Operation Market Garden Nijmegen

Being a big fan of the 'Market Garden' campaign, I was somewhat disappointed with this first of what looks to be, eventually, two parts to Pen & Sword's documentary covering the Arnhem/Oosterbeek battles. Whilst the narrators definitely exhibited excellent knowledge of the battle and taking the viewer to the locations where certain actions occured; I was not that impressed by the presentation and I thought it could've been better made. The use of stock-footage was not that great and it did not make full use of the various British airborne and German Waffen-SS re-enactors and simply showed the same snippets of re-enactor footage as a way to fill gaps between the sometimes droll narration by the presenters. I am hoping that Part 2 (which I believe will cover the Oosterbeek perimeter battles) will be better made. From what I've seen regards Arnhem documentaries, the best, to date, are the BBC's 'D-Day to Berlin' (Part Two - Allies at War) which covers 'Market Garden' and made great use of re-enactors (why didn't Pen & Sword use them???), The great Professor Richard Holmes covered Arnhem as one of his 'Battlefields' episodes and his narration was better when compared to the Pen & Sword epic. The best though has to be the Dutch SFW B&W documentary (made some years back) titled 'The Battle of Arnhem' which blends alot of stock footage with, then, modern footage and has an excellent narrative that runs for an entertaining 47 minutes. Read more

Don't waste your time and money. DOES NOT PLAY ON AMERICAN DVD'S...... Movie Mars should do some research on the products they sell. Read more

Disk 1 all scratched up. You pay 25.00 for a DVD it should at least arrive with no scratches. Third attempt. Read more

Disappointing. The presentation includes some reminiscences by veterans of Market Garden but most of this video is narration by somewhat biased historians and strange reenactors. Very few video clips of the actual battle and the viewpoint is strictly of the British perspective: no interviews of the other participants and there is a persistent theme that the operation's failure was due to the "(US) 82nd Airborne division's failure to capture the Nijmegan bridge" and some not-so-veiled criticism of Eisenhower. If you enjoy long stretches of cheesy reenactor footage (compete with a US halftrack disguised as a German vehicle and "paratroopers" that are overly pale and don't know how to hold a rifle) and often incomprehensible British mumbling and distortions, enjoy - but otherwise, save your money. Read more

Having had an interest in this whole subject for many years. And never had the opportunity to actually visit there . I was very much looking forward to seeing this. However after a short while,I was getting disappointed with seeing the narrator and just the narrow view around him. Only on a few occasions did the Camara, pull back for a bigger picture. I'm hopping for better results from the rest of the series by as I am awaiting there arrival. Read more