Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19: THE LOW COUNTRIES
As we crossed the frontier into Belgium, the enthusiasm of the crowds knew no bounds. They hung banners across the road. One read “QUITE WELCOME TO OUR ALLIES”. We assumed that they did not mean to offer a qualified welcome, but had not mastered the English idiom.
One of the banners was tied to a string across the street that was not high enough to clear a tall man standing in the turret of a big tank. The Colonel failed to duck in time, and lost his spectacles. The street was narrow: the Army’s advance was halted while we searched for the Colonel’s glasses. I saw them between the tracks of the Sherman and got Tug Wilson to reverse gently until we could recover the missing article — fortunately undamaged. The Army resumed their advance.
Our lengthening lines of communication now caused a shortage of supplies. We had neither fuel nor ammunition sufficient to sustain an advance by the whole Division. A spearhead force therefore took the lead through Belgium. 5 RHA was the chosen artillery regiment to join the spearhead.
The first Belgian city we entered was Audenarde. We drove through the main square with its beautiful Gothic Town Hall. Local resistance fighters told us that our next objective, the city of Ghent, was held by a German garrison of 1000 men. This was not a large force, but the city was intersected by a network of canals ideal for defence. Street fighting could cost heavy casualties.
We drove unhindered towards Ghent. As we approached the outskirts, a civilian walked up to the leading Squadron Commander to inform him that the garrison was prepared to surrender. The civilian led the Squadron Leader and his Colonel on foot to a German road block. The Officer in charge of the road block said that he and his Major would be prepared to surrender with their troops. Soon after, the German Major turned up and reported that his General would be ready to surrender the Ghent garrison if a British officer would accompany him to the divisional headquarters.
The German commander General Daser, bemedalled and in full dress uniform, was a stickler for protocol. He insisted on dealing only with an officer of equal rank. The Colonel of 5th RTR did his best to impersonate a general, but the deception did not succeed. Finally Brigadier Mackeson appeared, and took charge of the negotiations — with disastrous results, according to Major John Kynaston of our regiment who was present throughout. A degree of finesse was needed to cope with General Daser's injured dignity. Finesse was not one of Brigadier Mackeson's qualities.
The garrison did not surrender. They withdrew to the line of the principal canal in the north of Ghent, thus at least sparing most of the city from destruction. Our leading troops drove into the main square, surrounded by splendid medieval buildings. We parked our Sherman by the bandstand in the centre, surrounded by crowds anxious to shake hands or embrace us.
It was unusual for us to find ourselves liberating a big city. Normally we would expect to by-pass it with our armour, leaving the infantry to clear up. Spirits were high until the crack and whine of sniper bullets sent the crowds scattering. Plainly, a bandstand in the main square was not the best place for our headquarters if there were snipers in, or on the roof of, the buildings that overlooked the square. We retreated to more sheltered quarters but had no sooner settled in than the Brigade was ordered to switch the attack a few miles to the east where a sharp battle was raging for the bridge over the canal at Wetteren.
It took the infantry a few days to clear the enemy from the northern part of Ghent. Apart from the shortage of supplies, the Allied advance was slowed down by the rapid reorganization of the German forces along their new defensive line of the River Scheldt. I suppose that in my school geography I had learned something about the rivers of Europe, but I never realised there were so many of them. In this campaign for north-west Europe there was just one damn river after another, and if they were any distance apart there would be a couple of canals in between. I expect you notice them more if you are trying to cross them when all the main bridges have been blown up. There is no more practical way to familiarise yourself with the rivers of Europe than to indulge in a spot of mobile warfare.
South of the Scheldt we took part in several mopping-up operations, moving east to the Belgian-Dutch border. At last, towards the end of September, we were taken out of the front line — yes the artillery too! — and withdrawn to the Dutch city of Eindhoven.
That night I took off my boots and battle-dress and bedded down in my underwear for the first time since D-day. In this unaccustomed luxury I slipped under the blankets soon after midnight. It was also the first time that we switched off the wireless sets, having first — of course — reported our location to Brigade Headquarters. Two hours later I heard the engine of a motor-cycle sputtering to a stop. A dispatch rider had arrived with urgent orders. The regiment was to move north with all possible speed. Our advance was to start before dawn.
A few days previously, Monty had launched the ill-fated airborne drop on Arnhem - ‘A bridge too far’. If successful it would have paved the way for an advance into the heartland of Germany before the onset of winter. The operation turned out to be a heroic failure. The airborne troops were attacked and surrounded by the enemy. Our forces advancing from the south were too far away to get through against strong opposition. It had not been possible to relieve the besieged airborne division. More troops were now to be brought up in a final attempt at rescue.
I woke the Colonel who went promptly to Brigade Headquarters for a detailed briefing. My task was to warn each of our three batteries, now scattered around Eindhoven and sleeping peacefully — with their wireless sets switched off - to be ready to move forward before dawn. There was no time to spare. I put on my greatcoat over my underwear, pulled on my boots, and tramped round the suburbs of Eindhoven looking for the headquarters of the three batteries. In the air of relaxation that had pervaded the previous evening, not all had accurately reported their location.
I was very unpopular as I woke three majors successively between two and three in the morning. I had to tell them to switch on and to be ready to move, each with their two troops of four guns, at 4.30 a.m. “There’s no such time” grumbled one of them. My memories of Eindhoven are not happy ones.
As every schoolboy knows, Arnhem was not relieved. The route we had to take, north through Nijmegen, was a narrow road bordered by woods and waterlogged fields. There were few places where tanks could get off the road and manoeuvre. Well-armed German forces had set up a series of strong points across the road. Other enemy units on our left flank attacked the centre line further south, temporarily cutting the supply line behind us. The relieving forces were caught in a gigantic traffic jam.
Our guns were in action continually as the Division fought hard to batter a way through. During one barrage, Medical Officer Paddy Martin delivered a baby at the farmhouse where we had set up our HQ. The family named the baby after him. Somewhere south of Nijmegen there is a Dutchman who answers to the name of Paddy.
We were now in Limbourg, the southernmost province of Holland, bordering on Belgium. It was then a very poor agricultural district: in winter the peasants shared their dwellings with their pigs and cattle. The prolonged German occupation had led to severe hardship and deprivation. None of this detracted from the warm welcome we received from the Dutch. Many of them spoke a good or passable English. Sometimes, when they had already had ex 8th Army veterans billeted on them, their language was spiced with Arabic words that they took to be idiomatic English. When I apologised to one householder for invading his home, he replied that he was quite allakewfik — meaning ‘indifferent’ (literally, allah will take care of it).
Once Arnhem had failed it was clear that we were not going to finish the war that winter. Monty thought we could penetrate deep into Germany if all the Allied strength could be concentrated in one sector behind a single spearhead. Far to the south, the American General Patton thought the same — so long as he was the spearhead. Supreme Commander Eisenhower thought otherwise and continued to spread the Allied forces over a wide front.
We had one more major battle before the hard winter set in. We attacked in the south of Holland across flat sandy country to capture the towns of s’Hertogenbosch and Tilburg. The artillery put down a terrific barrage to cover the start of the advance on 22nd October. It was exposed country for the tank squadrons who were often obliged to advance along raised dykes. We lost a lot of tanks, but took many prisoners.
From then until the onset of winter we were limited to active probing and patrolling near the Dutch/Belgian border. The front was thinly held on both sides and there was an extensive no-man's-land where patrols might alternate. In this area lay the town of Oss, site of a giant Unilever margarine factory and other food depots. The 11th Hussars used to draw rations from there, and so did the German reconnaissance units. It was said that the warehouseman did not mind who drew the supplies so long as they were signed for.
ROMANCE
In early December we were out of action for three or four days. This was just long enough for me to make my only girl friend of the war. We were quartered in a small Belgian village called Neeroteren. (I met several Belgians in the following fifty years, but none of them had ever heard of it — until a young man I met in Burma in 1996.) When we arrived in Neeroteren, there was a commotion in the village square. A collaborator was being kicked and beaten to death by an angry crowd. He had probably caused the deportation and death of many of the villagers by betraying the resistance to the Germans. It was a sickening spectacle, but there was no point in trying to intervene.
More agreeably, there was a party laid on for us by the local forester and his family and neighbours. It was the Feast of St. Nicholas, in any case an occasion for local celebration. We found that the household lacked a corkscrew. Together with Elsa, the elder daughter of the family, I went round to the next house to borrow one. On the way back we kissed under a bright moon. Elsa, a sweet young woman of about my age, became a sort of girl friend. She had blue eyes and long fair hair. A devout Catholic of strict upbringing, she imposed strict limits on our embraces. Mia, her younger sister, used to throw me glances that suggested I might make better progress if I transferred my affections. But I remained loyal to Elsa and revisited Neeroteren twice that winter in order to see her. Once we enjoyed a day out in Liege with the help of the regimental jeep. I kept her photo for several years. I wonder if she remembers the tire-bouchon?
The young Belgian traveller I met in Burma half a century later had indeed heard of Neeroteren. It had been the home of his grandmother. Her maiden name was Hillerns. That was Elsa's surname. I did not question him further. I prefer to remember Elsa as she was in 1944.