Original subtitles

September 1944. Holland.

Allied forces defend a tenuous position in a German occupied city.

British airborne troops try to hold off an enemy tank attack

armed only with a handheld weapon called a PIAT.

After six rounds, the weapon fails.

The PIAT bomb explodes prematurely,

inside the trough of the weapon.

It's extremely close to his face.

We're talking about a distance like this.

As more German tanks arrive, it seems more likely

the whole operation has backfired.

On June 6th, 1944,

Allied forces finally land troops in Normandy

to open the western front.

But Nazi fanatics and diehards continue to fight ruthlessly for survival.

D-Day was a battle.

The Allies still need to win the war.

September 19th, 1944.

Arnhem, Holland.

Clear!

Major Robert Cain and his elite unit

of British airborne troops are 60 miles behind enemy lines.

Dropped into occupied Holland by glider,

they are lightly equipped but highly trained.

They close in on the town of Arnhem,

which has been under Nazi occupation for four years.

They are not the first British soldiers to pass through here.

The rest of Cain's regiment the South Staffordshires

are somewhere ahead.

Cain has orders to join them in an attack

on German defenses, on the other side of town.

But it's getting light, and he needs to find them,

before the Germans find him.

Cain can take no chances.

He is part of a risky and ambitious operation to help end the war.

In the three months since D-Day,

the Allies had advanced rapidly through France and Belgium.

In the early days of September

there was this astonishing advance all the way from the River Seine

right to, into Belgium, into even the edge of ah Germany

in a matter of days.

It was one of the fastest advances in the whole of the Second World War.

Allied leadership wants to capitalize on the chaotic German retreat

and deal a death blow to the Nazi regime.

British general, Bernard Montgomery,

believes he has the best plan.

The main objective for Operation Market Garden

was to get across the Rhine at Arnhem, in Holland

and then be able to encircle the Ruhr from the north.

Operation Market Garden has two distinct parts.

The "Market" plan calls for nearly 20,000 Allied airborne troops

to be dropped behind enemy lines

to capture and hold a series of critical bridges in central Holland.

Operation Garden has the British 30th corps on a tank charge

along a Dutch highway corridor from Belgium.

With bridges secured by Operation Market,

Operation Garden would split German defenses to cross the Rhine,

and enter Germany north of the Siegfried Line.

Montgomery also had a secret plan in a way

to head straight for Berlin, thinking that this would give him

command over all of the Allied ground forces.

If successful, the war could end by Christmas.

Market Garden will be the biggest airborne operation

in the whole of history.

Far bigger than the German invasion of Crete

or any of the other operations in Sicily or elsewhere.

There are so many troops,

they have to be dropped over multiple days, by both parachute and glider.

Among the first to land on September 17th is the Second Parachute Battalion...

...led by Lieutenant Colonel John Frost.

Born in India during his father's service,

Frost joins the military and serves in the Middle East,

and returns to Britain after the war begins.

Frost must make his way

the road bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem.

Colonel Frost with his second battalion

of the parachute regiment wasted no time at all.

He set off straight away and that was the main reason

why they got through.

The Nazis do not expect an attack

so far behind the front line.

The defense is disorganized.

They do not realize the Allies target the bridges.

Shoot those Krauts!

Frost managed to get to the north end of the bridge

by night fall and then concealed his men as German troops

still crossed over the bridge without realizing the British had reached it.

But even with the north end secure,

British attempts to capture the south end fail.

The Germans respond.

They reinforce the bridge overnight

and encircle the north end.

Frost and his men are now cut off and surrounded.

The original plan was

for the different parachute battalions to take up positions really encircling

the whole of the town of Arnhem.

Once Frost had got to the bridge and they realized

that they were under heavy pressure with German counterattacks.

The other two battalions felt they had to get to the bridge

themselves and support him.

So this is why the whole of the original plan

was more or less forgotten on that first evening or afternoon

of the 17th of September.

Cain's own regiment was originally tasked

with protecting the drop zones, eight miles from Arnhem.

But when Cain and B Company land,

they learn of the change of plan.

They felt that they had to send

every available unit at that particular moment

to reinforce Frost at the bridge.

Because if the bridge wasn't held then obviously

the whole of Market Garden would lose its whole point and collapse.

B Company urgently needs to locate

the rest of its regiment, and join them.

You're talking from the center of the landing zones

to Arnhem nearly 12 kilometers.

And Airborne soldiers need surprise on their side.

When they move through the outskirts of the city,

Cain hears heavy gunfire on the heights behind the hospital.

The Germans have had time to mobilize a response.

As he nears the battleground,

Cain starts seeing German and British casualties.

He recognizes uniforms from other regiments among the dead

and continues to press forward.

The Allied planners had assumed that the German troops

in the area of Arnhem were very weak.

That they'd talked about you know, old men and, uh, boys.

They knew though that these two SS Panzer divisions

were deployed somewhere in the area.

But they had been beaten up in the end of the fighting in Normandy.

That they assumed they weren't going to represent a major threat.

And the Germans always punished, uh, shall we say such assumptions.

One Panzer division contains a battalion

commanded by SS Captain Hauptstrumfuher Hans Moeller.

Hans Moeller is a Waffen SS veteran

who had already joined the forces in the 1930s.

He served in the first SS engineer regiment

that was raised up in 1934.

He initially was an NCO and in 1940 he was commissioned.

Moeller had escaped the Falaise Gap in Normandy,

only to lose hundreds of men in the retreat.

He is no stranger to Arnhem.

Moeller is familiar with the terrain and with the region,

because he had fought there in 1940,

and now he finds himself four years later at exactly the same spot.

After arriving back in Arnhem, the Panzer division

organizes its remaining troops into alarm units,

Ninety men strong, as a precaution.

Alarmeinheiten translates into alarm units

that are set up specifically for the task of reacting

and counter attacking as quickly as possible

in the case of an Allied airborne operation.

Moeller and the other Panzer units form Sperrlinie or blocking lines.

A Sperrlinie is a line of defense that the enemy must not pass.

It's quite often reinforced with obstacles or mine fields

in order to funnel the enemy attack and create kill zones.

The blocking lines run across the west end of Arnhem

from the highroad down to the river.

They should trap Allied airborne troops

and keep them from reaching Arnhem bridge to reinforce Frost and his men.

Go, go, go!

It is at the far end of the kill zone

where Major Cain finally locates his regimental commanding officer,

Lieutenant Colonel Derek McCardie.

By the night of the second day, the 18th of September.

It is very clear to Derek McCardie

and all of the officers down near the bridge,

that it was getting extremely difficult to get to the bridge.

But there was a determination on the part of them all,

they had to get to the bridge to Johnny Frost

and relieve those paratroopers who were holding on.

McCardie expects support from a unit to the north,

to help them push through the kill zone.

The South Staffs have already suffered heavy losses.

Cain's timing could not be better

as the Second Staffordshires prepare to fend off yet another attack.

British Major Robert Cain

is part of a daring airborne operation to seize the bridges

that cross the lower Rhine River in Holland.

But Nazi resistance proves stronger than anticipated.

As highly mobile airborne troops, they have been dropped in by glider,

the South Staffordshires are armed with what they can carry.

They have no big anti-tank guns here, in what the South Staffs call the dell...

...but they do have PIATs.

PIAT stands for projector infantry anti-tank.

The PIAT was a very cumbersome weapon to put it mildly.

It was basically spring loaded.

You need to be incredibly strong,

and also it was a very difficult weapon to fire standing up.

Fire!

Depending on the sort of vehicle you were trying to destroy

you really needed to be within 60 meters.

Now that is incredibly close, especially when if it was a tank

or an armored personnel carrier and they have machine guns

you were going to be very, very exposed.

So, it required not just strength. It required bravery, too.

Go, go, go.

Cain draws enemy fire and fetches ammunition

while a Lieutenant targets the tanks.

As the tanks close to about 100 yards,

they are too far for the PIAT to destroy.

But the South Staffs hold them at bay

for several hours before running out of bombs.

They are buying time, hoping for reinforcement.

But German counter attacks throughout the city

keep Allied troops tied up.

So Cain and the others do their best to hold the dell.

One stage he sees a German NCO

and some German soldiers coming up closely towards them.

Clearly not particularly aware of the positions of the South Staffords

and he orders a Bren Gun to open fire.

He fires on the Germans, but misses.

Cain proves impatient.

And now you can tell his frustration.

He grabs the Bren Gun.

Cain opens with deadly fire.

When one of the Germans tries to rise,

Cain loads another magazine, and empties it.

He kills all of those Germans,

just dispatches them almost, uh, out of hand.

It is becoming clear, that no matter how many they kill...

...more arrive to take their place.

Moving closer to the German border,

also means for the Germans, it's easier to bring in their reinforcements.

To bring in their supplies.

The Germans must wipe out the Allied forces in Holland.

We're getting to the Rhine.

It's the last defense line for the Germans

before the Allies come into the home territory.

SS Captain Hans Moeller and his men

put up some of the stiffest opposition.

In addition to attacks from a self-propelled gun

and half-track vehicles...

...Moeller's men pummel the South Staffordshires

with Panzerfaust projectiles and flame throwers.

The Germans are well supplied with ammunition.

Wave after wave of Allied soldier is shot down.

We mustn't forget that in the entire war,

the biggest output of the German war industry is August 1944.

So all the new kit that had been produced just a month earlier,

can be brought quickly to the front line,

and is also one of the factors why the Germans

are able to stabilize the front in September.

Cain's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Derek McCardie

faces a desperate decision in his sector.

The rumors certainly were coming through

that Arnhem Bridge had fallen and was back in German hands

and therefore any further attempt might be futile.

McCardie has to consider the larger operation.

If they cannot get to the Arnhem road bridge,

maybe they can protect another potential bridgehead.

The whole point of this operation is for a link up

with 30 Corps and to get a crossing over the Rhine

and therefore the establishment of the perimeter west of Arnhem

at Oosterbeek is a chance to, ah, still achieve that objective.

McCardie orders his men to withdraw

from their position in the dell. Go!

Hurry, hurry!

Cain sets a rear guard to protect their retreat.

The South Staffs bring their wounded to what they call the monastery...

and prepare to pull back.

As they seek shelter,

a German tank blows up the house next to them.

Get down! Go, go!

Still determined to fight, Cain and three others

take cover in a trench and wait.

September 19th, 1944...

British Major Robert Cain and three others occupy a trench

which provides some protection as they retreat from Arnhem, Holland.

A German tank approaches their position,

not knowing that they are there.

This tank gets really close and Robert Cain can see

the tank commander out of his turret with his field glass

and his black gloves and this extraordinary detail

and there isn't much they can do about it.

The tank is too close.

Firing at this distance is too risky.

Cain sees the tank commander scanning for targets.

Hoping the tank will pass by,

Cain urges the men to stay down.

But one cannot resist.

He takes a shot at the tank commander,

and betrays their position.

As he says, some bloody fool opens fire on the tank

to absolutely no effect, so the tank is going to retaliate.

Before the German commander even lets off a round,

the other men bolt from the trench. Go, go!

They are immediately gunned down.

The tank advance continues.

Clearly Robert Cain is not at the end of his tether,

but he's armed with his pistol thinking, what on earth can I do with a pistol?

He crawls to the top of the trench and out

carefully below the line of sight of the tank commander and his guns.

Cain rolls over and over, off a ledge and drops 20 feet

into the relative safety of the hospital yard and passes out.

Some minutes, not very long where I'm guessing he lay there

thinking I-- what am I-- this is going nowhere.

But of course gathers his senses, the man that he is,

and manages to extricate himself and head west

with the rest of his soldiers.

What remains of the South Staffordshire regiment

joins 11th Battalion

having heard the rest of their unit was gathering at Den Brink.

Stay low, stay low!

But before commanding officer

Lieutenant Colonel Derek McCardie can also escape...

...he too is struck and taken prisoner.

Major Cain is now the most senior active officer in his battalion.

As Operation Market Garden enters its third day,

SS Captain Moeller has gone on the offensive,

determined to eliminate the Allied airborne threat

in the Dutch city once and for all.

Halt!

At Arnhem, there's a last bridge of the river Rhine.

So, Moeller knows, and his men, we must defend,

this is our last line of defense.

Otherwise the gate to Germany is open.

NARRATOR He advances west from Arnhem, slowly clearing

the airborne troops out of houses and trenches.

Each house has to be taken individually,

often with fierce hand-to-hand combat.

Entire platoons from both sides disappear into the urban battlefield.

Because Allied forces have failed to get reinforcements

to Arnhem bridge to relieve Lieutenant Colonel John Frost...

they now hope to set up a new position west of Arnhem,

in Oosterbeek.

Perhaps if they hold on there then 30 Corps

and the rest of the Second British Army will come up

and will be able to bridge the Rhine there

and continue and hold that particular bridgehead.

To give airborne troops time to withdraw to Oosterbeek...

Robert Cain is given orders to take the high ground

overlooking the withdrawal route known as Den Brink.

It's not particularly high, but it's high enough

to be a significant feature.

- Understood? - Yes, sir.

Cain organizes the remaining 100 men

of his regiment into five small platoons.

He selects two, to stage an assault on Den Brink.

When they reach the top, the Germans open with heavy mortar fire.

Cain's men need to dig in to take cover

or face certain death.

They get to work with what they have.

And they find it extremely difficult to dig in on Den Brink.

They don't have proper digging tools with them,

just their entrenching tools.

And I suspect a number of men would've discarded those too,

on their way into Arnhem

and during the fighting that's taking place that day.

Cain is exposed on the hill,

with no supporting artillery fire.

His platoons suffer many casualties

as shells rain down around them.

After 90 minutes, Cain pulls out.

Come on, move!

To stay would be suicide.

Operation Market Garden is unraveling.

The next day, news filters through both sides.

After defying German counter attacks without reinforcement,

Lieutenant Colonel John Frost and more than 100 others are taken prisoner.

Frost has to surrender purely because they are out of ammunition,

ah, they're out of food and water,

ah, there are so many wounded that his doctors

simply can't look after them anymore.

Frost himself was also badly wounded in the legs

when a mortar bomb explodes very nearby

and is incapable of carrying on.

It is a turning point.

Retaking the Arnhem Bridge is a major victory

for the Germans.

They have got these important Rhine crossings again in their hands.

And besides, capturing a Battalion Commander

is something that the Germans don't achieve very often

at this stage of the war.

By Thursday September 21st,

Operation Market Garden is officially a failure.

For Major Cain and the thousands of remaining

Allied airborne troops, 60 miles behind enemy lines,

their best hope of getting out of Holland alive

remains the arrival of Allied tanks and troops from the south.

But they are still days away.

September 21st, 1944.

Nazi soldiers encircle thousands of Allied troops,

near Arnhem, Holland.

After a failed operation to capture and secure bridges

crossing the lower Rhine River.

What remains of the First British Airborne Division

has fallen back to Oosterbeek, west of Arnhem.

The defense of Oosterbeek,

ah, during the latter part of Operation Market Garden

was purely a-- a defensive measure. It was no more than that.

They hope by holding on to the bridgehead

that maybe in the coming days if 30 Corps came through.

But basically, they could do no more than just hold on.

30 corps was a force of British armor

expected to race 64 miles through occupied Holland.

And consolidate the bridges in two and a half days.

Entering the fifth day, resistance to the Allied operation

has proved far greater than expected, on all fronts.

Now 6,000 German infantry backed by tanks,

surround and close in on the remainder of the airborne division.

When an enemy is trapped and encircled,

the Germans call it, it's a kessel. So it's a cauldron.

So, this is very much a German tactic,

and also on the operational level, during the Second World War,

to encircle the enemy, to eneinselkessen,

so to encircle him, to put him into a cauldron.

SS Capt. Hans Moeller and the Panzer troops

plan to squeeze the airborne division to death, or surrender.

And at Arnhem, the fighting as it is particularly ferocious,

the cauldron is called a witch's cauldron, " en hexen kessel".

A very strong word for saying something is very, uh, chaotic

and brutal at the same time.

Moeller later describes occupying the ground floor of a house,

with British airborne troops upstairs.

As the day wears on, a whiskey bottle appears from above.

The Germans send up some chocolate in return.

It shows you that even in this ferocious fighting

there are always moments of ja, humanity,

of sharing the hardships of the war,

and in the next moment they shoot against each other again.

British Major Robert Cain and his 40 men

must defend the southeastern sector of the horseshoe defense,

near a church.

It guards one of the roads into the perimeter

and also it is next to the River Rhine

and this is extremely important to hold onto

because they're still hoping for a link up with 30 Corps

and they had to protect the crossing.

As Major Cain holds this position,

he spots Panzer troops setting fire to the laundry house.

It is a scorched earth policy to punish the Dutch

and flush out Allied troops.

Robert Cain throws a hand grenade,

but he throws it upwards and it hits a rafter and bounces back towards him.

He threw himself into the burning embers of the laundry

as a safer place to be than where his hand grenade was going to land,

and he emerged scorched but otherwise untouched.

So far behind enemy lines,

airborne troops rely on relief and resupply.

Operation Market Garden was planned

to last only three or four days,

by getting on well beyond four days,

and the fighting more or less 24 hours a day,

ah, means that they were all totally exhausted.

And also, one sees the way that the rates of battle shock

or of psychological collapse, ah, start to increase pretty rapidly.

Surrounded by the enemy and unable to defend their drop zones,

Allied supplies fall out of reach.

The Germans are able to seize the British airdrop zones.

As a consequence, all the supplies

or 90% of the supplies, comes into German hands.

And this is of course for the Nazis, great propaganda material.

So you have got Germans now with British food,

with British cigarettes.

Within the Oosterbeek perimeter,

things get worse for the civilians and airborne troops,

as the Germans cut off the water.

Food and ammunition also run out.

Starving and exhausted,

the airborne troops cannot hold out for much longer.

More equipment arrives on the German side.

The arrival of new tanks for the Germans

means that they can split now the Witch's Cauldron into two parts

and the British forces face now annihilation.

Panzer troops are ordered to attack Oosterbeek

to finish off the trapped airborne division holding out in the cauldron.

Once again, Major Robert Cain finds himself defending their sector

with little more than a PIAT.

All right!

September 1944.

Now into their fifth day of Operation Market Garden,

the First British Airborne Division has been trapped

and surrounded by two German Panzer divisions

at Oosterbeek, Holland.

Major Robert Cain's position is under attack by tanks.

With only a handheld weapon called a PIAT,

he takes aim at a tank 100 yards away.

As the smoke clears,

he sees that he has damaged the tracks...

but he has also alerted the tank to his position.

Cain fights with the supporting fire of Bren gunners.

The Bren gunners keep the German's heads down...

and certainly the commanders of the tanks

who like to stick their heads up because it was much better observation,

kept them inside their turrets.

With Cain's next shot, the tank is disabled,

and the crew bails out.

Cain approaches the tank,

shouting for the Bren guns to continue firing.

The German crew is eliminated.

As more tanks approach, Cain holds his ground.

Robert Cain hits on the idea of firing it.

Firing the PIAT in almost vertical position.

Not anything to do with range, but to try and drop

the PIAT bombs on top of the German armor,

where the thickness of their armor is weakest.

But after six rounds, Cain's PIAT gun misfires.

The PIAT bomb explodes prematurely,

inside the trough of the weapon,

uh, it's extremely close to his face,

when I say extremely close, we're talking about a distance like this...

semi blinds him certainly gives him a couple of black eyes.

Cain has to be dragged from the trench

to the regimental aid post.

We know that his fury boiled over.

He issued a stream of obscenities.

I suspect towards the soldiers who were trying to escort him

out of further danger.

Reload!

As the battle resumes, Major Cain

brushes off his PIAT bomb injuries and leaves the aid post,

to return to his trench.

So determined is this man to be an example

to his soldiers that in about half an hour, he is back with them.

The battle of attrition takes its toll.

Robert Cain says this thing about you call for someone

and they don't answer, or the answer comes he's had it.

He was killed yesterday or he's wounded.

Or he's a prisoner.

Too often by these last days,

he's calling for men who are no-- no longer there.

No longer answering the call.

And by the next day...

...Major Cain has fired so many rounds

that his eardrum bursts.

He stuffs field dressing into his ears, and continues to fight.

They hold off the Germans trying to gain ground near the river.

With limited supplies and under constant counter attack,

it becomes increasingly difficult for the British to care for their wounded.

A cease fire is negotiated.

It was arranged for the Germans to take them

and basically to transport them in most cases back to Appeldorn

rather than in the immediate area.

The wounded were then put on stretchers and taken away.

During a two hour cease fire, 1,200 wounded Allied soldiers

are taken into German captivity.

For those left behind, pressure continues to build.

Fifteen new Tiger tanks appear on the battlefield,

having arrived from Germany the night of September 23rd.

With the arrival of the Royal Tiger Tanks their fate was sealed.

Desperation sets in for the remaining airborne division.

The next day, Cain no longer has even a PIAT

to defend his men or their position.

He uses whatever he can find.

He locates a two-inch mortar.

Not a handheld weapon, it is usually fired from the ground.

It's not even meant to be used against tanks.

He's firing the two-inch mortar at very short range

to try and get these rounds onto the German armor...

and certainly in amongst German infantry.

Anything to thwart the enemy attacks on their perimeter.

Despite the heroics of Major Cain and many others...

General Urquhart the commander of the First Airborne

got the message across to General Browning

in Nijmegen, they were out of ammunition.

They could not hold on any longer.

After five days holding out at Oosterbeek

and eight days from the start of Operation Market Garden

the order comes for the airborne troops to abandon their posts.

Oosterbeek, Holland.

In the aftermath of Operation Market Garden,

Allied airborne troops can no longer hold a potential bridgehead,

north of the lower Rhine River.

Perhaps the most difficult part of this operation is about to come...

to hold this perimeter, and to continue to hold it convincingly,

so that the Germans think that it continues to be a solid perimeter

while as many men as possible are withdrawn across the Rhine.

The First Airborne Division is to be evacuated,

across the river, by night.

In preparation, Major Robert Cain shaves for the first time in a week.

Later, his efforts attract the notice of Brigadier Philip Hicks,

who notes, there's one officer at least who's shaved.

But before, Cain remains on the north side,

to ensure all his men board the vessels,

but when he is ready to evacuate,

there are no boats left to take him across.

So, Cain and the other stragglers, locate a damaged assault craft,

and use their rifle butts as paddles.

Their boat leaks badly,

but they make it to the other side, to safety.

The First Airborne Division goes in some 12,000 strong,

ah, with the reinforcements, which arrive later.

By the time the end of the battle comes,

less than 3,000 are evacuated.

Thousands are taken prisoner, missing, or killed in action.

Market Garden did not just constitute a massive loss

in terms of Airborne troops and certain degree, 30 Corps as well.

It was above all the suffering of the civilians,

having helped the airborne troops so bravely, so generously.

Thousands of Dutch civilians are killed

and many more injured in the fighting.

Almost immediately, the Dutch then faced retribution from the Germans.

They took their revenge basically by cutting off food

from the major cities and this led to the Hunger Winter

where at least another 20,000 died from starvation.

After being captured at the bridge,

Lieutenant Colonel John Frost spends the rest of the war as a POW.

He is later awarded a bar to his distinguished service order

for his leadership at Arnhem.

Major Cain earns the Victoria Cross for his actions throughout the operation.

It is the highest honor for valor in the British Empire.

He is the only man to receive the medal at Arnhem,

and live to tell the tale.

His citation reads, "His coolness and courage

under incessant fire could not be surpassed".

Nazi propaganda portrays Arnhem

to be a major German victory, it's actually only partly a victory.

Further south in Holland, at Nijmegen

the Germans cannot throw back all the liberating Allied forces.

But for Arnhem, and this is the crucial bridge,

the Germans achieve a major victory.

And it's the only time in '44, '45 that the Germans destroy

an entire Allied Division.

Montgomery's version has its own spin.

General Montgomery tried to claim that Market Garden was a 90% success.

I think that Prince Bernhardt, the Dutch Commander in Chief,

said, uh, "My country cannot afford another Montgomery victory, in that case."

Even more scathing was Air Chief Marshall Tedder

who was Eisenhower's deputy.

Tedder said, "One has even more success jumping off a cliff

until the last few inches."

After the retreat from Arnhem and Oosterbeek,

the Allies establish a new front further south around Nijmegen,

to launch their next offensives to the German border.

Arnhem itself will only be liberated by Canadian troops

in April 1945...

as the war in Europe rages on for another seven and a half months.

Captioned by Visual Data Media Services.