Operation Varsity: The British and Canadian Airborne Crossing of the Rhine (Battleground The Rhine Crossing)
Tim Saunders
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 184415601X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Spring 1945 the outcome of the war was ritually certain but the mighty River Rhine still stood in the way of the Allies. Eisenhower’s strategy was to guarantee a crossing in the Ruhr area by allocating the main effort to Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. Monty’s task was to envelope and take out the last German war production and open the way onto the North German Plain.
On the morning of 24 March 1945 the Normandy veterans of 6th British Airborne Division were to land just three to six miles in front of XII Corps, within supporting distance of their artillery, with the aim of linking up with the ground forces on day one. First in were the two parachute brigades, who benefited from the numbing effect of the Allied bombardment but by the time 6th Airlanding Brigade came in aboard their gliders, the German anti-aircraft gunners were recovering and, on the DZs, resisting and even counter-attacking the British and Canadian paratroopers.
Casualties were heavy, not least because the Airlanding Brigade were gliding in amidst an Armoured kampfgruppe. Despite their presence, the glider infantry of the Ox and Bucks and the Ulster Rifles took their bridges and the Devons fought a desperate battle for the key village of Hammelkeln.
By evening, despite heavy losses, General Bols’s 6th Airborne Division had linked-up with XII Corps, the airborne objectives had been taken and the gateway onto the North German Plain and final victory was open.
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junction and corner of the woods in the northern sector. A Company would then pass through C Company in order to clear and hold the area of the houses where Bn H.Q. would later be established. B Company was to move south-west through the woods to provide flank protection, to seize and hold the cross roads about which the houses were grouped, and to consolidate the southern sector. All companies would then carry out extensive local patrolling for their own protection and in order to attempt to
German SS captain, who saluted and handed me his Walther automatic pistol, butt first. It took ten minutes to clear the building ‘or rather to search it to make sure there were no lurking enemy’. The enemy had obviously gone leaving an officer to operate the radio up until the last possible moment. During the searching Anderson found some mementos of Hamminkeln. I then went quickly through the contents of the attic and found a Schmeisser sub-machine carbine and dagger, with the SS insignia and
4.2-inch mortars of the Recce Regiment. In the event of a crisis, the Commander Royal Artillery could direct all his divisional assets against a specific target and call for fire from XII Corps, which would bring a massive weight of fire down on Target Groups code named COUSIN, CULPRIT and CLOG that surrounded 5 Para Brigade. The fact that the Brigade was in position, with nearly finished trenches and ready to face an enemy counter-attack, fully justifies General Ridgeway’s decision to drop on
and was subsequently decorated for this action. The situation was, however, only temporarily restored and as enemy pressure again built on B Company, Colonel Darrel-Brown, sought permission to blow the bridge if it was likely to be captured. Authority to blow was duly delegated from Brigade HQ to the Ox and Bucks and amidst the fighting the Sapper firing party went forward to insert the detonators into the circuit, thus arming the demolition. At the same time, HQ 6 Airlanding Brigade made
At the end of Operation VERITABLE, after nine months of active campaigning, the British Army that had crossed the German frontline and was about to take part in the last major Allied offensive of the war, was very different from the army that had landed in Normandy. Brigadier Essame of 43rd Wessex Division wrote of the state of the British Second Army at the end of March 1945: Despite exposure twenty-four hours a day for over a month, to the almost incessant rain and sleet and intense and
