On 8 September Guards Armoured Division crossed the Albert Canal and two days later established a bridgehead on the north side of the Meuse-Escaut Canal,1 west of Neerpelt. German resistance, however, was growing as those formations and units which had withdrawn in disarray from Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais reformed and turned to face the Allies. With supply now becoming a serious concern, the offensive ran temporarily out of steam, both on the XXX Corps front along the canal line and further west, where XII Corps had made no progress beyond Antwerp. A sizeable and well-defended pocket had also been created by the Germans south of the Scheldt estuary.
On the day that the Guards crossed the Meuse-Escaut Canal, Monty held two vitally important meetings. The first was with Dempsey and Lieutenant General ‘Boy’ Browning, the commander of I Airborne Corps. Monty now recognized that if he was to continue to press the merits of the Northern Thrust he could not afford to lose momentum. The lack of transport and shortages of fuel meant that he was having difficulty in bringing all his divisions forward from Normandy, whilst losses during the battles meant that he would shortly have to break up 59 Division and use it to provide reinforcements to the others. The only reserve available was I Airborne Corps, which was at the disposal of SHAEF.
It had been a frustrating three months for I Airborne Corps. Numerous operations had been planned and cancelled. These included not only the landings vetoed by Leigh-Mallory, but the even more ambitious plans to seize the Brittany ports, to drop into and hold the Paris-Orleans Gap, to capture Boulogne, to cut off the Germans retreating through Tournai and to control the Aachen–Maastricht Gap. Most had been aborted because of the unexpectedly rapid advance, in which the proposed landing zones were overrun by the Allies before the airborne forces could set off from the UK.
The most recent plan was Operation COMET. On 3 September, with the Guards Armoured Division passing through Brussels and optimism high, Monty sent a signal to Freddie: ‘require airborne operation of one British Division and Poles on evening 6 Sep or morning 7 Sep to secure bridges over RHINE between WESEL and ARNHEM’. The impetus which had developed over the previous week had persuaded him that an opportunity had opened to bounce the Rhine itself and the various rivers and canals in between, creating a corridor up which he could pass 21st Army Group into the North German Plain and around the Ruhr. D-Day for the operation was delayed until 10 September, by which time the situation had perceptibly changed. Resistance was increasing behind the canal line, lack of transport was delaying reinforcements and the supply situation was deteriorating by the day. Monty cancelled the operation on the evening of 9 September and ordered Dempsey and Browning to meet him in Brussels on the following day.