101st Airborne Division coast and strengthened the paratrooper positions, many were relieved and sent to the rear to organize for the next big paratroop operation. On 17 September 1944, the 101st Airborne Division became part of XVIII Airborne Corps, under Major General Matthew Ridgway, part of the First Allied Airborne Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton. The division took part in Operation Market Garden (17–25 September 1944), an unsuccessful Allied military operation under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, to capture Dutch bridges over the Rhine fought in the Netherlands and the largest airborne operation of
First Allied Airborne Army when a major offensive was launched by the Germans on the orders of Adolf Hitler; on 16 December 1944 Operation ""Watch on the Rhine" began, with three German armies attacking through the Ardennes, hundreds of thousands of German troops and tanks breaking through Allied line on the American sector. The operation took the Allied forces completely by surprise, and several units under the command of First Allied Airborne Army became involved in the Allied attempt to first halt, and then repel the offensive; these units were principally the 101st Airborne Division, 82nd Airborne Division and the 6th Airborne Division. With