NOW HE WAS A MAN TO FOLLOW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDNv5N3p4-E

Or if you fancy even more convoluted theories: Spitfire List | FTR #810 A Prince Too Far
;)

Probably true, but other than making ground when they should have done regardless of what they found on the roads, and used them as an excuse, getting to Arnhem Bridge was the armours priority, and they knew it.

I probably agree with Barry Wynne, men should have made progress on foot if need be, and tried to link up, and then WW2 would have been re written and certainly shortened, and saved countless lives.

There would then have been no need for Operation Varsity, the Rhine Crossing in March 1945, to effectively do the whole thing once again..................thankfully, with lessons learnt in Sept 1944, it worked.

1944...most people hoped to survive the war...Maj. Lionel Wigram's study...and the "Guards mentality"?

Quote:

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An initial study in the British Army was carried out in Italy by Major Lionel Wigram. Wigram estimated that in most platoons only a small handful of men really did the fighting. Another small group of men were likely to run away at the first opportunity. Those in the main group in between would follow the fighters, if things went well, or the potential deserters if they went badly. General Montgomery was so horrified by the report that he had it suppressed. Yet other armies were no different, it turned out. The Germans divided their soldiers’ combat performance into four categories, which were essentially the same as Wigram’s breakdown except that they split the main group in the middle in two. And American studies came up with similar results, showing that most enlisted men seldom fired their rifles in combat. The Red Army found that most of its conscript soldiers were no different.

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When does phlegmatism become nonchalance and then merely something worse?
A country cannot pour out by the millions it's best citizens in war and peace and remain all that it was or would have been without those losses.
That loss however was the world's gain.

Some really interesting points here from Eisenhowers point of view about his top five contemporaries:

President Eisenhower's Top 5 Most Disliked Contemporaries