Qualla: Battle of the Nijmegen salient

Battle of the Nijmegen salient: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gee (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Public domain. Operation Market Garden ended on 26 September 1944, when the last survivors of the British 1st Airborne were ferried back across the Rhine in the dark. The next morning the Germans began trying to push the Allies back off the long thin corridor they had just paid so much to seize. The fighting that followed lasted into October, killed more men than most histories of the campaign bother to mention, and ended with the front line exactly where Market Garden had left it. The soldiers who fought there called the wedge of farmland between the Waal and the Nederrijn the Island.

Image: Gee (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit | Public domain

Battle of the Nijmegen salient: The Geography of the Island

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Midgley (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit Post-Work: User:W.wolny, Public domain. The Allies had taken the Nijmegen bridge intact on 20 September in a now-famous daylight river crossing by the US 82nd Airborne, but they had not taken Arnhem. What they held instead was a salient running north from the Belgian border across south-eastern Holland to the south ban...

Image: Midgley (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit Post-Work: User:W.wolny | Public domain

Battle of the Nijmegen salient: The Counterattack at Randwijk

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pieterverberne, Public domain. On 26 September, the day after Operation Berlin pulled the airborne survivors out of the Oosterbeek pocket, the Germans crossed the Nederrijn in battalion strength at Randwijk and seized a small bridgehead. The 43rd Reconnaissance Regiment holding that stretch of dyke was thin on...

Image: Pieterverberne | Public domain

Battle of the Nijmegen salient: Bittrich's Two-Pronged Push

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC0. Bittrich's counterattack came in from the north and east. The 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg, already deployed on the Island, opened the assault. The 9th Panzer Division, freshly arrived, picked up command of the ad hoc Kampfgruppen Knaust and Bruhn that had fought the Britis...

Image: Unknown author | CC0

Battle of the Nijmegen salient: What the Salient Cost

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eva K. / Eva K., CC BY-SA 2.5. The Germans suffered heavy losses in infantry and armor during the nine days of attacks. British casualty figures from the salient are folded into the larger campaign totals and are harder to extract; the divisional histories of the 43rd Wessex, the 50th Northumbrian, and the 8th...

Image: Eva K. / Eva K. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Battle of the Nijmegen salient: The Forgotten Coda

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan Flöper, CC BY-SA 4.0. Market Garden has had its books and its film. The salient has not. The men who fought through the Island in those wet October days were doing the unglamorous work that follows every bold failure: holding what the bold plan actually achieved, paying again for ground that had alrea...

Image: Stefan Flöper | CC BY-SA 4.0