Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Korthorn. On today's episode we have another in our recorded lecture series from our 2019 history weekend event in Winchester.

This time it's the best-selling military historian Anthony Beaver

speaking about his most recent book Arn Arnhem, The Battle for the Bridges, 1944.

Thank you very much indeed. At dawn on Sunday the 17th of September

1944, squadrons of medium bombers and mosquito fighter bombers took off for the Netherlands.

This was the overture to Operation Market Garden.

Field Marshal Montgomery's plan to jump the river Rhine at Arnham and advance into Germany.

Montgomery was convinced that if he could cross the Rhine before General Patton to its

south, then General Eisenhower would have to give him the bulk of the supplies and

also command over American formations.

That morning more than 20,000 paratroopers queued for breakfast near airfields all over England.

The 82nd and 101st American Airborne divisions had hot cakes and syrup, fried chicken with all the trimmings and apple pie.

Paratroopers from the British First Airborne Division piled their mess tins with smoked

hadak, quite a lot of which ended up on the floor of the aircraft, a Sergeant Remark.

As the British first airborne lined up for mugs of tea before boarding on the airfield, some

demonstrated conspicuous optimism,

such as taking a football ready for a celebration match

as soon as they'd captured Arnham Bridge.

The American equivalent appeared to consist mostly of fantasies about yet

another foreign country. A young American lieutenant remembered wondering

what all those blonde girls rarely looked like with wooden shoes on their feet and windmills in their eyes.

A number of American paratroopers had heard that the Netherlands was the country of diamonds and they dreamed of returning

...