Item Description: Invitation to Never Played Football Game

Introduction: Through an online auction Battledetective bought a very interesting document from renowned expert on the Battle of the Bulge; Pierre Godeau. An invitation card to a football game which never took place as a result of The Fuehrer's plans for a counter attack in the Ardennes  in December 1944. The entire 101st Airborne Division, including all Screaming Eagles and Sky Train team members had to hurry to Bastogne and stop cold everything the Germans threw at the Eagle-men. And they succeeded!

The Story: We already knew of the existence of the document from the "Screaming Eagle Bible", Rapport and Northwood's Rendezvous with Destiny.

This is a part of page 559:

It took a while to finally get the document delivered to our office, but with this football game invitation we own a piece of history. It proves that the future can't be planned.

This is the original document:

   

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

 

By the time the 101st was planning this football game, it had already learned the painful lesson that the course of war can't be predicted. Their role in Operation Market Garden was planned to only last a few days. Eventually it was after 72 days in combat in Holland that the eagle men were sent to Mourmelon to recuperate and refit. This is how the original end goal (the 'final planned dispositions') was indicated in the map of Operation Market Garden ('Appendix "B" to part II'; Operation Garden, the role of the British Second Army):

  

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

 

This is the map of the positions that the 101st held after it was transferred out of the 'Hell's Highway-'area to 'The Island', South of Arnhem. It was the Northern-most Allied position of World War Two for weeks:

The lesson that the future can't be planned is edged in a stone plaque in a wall on a boulevard named after Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery in Eindhoven, Holland.
The plaque was already installed into the gable of an apartment building waiting for the Field Marshal to unveil it on September 18th 1959, fifteen years after the liberation of Eindhoven as part of operation "Market Garden".
Legend has it that this operation was named after the field marshal's name; "MG" for "MontGomery".
But, unfortunately, the Field Marshal could not attend the ceremony and the plaque was unveiled on a later time by another, lower ranking, military authority whose identity remains obscure to this agency to date.

The inscribed text remains: "In memory of the dedication of this avenue by Field Marshal Montgomery on 18 September 1959".
 

(click to enlarge)
 

Veldmaarschalk Montgomerylaan (Field Marshal Montgomery Avenue) in Eindhoven, Holland today

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