Bridging Operation Market Garden: A Nice Little Problem (Part 1)

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3:01When you refer to Bailey Crab, I take it you mean that glorious, precision-made, British-built bridge which is the envy of the civilized world. I don't know how you're going to get it through this crowd.

3:14Al Murray: No sweat! I got a back way staked out that will avoid all this. American ingenuity! Really? Actually, I was born in Yugoslavia. But what the hell? And those are the immortal words. A scene indelible in many's mind from A Bridge Too Far, screenplay by William Goldman after the book by Cornelius Ryan, surrounding the events of the demolition of the bridge at Son during Operation Market Garden. So welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, and James Holland for a two-part series that we are calling Hurrah for the CRE. CRE meaning Corps of Royal Engineers, of course. Just in case.

3:54Al Murray: Of course, everyone knows that now. But also Commander Royal Engineers, because that's what we're going to be looking at here. As you know, if you're a regular listener, if you're not a regular listener, if you're new, we have on this podcast talked about Operation Market Garden rather a lot. And that's my fault. That's entirely down to me. From time to time. Yeah, from time to time. No, no, but I've been an eager, eager participant in this. Yes, you have. I mean, I can't fault you, Jim, for your enthusiasm as a... You were new to it. I remember when we were... No, I'm all in. When we were stood on the bridge at Arnhem, you were saying, I've never been here before.

4:26Al Murray: I can't believe it. I know, I know. But now I feel... Now it feels impossible to think that I hadn't been there, if you see what I mean. It wasn't part of my armory of memories and understanding. Now it is. And now it is. And I feel better and happier for it. Yeah, of course. But we want to look at this from a slightly different angle because the thing about Market Garden is the focus tends to be on the airborne carpet, as it's called. And I have here in my hand Brian Horrocks' memoir called A Full Life. Oh, yes. It's a reassuringly slender volume, A Full Life, which I've got to say, I've got a lot of time for that.

5:07A narrow life.

5:08Al Murray: Well, Horrocks was all about cracking on and getting it done. I mean, he makes the point that, you know, Guards Armoured had done 250 miles in six days before they get stuck at the Esco Canal. They're not hanging around, are they? Let's face it. Exactly. It's quite extraordinary. And who else has added their markers to that particular edition now? This particular edition has the autographs of, the imprimatur of, well, Horrocks himself, John Frost, and Boy Browning. I mean, that is quite the item. Boy, in inverted commas. Like I say, reassuringly slender. But that's the manner of the man. He's not here to waste anyone's time.

5:48Al Murray: But the thing is with Market Garden, though, it's often thought of inevitably in terms of the parachute troops, the glider-borne troops, because it's glamorous, isn't it, and exciting. And then the armoured thrust itself. But you can't move these soldiers about, in particular talking about the armoured soldiers, without a massive engineering effort. In this episode, we're getting two episodes here about the sapping involved in, really in the armoured thrust side of Market Garden. What's it like being commander royal engineers of Guards Armoured Division? What's that role? And how close does this guy, who's a brigadier, how close does the CRE get to the action?

6:31Al Murray: So what we're going to look at is the operations that the commander royal engineers with Guards Armoured Div, which is part of 30 Corps, the spearhead of 30 Corps, what they had to mount for Operation Garden, because market, of course, is the airborne component. Garden is the landbore component. What they had to do and what kind of things they had to do and how those operations went. And obviously the simple fact that, you know, no plan survives contact with the enemy, blah, blah, blah. So when I started looking at this, the scale of it became boggling. You know, we are talking about operations at scale.

7:04So much so that you were firing over little passages, weren't you? And stats and figures in wonderment.

7:11Al Murray: Yeah, yeah. God, you're never going to believe this. But at the moment when we're talking about is our wee tinky little army too tiny, right? You think of what they're doing to get garden on the road is absolutely boggling. It's giant resources, relentless juggling of the resources, and obviously the plan not surviving contact with the enemy and bridges. It's all about bridges in Operation Garden, but not just the bridges that the airborne carpets are supposed to seize, but the possibilities, of course, of demolitions or damage to existing bridges. But and it's really important to stress this.

7:46Al Murray: The thing they're preparing for is new bridges that need to be constructed over each of the main water obstacles. once the operation has succeeded, all those crossings have been seized, so that you can not be relying on one road, one bridge, so that you can actually upscale your advance. If Market Garden works out, then the idea is to use Arnhem and the crossing and the Nader Rhein as a springboard for an offensive into northern Germany, around the Siegfried Line and the Reisfeld. So a huge amount of traffic will have to cross Arnhem as well as at Nijmegen, where only one bridge across the wall isn't going to be adequate for the requirements of the offensive to follow.

8:24It's not just securing the initial bridge. It's then going, we're going to have to make a whole load more. We're going to have to make a whole load more.

8:30Al Murray: And we're going to make a whole load more because it's also about redundancy. Because what if the Germans strike the Weil Bridge? Then the whole thing's had it, right? The whole thing falls in on itself. You know, the bridge at Remargen, when the Americans finally seize that, the minute they get hold of that bridge, they start bridging efforts. The following year, once the Americans do bounce the Rhine, They get bridging, alternate bridging up immediately because it's more important than just the single crossing. It's about being able to cross the river safely in the first place and then exploit the location.

9:02Al Murray: And it's about keeping the traffic moving. And in this sense, Royal Engineers are absolutely, the sappers are completely core to the operational function of the British Army. They are the thing that makes the wheels move. because he's not just about bridging. It's minefields, it's demolitions, it's flooding, it's collapsed roads. And the role of the commander royal engineers with guards armour and his sappers, the ones he has at disposed, is to make sure the division can get where it needs to go, overcoming those obstacles, whatever they might be. Can I just make a point here? Because it's obviously when the Germans retreat, they blow up bridges.

9:39So you've got to have contingency so that you can replace those bridges that have been blown up. But you also, as you're pointing out, You need extra bridges because the scale of traffic we're talking about here is unprecedented for this time, this moment in history. We're talking about a massively mechanized allied forces, which the European road network and bridging network is simply not ready for dealing with.

10:08Al Murray: I mean, I think the interesting thing about the Bailey Bridge, which is part of the story, of course, is it's a countermeasure. The Bailey Bridge is a countermeasure. It's an offensive countermeasure. If you think of it in those terms, it's a weapon, the Bailey Bridge. It's an operational weapon, because if blowing a bridge, demolishing a bridge is a defensive maneuver on the part of the Germans, building a new one is an operationally offensive thing to do. So the Bailey Bridge is, you know, it's a miracle of British engineering and all that, but it's a weapon. You know, if you talk to Keith Brickstock at the garrison, he says it's not the gun that's the weapon, it's the projectile.

10:43Al Murray: Always think of that in artillery, it's the projectile that's the weapon, not the gun. Well, in this instance, the bridge is the weapon because how do you keep your army moving? How do you deliver your troops? You need bridging. And it's an operational countermeasure, the bridge. You've got to think of them like, think of the engineering in those terms. And it starts to look quite different and becomes even more important to the way things are done. So the CRE of Guards Armoured is Charles Fibbs Jones. Yeah, who is he? Well, he's the son of Hume Riversdale Jones and Elizabeth Ann, nay Fibbs. He's a classic army lad.

11:22Al Murray: He was born in 1906. He's from Amesbury, Jim. So he's a Wiltshire lad. Very good. But he goes to school in Enniskillen. Then he goes to Woolwich. Then he goes to Pembroke College, Cambridge. And then the Staff College, Cambridge in 1939. So he's brainy. He's a clever man. He's commissioned lieutenant in February 1926, joins the engineers two years later. He does time with the Royal Bombay sappers and miners in India. So he's this absolute classic imperial soldier. And that stiffens him and makes him more resilient. It makes him more resilient and, you know, because there's still that make, do and mend.

11:59Al Murray: Exactly. Broad palette of experience and all that. And then when the war comes, he's the adjutant in the East Lancashire Divisional Engineers with the TA. Then he works his way up, series of staff jobs. Very good. This is one of these guys you're never going to see Bob to the top yet, but who's, you know, right there in the operational staff side of how the British Army works. He's GS03 in 1940s, brigade major with 127th Brigade of the BEF. So he's BEF experience. And the BEF spend their entire time, BEF sappers spend their time blowing bridges. Their entire BEF war is blowing the bridges on things like the MERS-Esco Canal, right?

12:38Al Murray: and discovering, the BEF discovers in its experience in the collapse back from the deal line, in the 1920s and 30s, there's been a rash of bridge building in the lowlands and in Flanders. Because the Nijmegen Bridge is from 1936. The Arnhem Bridge is sort of contemporary with that. There's been like a burst of bridge building all over that part of the world. And most of the bridges have chambers for demolitions, as they discover, as they're falling back in the summer of 1940. So the Royal Engineers have intimate experience with the bridges in this part of the world by fortuitous happenstance. They know what they're in for, as it were.

13:16Al Murray: He ends up as the CRE of Guards Unomored in 1944. And then after that, he's a general staff in 30 Corps. Then he ends up in Kuala Lumpur accepting the surrender of General Ayabe. Gets around then. Yeah, exactly. Gets around and he ends up Chief Royal Engineer later in life. So this is a man whose Corps of Engineers through and through, but also I think his staff positions reflect the role that the sappers have in the way the army works. But he stays in the army. And goes all the way through. But never number one, except when he ends up Chief Royal Engineer. But he's one of these people who's right in the engine room of how the British army works.

13:55Al Murray: The mechanised mobile warfare that the army is committed to for North West Europe. And it relies entirely on sappers and officers like Brigadier CP Jones. No one is going anywhere without this gentleman, his officers, his NCOs and his other ranks working their magic and getting stuff done. And sometimes he says, you know, I have no idea how they pulled this off, but they did it by boys, by chaps did it anyway. It's all very modest in the language. So I think most people are familiar with the Market Garden plan from the airborne side. You know, 101st at Sona and Eindhoven, 82nd at Graver and Nijmegen and the Grosbeck Heights, and then 1st Airborne and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade at Arnhem.

14:38Al Murray: But most people know the way around that. But this is, we're not going to look at the plucky paratroopers holding on by the skin of their teeth at Arnhem and Oosterbeek, nor Easy Company winning the war at Eindhoven single-handedly. No, this is about plucky sappers. It's about plucky sappers. In rough, we're going to race up to Arnhem, seize the Rhine Crossings, war done by Christmas. That's the plan, right? But what does this mean in practice for Brigadier Charles Fibbs for the CRE? Well, let's look at 30 Corps' order of battle to start with. So it's Guards Armoured Division, the 84th Medium Regiment, 198th 73rd Anti-Tank Battery, Detachment of the 4th Survey Regiment, 11th Field Company, Detachment of the 128th Company Royal Army Service Corps, Recce Party from the 16th Airfield Construction Group, Recce Party from 5357 Airfield Construction Wing.

15:25I mean, there's quite a lot going on there, aren't there? I mean, you know, it really isn't just sort of people wandering around in fireflies. No, no.

15:31Al Murray: There's a lot of moving parts. And that is an order of battle pregnant with intent, isn't it, Jim? And there's more airfield construction people. There's detachments for 5357, as well as the recce party. So what you've listed there is divisional troops, right? It's not obviously the battle, the fighting component part. That's just the divisional troops. So how a division is divided is you have divisional troops, which are attached directly to divisional headquarters, and then you have your component parts, which is your brigades. So you'd have three brigades, which would be three armoured brigades, right?

16:06Al Murray: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What you're looking at here, though, is this is a formation pregnant with intent. Because if you're taking airfield construction troops with you, airfield construction recce troops with you, the idea is as soon as you've seized where you're going, you're going to be putting airfields up. because you need that cab rank overhead because that's how it works best rather than at distance. Because one of the issues for the market garden plan at this point is that the air cover, you know, the further, the deeper they push into the Netherlands, the air cover as a resource becomes harder to deliver because the aircraft have to fly further, have less time to loiter over target and so on.

16:44Al Murray: So they want airfields as fast as they can up front. So, you know, the officers from the recce party, the officers and NCOs from 16 airfield Construction Group recce party. The idea is as soon as they're, as soon as they can, they're out there with their, with the surveying equipment and picking a site and going, well, we're going to need this much concrete, this much gravel, this, you know, the hard stand will be here and the Nissen huts will be over there. In the Northwest Europe sapling history, there's chapter after chapter of how we built this airfield here, how we built this aircraft, airfield there under these conditions.

17:15Al Murray: Why are you seizing this territory? Well, one reason is to, is to, is to enable your air effort, your air side. What we're talking about here is the tactical air forces who are then going to support the troops. And you want them as close to the front line as you can so that they can have as much time fighting the enemy rather than going from A to B. But that is what this is all about. It's keeping airfields as close to the front line as you possibly can have them for maximum offensive effect. Exactly. And the airfield at Eindhoven ends up a very, very important fighter station for second tactical air force.

17:48Al Murray: Yes, it does. Right? And that's one of the gains in Market Garden. It's worth noting, this is how 30 Corps rolls. Since Normandy, particularly during the Great Swan, which is the thing Brian Horace was talking about in his memoir, you know, where they go these vast distances. But sapling has been part of parcel of the planning and the operational consideration through all of the planning. Choosing a suitable bridging site is as important a decision as picking which high ground to contest. Because you've got to keep the show on the road. And this means that the CRE, the Commander Royal Engineers, he has the ear of the divisional commander.

18:18Al Murray: which is Alan Adair in the case of Guards Armoured. And he can recommend an access of advance. Legend, by the way. Absolute stone-cold legend. So that the CRE can recommend an access of advance if it offers him a favourable opportunity for bridging. So he can say to his boss, if we can go that way, that bridge there is easier for us to seize and fix than the one east of here or whatever. So the CRE and the divisional commander have to be tight, don't they? I mean, it just absolutely goes on the way. Exactly. And when the moment comes, the CRE will need to plan and execute assault crossings for the purpose of bridging, which means he might appear to be a behind the scenes man, but actually he's calling a lot of the shots.

18:58Al Murray: There are accounts of, so I got my guys together with this battalion and we put in a bridging assault. Their orders, the sapling orders are for Market Garden to obviously, you know, or the sapling considerations are to go with the orders to advance at maximum speed to the area of Arnhem and by bypassing Appledorn, dominate the area from inclusive Numspeak to exclusive Appledorn in the event of the bridges at Grava and Nijmegen having been destroyed. So this is the crucial part to secure the south bank of the river and in conjunction with the airborne troops in the area, take all possible action to facilitate crossing and bridging operations by 43 brigade.

19:29Al Murray: The bridging resources that the CRE has at his disposal, for the Mars, which is 800 feet wide, he has, for initial long crossings, three Class 40 rafts. And a Class 40 means it can handle 40-ton vehicles, so a Churchill tank, which comes in at 40 tons. A Class 9 folding boat equipment at bridge by deed plus two. Acronym FBE. FBE. And the Mark III FBE, which is what we're talking about. Class 9 means it can, the class means how heavy a vehicle, so class 9 means a nine-ton vehicle. So you get a carrier over on that and a Jeep and things like that. It's mainly for getting infantry across quickly.

20:09Al Murray: But the Mark III FBE can be used in lots of different configurations. It's like an open-ended piece of kit. So it could be a class 5 decked raft, a class 9 decked raft, and a class 9 shoreloading decked raft. Any of these, and they're modular, they can all be used with an outboard motor. And then by D plus seven, a class 40 Bailey pontoon bridge is what they've got lined up. For the Mars Wall Canal, they've initially nine class 40 rafts. So these are in the Vanguard, these rafts, followed by class 40 Bailey pontoon bridge by D plus seven to be followed by class 40 Bailey barge bridge by D plus three.

20:46Al Murray: And the wall itself, they have nine class 40 rafts followed by a class 40 Bailey pontoon bridge by D plus seven, then a class 40 Bailey barge bridge by D plus 13. And the walls are 850 feet. And then you come to the Nader Rhine. It is interesting. When we were last at Arnhem, I remember us looking at the river and going, it's not that wide here at Oosterbeek. It's not, you know, the mighty, mighty Rhine. But in winter, the Nader Rhine can expand from its normal 300 feet to 1640 feet when it floods at the polder. Shucks. So there's a problem. And just to explain now, a Bailey pontoon bridge. So the Bailey bridge is, what makes the Bailey bridge unique is the way you have these pieces that all slot together, like Meccano, and you just push them out a bit at a time, and you've always got enough on the other side.

21:36The pontoon bit means what you're doing is you're, instead of just running a Bailey Bridge across the width of the river because it's so wide, you can't do that. So it has to rest on something. So it's resting on boats, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:49Al Murray: It's a floating component because the Bailey Bridge is completely modular and you can upscale it, downscale it. You don't need, there's no welding. There's no tools beyond a sledgehammer. There's no cranes required. But you can weld it. You can use a crane. But you don't need to. But it's bolts, isn't it? It's bolts. It's pins. It's pins. You want to be the pin man because he hasn't got to lift the extremely heavy panels and the very, very heavy transoms and the extremely heavy wooden runners. You want to be the bloke with the pin tapping the pin in. That's the dream job. Got it. So for the Nader Rhein, they have a Class 9 FBE bridge followed by a Class 40 Bailey pontoon.

22:30Al Murray: Then the idea is by D plus 12. Then a Class 40 Bailey barge bridge by D plus 18. This is tons of bridging. Yeah, it's a lot, isn't it? And that's all going to be lined up logistically. Yep. And ready to go. You know, the whole idea of the Bailey Bridge is it's all lorry portable. It's all man liftable. So everything can go in a lorry. It doesn't need to go in anything else, right? But that means a ton of lorries. As you start to sort of compute all this, you start to get a much, much clearer image. And I think one of the things that we're sort of guilty of in the narrative of the war is we just think it's tanks and infantry and carriers and, you know, brain carriers and so on.

23:10You know, we don't in our minds think about all this stuff. And of course, all the planners, this absolutely has to be at the forefront.

23:17Al Murray: Yeah. I mean, you know, it is absolutely baked in. Yeah. That you have to think about this. You have to keep roads open. You have to have all the requisite trucks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as you say, it's the logistics of it are mind-boggling, aren't they? And you can also see why halfway through the war, the army paired off the RIMI, the mechanical engineers, you know, sliced them off and created a new core because there's just too much of that to do for it to be left to everybody. You needed to specialize. You needed to, you know, reorganize and put all your mechanics on, you know.

23:49Al Murray: The assets to do this are assembled by the CRE 30 Corps. And this is just for 30 Corps, by the way, because of the scale operation, though. He's given other people some help. So he's got headquarters, 10 army group Royal Engineers. So on occasion, we've talked about an AGRA, which is Army Group Royal Artillery, which is like this extra asset of guns available in the British Army that each corps and each division has its own allocation of artillery. But then there's a sort of free floating additional thing called an Army Group Royal Artillery that you can add as a sort of stiffener to your firepower.

24:22Al Murray: And they've done a similar thing with Royal Engineers. So there's Army Group Royal Engineers. So you've another, you know, free floating, troubleshooting, send them where they need to go. So they've got HQ-10 agri. They've got HQ-11 agri. They've got HQ-1 Canadian agri who've been added to the mix. You've got six assault troop engineers, seven assault troop engineers, eight general headquarters troop engineers. So what are they? What are they? They're just, well, they're absolute like out in the combat engineers. They're combat engineers. Combat engineers. So they're the guys doing the assault bridging.

24:53Al Murray: They're the guys doing the demining. They're the guys going, looking for viable crossings, for roads that can withstand the armoured traffic. They're the people right there on the absolute tip of the spear doing the combat sapping. Foreign line. They're in the foreign line. And doing everything that needs to be done that falls under the sapping remit. Now, all of this bridging kit is amassed at a depot at Borg Leopold, where the Belgian army had been based. and the engineered dumps, and this is how the British Army works, is there are these vast dumps and they go all the way back the line of advance from Normandy, all the way back.

25:33Al Murray: They go as far back as Bayer and Col, by way of Vermel near Lille, Venon, where Bailey Bridges have been used to span the Seine and have been broken down and then put into storage. So that's part of it. The whole point of the Bailey Bridge as well is it's reusable. So once you're across, Once you're crossed and you put up something more permanent, you can move it on and keep it going. Extra stuff for Market Garden has been brought in via Dieppe from England. Extra bridges. This move alone from England required 1 ,300 vehicles.

26:09Each requiring fuel and oil and spare sparks and spare gaskets and distributor caps and coils.

26:18Al Murray: And you think when you're on the motorway and you go past four green lorries in convoy and you think, oh, the army's out and about. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah, 1 ,300. You're looking at, you know, rafts, assault kit and this equipment. So the assault bridging provision is on wheels, as they call it, for the start of the operation. 30 Corps, because of the single road advance, they are given some assault bridging equipment, but the rest has to be ready to go. and rather than sending the bridging forward willy-nilly, to avoid confusion, the men in specific bridges for the specific tasks are held waiting for the order to go.

26:51Al Murray: So in other words, if the WAL needed a bridge, the WAL team would go forward. If it doesn't, they don't. So you have got a lot of blokes sat around picking their nose, waiting for something to happen. In particular, they're set for the eventuality of the bridge being blown with airborne soldiers both sides of the river. So it's less of an assault crossing. You've at least got friendlies both sides of the river. And all four bridging groups will stand by for this. So this gives you some idea of the challenges facing the Commander-O-L engineers in the 30 Corps. For the Mars crossing, it's 878 vehicles and 378 of them are RASC, the remaining 500 are engineers.

27:29Al Murray: The Mars, while it's 483 vehicles, the while itself is 380 vehicles. The Nader Rhin is 536 vehicles standing by. So there's a total of 2 ,277 vehicles standing by. Oh, my God. Yeah. In contingency. That's the contingency for this plan. Right? Imagine. That's additional to the 1 ,300. Yeah. Well, the 1 ,300 is bringing the stuff from England via Dieppe. That move alone to bring the extra stuff up. This is who's ready to go and they may never go. Right. And there's also flexibility to increase the allotment of equipment in case it might be required. So there's assault bridging columns on standby as well in case they need to do assault crossings.

28:18Al Murray: And there's another eighteen hundred and sixty three vehicles in those standby assault bridging column. Those 2 ,227 vehicles, they're stood by for the main crossings. And then you've another nearly 2 ,000 vehicle assault teams ready to go. Can we just pause for just a second and just consider the British Expeditionary Force in 1940? Yeah. And consider how far they've come in four years. It's insane. Four years. And going over the same countryside. How can you not, chess, not swell with pride at the prospect of how brilliant we were by 1944? Well, and also boggle at the scale of it, the organising.

29:01Al Murray: And this is an operation that's been thrown up in a week. Oh, man. Yes, of course. Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it? And that means there's 9 ,000 engineering personnel on the CRE's effort for garden. And that includes pioneers, but it doesn't include airfield construction people. This is an amount comparable to 1st Airborne Division. No, they're separate. Yeah. Yeah, the airfield construction people, they're separate. They're coming along. Just sappers. But they're not involved in the assault engineering or the bridging or the road fixing or the whatever. But this is an amount comparable to 1st Airborne Division.

29:32Al Murray: 1st Airborne Division plus the poles is just over 10 ,000 people. For this, they've also got themselves their own radio control net. The sappers have got their own radio net by themselves. So they know that the radios are a problem at this stage of the war. So they've ensured they got their own and they're using radios and a radio net system borrowed from the Reserve Army Group Royal Artillery. Because the artillery's radios are the best. They just are. They're the best at it. So it's a maximum sappering effort, or as Brigadier Jones put it, a nice little problem. We love insouciance and understatement, don't we, on this show?

30:08We dig it hugely, yeah. We can't get enough of it.

30:11Al Murray: So we're going to take a break now. We're going to see how well Brigadier Jones' plan survives contact with the enemy. And events, dear boy, events.

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32:10Al Murray: Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making a Talk. With me, I'm Irene James Holland. for this episode a nice little problem about the engineering efforts for garden the the landborne component of the more famous market guard now we've seen that the market garden plan has what brigadier jones calls sapper repercussions i just i cannot get enough of this um this style this language this language is so good isn't it i'd quite like to get an fbe as well i must say yes can we get an fbe to the next festival perhaps we can who knows someone i think so Someone will know. So with these established assets in place, waiting at the depot at Borg Leopold, Jones's immediate problems are dealing with what he calls the smaller obstacles.

32:53Al Murray: So he said in the run up to Market Garden, he made sure he had what I call, what I always carried with me, sufficient assault boats, closed support rafts and FBE to enable a battalion to assault across a water obstacle of reasonable size. And he also ensured that he had enough bridging in place in case he needed to cross the Wilhelmina Canal and the Südwillemsvart, which are right there, right in front of the first part of the Market Garden thrust, the Garden thrust. Obviously, the other issue with Market Garden is the simple question of whether it's going to go ahead at all. You know, plenty of ops have been cancelled.

33:25Yeah, so they might have got all their stuff together and then, no, it's stood down, boys. All right, fine. Because cancelled is the norm for airborne operations at this phase of the war. Get ready for the next little problem.

33:34Al Murray: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Imagine the staff working. Oh, well, it's off, boys. Never mind. Stand down. Bridging will remain an issue, so you could retask the Mars wild people. But if it's a wider obstacle, you'll need to add to that, subtract to it, or whatever. Subtract from it, whatever. Because normally on the ground, they're out running the airborne ambitions. So the start line for Garden is at Joe's Bridge, named after Joe Vandlo, which is on the MERS-Escoe Canal. The bridge on the MERS-Esko Canal in 1940 had been one left over from 1918 that the Americans had put in in the First World War.

34:10Al Murray: Huh. Interestingly, the Royal Engineers on the way out in 1940 had blown that bridge up. They're only 400 yards over the bridge and it's held by 50 Div and five guards armoured brigade who are going to break out through the 50 Div bridge. Yep. And it's being mortared and sniped the day before. um uh but you know on the 16th of september it's being mortared and sniped out and a german patrol comes over the canal that night and almost get almost gets into the divisional headquarters area so things are pretty pretty like holy moly so what happens there well they they're then i think that german patrol is then um firmly dealt with but you can see how right on the edge they They are, yeah.

34:50Al Murray: And with five guards, armored brigade, it's 14 field squadron royal engineers who are there to do the tip of the spear immediate sapping tasks. And we're going to follow them in our next episode. And behind them is 32 guards, infantry brigade with 615 field squadron in tow. So there's always a field squadron attached directly to these spearheads. And they're traveling in line in cahoots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a recce troop with the squadron, you know, that's right at the front. And they're plugged into battalion headquarters or brigade headquarters in this instance. So at noon, word comes that Market Garden's happening.

35:31Al Murray: And the advance sets off at 1 ,400 hours with the leading guards, armoured lads, punching through the German crust pretty successfully. So this is 17th September. 17th September and it's go. But immediately the normal sapping stuff asserts itself, right? Jones writes, the first Sapper problem was an incident on the front barrier between Belgium and Holland. First a tank, then a scout car, then a succession of vehicles were blown up there. The mines were no ordinary ones as vehicles were completely written off and they were carefully concealed as no matter of Sapper searching brought them to light.

36:00Al Murray: We found the answer in time. The Bosch had filled weapon pits with explosive and arranged a simple improvised firing mechanism to operate under heavy pressure. Fortunately, this incident did not hold up the advance, though forward units needed persuading that the whole of the route would not be mined on this scale. So it's IEDs, what we'd call IEDs. And they're filling weapons pits, slit trenches with shells and munitions and pressure fuses. And this is a good reminder that mines are the big problem for tanks. As big a problem, not quite as anything else, but you look at the Americans in their operational research in 1951, it's 20 % of tanks are lost to mines.

36:41Al Murray: That's amazing, isn't it? All this tank-on-tank stuff. Because they break their tank casualties down in 1951. They break it down to mortars and miscellaneous at 6%. Hollow charge at 7.5%. So hollow charge is a Panzerfaust or whatever. Panzerfaust, yeah. Non-enemy is 13%. Just more than Panzerfaust. That's amazing. Yeah, so that's your own side. So non-enemy just means it breaks down. It breaks down, right? It just breaks down. It breaks down. Sheds a track or whatever. Mines at 20%. And gunfire at 54%. I think it's very interesting gunfire isn't divided up into tank or anti-tank. Because I think, you know, it's anti-tank weapons, anti-tank and anti-artillery that are a problem for tanks rather than tanks necessarily.

37:23Al Murray: Yeah. Slight rabbit hole coming here. The American operational research is fascinating in that they do look at, you know, the gunfire ranges, the bazooka threat. It's quite funny in the bazooka. They're very chauvinistic in their bazooka threat ranges, the Americans. They say that the American bazooka is deadly up to 55 yards, whereas the British bazooka is only deadly up to 35 yards, which is the piat versus the American tube weapon. Basically, the point is these figures about mines don't run to IEDs, but just a single raised road is going to leave armored fighting vehicles vulnerable to anti-tank fire.

38:04Al Murray: but it makes them much easier picking for mines. It's an easier job to have your own sappers, German sappers, who are seeking to delay and distract the British. You mine liberally. And you know that the Germans have had tons of practice in defense doing exactly this, mining roads, identifying pinch points, vulnerable points, bridging points, and destroying them. Nodal points, crossroads, all that kind of stuff. Anti-tank traps, all this sort of stuff. That American operational research document is amazing because what's interesting is as the war makes its way into germany the percentage of hollow charge losses increases but that's because there are fewer fewer german tanks and anti-tank weapons in in action by the spring of 45 so the panzer faust is taking the strain so it's not necessarily that the panzer faust is a more effective weapon it's it's the only one by the time they're doing their data more prevalent yeah yeah exactly also it doesn't require much training and they're very cheap to make you know which is one of the germans big problems is that all their equipment is incredibly expensive.

39:04So they've gone from one extreme to the other.

39:06Al Murray: You give it to a teenager full of vim and he'll have a go, won't he? Yeah. But it means... Fart that, mate. Yeah, exactly. But by the end of September the 17th, guards armoured have got into Valkensvard and they're eight miles past their start line. And the crust has definitely been broken, Jones recalls. So the following morning, and obviously, because they're armoured, they have to stop at night. They have to leaguer up. You know, you can't prosecute armoured operations at night. It's very difficult. Following morning, 30 Corps push onto Eindhoven. They get stuck at a place called Alst, at which point the household cavalry makes a sweeping move around the left flank of the column over bridges that Jones has noted are unsuitable for tanks, but they've gambled on it anyway.

39:49Al Murray: But they've done it with armoured cars and there's light tanks. That's all they're prepared to gamble on it. Now, the household cavalry... Not a Sherman's, yeah. Yeah, exactly. The household cavalry makes contact with 101st Airborne, who then informed him of the loss of the bridge at Somme, which has been blown up, as we know, as Bridge 2 Fire viewers will know, it's demolished. It was reported as blown with a gap of approximately 100 feet, just 30 meters. I immediately got a message passed to the household cavalry to ask the head sap of 101st US Airborne Division, will 110 feet of Bailey Class 40 fill the bill?

40:23Al Murray: Remarkably quickly, the answer came back, yes. That, of course, that's the Elliot Gould, Michael Caine scene, essentially. Fortunately, the commanding officer of 14 Field Squadron, who's unbelievably actually called John Thomas. I mean, the banter he must have been on the receiving end of. It's very on the nose, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Thomas with you? He's everywhere I go, sir. They're in the van with guards armoured. John Thomas finds a phone box at Alst, and he calls Ring Sond and he gets the American sapper officer on the ground at the bridge on the phone. Does he reverse charges, do you think?

41:03Al Murray: I hope so. I hope he does. And the American sapper on the ground tells - Hello, I'd like to make a call. Reverse charges. If you could just put me through. Hey, what's up? Well, I understand Bridget Sond's been there. What's your name again? John Thomas? I don't believe it.

41:22Al Murray: Get out of here. Get out of here.

41:27i'm looking for hugh arse

41:31Al Murray: seymour buns so that the american sapper officer seymour buns comes on the line

41:39Al Murray: anyway they they they have a they have the professional bridging conversation and this is related to jones who goes right okay i'm gonna get my i've been ordered to keep my vehicles off the road which is really really busy he goes no i'm gonna get on with it and And he commits the bridging kit that he has ready, bringing the vehicles up to Valkensvard. They can dash on to safety to Sonne if and when the Germans are cleared out of Alst. So basically he brings them up to the edge of Alst, ready to go for the minute the village is cleared. And he gets there at 17, 15 hours. This is on the 18th on the Monday.

42:12Al Murray: He gets up to Alst and the Irish guards, so Joe Vandler, to see the divisional commanders, the Sea Major General Alan Adair, as well as the commanding officer of five guards armoured, Brigadier Gwatkin. I've never heard. Yes, he's a tremendous fellow, isn't he? Yeah, Gwatkin. And Jones clearly felt he had to be there on hand with those senior staff to lean on them or to make sure that he could get his vehicles through. And they know how important this bridge is. An hour later, the Germans break. so quarter past six the Germans break at Alst and the bridging column goes and he he gets on the sapper net they've their own net remember their own radio net and he orders his men to Son and he he books a lift with Brigadier Gwackin who he says drove like John in his account drove like a maniac herring up the column with Jones scout car following skirting alongside the traffic jam on the road to Son catching up with the lead squadron of guards armored and meeting the men from 101st.

43:11Al Murray: So Brigadier Jones is right there in the lead vehicle meeting up with 101st because the sapling is that important. John Thomas and 14 Field Squadron then arrive at the same time. And Major Hugh Jars. And Major Hugh Jars and Lieutenant Seymour Barnes. And basically, they then, they do a quick bridging survey and they agree it's 110 foot, triple single Bailey would do the trick. I mean, you can just imagine that, can't you? They're standing on the bank, they've got binos, they're looking through and they're sort of going, what do you think? Do you think 110 will do it? Yeah, I reckon so. The Bailey Bridge is in 10 foot by 5 foot parts, right?

43:47Al Murray: There's a 10 foot panel. So that's 11 panels. It's modular. It's modular. And they start, the equipment arrives at 19, 30 hours. So it's starting to get dark. And his decision had paid off to bring his vehicles forward, to not do as he was told. And 14 field squadron get cracking building the bridge. Jones says, we expected to be bombed or counterattacked, but nothing happened. Many Bosch planes passed overhead, but we were thankful to hear the bombs drop in the direction of Best further to the west. Although the Germans have landed a blow by blowing the bridge up at Son, they're too confused by the shock of Marker Garden itself to follow up on that disruption that they'd caused.

44:25Al Murray: Because had they attacked that bridge, that bridging effort, they'd have caused a real problem. And by midnight, works proceeding smoothly, the pins are being knocked in and so on. Brigadier Jones is able to tell Major General Adair that the bridge will be ready by 0600 as the following morning. We were 15 minutes late, and the leading armoured cars rolled over 0615 as, followed by five-guard armoured brigade. I mean, that's just nuts, isn't it? It's absolutely crazy. This is why the Bailey Bridge is a weapon, Jim. It is a modular Meccano set and all that, but it's a weapon because you can't do this kind of thing without it in your scabbard or in your quiver.

45:02Al Murray: Jones then sets off north to follow the drive to Nijmegen, and on the way he sees American parasappers fixing a damaged bridge at Vagel and he decides they don't need any help. Then the road bridge at Grava had been damaged and needed fixing. And within three days, it's restored to Class 70 by the sappers from six assault troop engineers. And luckily, because 82nd Airborne have captured other bridges, they can take their time to fix the road bridge at Grava. This means by the evening of the 19th of September, Brigadier Jones and the bulk of his sapper strength were north of the river Mars, with the core field company further back on the route fixing the road.

45:40Al Murray: The road's taking a pummeling with all this armor going up. The 82nd had got bogged down in the fight for the high ground around the Grosby Heights and not been able to reach either the road bridge or the railway bridges. No shit. So the situation is difficult, he says. His progress was slow. And then on the morning of the 20th of September, he gets the call. Have you got linear salt boats? and in our next episode we'll find out whether he's got the assault boats and what what happens with those assault boats and we'll be looking at another sapper office called jones and what he gets up to as part of at the sharp end as part of the sapping effort for operation garden we'll see you next time thanks for listening if you want to hear that immediately of course go to our patreon become a patreon member um uh we have ways of making you talk patreon member and you can listen this ad free and and in a torrent of uh thrilling operational um level information um we'll see you soon cheerio cheerio