Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan Page B

every detail on the Germans—troop strength, the number of tanks and armored vehicles, the position of antiaircraft guns—and I knew, apart from immediate front-line opposition, that there was little strength behind it.  I was sick at heart, because I knew that German strength would grow with each passing day.  I was unable to persuade Montgomery.  In fact, nothing I said seemed to matter.”
    Then Montgomery made an extraordinary disclosure.  “I am just as eager
    to liberate the Netherlands as you are,” he said, “but we intend to do
    it in another, even better way.”  He paused, thought a moment and then,
    almost reluctantly, said, “I am planning an airborne operation ahead of
    my troops.”  Bernhard was startled.  Instantly a number of questions
    came to his mind.  In what area were the drops planned?  When would the
    operation take place?  How was it being developed?  Yet he refrained
    from asking.  Montgomery’s manner indicated he would say no more.  The
    operation was obviously still in the planning stage and the Prince’s
    impression was that only the Field Marshal and a few of his staff
    officers knew of the plan.  Although he was given no more details,
    Bernhard was now hopeful that the liberation of Holland, despite
    Montgomery’s earlier talk of lack of supplies, was imminent.  He must
    be patient and wait.  The Field Marshal’s reputa-
    n was awesome.  Bernhard believed in it and in the man himself.  The Prince felt a renewal of hope, for “anything Montgomery did, he would do well.”
    Eisenhower, acceding to Montgomery’s request, set Sunday, September 10, as the date for a meeting.  He was not particularly looking forward to his meeting with Montgomery and the usual temperamental arguments he had come to expect from the Field Marshal.  He was, however, interested in learning what progress had been made in one aspect of the Montgomery operation.  Although the Supreme Commander must approve all airborne plans, he had given Montgomery tactical use of the First Allied Airborne Army and permission to work out a possible plan involving that force.  He knew that Montgomery, at least since the fourth, had been quietly exploring the possibility of an airborne operation to seize a bridgehead across the Rhine.
    Ever since the formation of the First Allied Airborne Army under its American commander, Lieutenant General Lewis Hyde Brereton, six weeks earlier, Eisenhower had been searching for both a target and a suitable opportunity to employ the force.  To that end he had been pressing Brereton and the various army commanders to develop bold and imaginative airborne plans calling for large-scale mass attacks deep behind the enemy’s lines.  Various missions had been proposed and accepted, but all had been canceled.  In nearly every case the speeding land armies had already arrived at the objectives planned for the paratroops.
    Montgomery’s original proposal had called for units of Brereton’s airborne force to grab a crossing west of the town of Wesel, just over the Dutch-German border.  However, heavy antiaircraft defenses in that area had forced the Field Marshal to make a change.  The site he then chose was farther west in Holland: the Lower Rhine bridge at Arnhem—at this juncture more than seventy-five miles behind the German front lines.
    By September 7, Operation Comet, as the plan was called, was
    in readiness; then bad weather, coupled with Montgomery’s concern about the ever-increasing German opposition his troops were encountering, forced a postponement.  What might have succeeded on the sixth or seventh seemed risky by the tenth.  Eisenhower too was concerned; for one thing he felt that the launching of an airborne attack at this juncture would mean a delay in opening the port of Antwerp.  Yet the Supreme Commander remained fascinated by the possibilities of an airborne attack.
    The abortive operations, some of them canceled almost at the last minute, had