Market Garden day 6

[Joris]

Day six of the operation, the fight for the Arnhem bridge is lost. Yesterday in the morning the last of the remaining paras at the bridge have surrendered and the Germans immediately used the bridge to rush in reinforcements to stop the anticipated Allied drive on Arnhem. Although the fighting at the bridge was savage and lasted continiously for over 3 day and 4 nights the British casulaties were relatively light, 81 soldiers out of the 750 defenders died in the fighting at the bridge.

 

At Oosterbeek nothing short of a mircale has happened, yesterday morning the radio operators managed to contact XXXcorps artillery. From that moment on those guns have hardly stopped firing in support of the paras, already stopping a number of German attacks.

Also, yesterday afternoon at Driel the main force of the Poles has landed. Not in full strength because a number of planes turn back to England because of suspected bad weather at the DZ but they finally are there, 3 days later then planned. They immediately rush for the ferry which ought to take them to Oosterbeek but found it missing. Last night they tried to ferry men accross in small rubber dinghys but only a small number has made it accross.

 

The Allied attack on Arnhem did not start untill 13:30h and was soon after stopped by strong German blocking forces causing heavy casualties.

[Joris]

Bumpy