On September 17th, 1944, three Allied airborne divisions - two American, one British, totaling 30,000 men - landed at Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem in Holland. Their task was to lay an 'airborne carpet' across Holland to the Rhine, seizing vital bridges and opening up a route for an advance into northern Germany by the British Second Army. This book covers all aspects of that massive operation, which was code-named "Market Garden" and deals with the German side as well as the British and American. Above all, it tells of the epic and heroic stand of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem, where the paratroops fought against increasingly hopeless odds for nine days. They were supposed to have held on for only two, until the ground offensive reached them. It never did.