[17] Although the area is generally flat with less than 30 feet (9 m) of variation in altitude, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, commander of XXX Corps, recalled that "The country was wooded and rather marshy, which made any outflanking operation impossible.

[31] Montgomery replaced Comet with Market Garden, a more ambitious plan to bypass the West Wall or Siegfried Line of German defenses by hooking around its northern end and securing a crossing of the Rhine River, thereby gaining a path to the Ruhr.

He was also highly critical of Browning, writing that he "... unquestionably lacks the standing, influence and judgment that comes from a proper troop experience... his staff was superficial... Why the British units fumble along... becomes more and more apparent.

[63] Meanwhile, Colonel General Kurt Student, commander of the Fallschirmjaeger, the German airborne forces, received orders from Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, to immediately move from Berlin and proceed to the Netherlands, where he would collect all available units and build a front near the Albert Canal, which was to be held at all costs.

The 3rd Battalion under Captain James Cleminson, KBE, MC, ambushed a German staff car and killed the commander of Arnhem's garrison, Major-General Friedrich Kussin, as well as his aide and his driver.

John Greenacre's study points out that radio communications failures were experienced by the division before, were warned about prior to the operation and provided for by bringing extra field telephone wire.

With their long and unwieldy columns having to halt to beat off attacks whilst the troops in front carried on unaware, the Germans delayed segments of the two battalions, fragmented them and mopped up the remnants.

[112] To the north of Oosterbeek, the 4th Parachute Brigade led an attempt by the 1st Airborne Division to break through the German lines, but communication difficulties between British paratroopers and General Frederick Browning and the Americans, and enemy resistance, caused the attack to fail with heavy losses.

Frost, who commanded the only battalion that had made it to the Arnhem bridge, the remaining soldiers attempted to withdraw into a defensive pocket at Oosterbeek and hold a bridgehead on the north bank of the Rhine after overwhelming German resistance.

Food, water and medical supplies were scarce, and so many buildings were on fire and in such serious danger of collapse that a two-hour truce was arranged to evacuate the wounded (including Lieutenant-Colonel Frost) into German captivity.

"[129] Harmel's artillery map, preserved from the time of the battle, suggested that German troops between Nijmegen and Arnhem were extremely thin: there were a handful of security pickets with rifles at the Betuwe midpoint, in Elst.

In the north the 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers were almost overrun during the afternoon but a counterattack with bayonets restored the situation and the heavily depleted battalion moved further south to occupy a narrower front.

The most serious attack of the day was made at dawn against "B" Company, 1st Battalion, Border Regiment which controlled a vital area of high ground in the southwestern tip of the perimeter overlooking the Heveadorp ferry crossing at Driel, which was the division's only straightforward means of receiving reinforcements from the south.

[132] After two days of delay due to the weather, the remainder of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade under Major-General Stanislaw Sosabowski entered the battle on the afternoon of 21 September, delivered at about 17:15 by 114 C-47s of the U.S. 61st and 314th Troop Carrier Groups.

Overall, the poor coordination by the British air transfer officers and persistent attacks by Luftwaffe aircraft caused their supplies to be dropped 15 km (9.3 mi) away on the opposite side of the Rhine.

In a departure from their cautious attritional tactics of the previous days, the Germans formed two potent SS battlegroups and made a significant thrust along a narrow front in the eastern sector.

[160] Also on 19 September, Captain Lionel Queripel of the 10th Parachute Battalion, though injured in the face and both arms, personally remained as a solitary rear guard after ordering his men to withdraw, over their protests.

[169][170] British forces from 50th Division then launched a counter-attack on 4 and 5 October, recapturing most of the lost ground, and also capturing the villages of Bemmel and Haalderen, giving extra strength to hold the bridgehead.

There was a reason for this: Britain's spy network in the Netherlands had been thoroughly and infamously compromised – the so-called England game, which had only been discovered in April 1944, therefore British intelligence took pains to minimise all civilian contact.

As things turned out, knowledge of the Driel ferry or of the underground's secret telephone network could have changed the result of the operation, especially since Allied radio equipment failed, having to rely on messengers.

"[189] CBS war correspondent Bill Downs, who was assigned to Montgomery's campaign since the Normandy invasion, famously said of Nijmegen that it was "...a single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach...a story that should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal River possible.

Responsibility for the failure "began with Eisenhower and extended to Montgomery, Brereton, Browning, and, on the ground side, Dempsey and Horrocks, neither of whom ... galvanised their tank units while there was still time to have seized and held Arnhem bridge".

In my – prejudiced – view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area.

Atkinson stated that the terrain captured "led nowhere", and that the operation failed to achieve its objectives due to "an epic cock-up [of] poor plan[ing] with deficient intelligence, haphazard execution, and indifferent generalship".

[199] Carlo D'Este wrote "What had begun with high optimism had turned into a military disaster", and that despite the heroics at Arnhem bridge, the operation "failed to establish a bridgehead north of the Rhine".

Reynolds stated "The salient achieved led nowhere and was to prove extremely costly in the coming months", and that "The seven [British commanders] most directly involved ... bear responsibility for the failure of the Operation.

It is also clear that, whilst the German commanders were prepared to take all necessary measures and risk to win the battle, even to point of using men untrained in ground warfare, their British adversaries were [not]".

This segregation from the rest of the German front complicated the supply problem of Fifteenth Army, which was forced to rely on the inferior crossings over the Maas and the Waal rivers west of the Allied penetration."

[204] Chester Wilmot stated that the captured terrain was "of immense tactical value", which removed "the threat of an immediate counter-stroke against Antwerp; strategically, however, it was in danger of becoming a blind alley, unless the bridgeheads over the Maas and the Waal could be quickly exploited."

A hole, a par five, on the south course (Hylands Golf Course Uplands) in Ottawa, Ontario was named "Arnhem, in honour of the Royal Canadian Artillery squadrons that took part in Second World War allied airborne Operation MARKET GARDEN from 17 to 26 September 1944.