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By Root 1428 0

that autumn across the terrain least suited to its success. He failed to recognise that the clearing of the Scheldt approaches, to enable Antwerp to operate as an Allied supply base, was a much more important and plausible objective for his army. To use a nursery analogy, in thrusting for a Rhine bridge the Allied leadership’s eyes were bigger than their stomachs.

British land worker Muriel Green revealed to her diary a surge of depression such as infected every Allied nation on hearing news of the Arnhem failure. ‘We all thought the war was so nearly over and now we hear of such sacrifice of lives it makes me miserable. I suppose we are taking victory so much for granted it makes such disasters seem worse.’ As the war entered its final phase, it became ever harder for families to endure the loss of loved ones with whom they yearned to share the fruits of peace. Ivor Rowberry, a twenty-two-year-old trainee accountant killed while serving as a signaller with the South Staffordshires, left behind words for his parents which reflected the sentiments of many fighting men of many nations:

This … is a letter I hoped you would never receive … Tomorrow we go into action. As yet we do not know exactly what our job will be, but no doubt it will be a dangerous one in which many lives will be lost – mine may be one of those lives. Well, Mom, I am not afraid to die. I like this life, yes – for the past two years I have planned and dreamed and mapped out a perfect future for myself. I would have liked that future to materialize, but it is not what I will but what God wills, and if by sacrificing all this I leave the world slightly better than I found it I am perfectly willing to make that sacrifice. Don’t get me wrong though, Mom, I am no flag-waving patriot … England’s a great little country – the best there is – but I cannot honestly say that it is ‘worth fighting for’. Nor can I fancy myself in the role of a gallant crusader fighting for the liberation of Europe. It would be a nice thought but I would only be kidding myself. No, Mom, my little world is centred around you and including Dad, everyone at home, and my friends at W[olverhamp]ton – That is worth fighting for – and if by doing so it strengthens your security and improves your lot in any way, then it is worth dying for too.

Allied hopes of breaking into Germany – even of winning the war in 1944 – did not immediately collapse at the end of September, with the failure of Market Garden. Instead, they shrank progressively during the weeks that followed, as their soldiers floundered into a sea of mud and local disappointments. Too much historical attention has focused on the drama of the dash for Arnhem; even had Montgomery secured a Rhine bridge, it is implausible that he could have exploited this to break through into Germany. More promising possibilities lay in the path of Hodges’ First US Army, around Aachen just inside the German frontier; in early and mid-September, this nearest sector of Hitler’s West Wall was scarcely defended, yet between the 12th and 15th the Americans failed in a succession of unconvincing attempts to break through. Hodges was the least impressive US Army commander, and his autumn operations were conducted with notable clumsiness. Five more weeks elapsed before First Army occupied the ruins of Aachen. If Patton had commanded there, it is just possible that a quick breach in the West Wall might have been achieved. As it was, his Third Army battered at Metz through September, cursing the incessant rain, to no consequence except that of a mounting casualty list.

Hodges’ next serious error was to launch his army into a desperate, bloody two-month struggle to clear the Huertgen forest, which was thought to threaten his right flank and rear. Four American divisions in turn suffered misery, heavy losses and soaring combat-fatigue rates in the dense woodland. The Germans doggedly held their ground, imposing a price for each small advance, and by the time First Army emerged onto the Roer plain in early December, all hopes of an early victory had perished.