The Royal Engineers

By midnight of 24th/25th March the first light bridge had been erected across the Rhine although 80,000 Allied troops had already crossed their 20 mile stretch of river including Winston Churchill who crossed the Rhine in a landing craft near Wesel.

8,000 Royal Engineers assisted the crossing of the Rhine. Don Aiken was with them:

“We had a request for Radio Operator volunteers to be detached to the Royal Engineers on the forthcoming crossing of the Rhine for the purpose of communications. Although soldiers didn't usually believe in volunteering, I was new in this unit and wouldn't miss the company much, so I volunteered.

I was taken (along with another Operator) in a small truck, back into Belgium; where we were attached to separate Companies of Engineers, placed in Heavy Armoured cars and moved back into Germany.  My car was moved up behind a huge earth banking, which ran all along both sides of the Rhine in this area, used to prevent flooding of this very low-lying and flat countryside.

The communications set-up was this: The Officer in Charge of the Royal Engineers Unit would radio his messages to an armoured car which was situated near to mine. This message would be relayed to me by means of a runner. I would then send this back to Divisional H.Q. Remember that these radios had a very limited range; especially the back-pack field radios used by the forward engineers.

Then the attack started. In its own way it was almost as awe inspiring as the 'D' Day landings. It was preceded by a massive airborne assault; with hundreds of gliders flying low over our heads and landing behind the enemy lines. The biggest artillery bombardment ever to be carried out followed immediately behind. Hundreds upon hundreds of heavy artillery opened up all at once, with thousands of shells whistling overhead. The noise was deafening.

Then the ground troops started to move through us and down to the river bank. The Royal Engineers began to build the pontoon bridges which would allow the rest of the Division to cross over. This was done under very heavy German fire, as most of their first line defensive positions, dug into the huge earth banking on the German side of the river, had not been affected by the artillery or by the airborne attack behind them. I don't know what the cost was to the Engineers, but it must have been high.

I was kept fully occupied sending the coded messages back to H.Q. and occasionally receiving some back.  Then there was a sudden drop in radio activity and I found time to poke my head out of the turret, only to find that the lull in getting messages had been caused by a German shell which had landed close and killed the runner.

In a few hours we knew that the bridge had been constructed across the Rhine and that the infantry were already across and being followed by tanks. The sounds of warfare became a little more distant and we moved forward to get a good view of the proceedings. The pontoon bridge was thick with movement, as it had now become a two way highway. All the paraphernalia of an attacking army was crossing into Germany. The rattle of our infantry's small-arms fire coming from the enemy positions was now resulting in long lines of German soldiers being marched out of Germany to P.O.W. camps somewhere in England.”

(Extract  republished from 'From the Rhine to Civvy Street' by kind permission of Don Aiken)

 

Anthony Rampling went over the Rhine in a D.U.K.W on 25^th March 1945.

 

On 25^th and 26^th March 1945 there were more Rhine crossings by the Americans to the south, this time around Boppard, south of Koblenz.  American 1^st Army troops broke out from the Remagen bridgehead and marched south to join up with Patton’s 3^rd Army forces.