The MARKET GARDEN plan had called for the British to land by parachute and glider west of Oosterbeek near the town of Wolfheeze. After assembling on the ground, various elements of the division would then fight their way eastward across six miles of enemy-held territory toward the highway bridge over the Lower Rhine River. It was expected that they would encounter light opposition and that the bridge would be seized before sundown on the Sept. 17, but that proved to be an overly optimistic expectation. Intense German counterattacks began to strangle the British around Arnhem almost immediately, and the plan began to come apart at the seams. Lt. Col. John Frost, commanding the 2nd Parachute Battalion, managed to make it to the bridge with 745 lightly armed men, but elements of the II.SS-Panzerkorps quickly surrounded them. The Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade landed on a DZ on the south bank of the Rhine at the end of the day on Sept. 21, but it was not able to reach the men of 2 Para in the city before they were overrun and forced to surrender. As of Friday the 22nd, the main body of the 1st Airborne Division occupied a shrinking defensive perimeter near Oosterbeek where the casualties were mounting. By that time the division had been locked in vicious combat with the enemy for five days without resupply or reinforcement. Although the heaviest armaments available to them were 75 mm howitzers and a few anti-tank guns, they continued to fight. Although running short on ammunition, they continued to resist the enemy onslaught.

The outstanding small arms that it brought were, in large part, responsible for the 1st Airborne Division’s ability to continue putting up a fierce defense against overwhelming odds. Automatic arms like the Vickers water-cooled machine gun and the incomparable Bren light machine gun provided the suppressing fire that was continuing to hold off relentless German attacks. The standard-issue rifle of British forces, the long-serving .303 British-cal. Lee-Enfield rifle, in its No. 4 variant, was abundant during the battle. A sprinkling of No. 4 Mk I (T) rifles provided the 1st Airborne Division with a precision sniping platform second to none.

For combat at closer ranges, there were pistols like the venerable Browning 9 mm Luger Hi-Power (manufactured in Toronto, Canada by John Inglis and Co.), the Enfield No. 2 .38/200 revolver, and of course submachine guns. The Sten fought this battle in its newest version—the Mk V, easily recognizable thanks to its wooden pistol grip, fore-grip and buttstock. Although the Mk V improved on the ergonomic features of the old Mk II Sten, a replacement was already under development. Earlier that year, the British Army called for a lighter and more accurate submachine gun to replace the Sten, and Sterling Armaments Co. submitted a design that had promise. Created by George William Patchett, it fired the 9 mm Luger cartridge from the open bolt using Sten magazines and weighed a pound less than the Sten. But Patchett’s experimental submachine gun was still in development at the time, and only six prototypes had been produced up to that point. For many years it was thought that a few Patchetts fought with the 1st Airborne Division in Holland, but it is now known that all six of the existing prototypes remained in England throughout Operation MARKET GARDEN and that the Sten was the only British submachine gun involved in the Airborne part of the battle.

The same guns used to defend the perimeters at Arnhem and Oosterbeek were also fighting their way north with XXX Corps as it pushed across the flat plane stretching between the Waal and the Lower Rhine. As the British and Americans clashed with German units along the road leading north from Nijmegen—a road sardonically nicknamed “Hell’s Highway”—the momentum of Operation MARKET GARDEN bogged down irretrievably. On Sept. 23, the Germans greatly complicated things for the Allies by continuing to throw troops and vehicles against the Poles, against Oosterbeek, and against the “Hell’s Highway” corridor. The intense pressure built to a point that, on the following day, Sept. 24, the Allies shifted over to the defensive. Then the 1st Airborne was ordered to withdraw across the Lower Rhine on Sept. 25. It had held on for nine days without support and had, in the process, lost more than three-quarters of its strength. When what was left of the division escaped across the river during the night of Sept. 25, the bold ambitions of Operation MARKET GARDEN flickered out once and for all.

Although fighting would continue in Holland for many months to come, Montgomery’s audacious plan to capture Berlin swiftly and hasten the end to the war had failed. But that failure was not for a lack of heroism, because Operation MARKET GARDEN proved that Allied soldiers were willing to fight tenaciously toward the objective of liberating the Netherlands. With the guns of Enfield, Inglis, Saginaw, and Springfield, they fought an epic battle that pitted the aggregate strength of the free world against the forces of totalitarianism. The guns of Operation MARKET GARDEN gave us tales of extreme bravery that continue to provide inspiration almost 70 years later.