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By Root 1183 0

an action a few days later. The Scots were committed on 7 March to attack the village of Alpon, just short of Wesel on the Rhine, the last German pocket west of the river. The British assault battalions spent the night before the attack under German shellfire. Next morning, the unit attacking the village, 4/5th Royal Scots Fusiliers, soon became stuck among the houses, against energetic resistance from troops of First Parachute Army, supported by two self-propelled guns. The 6th Cameronians started the battle in some disarray. Their commanding officer had been blown out of his jeep for the second time in a week and was unfit for battle. His replacement was crippled by malaria, but insisted on conducting the operation. The battalion’s officers were thoroughly unhappy about attacking over ground they had been unable to reconnoitre and where the enemy’s strength was unknown. The Cameronians were ordered to carry out a flanking movement around Alpon, but in the first hours two of their platoons became entangled in fighting in the village itself, and lost several men before being pulled back.

A mile or so away, men of the 4th KOSB were advancing to join the Cameronians’ attack. “As usual, the rough plan on paper looked delightfully simple and free of snags,” wrote one of its platoon commanders, Peter White, “a feeling that was helped by one’s normal wishful thinking . . . that Jerry would have pulled back over the river by the time we arrived to do battle. To add to the dejected look of the sections trudging up the road, it was a chilly, raw day, and rain began to fall and soak into our clothing. I wondered if a newspaper reporter would have described us as ‘straining at the leash to be at the enemy, with morale at a new high.’” The Scots were deeply respectful of the tenacity of the Germans. When the KOSBs reached their objective, they found “one young German still firing his MG with his jaw shot off and standing in a trench on the body of a dead comrade.”

That night, the attack on Alpon was resumed under cover of darkness. The three fighting companies of 6th Cameronians were given widely separated objectives. D Company reached its destination without opposition and dug in. A Company ran into serious trouble on a railway embankment, which was raked by German machine-gun fire on fixed lines. At one point, its commander had his map shot out of his hands. The company finally withdrew when it lost radio contact with battalion HQ, and the time drew near for a scheduled British bombardment of its position.

C Company got across the railway tracks in a single dash, but halted short of a road that its commander had been told was the British boundary with the U.S. Ninth Army, which was alleged to be conducting a parallel attack. No Americans appeared, due to a breakdown of communications. C Company found itself exposed, some 400 yards behind the German front, with only forty-five minutes to dig in before dawn broke on 9 March. There was no time to create effective foxholes. Germans began to appear, including a Volkswagen field car which the Scots shot up. A tank clattered forward. The Cameronians loosed two PIAT bombs, which bounced off the hull. Supported by tank fire, German paratroops then assaulted and overran the British positions piecemeal. By 1000 it was all over for C Company. It had lost twenty-seven men killed and wounded. The other sixty surrendered.

At 156th Brigade headquarters, there was chaos. The divisional commander turned up in person, raging. Uncertainty about the whereabouts of the U.S. Ninth Army resulted in a decision not to allow any artillery support on the southern flank, lest shells fall upon the expected Americans. Radio contact had been lost with all the Cameronians’ companies. Poor weather made it impossible to call for air support. A request for tanks was refused, because the situation was so confused. Tensions became apparent between all the senior officers involved—indeed, they had lost control of the attack. The brigade commander paced the floor wretchedly, telling his staff that the divisional commander