At 0500 hours on February 8, 1,400 guns of the Canadian 1st Army blasted the German 84th Division, which had dug itself in along a seven-mile front between the Maas and the Waal close to the Dutch-German frontier. At 1030 hours, the British XXX Corps, which Montgomery had put under the command of General Crerar, moved in to the attack with five divisions (the British 51st, 53rd, and 15th and the Canadian 2nd and 3rd) in the first wave and the 43rd Division and the Guards Armoured Division in reserve. In all, according to the commander of the corps, Lieutenant-General Horrocks, there were 200,000 men and 35,000 vehicles.
The German position was heavily mined, and included a flooded area on the right and the thick Reichswald forest on the left. Moreover, the day before the attack, a thaw had softened the ground. Neither Hitler, at O. K.W., nor Colonel-General Blaskowitz, commanding Army Group "H’’, had been willing to accept the idea that Montgomery would choose such a sector in which to attack. Yet
V The end of the Tirpitz, Germany’s second and last battleship. Lying capsized in Tromso fjord, with small vessels moored by her keel, she looks more like an island than a once-proud capital skip.
General Schlemm, commanding the 1st Parachute Army, had warned them of this possibility. At the end of the day the 84th Division had lost 1,300 prisoners and was close to breaking-point.
Meanwhile the American 9th Army had been ordered to unleash Operation "Grenade” on February 10. This would cross the Roer and advance to the Rhine at Diisseldorf. Now came the flooding caused by the destruction of the Eifel dams, which held up the American 9th Army completely for 12 days and slowed down the British XXX Corps. The latter’s units were also hopelessly mixed up. These delays allowed Schlemm to send his 7th and 6th Parachute, 15th Panzer-grenadier, and then 116th Panzer Divisions to the rescue one after the other. And as Colonel C. P. Stacey, the official Canadian Army historian, notes, the Germans, at the edge of the abyss, had lost none of their morale:
"In this, the twilight of their gods, the defenders of the Reich displayed the recklessness of fanaticism and the courage of despair. In the contests west of the Rhine, in particular, they fought with special ferocity and resolution, rendering the battles in the Reichswald and Hoch-wald forests grimly memorable in the annals of this war.”
On February 13, the Canadian 1st Army had mopped up the Reichswald and the little town of Kleve, and had reached Gennep, where it was reinforced across the Maas by the British 52nd Division and 11th Armoured Division. Schlemm threw two divisions of infantry into the battle as well as the famous Panzer-"Lehr” Division, and so the intervention of Lieutenant-General G. G. Simonds’s Canadian II Corps at the side of the British XXX Corps did not have the decisive effect that Crerar expected. The 11th day of the offensive saw the attackers marking time on the Goch-Kalkar line about 15 miles from their jumping-off point.
But, just like the British 2nd Army in Normandy, the Canadian 1st Army had
Attracted the larger part of the enemy’s forces, while the flood water in the Roer valley was going down. The weather also turned finer, and Montgomery fixed February 23 for the launching of Operation "Grenade”. In his order of the day to the men of the 21st Army Group, Montgomery assured them that this was to be the beginning of the last round against Germany. The Third Reich was ready for the knock-out blow, which would be delivered from several directions.
Then, as an opening move, the Anglo-American Strategic Air Force launched 10,000 bombers and fighter escorts and made the heaviest attack of the war on the Third Reich’s communications network.
More than 200 targets featured on the programme of this attack, which went under the name of Operation "Clarion”. Some of these objectives were bombed from only 4,500 feet because enemy antiaircraft action was almost totally ineffective since Hitler had stripped it
To supply the Eastern Front, The results of this bombing on February 22 were still noticeable when Colonel-General Jodi came to bring General Eisenhower the surrender of the Third Reich.
The following day, at 0245 hours, the artillery of the United States 9th Army opened fire on German positions on the Roer. The 15th Army (General von Zan-gen) which defended them, formed the right of Army Group "B” (Field-Marshal Model). Though it defended itself well, his 353rd Division was still thrown out of the ruins of Julich by the American XIX Corps (Major-General Raymond S. Maclain). Meanwhile, in the Linnich sector, XIII Corps (Major-General Alvan C. Gillem) had established a bridgehead a mile and a half deep, VII Corps (Lieutenant-General John L. Collins) of the American 1st Army, had also taken part in the attack and, by the end of the day, had mopped up Duren.
Hitler, Rundstedt, and Model used every last resource to tackle this new crisis looming on the horizon. Schlemm was stripped of the reinforcements which had just been despatched to him. and to these were added the 9th and 11th Panzer Divisions and the 3rd Panzer grenadier Division. These forces were instructed to hit the enemy’s north-easterlv push in its flank. '
All the same, by February 27. the Allied breakthrough was complete near Erkelenz, and two days later, XIII Corps swept through the conurbation of Rheydt -Monchengladbach. At the same time, to the right of the 9th Army. XVI Corps (Major-General J. B. Anderson) hurtled towards Roermond and Venlo behind the 1st Parachute Army, while on the right. XIX Corps was approaching Neuss.
In these circumstances Schlemm was ordered to retreat to the right bank of the Rhine, and he must be given all credit for carrying out this delicate and dangerous mission with remarkable skill. Rearguard skirmishes at Rheinberg. Sonsbeck. and Xanten gave him the time to get the bulk of his forces across and to complete the planned demolitions without fault. On March 6. the United States 9th Army and the Canadian 1st Army linked up opposite Wesel.
This joint Operation "Veritable/ Grenade” cost the 18 German divisions engaged 53,000 prisoners. But Crerar alone had suffered 15,634 dead, wounded, and missing, of whofn 5,304 were Canadian troops.
A The "Masters of the World’ return home.
The British Hawker Tempest V Series 1 fighter and fighter-bomber
Engine: one Napier Sabre MB inline, 2,200-hp. Armament: four 20-mm Hispano Mark cannon with 200 rounds per gun, plus two 1,000-lb bombs or eight 60-lb rockets.
Speed : 435 mph at 17,000 feet.
Climb : 6 minutes 6 seconds to 20,000 feet. Ceiling : 36,000 feet Range: 1,300 miles with drop tanks Weight empty/loaded : 9,250/11,400 lbs Span : 41 feet.
Length : 33 feet 8 inches Height: 16 feet 1 inch
World History
