· · ·   the Regi­ment moved on, a bat­tery at a time, to OT­TER­LOO.  The 5 Cana­dian Ar­moured Bri­gade had reached OT­TER­LOO the day before and had passed through to BARNE­VELD and NIJ­KERK.  The 11 Cana­dian Infan­try Bri­gade was de­tailed to mop up along the axis of advance and to hold the L of C.  The Irish were deployed in OT­TER­LOO, the CBH in BARNE­VELD and the Perth on the high ground EAST of LUN­TEREN.

60 bat­tery brought down fire in that area and sil­enced the mortar, firing ranges of from 1000 to 750 yards.  37 and 60 bat­ter­ies har­assed the roads run­ning NORTH and NORTH EAST out of OT­TER­LOO and 2/11 Me­dium Bat­tery of 3 Medium Regi­ment RA har­assed the con­cen­tra­tion camp on the main road running NORTH.  37 bat­tery were soon firing over open sights and attemp­ting to defend them­selves.  C and D com­pa­nies of the IrRC were close to C and D troops but the Bat­tery Com­mand Post was off by itself.  A momen­tary ray of hope was exper­ienced when 37 bat­tery repor­ted they heard our tanks but it turned out to be the troop of the GGHGs reti­ring to the town.  L.35056 BSM Lloyd, W.R. of 76 bat­tery man­aged to fight his way out of 76 Bat­tery Com­mand Post to RHQ where he repor­ted the sit­ua­tion in detail.  He then pro­cee­ded to IrRC Tac­ti­cal HQ and asked for one tank.  The Bat­tal­ion Com­man­der agreed and they found a Sgt wil­ling to go but the GGHG offi­cer re­fused per­mis­sion.  Major D.L. Gor­don, MBE at RHQ Com­mand Post had taken com­plete charge of the sit­ua­tion and was sys­tem­atic­ally divi­ding every report of the num­ber of enemy in the area by 100.  By this time the 76 bat­tery Com­mand Post was forced to eva­cu­ate and fall back on E troop since their house was on fire and their wire­less set smashed by enemy fire.  Lt. J.H. Stone imme­di­ately put their wire­less on the Regi­men­tal net and re-established com­mun­i­ca­tions with RHQ.  Capt L.S. Hand then fought his way out of E troop Com­mand Post and ar­rived at RHQ repor­ting that they were almost out of SA ammu­ni­tion and wan­ting some to take back.  How­ever, he was unable to get the ammu­ni­tion up to 76 bat­tery since RHQ was now com­pletely cut off from E troop and bur­ning vehi­cles had the area lit up like day.  F troop had with­drawn from their troop Com­mand Post and were dug in around their guns holding their fire until they had some­thing to shoot at.  Lt. A.M. Ross did a hang-up job of con­trol­ling his troop and man­ag­ing to keep moving from gun pit to gun pit.  All their guns were knocked out by ma­chine gun fire but they stayed there figh­ting with their small arms, through­out the en­tire night and killed 5 enemy on the actual pos­i­tion, woun­ded four more and took 22 pri­son­ers.  The pos­i­tion was sur­roun­ded for over 6½ hours, under mor­tar fire and with an occa­sional round from our own guns fal­ling in the area.  The dri­vers from this troop who were some 500 yards in rear defen­ded their vehi­cles until all nine were woun­ded and then fell back into the IrRC area.  37 bat­tery, who at this point were firing fuze 222 (air­burst) with the set­ting at .2 and fin­ding it very effec­tive, repor­ted an SP about 300 yards away and “Tank Alert” was or­dered and the guns hauled out of the pits so as to be able to en­gage.  The gun­ners had then lit­tle or no pro­tec­tion from mor­tar or SA fire but held on any­how.  H.54941 Sgt. Mutch­eson L.T. and the remainder of 37 bat­tery sig­nal ex­change crew were in a house about 300 yards NORTH of their Bat­tery Com­mand Post and did not even awake until 0430 hours!  Shortly after that they heard Jerry force the civil­ians to tell what room they were in but man­aged to shoot their way out and suc­cess­fully rejoin their bat­tery.  Two amu­sing inci­dents, amu­sing looked at in retro­spect, hap­pened about this time.  First, the 4 Cana­dian Anti-tank Regi­ment, who had a party just SOUTH across the road from RHQ, com­plained to HQ RCA that the 17 Field Regi­ment was firing SA into their area and would they please stop.  They evi­dently were not in the pic­ture as to what was hap­pen­ing at all.  The other thing was a result of the Me­dium bat­tery firing at such ranges as 2700.  They were barely clear­ing the houses and trees at that range with their shells when the inevi­table hap­pened.  The one tall buil­ding in OT­TER­LOO was the church tower but it was much too dark for the gun­ners to see it and after repor­ting “Shot” on one of their numer­ous tar­gets they had to report they had removed the church tower.  76 bat­tery fi­nally ran out of SA ammu­ni­tion and were or­dered to fall back to RHQ where the ammu­ni­tion was re-allot­ted and the defen­ces streng­thened by the men from Bat­tery HQ and E troop of 76 bat­tery.  The enemy came to within 50 yards of RHQ but did not pen­e­trate the pos­i­tion.  RHQ and HQ 4 Anti-Tank Regi­ment were now cut off from the other units in town and the enemy went right through onto the me­dium guns and the Divi­sional HQ but were stopped at both places.  Spe­cial men­tion must be given to the Me­dium gun­ners who having turned in their Tommy guns on leaving ITALY had not yet re­ceived their Sten guns.  They fought the enemy with their bare hands until they cap­tured enough SA to shoot back.  One patrol got through to 60 bat­tery area, but after a sharp clash with SA and gre­nades they were wiped out after cau­sing some cas­ualties.  L.35252 Sgt. Knight, E.A. dealt with the first Jerry by throt­tling him while one of his gun crew clubbed him with a rifle.  Two men of B troop were woun­ded by mor­tar fire but were evac­ua­ted by Lt. G.F.F. Rey­nolds down “snipers alley” in a jeep.  Once 37 bat­tery had begun firing over open sights to defend them­selves all tar­gets were given to 60 bat­tery who began to run short of ammu­ni­tion.  How­ever, the dri­vers and ammu­ni­tion num­bers drove their vehi­cle on to the pos­i­tion and dumped ammu­ni­tion while under SA and machine gun fire.  As day­light began to fil­ter through, the inten­sity of the enemy fire began to in­crease though the enemy by this time was not organ­ized enough to put in a pro­per attack but was trying to infil­trate by sections.  Major D.L. Gordon, MBE kept rei­ter­a­ting that we would stay and hold the pos­i­tion (he was still divi­ding by 100) al­though all our SA ammu­ni­tion was run­ning dan­ger­ously low.  Just as ever­y­one was down to his last maga­zine or less a group of Churchills and AVREs roared up the road from the EAST with all guns bla­zing.  Three or four of the men from E troop had missed RHQ when they retired from their pos­i­tion and had con­tac­ted an assault squad­ron RE.  They moved up at first light with all guns bla­zing since they were unable to find out the loca­tions of our pos­i­tions.  This was unfor­tu­nate as several cas­u­al­ties resul­ted but necessary under the cir­cum­stances.  After exchan­ging a few shots with the GGHGs the sit­ua­tion was clar­i­fied and they both put in a co-or­din­a­ted attack with flame-throw­ers up the two roads along which Jerry had dug in.  The Jer­ries were flushed out and mowed down at a great old rate and rare indeed was the man who did not heave a huge sigh of relief.  Things then qui­e­tened down con­si­der­ably but with quite a lot of sni­ping coming from the woods.  At 0845 hours the tanks and infan­try star­ted to clean up the woods and houses.  Lt A.M. Ross and F troop had not bo­thered to wait how­ever, and had cleared their own troop area and were bus­ily en­gaged in having a wash and get­ting break­fast ready.  BHQ and E troop of 76 bat­tery had breakfast at RHQ and once their area was repor­ted clear they re­turned to their position.  Many and great were the stor­ies that were passed around but most of the men were far more inter­es­ted in lying down and going to sleep.  The Medi­cal Offi­cer, Capt D.F. Mar­celus was kept pretty busy in the mor­ning there being 20 woun­ded in the regi­ment with numer­ous pri­soners woun­ded.  The total cas­u­al­ties suf­fered by the Regi­ment were 3 killed and 20 woun­ded, 3 guns knocked out by ma­chine gun fire, 7 vehi­cles, 3 trai­lers and 1 motor­cycle set on fire and burnt out.  The unit's claims of cas­u­al­ties inflic­ted on the enemy, which can never be ver­i­fied in total, al­though they include only those which were actu­ally seen, in­clude 31 killed, 9 woun­ded and 127 pri­soners.