Preparations for the invasion of Occupied France had proceeded apace in Britain throughout the winter of 1943 and the spring of 1944. The Dieppe raid in 1942 had cost many lives, but it had also shown that it was going to be virtually impossible to capture and hold a major French port. Operation Overlord was therefore planned to land on the less well-defended Normandy beaches to the east of the Cherbourg peninsula. This meant that a vast invading army would have to be both deployed and supplied without the advantages of a proper harbour, so artificial Mulberry harbours were built to be towed across the English Channel to the landing beaches. 

In preparation for the invasion, special landing craft and amphibious vehicles were built, and large numbers of troops started to assemble in southern Britain. In addition, a pipeline named PLUTO* was laid across the seabed from the Isle of Wight to Normandy to ensure this enormous army had sufficient supplies of oil once the invasion was underway. 

The overall commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, gave the order for the long-awaited attack on the Normandy beaches to begin on June 6, 1944: D-Day. Soon after midnight a vast invasion fleet of nearly 7.000 vessels closed in on the designated beaches, and parachutists and glider-borne troops landed behind German lines in Normandy. At first light, after an initial assault from thousands of aircraft, the invasion proper began. Five beaches were designated for the landings; the Americans came ashore at the westernmost beaches, codenamed Utah and Omaha, while the British, supported by the Free French, landed further east at Gold and Sword beaches. The landing at Juno, in the middle of the two British beaches, was undertaken by the Canadian military, under command of the British. 

By the end of the first day some 130.000 men had landed in Occupied France and were able to establish a bridgehead in Normandy. This had come at a cost of many lives, especially at Omaha beach, where the preliminary aerial bombardment had missed the German defences along the sea wall. As the Americans came ashore, the Germans fired relentlessly from their pillboxes, gunning down hundreds of men before the beach was finally taken. 

The Germans were not prepared for the invasion force to come ashore at Normandy. They had been fooled by considerable decoy activity into believing that the attack would come along the coast near Calais. Nevertheless the fighting was bitter and the men encountered stiff resistance across Normandy. Within a few days the Allies began linking up their five beachheads as ever more troops poured ashore. 

53rd. Welch Division landed in Normandy at the end of June as a follow-up division and was placed under command of XII Corps now defending the Odon Valley position and was held in reserve for Operation Epsom, the drive to Hill 112. The division then went onto the line in the Hill 112/Odon area and saw heavy fighting as part of Operation Greenline, a diversionary attack West of Caen leading up to Operation Goodwood. In August the division began to push out of the Odon region driving along the river Orne adjacent to the Canadian sector as part of the attempt to close the Falaise Pocket. It was during the fighting near Balfour that Lieutenant Tasker Watkins (1/5th. Bn. The Welch Regiment) won his Victoria Cross. Due to the casualties suffered by the division in Normandy and the acute lack of infantry reinforcements, some battalions were replaced and reorganised. The ‘international’ regiments were mixed throughout the division as a result. 

All the plans for increasing and supplying the invasion force worked and, on June 27, American forces captured the port of Cherbourg. On July 8 Caen was taken after fierce fighting and the Allies began to push out of Normandy towards Paris. Liberating troops finally reached Paris on August 24, where serious street fighting had erupted some days earlier. French troops under the command of General Leclerc were given the honour of being the first to enter the city. They were followed a day later by the leader of the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle, who was treated to a rapturous welcome, despite the residual threat of snipers. 

From France, the Allies raced into Belgium and liberated Brussels and Antwerp in the first week of September 1944. From Belgium, the Allies could have concentrated their forces on the industrial Ruhr region of Germany, but General Montgomery feared that an attack on the well-defended Siegfried Line would be too costly. Instead, he devised Operation Market Garden, a plan to outflank the Siegfried Line through the Netherlands. His audacious operation involved dropping troops behind enemy lines to capture vital crossing points over a series of Dutch rivers and then following through with a swift ground invasion. The early stages were successful, but the British 1st. Airborne Division met with strong German resistance at Arnhem on the Lower Rhine. The overland troops sent to relieve them were held up and then withdrawn, having sustained heavy casualties. Operation Market Garden was called off and the northern Netherlands remained under German control until the last months of the war. The Germans finally surrendered the country on May 5, 1945, just days before the end of the war. 

 *PLUTO = Pipe-Line Underwater Transportation of Oil 

Lt. Tasker Watkins, 1/5 th. Bn. The Welch Regiment

The gap between the 15.Armee (Belgian coast) and the 7.Armee (Liege) had widened to no less than one hundred kilometres. So desperate times call for desperate measures and Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model had ordered a security screen to be set up behind the Albert Canal and the 15.Armee to pull back to a line from Ghent to Brussels and Namur. The LXXXVIII.Armeekorps (88th) of Hans Reinhard with its one division plus a few battalions could never plug the gap on its own. They would have to put in more troops, in fact a whole new army. But where to find one? 

That afternoon a phone call went out to Generaloberst Kurt Student, Oberbefehlshaber der Fallschirmtruppen in Berlin-Wannsee. He was ordered to form a defence behind the Albert Canal between Antwerp and Maastricht (the so-called ‘Brabantstelling’) with a new army, to be called the Erste Fallschirm Armee. In addition to the LXXXVIII.Armeekorps, Student was assigned an impressive array of troops, at least on paper. Still, one of the divisions was a static one (the 719.Infanterie-Division), one was composed of convalescents (the 176.Division zur besondere Verwendung) and the paratroop units were spread all over Germany and needed at least a few days to reach the battlefield. So time was not on his side. 

Countermeasures 

Since the end of August Reinhard had not been idle. While the Allies were swanning into Northern France he had ordered the 719.Infanterie-Division to pack up, leave its positions along the Holland and Zeeland coast and proceed in the direction of the Albert Canal. Because the 719.Infanterie-Division still had little transport of its own on 4 September 1944 Reinhard decided to commandeer all buses, trains and private means of transport that his troops could lay their hands on. Public transport in the west of the Netherlands became virtually non-existent. The whole undertaking was hasty and improvised. That same morning Reinhard inspected the defences at the southern part of the Moerdijk bridges. Driving back he was called to the phone. Reinhard then received orders from Christiansen (Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber der Niederlanden) to set up a defensive screen behind the Albert Canal between Antwerp and Hasselt. He would receive reinforcements in the form of Schwere Heeres Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 which was to be sent to the front as soon as it could be unloaded plus a battalion of Dutch SS-men, I/SS-Grenadier-Regiment Landstorm Nederland part of the 34.SS-Grenadier-Division.

Reinhard was delighted to get 559 (these could provide support in terms of several tracked vehicles such as Sturmgeschütz III and Jagdpanther), although it would not arrive until the following day, but manning a line of eighty kilometres with just six battalions of infantry was sheer madness. Then again he had no choice. He decided to send the Dutch SS-battalion to his left flank at Hasselt because they could get their soonest, the 719.Infanterie-Division would have to take care of the rest. Every second counted and Reinhard as yet had no idea what the situation was like at the canal. He decided to find out without further delay.
Reinhard only slept for a few hours and early on Tuesday 5 September he drove to his new advanced headquarters in Moergestel (near Tilburg) where he arrived around eight a.m. While his staff was settling in, he travelled on to the Albert Canal some forty kilometres further south. There was only one question on his mind: would his troops arrive in time or would the Allies win the race? As he neared the front-line Reinhard came across small groups of soldiers aimlessly hanging about. Angrily he told officers to assemble them into ad-hoc units. By accident he also stopped a Hauptmann who turned out to be the signals officer of the 85.Infanterie-Division. The officer had totally unexpected and wonderful news for Reinhard. He told Reinhard that his commanding officer, Generalleutnant Kurt Chill, had already set up blocking positions behind the Albert Canal, roughly between Herentals and Hasselt. 

Hans-Wolfgang Reinhard
Kommandierender General des LXXXVIII. Armeekorps 

Kurt Chill was on his way back from France with the remnants of his own as well as the 85.Infanterie-Division. Chill and his division had suffered heavily in Normandy just two weeks earlier at the combined onslaught by the 4th.Canadian Armoured Division and the 1st.Polish Armoured Division who were trying to close the gap near Falaise. Chill had just arrived in Turnhout when he learned of the fall of Brussels. As he had found in France that orders from higher up were often slow, he decided, on his own initiative, to assemble troops and set up a defence. The first time that mentioned was made of Kampfgruppe Chill was at noon on 5 September. This was the birth of Kampfgruppe Chill however Chill had no artillery, no anti-tank weapons and no Flak. And then there was the dubious quality of the men, none of whom had been trained as infantry. They certainly formed a motley crew, these companies of Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and security personnel among them some older Landesschützen who had been guarding German VIP’s in Paris until very recently. 

I’ve some idea of how the process of gathering them went. Some of the men were taken prisoner near Geel ten days later and told their interrogaters that they were all on the way back to the Heimat. They got as far as Turnhout where they were marshalled by officers into barracks and -to their indignation and dismay- locked in. Subsequently they were sent off to join the various battle groups. All were assembled by Chill and his officers and organised into three main Kampfgruppen, named Buchholz, Seidel and Dreyer after their commanding officers. 

Kurt Erich Chill
Generalleutnant

Instructed by Field-Marshal Montgomery (21st. Army Group) to push ahead in the perceived gap in the German front, Major-General A.H.S. Adair (Guards Armoured Division) sent his division northeast towards the Netherlands on Wednesday 6 September. The first stop was to be at the Albert Canal where crossing were to be seized. These were to be the start line for the advance to the river Rhine that was planned for the following day. Starting from Brussels, Adair ordered the 32nd.Guards Brigade to go to Beringen via Diest, while on the left the 5th.Guards Armoured Brigade would travel to Geel via Aarschot. The first major obstacle was the Albert Canal. As usual the armoured cars of the Household Cavalry led the advance, ‘A’ Squadron on the right was followed by the Welsh Guards Group and ‘D’ Squadron on the left was followed by the Grenadier Guards Group. Intelligence had assured the commanders that it would be a “nice day’s run” and that there would be slight opposition and that only at canals and bridges. The troops were in for a shock. Also that day Chill received reinforcements in form of part of the Schwere Heeres Panzerjäger-Abteilung 559 and a few Fallschirmjäger battalions, among which the famous Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6 of Oberstleutnant Friedrich-August von der Heydte, a unit which also made its presence in Reusel. 

 Friedrich-August Freiherr von der Heydte
Oberstleutnant

The morning of 7 September was meant to be the turning point for the Germans. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Chef des Oberkommando der Wehrmacht had ordered a reorganisation along the Western Front and a halt to the retreat. The codeword was Herbststurm (Autumn Gale). The reorganisation was to take effect from 7 September. For LXXXVIII.Armeekorps Reinhard issued an additional order, Herbststurm would be implemented as soon as the situation at Beringen was restored. He would be in for a long wait. The first tanks of the Welsh Guards had just entered the centre of Beringen as Reinhard’s order went out. The Welsh Guards immediately ran into some very strong opposition, at six a.m. on Thursday 7 September all fourteen Sturmgeschütze of Oberleutnant Franz Kopka arrived and most of Feld Ersatz Battalion 347 joined 559. While the Grenadiere climbed aboard the vehicles, Kopka informed the commanders of the vehicles about his plans for the attack on the Welsh Guards bridgehead. 

Here is a battle which has indeed been completely gone from the annals of military history it seems, and when it is referred to it is sometimes wrongly called the battle for Geel. The reasons for its neglect are probably twofold, it was a genuine defeat during a period that the Allies were generally winning, and it was largely fought while Market Garden was taken place. Because the fighting at Ten Aard was connected to the major airborne operation, as we shall see, the outcome was to have serious consequences for Market Garden. Kampfgruppe Chill took a major part in the battle, a good reason to look at it in some detail. It all began on Tuesday 12 September, the day that the 15th. Scottish Division took over from the 50th. Northumbrian Division south of Geel. After their take-over the 15th. Scottish Division would face the same adversary 50th. Northumbrian Division had, an improvised battle group under Oberstleutnant Dreyer. 

The Albert Canal and Ten Aard

Of the two battalions that reached the canal, the 6th. King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) was the first one to try and cross it. ‘A’ Company had been ordered forward to lead. Between Geel and Lock 7 there was a wood and unseen by the Germans they marched up the road accompanied only by the crunching of boots and the patter of rain dripping from the leaves. Meanwhile Kampfgruppe Chill received reinforcements in two battalions of the Fallschirm Ersatz-und Ausbildungs-Regiment Hermann Göring and II./SS-Grenadier-Regiment Landstorm Nederland. As soon as the KOSB left the security of the woods mortars and machine-guns opened fire on them. It got worse after the first section had crossed the small bridge. This section was engaged by two 2cm. guns while 8.8cm. guns and mortars opened fire on the rest of ‘A’ company. It was clear that a trap had been set by II./SS-Grenadier-Regiment Landstorm Nederland which had arrived in the nick of time to cover this obvious crossing- place. 

The second assault, by the 8th. Royal Scots, took place around the time the 6th. KOSB sank down exhausted after their failed attempt. Since all the bridges at Ten Aard had been completely destroyed, this crossing was made using assault-boats. Lieutenant-Colonel Lane Joynt had decided not to cross in the obvious place. Instead the crossing was to take place slightly west of Ten Aard. The battalions would then turn east and hopefully outflank the German defences at the bridges. Beginning at 05.30 hours a.m. the first two companies, ‘A’ and ‘B’, crossed in the face of some fire and set up the bridgehead. Then the other companies followed. The 8th. Royal Scots fanned out and occupied the village. The stiffest opposition was east of the village, from 2cm. Flak guns. It was now time to build a bridge and there things started to go wrong rather rapidly. At the end of Saturday 16 September the situation in Ten Aard was back to where it was on the first day, a stalemate. The only difference was that now there were three battalions inside the village instead of one. After three days the 8th. Royal Scots were no more than a shadow of their former selves and Brigadier Cockburn decided to get them out of the bridgehead as soon as possible. This could not be done during the night as the fighting continually flared up, but early the following morning, at 06.30 hours, the exhausted Royal Scots were finally pulled out. They had lost a staggering 230 officers and men.