A Bridge Too Far: Cornelius Ryan's chronicle of the Arnhem debacle
On the morning of Sept. 17, 1944, taking off from 24 airfields in southeast England in what was "the greatest armada of troop-carrying aircraft ever assembled for a single battle," the leading elements of three Allied airborne divisions roared aloft and set a course for their designated drop zones in Nazi-occupied Holland. Aboard this first lift of a scheduled three, men from the veteran American 82nd and 101st Airborne and the British First Airborne Division -- which was making its first combat jump -- anxiously waited for the green lights to light up and to step out into the Dutch sky in a daring and unprecedented daylight parachute and glider landing. Their mission, to capture -- "with thunderclap surprise" -- a series of bridges that spanned the Albert Canal, the Waal River, and the last river between the advancing Allied forces and Germany: the mighty Rhine. On the Belgian-Dutch border, the tankers, soldiers, artillerymen, engineers, and vehicle drivers of Gen