I imagine most of us are very familiar with Operation Market garden, either from books, history lessons or films and may wonder what else we can learn about that magnificent, if ill executed battle. Well, maybe not a lot, but this dvd does explain much more than I already knew so perhaps it can do the same for others.

Operation Market Garden was designed to end the war by Christmas, 1944, to clear away the dreaded V weapons and seize the numerous waterways across Holland, and place the 2nd British army across the Rhine, thereby opening the road to the North German Plain and the road to Berlin; a bold and daring plan; had it worked.

It's not a secret that it didn't go as planned, and that the whole operation became chaotic, however this excellent dvd goes a long way to illustrating how it should have worked and explaining why it didn't.
I'm not giving away the plot when I say that the United States 101st Airborne chose the wrong - or if not wrong, then strategically inept - place to drop. I appreciate the zone was chosen to avoid massive casualties, but it did deny them the prime objective. Or that the British XXX Corps faced a major struggle against excellent and experienced front line troops yet still achieved their objective.

What this dvd does is to explain why and how the American troops, lightly armed as they were, fought with courage and determination against massive odds to try to support the operation and to attempt to hold the route open.

The presentation is good and the original maps and details of orbat are something I have not seen before, in fact some have never been seen outside of military archives!

There is an element of staff college lecturing, but this doesn't in any way detract from the whole; if anything it enhances the presentation. As a caveat, I would add that there are moments when it seems a bit simplistic, for example when a re-enactor is demonstrating the American uniform but that is a very minor niggle on my part.
Over all, this is a very good and illuminating presentation, very much what we have come to expect from Pen & Sword Military and one I would heartily recommend.

Four and a half heads for this.