Onslaught on Hitler's Rhine
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Beginning on the night of 23 March 1945, Operation Plunder was the crossing of the River Rhine at Rees, Wesel, and south of the Lippe River by the British 2nd Army, under Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey. At 17:00, 1,300 guns of the 21st Army Group unleashed a terrific bombardment of the east bank of the Rhine. The bombardment, continuing for four hours and was the largest undertaken by the Royal Artillery during the War. This was just the first phase of Montgomery's plan to cross Hitler's last obstacle to the attacking forces of the Western Allies-the River Rhine. The plans were broken into smaller operations, Turnscrew-a diversion ten miles to the north of where the main attack was to take place with the assault elements of the 51st (Highland) Division and 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade; Widgeon-a subordinate operation by 1st Commando Brigade to capture and hold Wesel; and Torchlight-the second major operation for 15th Scottish Division to capture the key area between Bislich and Rees.
A fourth-and controversial component with the benefit of hindsight-was Operation Varsity consisting of the British 6th Airborne Division and the US 17th Airborne Division, conducting parachute landings on the east bank in support of the operation. The American and Canadian forces south and north of Plunder were part of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's huge army. This was part of a coordinated set of Rhine crossings and the race to the Baltic.
I fought in Operation Blockbuster in early March 1945 as a Troop Leader in an armoured half-track leading a troop of four 31-ton Sexton SPs with 25-pounder guns. The regiment then moved to the Buderich area, a village two miles from the Rhine, SW of Wesel. The area is clearly shown on the map Operation Varsity with all the gun positions (page 187). The Americans were almost next door to us. Fox Troop had 4 Sextons, 2 tanks and 2 armoured half-tracks. Christopher Studdert-Kennedy was the Gun Position Officer (GPO), a lieutenant aged 23. I was 21 and a veteran of a dozen battles since Normandy. I was wounded in Holland, awarded the Bronze Cross of Orange- Nassau for all sorts of skulduggery in the Dutch Peel country and polders. During Plunder we fired almost non-stop for nearly 10 hours supporting the 15th Scottish in Operation Torchlight around Wesel and on the many German AA batteries east of the Rhine, identified by aerial photos. We 'commanded' one hour on, one hour off. No problem, we were fit and knew what we were doing. The ranges varied from 6,500 yards to 9,500 yards and usually 25 rounds per gun per target. In the year's campaign we fired just over 1,000 rounds per gun. In Plunder probably about 250 per gun. The rest of 11th Armoured-265 brand new Comet tanks-crossed near Wesel a couple of days later, heading for the four great German river battles: Dortmund-Ems, Wesel, Aller and the Elbe via Bergen-Belsen-first battlegroup in.