THE ARNHEM GAMBLE

SEPTEMBER 1944. The Second World War has been raging in Europe for five years. Three long, brutal months after the Normandy landings, one daring plan promises to smash open the road to Germany itself and make the Allies believe the war could be over in weeks. To drop more than thirty-four-thousand paratroopers into the occupied Netherlands, sixty-four miles behind the front line - the greatest airborne operation of the war - and seize a chain of vital bridges. On the ground, an armoured spearhead - some twenty-thousand vehicles and fifty-thousand troops would drive up a narrow corridor. They would link up and relieve the paratroopers all the way to a city on the Lower Rhine called Arnhem. Next: drive north, cut the Netherlands in two, cut off the occupying forces and turn east, into the German Reich itself and straight onto the Ruhr.

But the plan to 'jump the Rhine', codenamed: OPERATION MARKET-GARDEN, becomes a gamble played at the edge of catastrophe. German forces-thought to be broken-rise into view with tanks and troops no one expected. On a narrow road soon christened Hell's Highway, every mile is fought and paid for in blood.

But at Arnhem, a handful of airborne troops cling to a bridge that becomes both their lifeline and their tomb. Cut off, outgunned, bloodied, filthy and surrounded, they fight on with a defiance that turns their stand into legend.
This is the story of a bold vision tempered by brutal reality-of courage, chaos, and the dogged determination of men who refused to surrender.