VideoOperation Market Garden - Gliders At Arnhem: Dauncey, M

Brigadier Mike Dauncey was a young officer in the Glider Regiment who landed near Wolfheze with the British Airborne Forces on the afternoon 17 September 1944. He was wounded in the battle and captured by German troops, but later escaped from a military hospital and was eventually smuggled back to Allied lines by the Dutch reisistance.

Operation Market Garden was one of the Second World War's boldest plans and as such it continues even to this day to generate considerable controversy about the degree of success it achieved.

As part of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 'Narrow Front' strategy it called for three Allied airborne divisions to land at various key points in Holland well behind the frontline and seize and hold a series of bridges which spanned three of Europe's major rivers. At the same time XXX Corps under the command of General Brian Horrocks would commence an armoured thrust from the Belgian-Dutch border linking up with these paratrooper and glider forces – first near Eindhoven, then at Nijmegen, and finally at Arnhem – before continuing the advance to the northern Dutch coast at the Zuider Zee.

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