"Holding bits of the line"

Eric Brewer’s diary for 3^rd December reads:

“Moved today to Mill (got relieved by the 59th*).  Spent the night in a café.”  On December 4^th he was still at the same place.

*possibly the 59^th Anti Tank Regiment of the Royal Artillery, part of the 43^rd Wessex Division.

Colonel Brownrigg’s account of 61^st Recce continues:

“In December, to our immense sorrow, the axe fell on the 50^th Division.  The Regiment, thus orphaned, survived for a time, thanks to our Corps Commander, who rang up the Commander-in-Chief in my presence to say we would be worth a brigade to him.  But after holding bits of the line for the 49^th* and 53^rd** Divisions we were ordered back to Iseghem to disband.” (From ‘A Reconnaissance Regiment in the B.L.A.’ by Lieutenant-Colonel P.H.A.Brownrigg D.S.O.)

*the 49^th (West Riding) Division, symbolised by a Polar Bear, was serving with the First Canadian Army.  They garrisoned ‘the Island’ between Arnhem and Nijmegen during the winter of 1944.

**the 53^rd (Welsh) Infantry Division was attached to XXX Corps and had been fighting to remove the Germans from the western bank of the Maas.  It was based around Roermund (south-west of Eindhoven and Weert) until 18^th December.

 

Eric Postles recalled working with the 53^rd Division:

"30 Corps General Horrocks tried to keep the regiment as Corps troops but we only got a brief respite before disbandment.  We helped 49 Division who had taken over “the Island” and took over from the Monmouths of 53 Division on a canal near Venlo.  The lock gatehouse was built into the bank and was reached along a long, white-taped, deep, muddy track, which ran through a minefield.  We found an injured cow stuck on the stairs but dare not kill it because of the smell it would create.  It was moaning all the time.  All through the day and night the Germans fired rifle grenades – not a very accurate weapon – at the house plus mortar fire.  We were glad to leave the place and the moaning cow."

(Extract from ‘My War Years’ by John Eric Postles ISO used by kind permission of the author.)