Abundance of Valor: Resistance, Survival, and Liberation: 1944-45, Will Irwin

The operation known as “Market-Garden”—made famous in the book and film A Bridge Too Far—was the largest airborne assault in history up to that time, a high-risk Allied invasion of enemy territory that has become a legend of World War II even as it still invites criticism. Abundance of Valor re-creates for the first time the full adventures of the bold “Jedburgh” paratroopers, whose exploits were equally risky and heroic.

Kicked off on September 17, 1944, Market-Garden was intended to secure crucial bridges in Nazi-occupied Holland by a parachute assault conducted by three Allied airborne divisions. Jedburgh teams—Allied Special Forces—were dropped into the Netherlands to train and use the Dutch resistance in support of the larger operation. Based on new firsthand testimony of survivors and declassified documents, Abundance of Valor concentrates on the three teams that operated farthest behind enemy lines, the nine men whose treacherous missions resulted in deaths, captures, and hairbreadth escapes.

With piercing criticism of the mission’s failure through faulty use of intelligence, Abundance of Valor is a brutally honest and truly inspiring account of fighting men in a noble cause who did their jobs with extraordinary honor and courage.

List of Maps

Prologue

1. The England Game

2. The Man from Washington

3. Hazardous Duty

4. Highlands Interlude

5. First Jeds into Holland

6. Operation Market-Garden