British POWs being escorted away after being captured by German forces, The Netherlands, Arnhem / Nijmegen, September 1944. Operation Market Garden was an unsuccessful Second World War military operation fought in the Netherlands from 17 to 25 September 1944. It was the brainchild of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and strongly supported by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. The airborne operation was undertaken by the First Allied Airborne Army with the land operation by XXX Corps of the British Second Army. The objective was to create a 103 km salient (bulge formation of troops) into German territory with a bridgehead over the River Rhine, creating an Allied invasion route into northern Germany. This was to be achieved by seizing a series of nine bridges with airborne forces, with land forces swiftly following over the bridges. The operation succeeded in liberating the Dutch cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen along with many towns, creating a 97 km salient into German-held territory, limiting V-2 rocket launching sites. It failed, however, to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine, with the advance being halted at the river. Colour: facebook.com/Julius.coloriza…

September 1942 German soldiers prepare a 5 cm PaK 38 (L/60) anti-tank gun for action on the outskirts of Stalingrad (now, Volgograd), Volgograd Oblast, Russia, Soviet Union. By 12 September, at the time of their retreat into the city, the Soviet 62nd Army had been reduced to 90 tanks, 700 mortars and just 20,000 personnel. The remaining tanks were used as immobile strongpoints within the city. The initial German attack attempted to take the city in a rush. One infantry division went after the Mamayev Kurgan hill, one attacked the central rail station and one attacked toward the central landing stage on the Volga. Though initially successful, the German attacks stalled in the face of Soviet reinforcements brought in from across the Volga. The Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division, assigned to counterattack at the Mamayev Kurgan and at Railway Station No. 1 suffered particularly heavy losses. Over 30 percent of its soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours, and just 320 out of the original 10,000 survived the entire battle. Both objectives were retaken, but only temporarily. The railway station changed hands 14 times in six hours. By the following evening, the 13th Guards Rifle Division had ceased to exist. The PaK 38 was first used by the German forces in April 1941. When they faced Soviet tanks in 1941 during 'Operation Barbarossa', the PaK 38 was one of the few early guns capable of penetrating the 45 mm (1.8 in) armour of the T-34. The gun was also equipped with Panzergranate 40 APCR shots with a hard tungsten core, in an attempt to penetrate the armour of the heavier KV-1 tank. The PaK 38 was also used in the Atlantic Wall because of its range and anti-tank capabilities, which would have been very useful in destroying allied tanks on the shore. Colourised by Royston Leonard