Operation Market-Garden (17 – 26 September 1944), as most readers will recognize, was Field Marshal Montgomery's plan to reach the Rhine River at Arnhem with a combined airborne/land assault that would poise the Allied armies to encircle the Ruhr, cut off the Axis forces in the Netherlands, and significantly shorten the war. The basic plan called for dropping massive airborne forces – the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, and the British First Airborne Corps – to seize all of the bridges between the jumping-off point near Neerpelt, Belgium, up to and including the road bridge across the Lower Rhine at Arnhem. British 30th Corps would make the land drive on Arnhem, with flanking support from 8th and 12th Corps. Things didn't go quite as planned – the land drive bogged down, German defenders proved much stronger and more numerous than anticipated, and by 26 September the last remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division had withdrawn from Osterbeek, just west of Arnhem, south across the Lower Rhine, ending the operation. The campaign was a complicated affair, involving all manner of engagements and all sorts of troops – the stuff from which interesting scenarios are made. One of our scenarios portrays a hasty German counter-attack against troops of the U. S. 82nd Airborne Division just south-east of Nijmegen. The other recreates the desperate defense of the British Paratroops, in Arnhem proper. We tend to play most of our games at this scale using an interesting set of rules, Crossfire, whose unique features suit it to recreating the chaos of company-level actions in broken terrain. These scenarios will be oriented toward Crossfire but they should adapt easily to your favorite rule set with little or no modification. As usual, these scenarios don't pretend to absolute historical accuracy but rather, try to provide enjoyable games in a reasonably historical manner. More Crossfire Crossfire Market Garden: Scenario 1: Arnhem Crossfire Market Garden: Scenario 2: Nijmegen Heights Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #76 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com