WW2 - Operation Market Garden

[VHG]

I am currently watching "D Day to Berlin" that was on UK TV History (3 part series).

Part 2 has just covered the Market Garden operation, the attempt to push into Holland and shorten the war (I have also recently watched the film "A Bridge to far" which covers the same operation).

While the whole operation is considered badly planned, was anything gained out of it?

And all the soldiers that landed along the route at the various bridges, did they all retreat back to where we started, or was some of the captured land or towns kept by the allies? (I know many surrendered at Arnham but what about the other towns that were captured).

The program also mentions that Ostend port was captured, but almost as an afterthought (even though it was meant to be a major part of Market Garden).

Surely the capture of a major port like Ostend was vital as we were still shipping supplies from the Normandy beaches.

Surely the capture of Ostend should have been given a very high priority, not just been "part" of Market Garden.

Its strange, the actual D Day event is given such a large amount of publicity, but the break out from Normandy after D Day, in which MANY MANY lives were lost, is rarely mentioned, when it was just as important a D Day (in fact if the break out failed then D Day would have been a waste of time).

[VHG]

Thanks for the info

>Montgomery considered it �90% successful�

Well as it was a Montogomery operation you would expect hm to say that.

Monty was hardly a shrinking violet and was accused of being rather arrogant, even critisizing Eisenhower when he took over the job of commanding all the allied troops in Northern Europe.

I remember reading that in Monty's autobiography he blamed almost everyone else for things that went wrong, and put no blame on himself for anything.

The article said he upset a lot of people with that book.