Operation Plunder: The British and Canadian Operations

by Tim Saunders

  To release Headquarters XVIII US Airborne Corps as soon as possible, Headquarters 8 Corps was to take over from that corps within seven days.

  Second Army would then be correctly positioned to continue the advance into the North German plains with 8 Corps RIGHT, 12 Corps CENTRE and 30 Corps LEFT.

  II Canadian Corps was to be passed through the LEFT of Second Army bridgehead and handed back to First Canadian Army when it was in a position to exercise command.

  In the first phase of Second Army’s plan, the two assault divisions were to capture the low-lying ground east of the river up to approximately the line of the Wesel – Emmrich railway. XXX Corps would begin the attack on the left flank, astride Rees, at 2100 hours on 23 March, with 1 Commando Brigade crossing the Rhine to seize Wesel an hour later, while XII Corps would be led by 15th Scottish Division’s assault from the area of Xanten at 0200 hours. At the same time, XVI US Corps would launch their attack south of Wesel.

  The second phase was to be the capture of the Issel bridges, with or without the assistance of XVIII US Airborne Corps (Operation VARSITY – scheduled for 1000 hours on 24 March), as they could easily be prevented from dropping by poor weather. By the time they launched the assault, Second Army were confident that they could, indeed capture the bridges unaided if necessary, albeit in slower time and with greater casualties.

  In contrast with MARKET GARDEN where three airborne divisions had been dropped over several days up to sixty miles from the front line, XVII US Corps’s drop and landing zones were concentrated between just three and six miles from the Rhine, well within the range of Second Army’s medium guns. In addition, the airborne divisions, in Operation VARSITY, were not to be committed until a viable bridgehead across the Rhine had been formed by the US and British infantry Divisions (operations TURNSCREW, TORCHLIGHT and FLASHLIGHT). In short, the inadequacies and over ambitious planning assumptions of MARKET GARDEN were not to be repeated.

  Landing in daylight, in a single wave, in over just three hours, the two divisions were to seize vital villages, the wooded Diersfordter feature and capture the crossings of the River Issel, necessary for a swift breakout from the Rhine Bridgehead.

  The breakout on to the North German Plain would be Phase Three of the operation.

  With the fighting on the west bank of the Rhine only having finally ended on 11 March there were less than two weeks to complete the planning, deployment and implementation of the largest and most complex amphibious and airborne operation since the Normandy landings. This was a tall order but after nine months of campaigning the British and Canadian formation staffs were up to the challenge.

  Shoulder flash of XVIII US Airborne Corps.

  G Wing of 79 Armoured Division developing assault techniques on the Maas River.

  Training

  Having taken part in the first half of Operation VERITABLE, 15th Scottish Division was selected to lead the assault across the Rhine and on the 26th February they were withdrawn and placed under XII Corps on the River Maas for the purposes of developing techniques and for training. Grouped with the Corps was G Wing of 79th Armoured Division (‘Hobart’s Funnies’), who had in the meantime, been working on developing or adapting amphibious equipment and tactical doctrine for river crossings. With the following additions, General Hobart’s command became, at 21,430 men, easily the largest division in the British Army. In January, 33 Armoured Brigade joined leaving behind their Sherman tanks and retraining on the amphibious Buffalo or as it was officially known, the Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT). The Staffordshire Yeomanry and 44 Royal Tank Regiment under HQ 4th Armoured Brigade joined the division to train with DD tanks. Lieutenant Colonel Hopkinson, Commanding Officer 44 RTR wrote:

  Yes it was all too true, we the 44th Royal Tank Regiment had joined the Wavy Navy and were to sail our way across the Rhine in the same type of DD tanks with inflatable skirts as were used for the amphibious landings on D-Day. Then ensued a furious period of training – 10 days – from morning to night. Nautical terms were freely used!

  A carpet-laying amphibious Buffalo or Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT) practising for its role of improving the exits across the river mud.

  The amphibious LVT climbing a river bank to land its cargo of troops ‘dry-shod’ some distance inland.

  This training and preparation along with other innovations, including radio beacons and shaded lights for navigation on the river in darkness or smoke, carpet laying versions of the Buffalo to create exits over soft mud and RE heavy rafts, all helped ensure success.

  When it became apparent that XXX Corps was also going to be carrying out an assault crossing 51st Highland Division were extracted from the battle and went through a similar package of training exercises based on the doctrine developed by XII Corps and 15th and 79th Divisions. Lieutenant Campbell of 5 Black Watch commented of one preparatory exercise:

  We hadn’t seen the Buffaloes before and we hadn’t had much practice in the dark. In the fog, we got turned around and landed downstream on the same side we started from.

  It is worth noting that thirty-six of the Royal Navy’s Landing Craft Vehicle (Personnel) (LCV(P)) and a similar number of Mark 3 Landing Craft Mechanised (LCM) were brought to the Rhine. Lieutenant Peter White of 4 KOSB recalled watching the build-up of forces: ‘...we were astonished to see even Royal Navy involved. Enormous transporters lumbered by, with sailors and marines and assorted craft aboard, some as big as 45 feet long and 14 feet broad which had been hauled overland through Holland and Belgium.’

  Royal Navy landing craft on its way inland to the Rhine.

  Known as Force U, under command of Captain James RN, the landing craft had been intended to carry troops and equipment across the Rhine early in the assault. So successful had XII Corps and 79th Division been in their work that, in the event, the craft were relegated to more mundane but none the less important tasks on the river, principally in support of the Royal Engineers.

  Also training on the Maas was 1 Commando Brigade, still under former Guardsman, Brigadier Derek Mills-Roberts, who had taken over command when Lord Lovat had been wounded in Normandy. The Brigade commander believed in thorough training and would have his units repeat exercises until they were perfect, all the while with the incentive of time off for those who got it right more quickly. He was also determined to minimise casualties and took measures to ensure that his men would not suffer for the want of resources and that casualties would be promptly evacuated. Problems identified during training were resolved and mitigating measures built into his emerging plan.

  Preparations

  Lieutenant Douglas Goddard of 112 Field Regiment RA, having fought throughout VERITABLE, recorded details of that other necessary pre-operational requirement; rest.

  The nine days rest period since the end of Veritable, spent at Bergen, was occupied with catching up on baths, sorting out personal kit and battery equipment, absorbing and inducting reinforcements and of course training. It was also the opportunity to take in an ENSA concert or see a film or two.

  While many of the combat troops were resting, training or briefing, the services were working to gather all possible resources to support the assault, which was to be the last great set piece battle of the war. Corporal Douglas Robinson, of 297 Company RASC, whose DUKWs had originally been a part of the beach group working on Juno Beach, and had been invaluable in coping with the Rhine Floods during VERITABLE was sent to help the effort.

  Lieutenant Douglas Goddard.

  On 18 March we came under the command of the Second British Army and moved to Bonninghardt, from where we were transporting 25-pounder shells and petrol from Nijmegen to the small village of Werrich ..., where all the stores were stockpiled along the hedgerows, together with the tanks and guns, in readiness for the Rhine crossing, our last load of four tons of ammunition was left on the DUKW.

  Being one of the laden vehicles that was to cross the Rhine in the first two days, Corporal Robinson’s DUKW was issued packet serial numbers as a part of the
traffic management plan. This plan incorporated a methodology of being able to change priorities and to call forward to the crossing point the supplies or troops needed most urgently at the front.

  Lieutenant Peter White of 4 KOSB, who as part of 52nd (Lowland) Division, was in the area just west of the Rhine, recalled:

  Interesting units and vehicles, including amphibious tanks and Buffaloes, bridging pontoons, hundreds of guns and mountains of ammunition, were piling into every available space. During daylight hours, more and more smoke generators and canisters tended by pioneers appeared over the countryside, pouring out coiling billows of bluish and yellow smoke screens to keep the enemy guessing on the date and place of the crossing.

  The smoke, designed to screen the west bank from observation from the other side of the river had been started as First Canadian Army advanced south east from the Groesbeek Heights towards Wesel. With the dyke on the far bank being higher than on the home bank, the essential smoke screen was now maintained by four Pioneer Corps smoke companies to conceal the preparations. The companies were made up of no less than 1,350 men, who one old soldier described as ‘ineligible for any other arm of the service, with a sprinkling of intellectuals considered to be of no military value elsewhere’. They worked under a headquarters known as Smoke Control and expended during VERITABLE and PLUNDER 8,500 zinc chloride smoke generators and about 450,000 gallons of fog oil to maintain a screen up to sixty-six miles long. Their work was when combined with smoke from the fires in Wesel, extremely effective, however, the Dakota and glider pilots carrying the airborne divisions, perhaps found their work a little too effective.

  Corporal Douglas Robinson.

  Lieutenant Peter White.

  Pioneer Corps soldiers maintain the screen on the banks of the Rhine with smoke generators.

  Lieutenant White continued his account of the build-up west of the Rhine:

  While taking a spin round the area, enjoying a ′liberated’ motorcycle, I was struck anew at the rapidly massing material for the river crossing.... Guns and materials speckled the landscape as thickly as it had once been sprinkled with cattle. The hedgerows were lined and the barns bursting with supplies and ammunition. Other shell dumps were camouflaged as false haystacks. Every house and farm was becoming packed with troops, among them those of the 51st Highland Division and our sister Battalion 1st KOSB. The woods were bristling with tanks, normal, amphibious with Duplex drive and other weird types for special purposes. Massed in other areas were Buffaloes and DUKW amphibious vehicles and fantastic quantities of bridging materials.

  Variously known as ‘Movement Light’, ‘Artificial Moonlight’ or even ‘Monty’s Moonlight’ search light units were deployed into the assault area on a large scale, with the idea of reflecting light off a cloud base. Some nights prior to the assault they were used to ‘accustom the Germans to their presence’ and no doubt aid the deployment into forward assembly areas. The searchlight unit HQ generally referred to as ‘Moonlight Ops’ was tasked with adjusting the intensity of light from the River bank in accordance with requests from the commanders concerned.

  If the location of the assault were to remain a secret one thing that had to be controlled was reconnaissance. Lieutenant General Horrocks, commander XXX Corps, explained:

  Before an attack of this sort a large number of people must go forward and reconnoitre the position they are to occupy. This applies particularly to the Gunners, who have many mysterious rites of their own to perform before they can bring down accurate concentrations of fire. Nobody was allowed forward on to the flat Polderland stretching back from the banks of the Rhine without reporting to a special branch of XXX Corps H.Q., where a very large-scale map of the forward area was maintained. This was known as ′The Pig Hotel’. After examining the accommodation on the map which they had been allocated, the reconnaissance parties were allowed to go forward a few at a time to see their ′rooms’, which, if satisfactory, were then marked up on the plan as ′booked’.

  Captain Goulden of 59 GHQ Troops Engineer Regiment was one of those who went forward to the river for a recce of the four sites where the Regiment’s squadrons were to ferry troops across the Rhine:

  We decided to do a night recce on the 14th. I visited corps, division and battalions, and then went to see the company of infantry holding that particular sector of the Rhine. The CRE [Commander Royal Engineers] and I went down to the forward company and as dusk was falling we met the Company commander. As soon as it was dark enough he took us down to the forward position at the bank on the river bank where the old Rees ferry used to operate and we were introduced to the infantry patrol which was to accompany us. There was a slight mist at the time and there were vague rumours of enemy patrols on our side of the river. The whole situation was rather eerie ... and the farms were quite deserted.

  After some time, we set out with the infantry patrol down to the water’s edge where in a low mist on the water and half moonlight, as far as possible we avoided the crunchy patches of gravel. The patrol moved along about half way up the foreshore and the CRE and I worked along the edge of the water. We waded out testing the slopes of the banks on our chosen beaches and feeling the firmness of the mud. We had nearly finished the stretch of beach which we had been allotted when we were told by the infantry commander that he would rather not go any further as he was coming into the next company area. He was not sure of the stability of the nerves of his neighbours, though they had been informed that we would be out that night. So we then turned and worked our way back to the house at the ferry. After a few cheery words we were conducted back to company headquarters, to battalion and to our car.

  Lieutenant General Horrocks wearing the

  ‘Old Pig’ of XXX Corps.

  General Horrocks highlighted the fact that not everyone was as careful in the conduct of their recce as they should have been:

  I was particularly angry one day to hear that a certain Major General, who was much too brave to take the normal precautions, had walked along the near bank of the Rhine, wearing his red hat. He subsequently left our area, with a monumental flea in his ear.

  To facilitate commanders’ daylight recces, the smoke screen was briefly allowed to disperse but on one occasion the wind changed and the commanders peering from camouflaged Observation posts built into the dykes only got a ‘watery eye squint’.

  Perhaps potentially the most obvious preparations were those being made by the Royal Artillery. 1,300 British and 600 US field, medium and heavy guns, their numerous vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition were difficult to conceal. So large was the number of guns to move and so few the routes available for them, it was not possible to bring the batteries forward in one move but they had to be brought up over the nights between 21 and 23 March using staging areas about six miles from the river. By the morning of 23 March, the majority of the guns were in their pre-recced forward positions. However, Captain Whately-Smith wrote: ‘As one looked around it was hard to believe that these fields and orchards concealed a mass of artillery waiting in silence for the evening zero hour’.

  While Second Army’s preparations for the amphibious assault across the Rhine were underway, XVIII US Airborne Corps, who were to come under command of the British Second Army, were similarly making ready at their bases in the UK and France.

  All that could be done, had been done. The staff had prepared meticulously for this massively complicated operation; material was stockpiled, the soldiers were ready. The scene was set for another typical Montgomery set piece battle and victory, just as Eisenhower had intended.

  CHAPTER 4

  Operation TURNSCREW 51st Highland Division

  ′Forward on wings of flame to final victory’

  Winston Churchill 23 March 1945

  WITH THE WEATHER and state of the river all looking suitable for the assault crossing and airborne drop, ‘At 1530 hours on 23rd March, I [Montgomery] gave orders to launch the operation...’

  51st Highland Division was to lead XXX Corps�
�� assault across the Rhine at 2100 hours on D-1. With elements of 3rd Division holding the home bank in the Corps’s sector, the initial crossing was to be launched from the area from opposite the German-held town of Rees northwards. Two battalions each from 153 and 154 Brigades were to form the leading flight in what were to be the opening moves of Second British Army’s largest amphibious assault operation since D-Day.

  XXX Corps’s orders for the initial phase were:

  ′...to capture Rees and Haldern and establish a bridgehead sufficiently deep to permit bridges to be built, preparatory to a further advance into Germany. 51 (H) Division, with under command 9 Canadian Brigade of 3 Canadian Division, was to assault and secure the initial bridgehead, 9 Canadian Brigade being committed on the LEFT flank. Immediately after, one infantry brigade and divisional headquarters of 43 (Wx) Division were to be passed across the river. 43 Division was to take 9 Canadian Brigade under command and relieve the LEFT brigade of 51 (H) Division.

  At least a part of the purpose of 51st Highland Division’s preliminary assault crossing, five hours before the main effort by 15th Scottish Division, was to widen the frontage of the assault, in order to give a larger objective for the inevitable German counter-attack and to draw away German reserves from the Xanten – Wesel area. In other words, it was a classic Montgomery move designed to unbalance the enemy before the main blow fell.