Club Routes

In Normandy 30 Corps included the 50th (Northumbrian) Division which landed on Gold Beach. It quickly overwhelmed the German defenders and had linked up with the British I Corps by the end of D-Day. The Corps launched Operation Perch. It made slow gains facing stiff resistance but by 10 June had linked up with US forces advancing from Omaha Beach. On 12 June, the Germans had a gap in their front lines near the Town of Caumont-l'Éventé. The 7th Armoured Division was sent to exploit the gap and head towards Villers-Bocage in an attempt to outflank the German Panzer-Lehr-Division and force them to withdraw, resulting in the Battle of Villers-Bocage. This attack was thwarted by elements of the Panzer Lehr Division and the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion. The Commander of 30 Corps, Lieutenant General Gerard Bucknall was heavily criticised for his decisions during the operation and battle. The Corps was then involved in a battle of attrition with only minor gains. On 25th July, the Americans launched Operation Cobra, an attack on German positions on the western end of the Contention Peninsula. The British Army launched Operation Bluecoat to support the attack. VIII Corps, on the right flank made considerable progress but 30 Corps was sluggish. Montgomery replaced Bucknall with Brian Horrocks, a veteran of North Africa. The performance of 30 Corps improved considerably and it kept up with the other British Corps during the battle for the Falaise Gap. After the German collapse, 30 Corps quickly advanced north-east and liberated Brussels and Antwerp in Belgium. There the advance was halted because of a shortage of fuel. Elements of Guards Armoured and the 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment managed to secure a bridge across the Maas-Schelde canal into the Netherlands. This bridge was nicknamed Joe's Bridge in honour of Lieutenant Colonel Joe Vandeleur, Commander of the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards who captured the bridge. Operation Market Garden After the success in France and Belgium, General Montgomery commanding the 21st Army Group turned his attention to outflanking the Siegfried Line and invading the Ruhr. This required passing a number of choke points over water obstacles, the last of them a road bridge at Arnhem, allowing ground troops to trap the 15th Army, and split it from the 1st Parachute Army on the way around the northern flank of the Siegfried Line. To do this, he requested from General Eisenhower to deploy the 1st Allied Airborne Army, with the US 101st Airborne Division dropped at Eindhoven, to secure the Son and Wilhelmina Canal bridges, the US 82nd dropped at Nijmegen, to secure the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, while the British 1st Airborne dropped at Arnhem, to secure the bridgehead over the Neder Rijn. This would become the MARKET part of the operation. The 30 Corps which consisted of about 50,000 men would advance along the main axis of the British 2 Army's line of the offensive, and pass through Arnhem within 48 hours, and continue into Germany. This was to be the GARDEN part of the operation. Operation Market Garden commenced at 14:00H on Sunday 17 September 1944, with the artillery preparation by 350 guns at 14:35] It was to be the most ambitious ground offensive operation by the British Army in the war so far. However it was also beset by problems. The ground was assessed to be too soft to accommodate the Sherman tanks of the leading Irish Guards Battle Group, forcing the entire Guards Division to stay on the single highway. As the 30 Corps advanced north-east, it became obvious that the single highway was prone to traffic jams and was extremely vulnerable to enemy counterattacks. The lead elements of 30 Corps, Guards Armoured Division were ambushed by German antitank defences, causing delays to the advance while the infantry dealt with the enemy. As a result, they were short of the 82nd Airborne Division's objectives, having not even reached the 101st Airborne Division's troops by the end of the first day.