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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reg Reid and has been added to the site with the author's permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander

CHAPTER 24: Eindhoven - March 1945 Holland - Into Germany `Across the Rhine on the Twenty Nine'

They moved fast again, with hardly time for goodbyes, into Holland with a long pause, three or four days camped in and under lorries, east of Eindhoven. Long enough for Wardy, mechanic 2nd class in Workshops' Platoon, to meet a Dutch girl, fall in love with her, meet her parents at their farm and get their acceptance of him as their daughter's future husband.

Long enough for Butch to be impressed by this tale of young love. The girl worked for Philips, Eindhoven, a factory that never had a day's full production for the Germans, thanks to Dutch workers going slow or sabotaging the plant. The British soldier had ambitions to run a haulage business in Eindhoven after their marriage.

And long enough for Butch and Ritchie to repair two abandoned lorries and run them into the girl's parents' farm, where they were hidden behind stacks of hay in a big barn. Also hidden there were gerricans of army petrol and spare tyres.

They were giving Wardy an excellent start for his new business. On the move again and into the Fatherland.

By mid March 1945, most of the territory west of the Rhine had been cleared of German troops who had suffered 60,000 casualties, with 300,000 taken prisoner. The hundred or so vehicles of 133 Company were playing their little part in this huge drama.

Only five days behind Monty, whose front line troops crossed the Rhine near Wesel, North of the Ruhr, on the 23/24th March 1945, 133 lorries still on the west side of the river saw hundreds of Dakotas going overhead which cut loose gliders carrying paras. One or two landed near 133 on the wrong side of the river and, it must be said, our paras `scared the shit blue lights' out of 133. As the gliders landed, the front of these big aircraft opened and bren gunners raked the hedges sheltering 133 before realising they were our troops! Jeeps and the paras then poured out and were so hyped up for battle, that they headed for the river bank, as if to swim across! 133 lads manhandled them away from the wide, fast flowing river. They'd have to wait, like them!

A pontoon bridge was laid across by Sappers and the convoy of lorries and pick-ups skedaddled across. It was the 29th March 1945.

`Across the Rhine on the Twenty Nine' was their ditty to remember the momentous day. Needless to say it was quite alarming to manoeuvre a 15 tonner across on the pontoons, each one straining to move with the current.

The Germans were all but defeated now: Ike had delivered a massive two prong thrust. Monty's British and Canadian troops, including 133 in the North,were pushing to Hamburg (with airborne troops sent to liberate Copenhagen) and pushing further to Lubeck to beat the Russians to this vital key city to the Baltic. Also under Monty, the 9th US Army reached the River Elbe at Magdeburg only 110 kilometres from Berlin.

The other thrust was by US and some French troops under Generals Bradley and Patton, who conquered Southern Germany, sealing off the vital Ruhr district.

As everyone knows, Monty, who perhaps had more political acumen than his American boss, wanted to finish the war earlier by a massive single thrust to Berlin, right to the heart of the Nazi regime.

Ike's view was that Berlin `no longer represented a military objective of major importance', so the Russians got there first and Berlin became the major flashpoint in the subsequent Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union.

After the war ended the Allies had to give up large chunks of their gains to Soviet troops in return for agreed British, American and French zones in Berlin.

Where were 133 in this huge movement of men and machines when the war ended in May 1945 and Monty, flushed by his stunning victory, accepted the surrender of all German forces in N.W. Europe outside his caravan on Luneburger Heath?

Pr-BR

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