On 17 September 1944 thousands of paratroopers descended from the sky by parachute or glider up to 150 km behind enemy lines. Their goal: to secure to bridges across the rivers in Holland so that the Allied army could advance rapidly northwards and turn right into the lowlands of Germany, hereby skirting around the Siegfried line, the German defence line. If all carried out as planned it should have ended the war by Christmas 1944.
Unfortunately this daring plan, named Operation Market Garden, didn't have the expected outcome. The bridge at Arnhem proved to be 'a bridge too far'. After 10 days of bitter fighting the operation ended with the evacuation of the remainder of the 1st British Airborne Division from the Arnhem area.
Static operations would mark the next few months in Holland, until the capture of the port of Antwerp necessitated the clearing of the Albert Canal for Allied ships. In three month of heavy fighting, Canadian and British units fought a waterlogged campaign to clear Germans out. The first ship unloaded on December 11, 1944.
Five days later, the largest German offensive in the west stormed across Belgium and Luxembourg. General Patton wrote in his diary, We can still lose this war.
