Between D Day on 6 June 1944 and VE Day on 8 May 1945 the Allied advance towards Germany saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Cornish soldiers of the 5th Bn DCLI had, for example, gone into battle on Hill 112 in July 1944 in Normandy with 380 men. Three days later there were only 60 men left to claim victory.
In February 1945, the same battalion now found itself in Belgium ready to fight its way into Nazi Germany. One can imagine how soldiers might have felt: on the one hand, victory – surely – was near, on the other hand, now was not the time to die. Across the Rhine feelings were different: for the German army it was to be a fight to the death to preserve the homeland.
Operation Veritable
Armies through the centuries have developed a modus operandi to deal with frightened soldiers and heroes. So in February 1945, Cornish soldiers in Belgium found themselves occupied with training, inspections, mobile cinema shows, and daily recreational transport to nearby towns. Then on 5 February the battalion was ordered to be “ready to move at 0230” to Sint-Oedenrode in Holland. The next day planning started for Operation Veritable. This was Montgomery’s plan for a breakout from the front line SE of Nijmegen, through the German Reichswald defences and eventually clear to the Rhine.
We can follow events through the battalion’s War Diary. On 7 February 1945 soldiers were to spend three hours training for “street fighting”. On 8 February the diary records “Today was D Day for Operation Veritable, and we moved at 1900 hours, after haversack rations and tea.” By 14 February the diary states that due to the difficult supply situation, primarily due to flooded supply lines, the Battalion, “will live on the land and hold one day’s fresh supply of meat in hand. Milking cows will not be killed.” It is interesting to reflect on the reversion to living off the land. By now, Cornish soldiers were just inside the German border, which perhaps made such a decision easier.
What the Battalion’s War Diary doesn’t convey is the awful reality of the infantryman’s grinding war. From 9 to 23 February, the 5th Battalion was engaged in battles around Goch in Germany. Tanks couldn’t operate in the muddy, boggy, ground and so soldiers who had been without sleep for forty-eight hours, had to clamber across wire cattle fences and water-filled ditches in pitch darkness at night, laden down with assault loads of ammunition and exhausted by continuous movement and sudden German mortar and machine-gunfire.
In human terms, the cost of this fighting is illustrated by a Major Kitchen. He was badly wounded in the shoulder in late February; this was his third wound since landing in Normandy.
The soldiers of 5 DCLI could not know that VE Day would dawn in two months’ time, but it was their grit and determination that kept them going and paying the price in men and nerves.