Sandy joins the 52nd

9^th February 1945 – Operation Veritable was to have been accompanied by a pincer advance from US forces to the south, between Venlo and Roermond on the Maas and along the Roer River. However, the Germans blew the dams along the Roer river, flooding the area and delaying Operation Grenade for two weeks.

 

WAR DIARY of 52^nd (Lowland) Recce Regt RAC February 1945 – Lt Col J.B.A. Hankey OBE

Date 9^th Place BOXMEER

‘RHQ with ‘A’ Squadron (reserve) at BOXMEER.  ‘C’ Squadron at SAMBEEK (immediately south of Boxmeer) 7739 with one Platoon medium machine guns under command.  ‘B’ Squadron at GROENINGEN (slightly further south) 7835 with one Platoon 4.2 Mortars under command.  One Dutch Company at VORTUM (between Sambeek and Groeningen) 7837 and the other at ST. ANTONIS (north-west of Boxmeer) 7138 in reserve.  Nothing to report all day.’  52 Division O.O. (Operations Order?) No:7 attached.

Dick was presumably at Sambeek with ‘C’ Squadron.

He was joined by Sandy Handley who became his batman ( Anthony Rampling pers. comm.):

“When I got back to Izegem after my UK leave I was posted to the 52^nd (Lowland) Recce – Belgium February ’45.  They were in Holland at Boxmeer, not too far from the Rhine.  Fortunately for me the whole of the troop* I was in with from Normandy were posted to the 52^nd Recce so it wasn’t too bad.  A lot of the 52^nd Recce were Scots and Newcastle men and their first involvement on the continent had been in the Walcheren Islands. 

Now we had Daimlers.  I was assigned to a heavy Daimler (15 troop) still as a gunner operator.  I now had a Besa 7.92 machine gun and a 2 pounder gun and 2 smoke dischargers.”

*i.e. Dick’s Troop in 61st Reconnaissance.   Not including Anthony Rampling, however.

(From Ex Trooper S Handley’s ‘61 Recce - Memories of Normandy 1944 – 1945’, unpublished)

 

WAR DIARY of 52^nd (Lowland) Recce Regt RAC February 1945 – Lt Col J.B.A. Hankey OBE

Date 11^th Place BOXMEER:

Strength - 935 men, 188 tanks/armoured cars/guns                 Weather – Wet

‘No activity on Regimental front. 21 Carriers arrived from Re-ordnance Centre’. 52 Recce Regiment O.O. No. 11 attached.

 

Date 12^th Place BOXMEER:             Weather – Wet

' ‘A’ Squadron took over from ‘C’ Squadron.  ‘C’ coming into reserve.'

12^th February 1945 – British and Canadian forces advancing in Operation Veritable capture Kleve, a town in western Germany between the Maas and Rhine rivers, east of Nijmegen and the Reichswald Forest. The town had been the location one of the pair of Knickebein radio transmitters sending beams across Britain for the Luftwaffe to locate night bombing raids early in the war.

 

WAR DIARY of 52^nd (Lowland) Recce Regt RAC February 1945 – Lt Col J.B.A. Hankey OBE

Date 13^th Place BOXMEER:                 Weather – Fine

‘Spasmodic shelling on front and in BOXMEER area.  Otherwise NTR (nothing to report).

 

Date 14^th Place BOXMEER:                 Weather – Fine

‘Still some shelling.  Patrolling carried out by Assault boat as far as main stream.’

(From the War Diary of the 52nd Reconnaissance Regiment held by the Archive and Reference Library, the Tank Museum, Bovington, Dorset.)