11-286 Garand Picture of the Day - 101st Holland

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"Friendly Eagle" - 101st Airborne Trooper shares his food with Dutch civilians.
Photo courtesy of Mary Martin and Troy Wynne - From Donald D. Martin's collection.

Operation Market Garden was a classic SNAFU.

For sure. A Dutch Resistance spotter radioed that there was an SS Panzer Division rolling through his town but he was not believed, even when he insisted that the tanks were passing right under his window. No, he was told, we know where that division is and it's not there.

Intelligence FailureUnlike the American airborne divisions in the area, British forces at Arnhem ignored the local Dutch resistance. There was a good reason for this: Britain's spy network in the Netherlands had been thoroughly and famously compromised — the so-called England game, which had only been discovered in April 1944. Perhaps assuming that the Dutch resistance would be similarly penetrated, British intelligence took pains to minimise all civilian contact. U.S. units, without this bad experience, made use of Dutch help. As things turned out, knowledge of the Driel ferry or of the underground's secret telephone network could have changed the result of the operation, especially since Allied radio equipment failed, having to rely on messengers. The latter was very important: it would have given the XXX Corps and Airborne High Command knowledge about the dire situation at Arnhem.

After the war, claims arose that the Dutch resistance had indeed been penetrated. One high-ranking Dutch officer who had worked in counter-intelligence at SHAEF, Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto published a popular book, Spy Catcher, part-memoir and part counter-intelligence handbook. Pinto, who had made a name for himself in World War I for his part in uncovering Mata Hari, claimed that a minor figure in the Dutch resistance, Christiaan Lindemans (nicknamed "King Kong") had been a German agent and had betrayed Operation Market Garden to the Germans.[132] Lindemans was arrested in October 1944, but committed suicide in his cell in 1946 while awaiting trial. In 1969, French journalist and historian Anne Laurens concluded that Lindemans had been a double agent.[133]


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Goatley collapsible boat, wooden bottom and canvas sides, created by boat designer Fred Goatley

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82nd arrives at Grave

I've done more than my share of water crossings. Including the Columbia river. That was a good one! The Goatley boat always seemed like a disaster, I wouldn't want to have to resort to those.

The entire operation was a bollocks. A Dutch officer in England said the business of recapturing Holland was the passing-out problem on the Dutch officer college final exam. The Dutch had a plan-in-depth for the contingency. Montgomery's solution was the failing option on the exam because it tried to fight the battle up elevated roads that placed your entire army in view and shot of the enemy repeatedly. Monty's staff simply didn't consult with the Dutch Army staff in exile in England.

Bob