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  First published in Great Britain in 2006 by

  Pen & Sword Military

  an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Tim Saunders, 2006

  9781783460793

  The right of Tim Saunders to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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  ​​​​​

  Table of Contents

  Battleground series:

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE - Background

  CHAPTER 2 - The German Defenders

  CHAPTER THREE - Planning and Preparation

  CHAPTER 4 - Operation TURNSCREW 51st Highland Division

  CHAPTER 5 - Operation WIDGEON

  CHAPTER 6 - Operation TORCHLIGHT 15th (Scottish) Division

  CHAPTER 7 - Operation VARSITY

  CHAPTER EIGHT - The Capture of Rees

  CHAPTER 9 - The Capture of Speldrop and Bienen

  CHAPTER 10 - Tours of the PLUNDER Battlefields

  ​​​​​

  Introduction

  Operation PLUNDER was the overall name for 21st Army Group’s crossing of the Rhine but each of the major elements was known by its own codeword, TURNSCREW and TORCHLIGHT, the British assault river crossings; WIGEON, the attack by 1 Commando Brigade on Wesel and FLASHLIGHT, the crossing by XVI US Corps. Operation VARSITY, the airborne drop east of the river, was also a component of PLUNDER but 6th British Airborne Division’s part will be covered in a separate Battleground volume, as will the American crossings immediately south of Wesel. Consequently, this book concentrates on the part played by the British XII and XXX Corps during Operation PLUNDER.

  The Rhine Crossing was the last great set piece battle of the North West European Campaign. It was an immensely complicated operation launched in less than a month and just two weeks after the First Canadian Army reached the Rhine at Wesel. Second British Army, who were to command the crossing, was now a veteran formation, very different in character from that which landed in Normandy during June and July 1944. The headquarter staffs and the largely citizen officers and soldiers in the units they commanded, knew their jobs and realised that to finish the task they had to defeat the Germans.

  Despite their mauling in the Battle of the Rhineland, defeating a resolute enemy whose only choice was unconditional surrender was never going to be easy. In addition, the Germans were defending their last strategic barrier, the mighty Rhine, which is three hundred yards wide between Rees and Wesel. The far bank was held by a mixture of troops, in the north, XXX Corps faced the fanatical II Fallschirmjäger Korps, while further south, XII Corps were opposed by the remains of 84th Volksgrenadier Division and the old men and boys of Germany’s last reserves. However, both German formations were supported by their own armour, as well as the reserve of panzers and panzer grenadiers from XLVII Panzer Korps, who could not be underestimated.

  Operation PLUNDER is not without its controversies. Some critics of Montgomery’s battle have criticised the resources consumed and the casualties incurred, particularly amongst the airborne forces but this operation was General Eisenhower’s main effort. He had to get across the Rhine and deny the sustaining industrial capacity of the Ruhr to the enemy. ‘Sneak attacks’ across the river further to the south, could not deliver the knockout blow to Germany’s industry and nor it seemed, could the Allied bomber forces.

  As usual, there are points of language that need explaining. Firstly, the terms referring to the earthen banks built to contain the Rhine floods, used in equal measure by contemporary authors, are ‘dyke’ and ‘bund’. The latter is one of many words taken into the British military lexicon as a result of service in India. Another interchangeable term is used to describe the amphibious landing craft used to take the infantry across the Rhine; the Landing Vehicle Tracked or LVT, which was also known in British service as the ‘Buffalo’. Finally, the term D Day is not confined to the landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944 but is used to indicate the day on which a specific operation is to take place. In the case of Operation PLUNDER, D Day was 24 March 1945, with preliminary operations taking place on the evening of D-1, the 23rd.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the Land Warfare Centre Library for access to their unrivalled collection of increasingly rare infantry regimental histories. These are absolutely essential in writing about an operation such as this. Kate – many thanks and a happy retirement.

  Thanks and acknowledgements are due to Richard Hone, formerly of the REME and now of the xxxx Vehicle xxxx who helped me with armoured vehicle aspects of this book. I am most grateful for his expert assistance, in an area that is not my forte.

  I would also like to thank those authors, publishers, regiments and corps who have allowed me to quote freely from their works. Without their generous support, a book like this would not be possible. Fellow Battleground author Andrew Rawson helped me with copies of maps from the US National Archive. His timely assistance with these helped me greatly.

  Finally, thanks are due to the headquarters and museums of the British Army regiments who forced the crossing of the Rhine, for their help in putting me in touch with veterans and making available documents and maps that have not been previously published. As ever it is a pleasure to speak to Canadian military headquarters and museums, who see it as their job to actively promote and disseminate their regiments’ history. They give their time and resources freely, so many thanks are due to them and all those others who have helped make this book possible.

  Whether at home or on the ground, enjoy the tour.

  Tim Saunders

  Warminster 2006

  CHAPTER ONE

  Background

  IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 1944, following their victory in Normandy and pursuit across northern France, the Allies believed that final victory over Nazi Germany was close at hand. The Red Army, to the east, was inexorably closing on Germany; while the Allied air forces harried the Wehrmacht and did their best to obliterate the German industrial base and lines of communication. In the west, Allied armies were ranged from Switzerland to the North Sea, preparing for the final assault on Hitler’s Germany.

  Optimism ran high, with normally stoic intelligence officers predicting that victory against Germany was ‘within sight, almost within reach’ and they reported that it was ‘unlikely that organised German resistance would continue beyond 1 December 1944’. Dissenting voices who believed that the German forces were not finished and were preparing a ‘last-ditch struggle in the field at all costs’, were, in the prevailing enthusiasm, ignored.

  Montgomery’s attempt, in Operation MARKET GARDEN, to ‘bounce 21st Army Group across the Rhine onto the North German Plain’ had demonstrated that the Germans were far from finished. There was to be no repeat of the 1918 German civil and military collapse after Normandy that many commanders who had served in the Great War predicted and no dash into the heart of Germany in 1944. Quite the reverse, for while the Allies clinched victory in Normandy and the British and American Armies streamed east across France, 200,000 mostly slave labourers, worked to strengthen the pre-war German defences known as the West Wall or Siegfried Line. The physical barrier was to be manned by new citizen or volksgrenadier formations, with Himmler calling to arms the young, the old and many men previously excluded from th
e Wehrmacht on grounds of economic necessity, health, etc. To these men were added the now largely redundant manpower from the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Together they were drafted into the new volksgrenadier divisions for the final defence of the Third Reich. The Allies had and were to continue to underestimate the German genius for highly effective military improvisation and were largely unaware of the remarkable strategic recovery they were staging.

  Field Marshall Montgomery. Victor of Normandy but defeated at Arnhem.

  With the failure at Arnhem (Montgomery referred to it as a ninety percent success) General Eisenhower reverted to his broad front strategy. This favoured US doctrine (at the time) was also a politically acceptable policy that would see all three allied army groups closing up to the German frontier, breaching the Siegfried Line and then fighting their way to the Rhine, which was Germany’s last strategic barrier. Destruction of the German field armies and the capture of the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial powerhouse, were to be the principal targets rather than a headlong advance across the North German Plain to Berlin. The full impact of this policy rather than a dash east to Berlin was fully apparent to the British, who had an eye on the post-war situation in Europe, rather than simply an ending of the war against Germany in early 1945. In the increasingly bad autumn weather that heralded one of the worst winters for many years, the fighting was costly and Allied progress slowed to almost a halt. Nowhere was progress slower and more expensive in both British and American lives than at the Dutch town of Overloon in the Mass Pocket. Further to the north, the British fought to open the Scheldt Estuary and access to the vital port of Antwerp, which had to be open as the entry point for supplies in time for the final drive into Hitler’s Reich. Elsewhere, desperate battles were fought by British and American troops to reach and then penetrate the Siegfried Line, at points such as Geilenkeirchen, where the British 43rd Wessex Division fought alongside the US 84th Division to overcome a determined enemy in weather and ground conditions that foreshadowed those they were to experience later in the winter of 44/45. Meanwhile, General Patton grumbled as his armour bogged down in the mud of Lorraine. The Germans fought with courage and determination to defend the borders of their Fatherland and it was clear that despite the continuing bomber offensive that the war was going to go on well into 1945.