Announcing new Map: The Battle For Arnhem

[necramonium]

Seeing the Market Garden module is still far away, but we already have the Commonwealth module, i am planning to make a map based on the terrible fight that took place in Arnhem, The Netherlands during operation Market Garden, mostly situated around the battle John Frost and his men fought for the bridge, made famously in the war movie A Bridge Too Far:

Nowadays, the bridge is named after John Frost:

This is a very good website (mostly in dutch so will supply it in google translate) that shows allot about Market Garden but also some background information about the movie A Bridge Too Far, like where they recorded the scenes and such:

http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strijdbewijs.nl%2Fmarket-garden%2Fbridgetoofar.htm

Many people don't realize it but downtown Arnhem was completely destroyed after the battle:

R.H.

Phantom (attached to: 2nd Parachute Battalion)

1st Parachute Brigade

"I had to return to ARNHEM the pull was too strong, by various means I returned what I saw was utter devastation, its fine old buildings destroyed but what of the people? (It was not until later I read of the evacuation, the lootings, the starvation winter). I went to the areas where I had fought and was captured I went into a broken house and what I saw made me weep. I wept for my friends, for the magnificent Dutch people, even maybe for the Germans. In one corner of a room lay what I thought was two bundles of rags, they were uniforms British and German, to my horror bones stuck out of them still partly covered in putrefied flesh. I had arrived in hell!

I made my way to OOSTERBEEK the same there. I slept that night as best I could in a destroyed house. I could not take any more so with my brain filled with these ghastly images I left eventually getting back to the UK. I vowed (like so many others) to return which I have many times."

"I also have a hatred of the Germans which showed itself in 1985. With my wife I came for two weeks holiday, early July staying at the Dreyeroord Hotel (The Whitehouse) in Oosterbeek. Many of the boat-trips had not started so we took the one to Westerbouwing. On it were a party of what turned out to be German veterans. I got into conversation asking if they were Wehrmacht or S.S. This was the end of the meeting until one of them grinned. I exploded, I was 19 years old again, I picked him up by his coat and had him half way over the deckrail before I was stopped. When it was all over 4 Germans were stretched out cold. I was a little bruised myself. No charges where brought."

Full story: http://www.marketgarden.com/2010/UK/veterans/rh.html

Some of the soldiers on the German side were veterans from the Eastern front in Russia, even they have stated that the urban fighting that took place inside Arnhem was more brutal and horrible than over in Russia:

Alfred Ringsdorf

Truppen - Fuhrer

Waffen SS

"The fighting in and around the houses of Arnhem are very hard to describe, they were even more horrifying then what we had experienced before in Russia."

"When the battle at the Bridge was over I was standing in front of a damaged building with red bricks near the bridge. Suddenly a large group of British soldiers came marching by. An officer with a stick in his hand called an order and the group turned their faces towards me while the officer saluted me. I saluted him back as appreciation for the honour they presented me. They must have recognized me because we had taken them prisoner some time before.

I was completely surprised and could do no less then admire their spirit. These para's were the elite of the British Army....."

Full story: http://www.marketgarden.com/2010/UK/veterans/ringsdorf.html

Erwin Heck

Lieutenant

Unterfuhrer Schule Arnheim

Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by British forces. The fighting was terrible and the closer we got to Oosterbeek the harder the fighting became. Advance became difficult because of the wooded terrain.

Once arriving at Oosterbeek we fought man to man, house to house and in some occasions we occupied one floor of a house and the enemy another. In many occasions we just had to fight with pistols because of this man to man situations. We did not get any rest.

Full story: http://www.marketgarden.com/2010/UK/veterans/heck.html

Horst Weber

Kompagnie-Trupp-Fuhrer

1ste Bat.

We never expected to be able to recapture the bridge. It was our artillery that beat the Para's in the end. Not long after the surrender of the remaining British forces at the bridge we marched to Elst. I later heard that the Bridge was bombed in October. Bombed by the Allied Air Force. The allies destroyed the Bridge that they had fought so hard over and defended with their own blood. The war continued for seven months and caused a lot of destruction and suffering to the Dutch civilians.

We as German soldiers of that time can do nothing else then ask to be forgiven.

Full story: http://www.marketgarden.com/2010/UK/veterans/weber.html

More veteran memories here:

http://www.marketgarden.com (Click Topics - Veterans Memories)

I myself have been to Arnhem and it's surrounding places allot seeing as a kid my parents always took me to Arnhem for vacation (i live in The Netherlands if you not had figured that out by now). It's still amazing to think what a brutal war has raged there when you walked through the area's where it happened, i also been in the Eusebius Church, one of the few big buildings that survived the battle.

We got a tour around the church, the tour leader told us his father who lived closed to the church as a small boy heard bombers flying over, explosions were heard and than heard a sound he never had forgotten in his whole life, the tower got hit and the enormous clock tower bell came fallen down with a indescribable noise, i have seen this bell as it was still in the church in the year 2000, there was a giant crack on one side of the bell. My grandmother has lived through Market Garden in Nijmegen, also a town that got hit heavily (mostly because of a misplaced bombardment from the allied side), she lived as a young teenage girl mostly back than in a air-raid bunker. She still has trouble talking about that period, but sometimes she mentions some revelations, like a V2 bomb that hit the city, and when the town was free of Germans and the allied soldiers who came in the town, she said she got a orange from a well known officer, i can't remember if she told it was Montgomery or Patton.

I happen to have a small map that shows where everybody was located during the battle for the Arnhem bridge (see attachment). This can become very useful in making this map.

[Hister]

good luck with this next project necro, will be a meat fest!

[sburke]

beautiful, but I would hesitate to go too far. BF had said previously and we are already seeing in CMFI shots different building types. I would suggest only doing basic terrain features, elevations and probably roads for nw.

I have been tinkering with a 4x4 map of Veghel. I've got the Canal, River Aar, RR embankments and dykes, but am at the point now where I just may scrap the whole thing if the new mapping tools for CMFI turn out as good as expected. I could probably re do everything I have done so far in a day and have it be far more accurate.

Still really looking forward to this. My reading list lately has been very focused on MG.

[Paper Tiger]

Heh heh! You can be sure that the battle for the Arnhem bridge will be well covered in the module content. The real clincher for accurate OMG maps will be how BFC model the important bridges. It will be interesting to see how you will do it though.

[LongLeftFlank]

I used to have a copy of Louis Hagen's amazing foxhole-level soldier's memoir "The Arnhem Lift" (now long out of print, and my mum tossed my copy, alas). Hagen was a German Jew (was in Torgau KZ) who escaped to Britain and joined the Paras in time for OMG. He describes one sequence in which German prisoners refuse even to dig latrines for themselves until a captured officer arrives and upbraids them, using their captors as examples of disciplined soldierly behaviour to emulate.

That said, viewing the photos above leaves troubling questions in my mind. Arnhem was stoutly built in stone and brick; how could entire blocks be so completely destroyed?

Was that primarily a consequence of (a) the fighting being truly "house to house", requiring demolition of each British strongpoint in turn? ( Germans following Nazi SOP regarding harsh treatment of civilian populations who dared to "take part" (i.e. "partisan") in support of the enemy force? © subsequent German bombardment (V2 or conventional artillery?) of the Allied held south bank after the battle? (d) All of the above?

[akd]

I think the flattened structures are from Allied bombing of the area after Market-Garden (I'm pretty sure the photo above is the north bank).

[Crinius]

I used to have a copy of Louis Hagen's amazing foxhole-level soldier's memoir "The Arnhem Lift" (now long out of print, and my mum tossed my copy, alas). Hagen was a German Jew (was in Torgau KZ) who escaped to Britain and joined the Paras in time for OMG. He describes one sequence in which German prisoners refuse even to dig latrines for themselves until a captured officer arrives and upbraids them, using their captors as examples of disciplined soldierly behaviour to emulate.

I just found it on amazon. Its even available for the Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Arnhem-Lift-German-Glider-Regiment/dp/0752468685/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1342854529&sr=8-8&keywords=The+Arnhem+Lift

[LongLeftFlank]

Wow, excellent. I haven't read it in many years, but my recollection is that Hagen's writing, particularly his observations on men under fire, is the closest Allied-side analog I can think of to Guy Sajer's work. (Fred Cederberg's Canadian-Italy memoir comes close). Really fascinating but under-known.... although perhaps not for much longer now that it has been republished!

Oh, and it will settle once and for all the "were PIATs fired from upper floors" debate. He and an officer held off an assault gun firing from a tiny attic.

[sburke]

I just found it on amazon. Its even available for the Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Arnhem-Lift-German-Glider-Regiment/dp/0752468685/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1342854529&sr=8-8&keywords=The+Arnhem+Lift

Outstanding, another book for the roadtrip I am about to start! DLing now.

[Childress]

beautiful, but I would hesitate to go too far.

Was that a pun?

Good luck, necramonium (Element 57?). But I question the feasibility of recreating the enormous- and there were several- bridges in a convincing way using the existing graphics toolbox. Better leave it to BF as PT remarked.

[sburke]

Was that a pun?

Good luck, necramonium (Element 57?). But I question the feasibility of recreating the enormous- and there were several- bridges in a convincing way using the existing graphics toolbox. Better leave it to BF as PT remarked.

LOL actually no, can't believe I said that and didn't realize how it would look.

[necramonium]

As soon as i started working it's indeed very difficult to re-create the bridge area, mainly because the bridge goes in land where there is room under the bridge, i managed to replicate this a bit by elevating the ground after some tiles. And of course i have to use the railroad steel bridge, seeing thats the only one similar like the real bridge...

And to the question why it was so devastated, during the battle for Arnhem both sides bombed the crap out of it.

[necramonium]

This is what i got so far, it was not easy trying to replicate this map to the real thing mostly because of the bridge. Here are some images from the map so far!

On this last one you can see what i had to do to make sure the bridge does not sink into the terrain, had to make one tile stuck right in the air.

[LongLeftFlank]

Great work, sir! When it comes to building an embankment for the bridge, note that if you use Paved or Cobblestone ground type, it seems to create a sharper embankment.

[necramonium]

Great work, sir! When it comes to building an embankment for the bridge, note that if you use Paved or Cobblestone ground type, it seems to create a sharper embankment.

I had trouble with the embankment, because in real life it's a embankment were ships would load/unload their shipments. It's not really possible to recreate this in the game, here is a good example of the embankment:

[Broadsword56]

That really is impressive -- on the balcony shot I can almost see Antony Hopkins in "A Bridge Too Far!"

I wonder how your map, created in the current version of CMBN, would be affected once CMBN moves to 2.0 and Operation MG.

Would you need to go in and manually substitute more Dutch-styled buildings, objects, etc., for the ones you have, or would the new ones appear automatically in their places?

I just hope your time investment so far will not be wasted, and that you can build upon what you've done rather than have to do it all over again.

Any thoughts on this, BFC?

[Broadsword56]

I had trouble with the embankment, because in real life it's a embankment were ships would load/unload their shipments. It's not really possible to recreate this in the game, here is a good example of the embankment:

I can't tell you the technique, because I've never tried it myself -- but I'm sure I've seen screenies on the maps and mods forum of some experimental urban maps someone did months ago that looked like Paris, with the river and bridges and sharp, cobbled embankments. Can anyone help necramonium on this?

[LongLeftFlank]

I started a separate thread on the topic of manmade seawalls and embankments. As you will see, straight near vertical paved embankments are indeed possible!

[Paper Tiger]

Would you need to go in and manually substitute more Dutch-styled buildings, objects, etc., for the ones you have, or would the new ones appear automatically in their places?

I just hope your time investment so far will not be wasted, and that you can build upon what you've done rather than have to do it all over again.

Any thoughts on this, BFC?

Aye. There's the rub. I've done a bucket-load of work already on MG maps because BFC want to have this baby ready for selling before Xmas. Therefore, it would be crazy to wait until I've got v2 working for CMBN. I did all the rural maps first as there are very few buildings. However, I've just about finished one with a substantial village. At the very least, I should be able to take a screenshot of the placement of the buildings in the editor and replace them after the new buildings appear. However, best case scenario, it will replace these buildings with their new Dutch counterparts when the scenario month is September+

[Paper Tiger]

Nice maps there. But we're DEFINITELY going to have to wait for BFC to craft unique models for the Arnhem, and Nijmegen bridges for these sort of maps to look and play in a realistic manner. What we currently have to work with just doesn't work, visually or functionally.

[LongLeftFlank]

Aye. There's the rub. I've done a bucket-load of work already on MG maps because BFC want to have this baby ready for selling before Xmas. Therefore, it would be crazy to wait until I've got v2 working for CMBN. I did all the rural maps first as there are very few buildings. However, I've just about finished one with a substantial village. At the very least, I should be able to take a screenshot of the placement of the buildings in the editor and replace them after the new buildings appear. However, best case scenario, it will replace these buildings with their new Dutch counterparts when the scenario month is September+

This reminds me, as you can see in the below screenie, the square Modular buildings only allow their rooflines to orient east-west (or SW-NE if diagonal), regardless of which way the "front" is facing. This is a fairly minor visual annoyance of course, with no gameplay effect whatever.

With Holland, it would be nice to model THESE kinds of rowhouses running N-S. You could, of course, do that using lengthwise rectangular buildings only.

[necramonium]

Those are houses more prominent in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, they were present in Arnhem, but not as much as in A'dam and R'dam, as you can see here, it's mostly large houses that were present around the bridge area:

But that area was kinda special when it comes to dutch architecture, just like Nijmegen, it was a beautiful town but got destroyed almost to the ground during WW2.

I have btw discovered the movie Theirs is the Glory, this was shot in 1945, not so long after the real battle in the ruins! With some actual soldiers who survived the battle.

[JonS]

I used to have a copy of Louis Hagen's amazing foxhole-level soldier's memoir "The Arnhem Lift" (now long out of print, and my mum tossed my copy, alas). Hagen was a German Jew (was in Torgau KZ) who escaped to Britain and joined the Paras in time for OMG.

Oh heck, I used to have a copy of that too, many moons ago. Wasn't he a glider pilot?

Very good book , and I'm pretty sure it's back in print.

Amazon has this:

http://www.amazon.com/Arnhem-Lift-German-Glider-Regiment/dp/0752468685/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343080236&sr=1-2&keywords=louis+hagen

The Book Depository has copies too. I seem to recall that the book has been revised and expanded since the copies you and I used to own, but I couldn't say how. Edit: It looks like the book has doubled in size to include a view from the other side of the hill.

[JonS]

I can't tell you the technique, because I've never tried it myself -- but I'm sure I've seen screenies on the maps and mods forum of some experimental urban maps someone did months ago that looked like Paris, with the river and bridges and sharp, cobbled embankments. Can anyone help necramonium on this?

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105343

[necramonium]

I have a really strange situation, i have set up my german troops to attack through various A.I plans, but than one group sits still in the setup area, its mostly only vehicles.

I removed all the A.I plans and put all the troops in one plan, still some vehicles just sit around in the setup area, while the infantry of the same company moves out to its objectives! What the hell is going on?