing Frost’s men to maintain their foothold. The rest of the division was now firmly on the defensive—all attempts to push to the bridge had been cut off. Instead, Urquhart’s forces were grouped in the Arnhem suburb of Oosterbeek, dug in and fighting back. The Paras (and their glider-borne infantry comrades), who had earned their proud nickname, the Red Devils, in the North African campaign, were living up to their reputation with dogged resistance.² Inexplicably, their top commanders were nowhere to be seen. Frustrated by the intermittent radio communication, Urquhart went forward to investigate what was happening. He and a brigade commander, Lathbury, found themselves cut off and were forced to hole up in an attic room at Zwarteweg 14 in Arnhem. He would be away from his HQ for 36 hours.

Lack of command and control permeated the entire operation. The patchy radios meant that Browning’s HQ in Holland was almost redundant. His London HQ at Moor Park, where he should have been, resembled a ghost town, so no one coordinated the vast resources. Poor communication with the RAF resulted in supplies and reinforcements failing to be deployed correctly. This was not helped by the dire losses of transport planes at the hands of a rejuvenated Luftwaffe and lethal flak anti-aircraft fire.

At Arnhem on 18 and 19 September, more drops brought in reinforcements, but these men received a warm reception as the Germans had infiltrated many of the landing zones. Crucially, the Polish brigade that was planned to land south of the bridge was delayed for days by bad weather.

While the Guards Armoured brigade clattered over the Son Bailey bridge and on to the U.S. 82nd, its commander, Jim Gavin, had a dilemma. On his right lay the Groesbeek Heights along the German border, which if seized by the enemy would seriously compromise his flank. Simultaneously, Gavin needed to seize the vital road and rail bridges at Nijmegen. He had scant men to do both, and so chose to seize the heights. Meanwhile, small detachments were street fighting through the once beautiful city of Nijmegen.

By 19 September, despite fierce German resistance, XXX Corps’s vanguard had reached Nijmegen and pushed up to the banks of the Waal River—just nine miles from Arnhem. A plan was hatched for a daring night crossing to take both bridges at Nijmegen. This would be coordinated with a heavy thrust of British tanks. But the required boats for infantry to cross the river were far back down what had now been dubbed the Devil’s Highway. Although the U.S. 101st had been relieved, the Germans made continuous forays to cut the route. These American paratroopers would continue to defend the area for many weeks to come. Dodging shot and shell and a nightmarish traffic jam, a column of trucks laden with boats threaded its way north.

At 3 p.m., two companies of the U.S. 82nd 504 Regiment piled into 23 plywood boats and struck across the Waal. The Germans had dug in, supported by heavy artillery. Given suppressing fire from XXX Corps, which pounded the far bank and laid down a smoke screen, the impromptu armada rowed into a maelstrom. Despite appalling casualties, the men of the 504 stormed the German defences and, reinforced by a second wave, fanned out to take both the railway and road bridges. General Harmel was itching to blow the bridge. Ignoring orders from Bittrich, he had instructed his engineers to prime the structures with explosives. As British tanks debouched from the town to roll onto the causeway, the Germans blew their explosives—but the wires had been cut by the Dutch resistance. With both bridges taken, Gavin watched with dismay as Horrocks’ tanks stood idle, despite a promise to press on. Horrocks justified his inaction by the fact that the infantry were still heavily involved in street fighting.

Unbeknownst to allied commanders, the prize was already a chimera. After four days of the bitterest fighting, Frost’s men, now commanded by Freddie Gough after the colonel was wounded, were compelled to stop fighting. Arnhem had fallen to the Germans. In Oosterbeek, First Airborne had created a defensive pocket and were resisting with extraordinary tenacity—five Victoria Crosses would be won in separate engagements. By now, Urquhart had escaped confinement and returned to his HQ at the Hartenstein Hotel. His command was in dire straits. All their landing zones had been overrun, so the RAF unwittingly dropped much-needed supplies to the enemy. First Airborne’s wounded, in the thousands, were taking respite in any nook and cranny. Ordinary houses became makeshift hospitals, their owners, such as Kate ter Horst, serving as impromptu nurses. The St. Elizabeth Hospital in Arnhem overflowed with wounded but, as it formed part of the defence, was in the line of fire.

The Waffen-SS had a fearsome and bloody reputation on the Eastern Front, but this battle would see a rare moment of humanity. A daily truce of one hour was negotiated to allow for the wounded of both sides to be taken to the rear while hasty graves were dug for the fallen. And then the carnage would begin again, with neither side prepared to lose. Having finally arrived, Sosabowski’s Polish Parachute Brigade, who were concentrated around Driel, south of the Rhine, made various valiant attempts to reinforce Urquhart’s dwindling command in Oosterbeek. It was obvious to all that Arnhem was lost.

Under cover of pouring rain, the remnants of the First Airborne staged an exemplary withdrawal on the night of 25 September. The badly wounded and medical staff volunteered to man the perimeter to fool the Germans. Barely 2,000 men of the original 10,000 made it across the fast-flowing Rhine that night. While the recriminations and arguments would begin, Arnhem hadn’t finished with tragedy.

The Dutch living under German occupation suffered appalling privations during the following brutal winter, with many dying of starvation and cold. It was little comfort to hear that Montgomery considered the operation 90 percent successful, prompting Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to conclude, My country can ill afford another Montgomery success.³

The merits and failings of Operation Market Garden have been endlessly debated. While this is primarily a film book, it is worth some discussion about the battle. What seems extraordinary is the sheer dash and ambition of the operation: an enormous achievement planned and executed in seven days.

The American divisions carried out their orders with tenacity, ingenuity, and courage. The crossing of the Waal is unquestionably one of the most courageous feats in military history and deserves to be celebrated. Whether Horrocks should have ploughed ahead to Arnhem without his infantry is a moot point. The prized bridge had by then fallen. And what of First Airborne? They faced hell. The choice of drop zones so far from Arnhem was a crucial flaw. The failure to drop the Poles in the first few days south of the bridge meant Frost’s hold was always tenuous at best. On the other side, the Germans fought an admirable battle. Their military doctrine had always put great emphasis on vigorous counterattack, and at Arnhem they proved it. This was helped by the speed of reinforcements from the Fatherland and other parts of Holland, so quickly and in force.

Retired Dutch Major General Mart de Kruif, who commanded part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in 2008, overall considered that the defeat was not due to the Germans but to Montgomery’s ego in his competition with Patton, the desire to deploy the airborne troops, inaccurate planning, and the far too slow advance of XXX Corps.⁴

The plan was bold, and it could have succeeded. Should it have been prosecuted? The brutal winter of 1944 caused immense suffering to the Dutch people. The sobering fact of war is that battles must be fought with the utmost prejudice to win. It is a tragedy that so many have to die. The enormous and profound emotional connection the Dutch have to Montgomery’s great war-winning gamble showed they understood the almost unbearable sacrifice required from not just them but also the sons of three other nations, all prepared to end the war by Christmas—and bring the boys back home.

1

Theirs Is the Glory

It was the smell that got him. The sickly, almost sweet stench of death and decay. It hung around the ruins, lingering like a malevolent spirit to remind everyone that war was never far away. He could close his eyes and momentarily forget, but that noxious odour could not be so easily assuaged. At least he had his pipe, as he puffed on the tobacco, which escaped in a cloud from his mouth. Thankfully, the smoke from the pungent tobacco in his pipe, gritted between his teeth, helped to soothe his nostrils.

Known as Penny, Cyril Pennington-Richards was a tall, gangly fellow in his mid-30s with a thick, bushy beard giving him a Bohemian air, or what would soon be described as beatnik. Crouching amid the debris with his cap turned back to front, he looked quite different from the other men around him. They were all dressed in green and khaki camouflage, many with helmets, some with maroon berets with the silver badge of Pegasus. While none had Penny’s impressive facial hair, all wore three-day-old stubble, their faces covered in grease and mud. They were prone or huddled, each behind a mound of rubble, each aiming rifles or machine guns towards the shattered roadway beyond. They were waiting; bubbles of chit-chat alternated with titters of laughter. It was relaxed and good-natured, no doubt born of long stretches of boredom awaiting action to begin. Penny noted how nothing fazed these tough men. Once when a burial party was re-interring its grim subject, a voice chirped up: Cor, there’s old Ginger. He’d make a lovely stew, wouldn’t he!

Penny carefully repositioned his legs amid the rubble. None of them could be certain what lurked beneath their feet. Before they had taken up positions here, six glum-looking German prisoners armed with metal detectors had gingerly scanned the entire area. They had been doing it for days, each time unearthing at least one unexploded shell beneath the shattered town.

Penny shuddered at the memory of a little Dutch girl a few days before. She had approached him amid a group of soldiers and held out her hand with a grenade complete with its rusted pin. The others’ reflexes were better than his, as the tough bastards dived into a ditch. The girl, unmoving, stood with her hand still outstretched with its lethal discovery. All right, love, said a shaken sergeant major, as he pulled himself out of the ooze. Give it to me, darling, he said as he carefully took the grenade. That’s it, there we are. Now, run away, dear. Then, he promptly pulled the pin, threw it and all ducked as it exploded.

Penny’s reverie was interrupted as his arm was knocked. Next to him sat a gruff-looking man, his face creased with concentration. With greying hair, he was older than all the other men. He winced as he looked first at his watch and then at the ugly sky above. It was September, and the dampness of autumn was giving way to the chill of winter. Time was of the essence. The older man muttered in a clipped voice with the slight trace of a brusque Northern Irish accent: Where the hell is that tank?

Down the street could be heard the clanking and groaning of a metallic beast, punctuated now and then by throaty exhaust emissions. This was a 50-tonne Panther tank, armed with a 75-mm gun—part of Germany’s mighty Panzer fist. It lumbered forward, intent with extreme prejudice.

A grim smile illuminated the gruff man’s face. He turned to wave at a figure a few yards away. A series of semaphore signals followed as everyone poised to leap into action. The soldiers gripped their weapons, and each took careful aim. So did Penny, as he huddled his eye against the viewfinder of a lightweight Vinten H newsreel camera. He punched a switch, and the mechanism whirred as film threaded through. Speed, he said. The gruff man cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: Action!⁵

It had been Leonard Castleton Knight’s idea. He was head of the newsreel company Gaumont British News, and in early 1945 with war still raging, Knight suggested a film about Arnhem to the Rank Organisation. It would be a unique venture in which veterans would return to the scene of the terrible battle. For £3 per day, these men would replay their own actions for a movie. The chosen director was a veteran of the disastrous 1915 Gallipoli campaign, a tough and bluff Northern Irishman, fastidious and openly gay, Brian Desmond Hurst. He enlisted a young novelist, Louis Golding, to pen a script that would copiously use the veterans’ own memories. A protégé of Hurst was Terence Young, who later directed the first Bond films. He’d been a tank commander with XXX Corps during Market Garden and helped to beef up the script. Penny would serve as cameraman. A committed documentarian, Penny had filmed the Blitz sequence for Humphrey Jennings’ Fires Were Started (1941) amid the real bombing. Later he would gravitate to features and photograph Hurst’s most celebrated film, an adaptation of Scrooge (1951) with Alastair Sim.

With a small crew, Hurst and Penny filmed amid the ruins of Oosterbeek still littered with unexploded ordnance, some of it used as special effects. Six German prisoners were press-ganged to mine sweep areas