On September 20, 1944, the battle for Nijmegen narrowed to a strip of fast water. American paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division had landed in the Netherlands three days earlier, but the great road bridge over the Waal remained in German hands. The bridge was essential to Operation Market Garden: British armor could not continue toward Arnhem without it. A direct assault from the city’s southern side had stalled. The alternative was extraordinary—a daylight river crossing in collapsible canvas boats, in full view of defenders on the opposite bank.
The crossing became one of the most remembered actions of the campaign. It was also only one part of a larger, more complicated battle. Nijmegen was not simply “won” in a single charge, and taking its bridges did not rescue the British airborne troops at Arnhem. September 20 brought a genuine Allied success, but one measured against delay, casualties and an operational timetable already slipping away.
A corridor built around bridges
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s plan combined an airborne operation, “Market,” with the ground advance, “Garden.” Airborne divisions would seize crossings through the Netherlands while Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks’s XXX Corps drove north along a narrow road from Belgium. The intended prize was the bridge over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem, beyond which Allied forces hoped to turn into Germany.
The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, commanded by Major General James Gavin, received a demanding cluster of objectives around Grave, Groesbeek and Nijmegen. The heights southeast of Nijmegen mattered because German forces moving out of the Reichswald could threaten the entire corridor. The Maas bridge at Grave and the bridges across the Maas–Waal Canal also had to be secured. That dispersion of tasks, combined with unexpectedly strong German resistance in Nijmegen, meant the Waal road bridge was not captured on the first day.
By September 19, British Guards Armoured Division units had reached Nijmegen, and fighting moved through streets and buildings toward the southern approach to the bridge. German troops continued to hold the northern end and the riverbank beyond it. A frontal push across the bridge would expose armor and infantry to prepared fire. The Allies needed to take the northern side from behind.
The Waal crossing on September 20
The plan called for men of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment to cross west of the bridges. Engineers of Company C, 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, would handle the boats. According to the U.S. Army’s account of the action, the river was roughly 250 yards wide at the crossing point. Twenty-six canvas boats went into the first wave; only eleven returned for another load. The engineers ultimately made five trips under machine-gun and artillery fire.
The boats were not designed for a set-piece assault of this scale. Oars were scarce, and some soldiers used rifle butts to paddle. Smoke intended to conceal the crossing dispersed. None of those facts requires invented heroics: the documented geometry of the action is stark enough. Men were moving slowly across exposed water while the current carried the light craft and German positions commanded the far bank.
Those who reached the north side attacked through the riverbank defenses and moved toward the approaches to both the railway and road bridges. Other Allied forces maintained pressure from Nijmegen. The two arms of the assault eventually met. The road bridge—today usually called the Waalbrug—was taken intact, and Guards Armoured Division tanks crossed it that evening.
What the bridge victory did—and did not—achieve
Capturing the Waal bridges removed a major barrier in the Allied corridor. It was an impressive tactical result: an opposed daylight crossing, followed by attacks against the bridge defenses from the north, had succeeded where repeated pressure from the south had not. Nijmegen could serve as a vital bridgehead and later as a base for Allied operations toward the Rhine.
Yet the central question of Market Garden lay farther north. British 1st Airborne Division troops at Arnhem had been isolated since September 17. German forces had time to organize between Nijmegen and Arnhem, and the ground advance did not reach the trapped bridgehead. By September 25, the surviving British airborne troops were withdrawn from Oosterbeek. The Rhine bridge that was supposed to unlock the road into Germany remained beyond Allied control.
The contrast is the heart of the September 20 story. The Waal crossing worked. The road bridge was captured. But a successful local action could not recover the operation’s lost time or solve the structural risks of a plan dependent on one narrow corridor and a sequence of bridges.
Nijmegen’s civilians and the meaning of “liberation”
For Nijmegen’s residents, liberation did not end danger. The city had already suffered a devastating Allied bombing in February 1944. Street fighting in September added new destruction and civilian losses. After the bridges were captured, Nijmegen remained close to the front and under German shelling for months. The word “liberation” is historically justified, but it should not be mistaken for an immediate return to safety.
This also complicates images of uncomplicated celebration. Some residents welcomed Allied troops and the end of German occupation; others were searching for relatives, shelter or surviving homes. The military success and the civilian disaster occupied the same streets. A trustworthy account has to hold both realities together.
Why the Waal crossing endures
The crossing is remembered because it joined improvisation to necessity. The assault force could not wait for ideal boats, full concealment or a safer hour. Engineers and infantry used what had reached them and crossed in the open. The new bridge called De Oversteek—“The Crossing”—now carries a memorial sequence of 48 pairs of lights, honoring the American soldiers killed in the action around the crossing.
It is equally important to remember the limits of the achievement. Nijmegen was not proof that Market Garden had nearly succeeded; it was proof that extraordinary tactical courage could coexist with an operation that failed to reach its final objective. The Waal bridge opened. Arnhem remained out of reach.
A victory measured against Arnhem
The bridge capture has often been described through the clock: how many hours were lost, whether armor could have moved sooner and whether a faster crossing might have reached Arnhem. Those questions matter, but they can turn hindsight into certainty. The Allied column still had to move over a single exposed road, through damaged urban ground and against German resistance that had proved stronger than planners expected. Tanks crossing the Waal bridge did not erase the tactical and logistical constraints north of Nijmegen.
What can be said with confidence is that the delay at Nijmegen consumed time the Arnhem force did not have. British airborne troops there were isolated, short of supplies and under increasing pressure. By the time the road bridge was secured, the larger operation had already lost much of the tempo on which its design depended. The Waal crossing solved an immediate military problem with extraordinary force; it could not restore the conditions imagined before the landings.
Liberation after the crossing
For Nijmegen, September 20 did not create a clean line between occupation and peace. German forces remained close, and the city became part of an exposed Allied salient. Shelling, shortages and military traffic continued. Civilians who had survived occupation and the mistaken Allied bombing of February 1944 now lived beside a front that would remain active through the winter.
That longer aftermath explains why the word liberation should be used with precision. German control of Nijmegen ended, and the bridge route opened to Allied forces. Yet safety, housing and ordinary civic life did not return in a single evening. Military liberation was a decisive change in authority; the human recovery from war took far longer.
Sources, method and further reading
This article was checked against the U.S. Army’s histories of the Waal River crossing and Operation Market Garden. Scene-setting is limited to documented terrain, equipment and operations; no dialogue or individual thoughts have been invented. Images are labeled reconstructions.
Continue with the September 20 Daily Edition, browse the World War II archive, or read related DTiH stories on the liberation of Maastricht and the Battle of Arracourt.
Written and edited by the Discover Today in History editorial team. Last fact-check: September 21, 2026.
