Here is the true story of the events that inspired the famous film, A Bridge Too Far, told in compelling style by Christopher Hibbert, one of Britain's foremost historians.
In September, 1944, in Arnhem, Holland, what was to have been a brilliant battle-a battle meant to hasten an end to the war-instead turned into an epic tragedy. Nine-thousand men of the First British Airborne division parachuted into the countryside, behind German lines, with a mission: to capture and hold the bridge over the Rhine ahead of the advancing British Second Army. But the result was disastrous: the men faced constant bombardment. Nine days later, after some of the fiercest street fighting of the war, only 2,000 of the paratroopers managed to escape to safety.