[Kiwiwriter]

Originally posted by Gotthard Heinrici@Mar 9 2005, 10:06 AM
How far exactly were XXX Corps from the bridge when the advance stopped and why didnt they try to punch through to take the bridge. I have yet to find a clear explanation for this. It all seems very vague. Were XXX Corps fought to a standstill or was it a case of the infantry stuck in the towns along the route still trying to clear out pockets of german resisntance???

Quoted post

30 Corps was five miles from the bridge at Elst, where the Arnhem-Nijmegen Highway is an elevated embankment, where vehicles are easily silhouetted against the sky. The 5th Guards Armoured Brigade was stalled there by Kampfgruppe Knaust, a collection of Tiger and Panther tanks led by one-legged Oberst Hans Peter Knaust, and jammed up the road. The 43rd Infantry Division slide left around the block, through the polder and hooked up with the Polish paratroopers at Driel and the British 1st Airborne, but also found they were blocked by the rest of 2nd SS Panzer Corps and KG Knaust. With the Germans cutting the highway at Veghel, 30 Corps' supply and administration system was pretty fragile. At this point, with the 1st Airborne hanging on by a thread and the offensive stalled and nearly out of supply, Dempsey (and Horrocks to a lesser degree) made the call that a further push would just lead to the annihilation of the 1st Airborne and no ground gained. Dempsey said it was time to halt and "consolidate" the offensive's gains, and pull out the 1st Airborne. "It was the one bloody road...to Nijmegen," as the generals say at the end of "A Bridge Too Far."