Market Garden

[spqrzilla]

Montgomery was a flaming ass, egotistical to extremes not to be believed and crazy as a s***house rat. But he was probably the best British General of WWII or at least one of the best three.

Montgomery was pretty good at setting up "set piece battles", ie., at creating a battle where his forces could win. He was hampered by having fairly unimaginative and sometimes plainly incompetent British officers to work with, mediocre British equipment and training. His troops invariably were very big fans of his and he knew how to relate to troops. His weaknesses were that he wasn't great at improvisation and maneuver warfare - although sometimes its hard to separate out the fact that his armored formations were poorly led - and he would maintain that all had gone to "plan" no matter how ridiculous.

Montgomery was also fairly impossible to work with as a peer or superior. Market-Garden is rightfully counted as his failure because of his insistence upon beginning the operation despite bad airborne planning, poor support from air transport services and contrary intelligence. Another reason that the operation failed - or at least was undertaken with bad planning - was that the commander of the Airborne Corps US Gen. Lewis Brererton was incompetent and the commander of British airborne forces under him, Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning, was not quite as incompetent but undermined by political fighting with Brererton.

[Ridge]

John was also a tank commander and actually fought in Operation Market Garden

But the allies had no armor in Market Garden? Which side was he fighting for?

[spqrzilla]

Ridge, the British XXX Corps advancing northward had several British armor formations.

[Ridge]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up!

[marty]

I happened to pass through Arnhem in 2004 during the 60 year anniversary of Market Garden while I was in Europe on a business trip. I was amazed at the number of people attending, esp. the Americans, and the extremely large number of beautifully kept /restored WWII US military vehicles. The columns of military vehicles made it seem like it was 1944. I've continued to wonder just where all those US WWII military vehicles came from, being in Europe, and who owned them.

[flogger]

I happened to pass through Arnhem in 2004 during the 60 year anniversary of Market Garden while I was in Europe on a business trip. I was amazed at the number of people attending, esp. the Americans, and the extremely large number of beautifully kept /restored WWII US military vehicles. The columns of military vehicles made it seem like it was 1944. I've continued to wonder just where all those US WWII military vehicles came from, being in Europe, and who owned them.

I think we left quite a few vehicles there when we left. I did a WW2 tour through Europe around the same time (2006), surprising how flat the terrain is in Holland. Went to all the D-Day beaches, Bastone Eaglesnest, the Maginot line and even the courtroom where the Nuremberg trials were held! Go for it if you EVER get a chance to do it.