Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
On War and Warfare Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: Perpetuating military history myths and Wikipedia
MHmythbuster    9/5/2009 11:59:31 PM
I have recently watched the movie A bridge too far, and noting many 'interesting' points about the impression Ryan and the movie wish to impress upon the viewer, decided to do some research. Not surprisingly I started online, and even less surprisingly the first article to pop up was that of Wikipedia. I had in the past a difficult relationship with Wikipedia, and it has not changed it seems, though people have. One change I made in the article is to add the word 'strategic' to it to clarify for the reader that the operation was strategic in nature, as conceived. The word was deleted, and I received a message that I was expressing a bias opinion from an 18 year old 'editor'. Below is the other message I left on the discussion page of the article after outlining my reasons for why the failure was strategic and not 'operational' as it says now. I would however be interested in non-Wikipedian assessment of the argument I advance, so thought I ask here. This is I feel a downfall of many similar article in Wikipedia that for some reason they adopt chronological structures where the chronology was rarely relevant to the actual events; objectives were. The agreed-on time-scale for the operation was two days, though Browning offered four. The essence of the operation was not the time the airborne troops could hold the bridges for, but the speed with which the XXX Corps could traverse them. Because the primary actor in the plan was the XXX Corps, and therefore Op GARDEN, it seems to me the emphasis of the article should be on it, and not the airborne troops of Op MARKET that were facilitating its execution of the plan, or lack of it. By the 20th Brereton was quite aware that the plan failed anyway after he received the low level altitude images of the Arnhem ridge taken by the US Mosquitoes, and news from Gavin that the British troops stopped at the 'Island', so the rest of the the D+n is quite irrelevant in terms of execution, even if Browning was unaware of the fact on the ground on the 21st September. Thank you, and look forward to an engaging discussion
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics