Many par­ties, dances and re­cep­tions were held.  The 2 i/c, Major D.L. Gor­don, MBE fi­nally got over his em­bar­ass­ment at being pre­sen­ted with bou­quets of flow­ers.  He also be­came ex­pert at giv­ing spee­ches tho­ugh the RHQ staff suf­fered con­si­der­ably be­ing used as gui­nea pigs.  The padre, H/Capt G.S. Fra­ser or­gan­ized sight see­ing trips to the scene of many of the fa­mous bat­tles of the last war.  On the 18th March the Divi­sion was wel­comed by Field Mar­shall Sir Ber­nard Law Mont­gom­ery who spoke to the of­fi­cers at YP­RES and to the men on the high­way just out­side WER­VIK.  The Regi­ment was in­spec­ted by the CRA Brig J.S. Ross, DSO and on the 21st March was visi­ted by the GOC-in-C Gen­eral Crerar.

's-HERTOGENBOSCH - 3 March 45.
THE ISLAND.

46.  At 0300 hours on the 23rd March the unit re­gret­fully said good­bye to their Bel­gian fri­ends and mo­ved through AN­TWERP to an area near 's-HER­TO­GEN­BOSCH.  Ev­ery­one was bil­let­ted in farm­houses and ac­com­mo­da­tion was very limi­ted.  The change from Bel­gium was es­pec­ially no­tice­able in lan­guage dif­fi­cul­ties, it be­ing im­pos­si­ble to un­der­stand the Dutch.  Great in­ter­est was shown in the VIs which pas­sed over fre­quently.  On the 28th March the FOOs and reps joined their re­spec­tive in­fan­try units and the fol­low­ing day the guns mo­ved and went into ac­tion on the “is­land” bet­ween NIJ­ME­GEN and ARN­HEM.  The Regi­ment was greatly spread out much to the de­light of the bat­ter­ies, RHQ be­ing far, far away.  Some of the gun pits and all com­mand posts had elec­tric lights, some­thing not even tho­ught of in a rest area in ITALY......  There was lit­tle ac­ti­vity aside from the oc­ca­sional buzz bomb in the area.  The OPs were able to do con­si­der­able shoot­ing since ob­ser­va­tion was ex­cel­lent and there was plenty of am­mu­ni­tion.  On the 2nd Ap­ril op­er­a­tion “QUICK AN­GER” was suc­cess­fully car­ried out, the is­land be­ing cleared as a first step pre­par­a­tory to form­ing a bridge­head across the NE­DER RIJN.
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