The battle of Arnhem was a major turning point in World War II. It was a gamble by Montgomery, using three airborne divisions, to capture a series of bridges across the wide rivers which separated a powerful army from the plains of northern Germany.
On September 17, 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, code-named Operation Market Garden. Their task was to open a 60-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 7 miles west of Arnhem, having failed utterly. William Buckingham's account, based on new research, unearths the reasons why the attack really failed.
