EV1720
Failure by Chalicea
Solution
Letters from wordplay give TOO MANY THINGS COULD GO WRONG AND MOST OF THEM DID, describing the failure of Operation MARKET GARDEN.
Setter’s Blog
I am often horrified at the immense loss of life that has occurred in military campaigns because of the mindless decisions of generals or the bungling of commanders (My last EV had the theme ‘Someone had blundered’ in relation to the Charge of the Light Brigade).
It was a discussion of that that reminded us of the Market Garden episode when Montgomery (Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, one of Britain’s top generals in WWII) after the Normandy campaign in 1944, devised Operation Market Garden, an ambitious plan to end the war quickly by seizing key bridges in the Netherlands and pushing into Germany.
The plan relied on airborne troops capturing bridges (the “Market” part) and ground forces racing north to relieve them (the “Garden” part). The most crucial bridge was at Arnhem, but the Allies failed to secure it fully — hence the phrase ‘a bridge too far’ which was used for the 1974 book and 1977 film that are so familiar to us and dramatize this campaign, showing both the daring vision and the tragic shortcomings of Montgomery’s plan.
The operation ended in failure, with heavy Allied losses, particularly among the British 1st Airborne Division (hence the title of my crossword).
As usual, I abandoned symmetry in order to fit in all my material (but I truly believe that solvers are not over concerned about symmetry – it tends to be a compiler’s concern). I hope it was enjoyable to solve.
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A full review of this puzzle can be seen over on fifteensquared.