That's really cool. But I gotta wonder - why didn't the Germans just give the guy a new artificial leg instead of letting the Brits parachute drop one in? Seems like it'd be easier for everyone.

Those are usually custom fit to the individual and the Germans were probably happy not to take the effort of repeating all that work.

There may be specific fit issues for a new artificial leg. Most prosthesis require quite a bit of fit adjustment.

See, there are weird war stories that if we turned into a movie, people would think it's Hollywood embellishing.

This is true. A Bridge Too Far both includes incidents that actually happened but were deemed unrealistic by critics, as well as omits certain details specifically because they would be assumed to be unrealistic.

The one movie I would love to see is one about the battle for Castle Itter toward the end of the war, where Americans, German soldiers who had defected to the resistance, a deserting SS officer, and a group of prisoners including two former French prime ministers, two French generals, Charles de Gaulle’s sister, and a pre-war French tennis champion all teamed up against an SS force attempting to recapture the castle and the VIP prisoners within. Which sounds like a completely absurd movie but it actually happened.

There is a movie about Bader: Reach for the Sky:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reach_for_the_Sky

I can't remember if it includes the bit about parachuting in a replacement artificial leg... I can't imagine there was much desire to portray Hermann Göring in a positive way in the mid 1950s!

They did make it into a movie, but not sure if it covers the parachuted legs incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reach_for_the_Sky