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South
Wales Borderers Museum: Fact sheets Fact Sheet No. B23 This territorial battalion was mobilized at once on the outbreak of war. In October 1939, it went to Northern Ireland where collective training began. It returned to England in 1941 and began a period of migrations and ever-intensifying training. Morale and expectancy rose steadily until by May 1944, the battalion was ready and fit for war. During May the King inspected it and watched a demonstration of the well known method of 'blowing in' slit trenches with grenades, a variation of 'digging in' which the battalion had devised during its training. NORTH-WEST EUROPE, 1944-45 THE ODON The battalion went to Normandy with the 53rd (Welsh) Division towards the end of June 1944. It moved into battle positions near the river Odon on 30th June and spent a most exhausting and trying month in which it took part in no battles but suffered a steady drain of casualties from enemy shelling, and from patrolling-so severe was this that at the end of the month casualties had reached over one hundred and fifty. Two unpleasant weeks were passed on Hill 112 between the Odon and the Orne. A description of life in a slit trench on Hill 112 is here, quoted from the Regimental History:- 'From where the hedgerows stopped and the naked area of the hill began,
about 1,000 yards was visible in every forward direction. Within that
area the explosion of shells and mortar bombs was a regular feature of
the landscape....... At first sight it would appear that 112 was unoccupied,
the reason being that every sane man was in his slit-trench. After a time
one would see helmets and the occasional runner, signaller mending a broken
line, or other figures on essential duty moving about-all ears-from hole
to hole. Those on the crest were completely imprisoned in their holes
during the hours of light. Everyone of these slits had been torn by sweat
and labour from a grudging Mother Earth because her soil on 112 was a
compounded mass of quartz, flint and rock bedded under a superficial layer
of sand. Mine was an individual affair, just large enough to lie down
in with knees bent, and deep enough to take me up to the shoulders standing.
Lumps of quartz of flint stuck out of the sides and on the bottom was
spread a gas cape and a blanket, supplemented at night by my greatcoat.
These things were at all times full of sand which showered down from the
walls at every move. Standing up, my chest was level with the ground,
but this was possible at one end only for I had covered up the rest of
the slit with branches, rough turf and spoil from the trench . . . (as)
protection . . . from flying fragments of German metal. FALAISE In the battle of the Falaise Gap the battalion fought three separate actions - at Le Logis they had the task of clearing the village and seizing the high ground beyond it. This was successfully accomplished in spite of stiff German resistance, which caused heavy casualties. At Leffard they again cleared the village in the face of heavy enemy fire. These actions were extremely hard fighting in which the battalion lost more men than in any of its later large scale battles and as a result 'A' and 'B' Companies had to be amalgamated and a new 'B' Company formed of men of the 54th East Lancashire Regiment which had been disbanded. Lieutenant F Evans, a Canadian officer commanding a platoon of 'C' Company distinguished himself at Leffard by reaching his objective with only seven men, who proceeded to drive off a counter attack launched by some forty Germans. This was typical of the spirit and determination of the battalion in these two battles. The third action near Falaise was at Necy. Here the battalion made a silent night advance through sleeping Germans, who came out of their billets in the morning to find themselves faced by the 2nd Monmouthshires. The anti-tank guns lagged behind and the battalion blockaded the roads with farm carts and carriers and laid grenades. A nasty moment came however when three German Tiger Tanks appeared, passed unscathed through 'D' Company's barrage of pistol and bren gun fire, knocked aside a half-track truck and the Commanding Officer's carrier blocking the road and went careering through 'C' Company and battalion 'HQ' and headed towards 'B' Company. Here the second tank exploded a necklace of Hawkin's grenades and swerved into the bank, the third tank ran into it and wedged its gun in its blanket bin. 'B' Company fired on the tanks and their crews baled out. By midday the Germans had been mopped up and the battalion was firmly established in the area, a strong position which dominated Falaise from the south-east. Casualties had been light and the battalion had captured over a hundred prisoners, two tanks and many vehicles. From Falaise the 2nd Monmouthshires began sweeping towards Antwerp, clearing woods by day and moving at night. They liberated Merville where the population went wild with joy, and passed in September through Wytschacte, where the survivors of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Monmouthshires, amalgamated after the second battle of Ypres, had held the line in 1915. The battalion fought its next action at Voorheide on the Antwerp-Turnhout Canal. THE NEDDERIJN The attack went in darkness and rain, three companies took the village of Voorheide. At 3 a.m. the Germans launched a vicious counter attack. The following description is quoted from an eye witness account in the Regimental History:- 'The enemy ... counter attacked out of the dark, four companies for a time the village was in complete recipes for continued living were to stay in a slit and shoot Germans off the windy skyline or stay in a e dim windowsill. In the latter case the cost of bad shooting was a hand grenade thrown into the room. . . At one time Voorheide was held by both German and British, one on the outside of the houses, and the other inside. invitations to ' surrender-you are surrounded' were met by streams of good British verbal obscenities and a burst of automatic sten from skylight or cellar peephole. it was a victory of tenacity and courage in the face of dark odds. . . The outcome was a sort of sudden awakening to the fact that we had achieved a positive victory won by the personal guts of each fighting individual battling in his own particular corner of the common nightmare. It was a 'Soldier's Battle' and a triumph for the fighting spirit of the battalion'. By morning the Germans had withdrawn with heavy losses. For this action the battalion won two MCs and one MM and earned the congratulations of the Divisional Commander. THE LOWER MAAS On 22nd October the battalion took part in the attack on S'Hertogenboch. Its task was to clear the country around a straggling village street running along a dyke leading to the outskirts of the town. On the first day it advanced three thousand yards and took two hundred and fifty-five prisoners, winning four MMs into the bargain. On the second day 'A' Company found itself faced with a tricky problem. The Germans' strength was on a slight rise where there were some houses and the road and the dyke ran together for a while. The road approach was exposed while the dyke one was close and the enemy unlocated. Major Deane, commanding the company, sent flame throwers in an all-out attack up the road and ordered the infantry in from the right after them in his words: 'The boys went in like demons and went straight through, shooting from the hip any Bosch who had not dived for cover from the flame, which was terrific. Not wishing to lose the advantage, I took the original left platoon forward immediately behind and slightly right of the attacking party and started mopping up. The right platoon saw what was happening and did likewise. . . . There were some scraps of really close infantry and tank co-operation and the whole party became a mass of fighting. The Bosch (those not near the flame) were still fighting, but our boys were on top of them and were really vicious-result : we killed many and captured forty-two, losing fifteen wounded and one killed'. In thirty-six hours fighting near S'Hertogeaboch the battalion covered nearly seven thousand yards and knocked out two German battalions. In this battle flame-throwers proved themselves a most effective weapon - the enemy were literally burned out of hideouts in houses, farmyards and dykes. THE OURTHE On 16th December the Germans launched a great offensive in the Ardennes, which was checked by the American armies. The end of December 1944 found the battalion taking part in the counteroffensive launched against the Germans in the Ardennes. In deep snow and icy cold the battalion moved up to attack a hill overlooking Rendeux Bas and then the village itself. 'B' Company approached the village along a road cut in a precipitous cliff. The village lay in a valley beyond a bend in the road. 11 Platoon, the men exhausted by a day's fighting in icy, weather with no food, advanced along the road and 12 Platoon along the wooded cliff top. 11 Platoon came across a road block of trees round the bend. The leading section crossed this but found the trees were mined. They came under intense fire and took refuge in a water mill. There the fire was so heavy that every man was wounded and they were cut off from the platoon. They left the mill and took up positions in the icy water on the river bank from which they prevented the Germans from coming close enough to bazooka the tanks held up at the road block. Having prevented this, they then fired on the Germans in the village ahead of them. For nine hours they harassed the enemy in spite of their own wounds. Only after dark were they finally evacuated. For this action the section commander, Corporal Hutton, who had conducted the fight in spite of a broken leg, was awarded the DCM. Meanwhile, 12 Platoon working along the cliff reached a bare slope and came under heavy fire. A section, which tried to rush the slope, was pinned down about half way across it. The survivors crouched beneath a fold in the ground until their leader, Corporal Fitzhugh found a way to the cover of some woods. There he waited until the next day, when he withdrew. He was awarded a DCM for his outstanding leadership and his attempts to rescue his wounded. With vehicles held up at the road block, with two sections lost and in face of determined German resistance from ideal defensive positions and with the men exhausted by a day's fighting in icy weather with no food, 'B' Company were unable to advance. 'C' and 'D' Companies launched attacks, which failed to dislodge the enemy. A sharp drop in temperature caused some of the shells directed against the Germans to fall on 'B' Company. The battalion was suffering much from exposure and fatigue and on 6th January it was relieved. The objective for which it had fought so hard was not captured until the Germans withdrew owing to pressure elsewhere. THE RHINELAND, THE REICHSWALD, WEEZE On 19th January the battalion moved to Holland and began to train in an atmosphere of rising excitement for the battle through the Reichswald, which brought the Allies through the northern Siegfried Line to the banks of the Rhine. The Reichswald is a great forest on German soil east of Nijmegen. The battalion moved into battle on the 8th February. In this battle of the Reichswald they were to distinguish themselves on numerous occasions. Particularly notable was the action of Sergeant Williams who took two men to investigate a farmhouse occupied by Germans. The sentry gave a bird call, which they promptly imitated. They then silenced him and attacked the house with grenades and fire. So effective was their attack that the thirty German parachutists in the house promptly surrendered. For this action, Sergeant GD Williams got an MM. On 24th February south of Goch the battalion fought another spirited action to dislodge the enemy from a strip of woodland. All objectives were gained but of 'B' Company's one hundred and twenty men, only forty reached their objective and of eighteen tanks supporting the regiment, fourteen had been knocked out by the end of the day. The fighting was extremely heavy and the battalion was continuously under shell and mortar fire. On 7th March when the battalion was withdrawn for rest it had been a month continuously in action and had suffered over three hundred casualties. THE ALLER In late March and early April the battalion was moving across Germany. On 11th April they attacked Rethem on the River Aller. At Rethem was one of the few bridges in the area and earlier attacks had failed to dislodge the enemy. 'B' Company was given the task of capturing a group of farm buildings and then a railway embankment on the edge of the town. 'C' Company was to pass through them and take the town. The approaches to these objectives were open and flat. 'B' Company took the farm under heavy fire and then advanced under a smoke screen towards the embankment. The screen was inadequate and they were driven back. More smoke was laid and another attack launched in which heavy fighting took place against Germans entrenched between the farm and the embankment. The smoke drifted away leaving the men exposed but they pushed gallantly on for another hundred yards before being pinned down only, fifty yards from the Germans on the embankment. The men crouched in shell craters and about a third of the company were killed or wounded. The predicament of these platoons was not known to Company 'HQ' as they were obscured by smoke. Meanwhile, 'D' Company advancing on the left, reached a similar 'impasse' and both companies eventually had to be withdrawn under a smoke screen. But the enemy withdrew after the attack and the battalion was able to occupy Rethem the next morning. 'B' Company had killed thirty Germans in front of the embankment for the loss of eighteen killed and they had shattered the morale of the Germans opposing them-the battalion was congratulated by higher commanders for this action. Rethem was the last big action fought by the 2nd Monmouthshires. By 4th
May they had reached Hamburg and on 5th May the campaign ended. The battalion
remained in Germany until November when it moved to Italy, where it remained
until passing into 'suspended animation' on 24th September 1946. Locations of Second Battalion
Commanding Officers, Second Battalion
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