It was on 17th April, by which time the armoured col­umns had cleared Ot­ter­loo and advanced past Barne­veld, nine miles to the north­west, that the 17th Field Reg­i­ment fought the sharp lit­tle action that was to be­come known as the “Bat­tle of Ot­ter­loo.”  Dur­ing the after­noon of the 16th the field reg­i­ment, fol­low­ing up the 11th Infan­try Bri­gade, had de­ployed its bat­teries in Ot­ter­loo, which at that time was occu­pied by the Irish Reg­i­ment of Canada and Ge­neral Hoff­meis­ter's Divi­sional Head­quar­ters.  With the 17th Field was the bat­tery of the 3rd Me­dium Reg­i­ment R.A. 

The village was on one of the routes by which enemy groups were making a bela­ted with­drawal from the Ijs­sel west­ward to the Grebbe Line.  The sud­den incur­sion into Ot­ter­loo shortly after mid­night of a Ger­man patrol “yel­ling like a gang of fana­tics and firing their auto­ma­tic wea­pons madly” devel­oped into an assault by a body of Ger­mans esti­ma­ted at bet­ween 600 and 900.  First of Colo­nel Ran­kin's bat­ter­ies to open fire was the 76th which was being mor­tared and in dan­ger of being over­run.  The other two quickly joined in, and were soon firing over open sights and haras­sing the roads leading into the village.  All personnel of 17th Field and of Bri­ga­dier Ross's artil­lery head­quar­ters were closely invol­ved in the all-night action, respon­ding to the fire of the enemy with their own rifle and ma­chine-gun fire.  With ammu­ni­tion run­ning dan­ger­ously low, dri­vers and ammu­ni­tion num­bers drove their vehi­cles onto the gun posi­tions and dumped shells while under mor­tar and ma­chine-gun fire.  A shor­tage of small-arms ammu­ni­tion devel­oped, and on one occa­sion an intre­pid N.C.O. of the 60th Bat­tery, Sgt. E.A. Knight, who was to win the Dis­tin­guished Con­duct Medal that night, seized and throt­tled an intru­ding Ger­man while a com­pan­ion used his rifle butt to good effect.  At day­break a coun­ter-at­tack by the Irish, assis­ted by the tanks of Divi­sional Head­quar­ters, brought the figh­ting to a close.  In the 17th Field's most memor­able night of the war the gun­ners had inflic­ted an esti­mated 200 casual­ties on the enemy, while suf­fer­ing los­ses of three men killed and 30 woun­ded, as well as much damage to guns and equip­ment.  Besides the decor­a­tion to Sgt. Knight, the her­o­ism of its per­son­nel brought the Reg­i­ment two M.C.'s (Lt. A.M. Ross and Lt. J.H. Stone), an M.M. (Gnr. R. Bouchard), and six Men­tions in Des­patches.  Lit­tle won­der that a for­mer war­rant offi­cer with the Reg­i­ment was to remi­nisce years later: “The remain­ing act­ion in North-West Eur­ope was really dull after Ot­ter­loo.”