Operation Market Garden   
 

The Imperial War Museum London is laying on a film show for us at 14.00 on Friday, 30 July 2010 sixty six years after the event. Some of the film is professional. Some is amateur. Doing these things while you are being shot at is just not the same. It is not Hollywood. It is the real thing.

Market Garden was an attempt to move on faster having been bogged down in Normandy. A push north through Eindhoven, Grave, Nijmegen and Arnhem was the plan. It failed. It was a bridge too far. The Rhine crossing that succeeded came later in March 1945 as Operation Varsity. Derek Cook, late of 2 Company was on that one.

WHAT
See which sequences at Operation Market Garden Film

 

WHERE
Location is the All Saints Annexe, Austral Street, London SE11 4SJ. It is behind the museum and just south of West Square. You can find it at Imperial War Museum map  The action itself is covered at Operation Market Garden - ex Wikipedia

 

WHEN
 14.00 on Friday, 30 July 2010. Please try to get there a bit before. There will be no ice creams served at half time.

 

ARRANGING YOUR OWN FILM SHOW
Means talking to the  archivist, Matthew Lee at the  Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ,  020 7416 5294, Fax: 020 7416 5299, www.iwm.org.uk, mlee@iwm.org.uk. You can get to their catalogue directly at Search the Film and Video Database on Collections Online
PS Some is on line but a lot is in their card index. They like at least three weeks notice.

 

ACCESSING THE COLLECTION OF FIREARMS, PHOTOS, ART ET CETERA
The museum is very approachable. Details are at Imperial War Museum

 

Operation Market Garden Maps

 

Operation Market Garden Pictures

 

Palace Barracks Memorial Garden
Is dedicated to the men who lost their lives serving Queen and Country.

 

Operation Market Garden - ex Wikipedia
QUOTE
Operation Market Garden (September 17–25, 1944) was an Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in World War II. It was the largest airborne operation of all time.

The operation plan's strategic context required the seizure of bridges across the Maas (Meuse River) and two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine) as well as several smaller canals and tributaries. Crossing the Lower Rhine would allow the Allies to outflank the Siegfried Line and encircle the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland. It made large-scale use of airborne forces whose tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands and allow a rapid advance by armoured units into Northern Germany.

Initially the operation was successful and several bridges between Eindhoven and Nijmegen were captured. However the ground force's advance was delayed by the demolition of a bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son, delaying the capture of the main road bridge over the Meuse until September 20. At Arnhem the British 1st Airborne Division encountered far stronger resistance than anticipated. In the ensuing battle only a small force managed to hold one end of the Arnhem road bridge and after the ground forces failed to relieve them they were overrun on the 21st. The rest of the division, trapped in a small pocket west of the bridge, had to be evacuated on the 25th. The Allies had failed to cross the Rhine in sufficient force, and the Rhine remained a barrier to their advance until the offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945. The failure of Market Garden ended Allied expectations of finishing the war in 1944.
UNQUOTE
Sadly it did not work. Men died for nothing but that can be said of the whole war.

 

Palace Barracks Memorial Garden
Is dedicated to the men who lost their lives serving Queen and Country.

 

If you want to come please contact me to reserve a seat. The cinema is quite small with seating for 25.  

Priority is for men who were there on the day and men of that war.

Emails to mike@21pronto.com or mike@sunray22b.net