Order of Battle The order of battle was as follows:
General Officer Commanding Lt-Gen
Gerard Bucknall (to 3 August 1944)Lt-Gen
Brian Horrocks (from 4 August 1944) • Corps Troops: •
11th Hussars (armoured cars) • 73rd Anti-Tank Regiment,
Royal Artillery • 27th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, RA • 4th (Durham) Survey Regiment, RA •
XXX Corps Troops, Royal Engineers • XXX Corps Postal Unit, Royal Engineers • XXX Corps Signals,
Royal Corps of Signals • 5th Army Group, RA •
4th Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery • 7th Medium Regiment, RA •
64th (London) Medium Regiment, RA •
84th (Sussex) Medium Regiment, RA •
121st (West Riding) Medium Regiment, RA •
52nd (Bedfordshire Yeomanry) Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery • Divisions (for the invasion of Normandy): •
7th Armoured Division; •
49th (West Riding) Infantry Division; •
50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division. • Divisions (17 September 1944):
Operation Market Garden After the success in France and Belgium, General Montgomery commanding the
21st Army Group turned his attention to outflanking the
Siegfried Line and invading the
Ruhr in a pincer movement. The northern part of the pincer would be near Arnhem at the Dutch–German border. Allied troops would concentrate at this point to form the northern part of the pincer. XXX Corps, consisting of approximately 50,000 men, would advance along the main axis of the Second Army and reach
Arnhem within 48 hours, and continue on to the Dutch–German border. XXX Corps was to be the GARDEN part of the operation to advance past Arnhem. This required crossing water obstacles, the last of them a road bridge at Arnhem. When the pincer closed, this would allow the British to trap the
15th Army, splitting it from the
1st Parachute Army on the way around the northern flank of the Siegfried Line. The MARKET part of the operation was to seize the bridges up to Arnhem. Montgomery requested from
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the
Supreme Allied Commander on the
Western Front, to deploy the
First Allied Airborne Army. The
101st Airborne Division (
Major General Maxwell D. Taylor) was dropped at
Eindhoven, to secure the
Son and Wilhelmina Canal bridges, the
82nd Airborne Division (
Brigadier General James M. Gavin), dropped at
Nijmegen, to secure the
Grave and Nijmegen bridges, while the British
1st Airborne Division (Major-General
Roy Urquhart), dropped at Arnhem, to secure the bridgehead over the Neder Rijn. Attached to the 1st Airborne Division was the
1st Polish Parachute Brigade (
Major-General Stanisław Sosabowski). of XXX Corps passing through
Grave having linked up with the
US 82nd Airborne Division.
Operation Market Garden commenced at 14:00H on Sunday 17 September 1944, with the artillery preparation by 350 guns at 14:35. It was to be the most ambitious ground offensive operation by the British Army in the war so far. It was beset by problems. The ground was assessed to be too soft to accommodate the
Sherman tanks of the leading
Irish Guards Battle Group, forcing the entire Guards Armoured Division to stay on the single highway. As XXX Corps advanced north-east, it became obvious that the highway was prone to traffic jams and was extremely vulnerable to enemy counter-attacks. The lead elements of XXX Corps, the Guards Armoured Division (Major-General
Allan Adair) were ambushed by German anti-tank defences, causing delays to the advance. As a result, they were far short of the 82nd Airborne Division objectives, having not even reached the 101st Airborne Division by the end of the first day. On the second day of GARDEN, the Guards Armoured Division continued northwards to Eindhoven, where they met elements of the 2nd Battalion,
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. They soon discovered that 101st had failed to secure the bridge at Son intact, creating more delays before XXX Corps engineers arrived to build a
Bailey bridge. On the morning of 19 September the Guards Armoured Division advanced without facing much resistance reaching the Nijmegen Bridge on schedule the same day, where they found that the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division had failed to capture the road bridge at Nijmegen, with troops only at the southern end of the bridge. XXX Corps brought up boats used by bridge engineers, allowing two companies of the 3rd Battalion,
504th Parachute Infantry Regiment (
Major Julian Cook) to cross the river to assault the bridge from the northern end. XXX Corps captured the Nijmegen bridge by running their tanks over. The Guards Armoured Division advanced and quickly established positions on the north bank to secure the bridge. Further south, in the 101st Airborne Division sector, many units from XXX Corps had to be detached to fight off repeated attempts by the German 106th
Panzerbrigade to cut the highway. The
231st Infantry Brigade (from the 50th Division) and the
4th Armoured Brigade spent most of the time during Operation Market Garden reacting to these probes by German Panther tanks and
panzergrenadiers. This created traffic jams and delayed reinforcements reaching the Guards Armoured Division–particularly the
43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division (Major-General
Ivor Thomas) and the
69th and
151st Brigades of the 50th Division, which further slowed down the XXX Corps advance. By 21 September the Guards Armoured Division was exhausted and Horrocks also took ill, with XXX Corps periodically being commanded by its Brigadier General Staff (BGS)
Brigadier Harold Pyman, for which he would be made
Chief of Staff of the Second Army after the operation. They had fought continuously for five days, much of it against fierce German resistance and were unable to continue the offensive. The 43rd Division was brought up to continue and managed to defeat elements of the
10th SS Panzer Division that penetrated to Nijmegen area and advanced to the Neder Rijn and the area called "the Island". There the 4th Battalion,
Dorset Regiment crossed the
Rhine as a diversion, so that the remnants of the 1st Airborne Division could withdraw more safely but many men of the 4th Dorsets were left behind on the north bank of the Rhine when the division withdrew. The failure of the 82nd Airborne Division to seize the Nijmegen bridge caused a long delay for the XXX Corps to arrive at the Arnhem bridge as planned. This caused the 1st Airborne Division, which was surrounded in the
Battle of Arnhem and suffered many casualties, to retreat from the Arnhem bridge after the delay enabled the Germans to reinforce with armoured divisions. Most of the 1st Airborne Division was killed, surrendered or withdrew to the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade positions, which ended the offensive.
Ardennes During the
Battle of the Bulge, units of XXX Corps moved to secure the bridges over the
Meuse. On 27 December the Corps pushed the
2nd Panzer Division out of
Celles. On 31 December they captured
Rochefort at the western end of the
salient. on 23rd March XXX Corps began Operation Turnscrew within the framework of
Operation Plunder the Rhine Crossing at Rees. ==General Officers Commanding==