With the Jocks: A Visit to the Battlefields of Peter White: The Battle for Haus Loo: 9th March 1945

Lieutenant Peter White details the attack on Haus Loo by 4th Bn KOSB on pages 223-248 of 'With the Jocks'. The objective was located 2km NNE of the town of Alpon and this attack by the 52nd (Lowland) Division came at the end of Operation VERITABLE. The Germans blew the last bridges over the Rhine at Wesel on the morning of 10 March 1945.

Haus Loo was a moated fortified house, no longer in existence. A description of the site is taken from this German website:

In the Middle Ages there was a hunting lodge of the Dukes of Kleve in the damp lowlands of a former arm of the Rhine, mentioned for the first time in the 11th Century. The castle, which was inhabited until the beginning of the 19th Century, had a double wall and moat, was demolished in the 19th Century and was used to rebuild the farm buildings of today's Haus Loo. On the site of the former outer bailey, Haus Loo was built in 1837 as a classicist country residence, typical of landed nobility in Prussia in the 19th Century. (https://www.haus-loo.de/haus-loo)

North West Europe

Sector of battle (A: Alpen B: Haus Loo)

GSGS series 4414. Sheet 4405, Third Edition (AEF). Copied from German Topographische Karte 1:25,000 Sheet 4405 dated 1936 and photolithographed by the British Ordnance Survey in 1944. Lambert modified conical orthomorphic projection. Nord de Guerre Grid.

Modern Topographic L4504 Moers, 1:50,000

I visited the site of the battle in Spring 2003. Peter White provided quite detailed descriptions of his journeys as well as accurate place names. As the Platoon commander attending Orders Groups ('O Groups') where the plans of attack were briefed in detail, I expected he would have an accurate recollection of his movements. Further, as he himself noted, he kept an illicit diary during the war and this was subsequently written up - with memories still fresh, whilst based with the 1st Battalion in Egypt, awaiting his demobilisation. He may also have retained items such as Orders or maps.

My retracing of what I took to believe his approach route is based on his verbal description, the one illustration he did, and my appreciation of the ground. A soldier for 7 years, I put myself in his position of how would I have described his journey. Over and above those considerations, I have noted a few landmarks. First and best, the objective of Haus Loo; the moated island is unique and exactly as described. Second, the crossroads of the track and railway as depicted in the sketch. Third, I have assumed that Peter White's advance started approximately where I started my own journey at the top of the prominent escarpment. It is similar to the description: the farm buildings, possible pub and a bridge across a watercourse is approximate to his description. An advance started further south would have put the KOSB effectively across the boundary to the 7th Bn The Cameronians, advancing on the northern edge of the town of Alpon. Conversely, a start further north would have left a large gap between the 7th Cameronians and Peter White's battalion. Notwithstanding, please note that there is a possibility some of my route may be incorrect.

Here, in two maps, is the line of advance I believe Peter White took with B Coy, 4th KOSB at the Battle of Haus Loo.

The History of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) Vol 3, 1933-46, p. 213.

GSGS series 4414. Sheet 4405, Third Edition (AEF).

My own route, black dotted line.

I think the route Peter White is best described in his own words; the text below is copyright 'With The Jocks' by Peter White, Sutton Publishing (2001). The page references are from the 2002 paperback version.

Photo Orientation

Background

Our objective was now to be the moated farm of Haus Loo. In our initial briefing before leaving Issum we were to have started the attack from the Xanten-Alpen railway line, clear Haus Loo, then, curving round in an arc from the left, clear some houses, first on the left, then some more on the right, check for enemy in a small wood, then dig in on the cross-roads at Bonning. p.229.

We were to move off to the start line for the attack at 0445 hours the next morning, 9 March, crossing the Alpen road to a ridge overlooking the railway line which we would have to cross 1,500 yards away over open country, with the farm, our objective, about 700 yards beyond that. p.230.

Groups of laden, push-cart tugging and dejected figures, clutching and comforting babies and children, walked out of the mist ahead – civilian refugees from the first objectives shelling in the valley below. We halted by a wayside heather patch. This was the start line. The first luminosity of the sky and a cold wisp of breeze swirling the mist foretold the dawn. The wonder and magic of the dawn’s beauty, always exciting, somehow seemed more beautiful than ever, with the grouped silhouettes of the Jocks against it and the poignant realisation that for many of us it would be our last. Each moment seemed of sufficient value to drink in with all one’s senses, even down to the pathetic, chirping attempt at a dawn chorus by a few explosive-stunned birds. p. 231.

Photo 1: View across field looking south-east, probably area where troops dug in before setting off. Was this the 'heather patch'?

Medium tanks appeared on the hill behind us and several roared down along the skyline, then raced back up again. This puzzled us a bit at first, and with Frank I made my way forward under cover of some trees to get a better look at what was going on down in the valley. p.232.

Photo 2: Edge of escarpment Could this be where the Medium tanks drove to draw the 88mm fire from their comrades below?

We could just make out the sprinkled figures of our two forward companies, tiny specks advancing slowly in line towards the railway embankment, halfway to Haus Loo. Dirty black splodges of smoke blossomed among them and drifted off over the fields. Several of the figures lay still behind the advancing line. Just then the 88mm anti-tank guns opened up heavily, sending their stray shots ricocheting with a most frightening sound into the bank and over our heads. They were after the tanks advancing with the Jocks below, and I then realised that the odd activities of the cruiser tanks on the skyline had been a brave effort to distract these guns in drawing their fire from the advancing Shermans. p.232.

The Advance

At last word came for us to move, 10 Platoon leading, followed by Advance Company HQ Rear. On our immediate left were the Guards [Guards Armoured Division], then the Canadians, and on our right Cameronians, the Royal Scots and in the distance the Americans, all piling in to the ‘Wesel Pocket’. p.233.

Photo 3: The escarpment where Peter White and Capt Frank Coutts (2ic B Company, obituary)

crept over to view the advance of A and D Coys below. I presume that the hillside was the bank into which the stray shots impacted.

We scrambled down a steep, wooded hill to a mud track, making for a bridge to cross a water obstacle after passing a farm in which we spotted a few German civilians pottering about the yard. By the bridge was a large cream-coloured building which seemed both a pub and a farm to look at, in which the regimental aid post had been set up. At the roadside by a newly laid tank bridge, a white-faced casualty sat, while another blood-streaked, bandage-draped figure staggered with a limp back from the front as we trudged forwards, alert, tense and watchful. p.233.

Photo 4: View looking back to previous shot location. The text mentions a 'cream-coloured building' both a 'pub and a farm' that was located 'by the bridge' where the Regimental Aid Post was located. The nearest building in the photo, on right hand side, could be this structure. It is about 50 yards away from the bridge over the culvert (likely watercourse over which was the 'newly laid tank bridge'). There was no evidence of another structure and the 1944 map, above, does not show a building immediately next to the watercourse.

My Platoon squeaked and clattered their way over and through a fence, Smyg just behind, with the Company spread out in arrowhead formation. Frank was somewhere out on the right. As the distance to the railway embankment narrowed, so the mortaring increased in its intensity. Some way ahead we could now make out the numerous scattered forms of A Company laying in and beside the shallow mortar craters.

Our thoughts were interrupted here by a new factor – some very loud whiplash cracks from a sniper firing at us from the right.

Smyg called me over to where he crouched in the stubble with Maj Stewart, and told me to take my chaps on up to the railway embankment and dig in there. Being the only one on my feet during this time, getting to and from Smyg was decidedly unhealthy, as the sniper gave me individual attention materialising in a series of deafening cracks from bullets passing near my head. p.234

Photo 5: Looking in the direction of the objective, Haus Loo, in distance to the North East. These are likely to be the fields in which B Company went to ground. It is exposed and the sniper fire was from the outskirts of Alpon, to the right hand side of the photo.

I was astonished to see from my watch that although the attack had started at eight that morning, it was already midday! Where on earth had the time gone to? I had just started digging in when a call came for me to go to an ‘O’ Group along the embankment to where Alan, Maj Stewart and several others were congregated in aa ground-hugging cluster beside a railway gangers’ small concrete hut. The bank was just tall enough to afford protection from machine gun fire from the other side of it if one adopted a shuffling, half-crawling stoop. p.235.

Photo 6: The view South East looking towards the railway embankment. Looking towards where Smyg and Company HQ was located. No gangers' hut remaining.

Our right flank was exposed because some factory buildings out there which were supposed to have been taken by the Cameronians had been establish as one of the sources of the sniper and machine gun fire. p. 235

Smyg asked me to take my Platoon over the embankment immediately and work our way over to the left against it, then lie there until the other platoons were in position for the attack to go in.

I formed the Platoon up on the near side of the railway embankment and after a lot of vocal effort, they followed me over well in one wave. As we skipped across the metals of the tracks, the crackle and hum of snipers’ bullets and machine gun fire spattered about exactly like a shower of hail. p.235-36.

The factory, source of MG and sniper fire, was the Lemken works approx. 300 yds South East of Peter White's position on the railway embankment. It was not cleared by the 6th Cameronians until late on 9th March.

Period view of the Lemken works, believed to manufacture agricultural machinery.

This is an illustration made by Peter White, showing an overvirew of the ground look North East from the railway embankment towards Haus Loo (top right corner). His note in the centre of the sketch highlights his position on the ground, reading 'Platoon HQ pinned down'.

Photo 7: To the best of my ability I climbed the larger tree in Photo 6 to capture the same view in Peter White's illustration. His perspective is impossible but a few key features stand out: the railway, the laneway on the left, the field boundary in centre mid-ground, and Haus Loo, distant.

Photo 8: View at top of railway embankment looking directly towards Haus Loo. Peter White's Platoon went over the railway here and then made their way to photo left.

The sniping was now heavy, sustained and accurate. Behind us the bank absorbed the numerous missiles with a loud, heavy thumping which came simultaneously to the sharp crackle of their passage through the air, and we were dismayed to find as we dashed and crawled the 150 yards to the left to get to the attack position that there was next to no cover at all.

Jerry, seeing us scuttling along, realised another attack was forming up, and gave us all he had. p. 236.

A cart track feathered with a few trees led from the farm objective to the railway line over which it crossed on our immediate left. The enemy had obviously registered this junction of the railway and the track as a defence fire task for his mortars and artillery. We were increasingly subjected, to mortaring especially, on a scale never previously met even at Heinsberg and which was never subsequently surpassed. p. 236.

Photo 9: Crossed over the railway and looking towards the lane/rail junction. The cart track runs L to R, and the area in the foreground was where Platoon HQ went to ground.

Photo 10: Looking South East from Peter White's position towards the ground from which the Platoon came: the '150 yards that was dashed and crawled'. Good appreciation of how exposed the KOSB's advance was to the fire from the factory on the skyline.

A series of violent bangs just behind and the revving of tank engines informed us that several Shermans were firing from a hull-down position on the far side of the railway bank. This was unfortunate as it brought immediate, accurate and heavy 88mm anti-tank fire from a concealed enemy gun in the woods bordering Haus Loo. Pte Jones, the parachutist, was crawling towards a culvert 10 yards away to have a look through when a black flash enveloped it and hid him from view. Another, a solid shot, fell short at immense velocity ploughing into the earth ahead, stretching the whole surface of the ground on which we lay and, to our amazement, such was the force of the impact that the earth heaved sluggishly like jelly to and fro. p. 237-38.

A line of mortar bombs fell heavily ahead and we moved on through the smoke still twirling and eddying as it blew back past us. How queer the seeming chances of their fall, and the thoughts that flitted through my mind. A surer hand than chance seemed to be guiding us, for had we moved off 30 seconds earlier the bombs would have coincided exactly with our stooping line of figures, hopping round craters and plodding forwards. p.240

Photo 11: I took this shot kneeling where the Platoon HQ was sheltering, Haus Loo distant centre. This would have been the ground into which the 88mm solid shot landed. The Very signal to advance was to have been fired right to left across the Platoon's front.

We could see the trees and high ground of Haus Loo looming through the smoke of explosives hanging in a through-drying fog above the grass. The low-lying ground was in part flooded. In this water and on the grass we were astonished and saddened to recognise the bodies of several of the chaps from the resto of the Company. More puzzled than ever we got through the water and climbed the sandy, wooded bank, which was seemingly deserted, working round to the right for more cover and at the same time realising that in some queer way the attack had gone in without the red Verey signals, and in consequence without us. In view of this I had reluctantly accepted the conclusion that both Smyg and Frank must have become casualties. p.241

Photo 13: On the objective: the embankment behind which the former moated castle of Haus Loo was situated.

Photo 14: Looking slight left of previous photo, cart track at left hand side.

Photo 15: Close up of the ground on the embankment, riddled with shrapnel and spent rounds to this day.

A dead German lay near the crest, and ahead the ground dropped away to a waterfilled moat surround an island, with a glimpse of the farm beyond. p.241

Photo 16: Looking South, top of embankment.

My chaps joined the rest of the Company in digging in as fast as they could in the explosives-tasting evening mist. They were just about dead beat. It was only the continuing fall of enemy projectiles round Haus Loo which prompted this additional burst of energy, for the day, which had started very early, had been a singularly demanding one. p.242.

Photo 17: Looking back towards Haus Loo, from the track leading to the main Alpon road.

Photo 18: Same position as photo 16, but looking towards the main Alpon road, the trees running across the skyline.

Photo 19: Looking toward Alpon and the Factory.

Photo 20: Similar view to photo 19, looking toward Alpon and the Factory.

Guards Armoured Division Accounts

Units of the Guards Armoured Division (32 Guards Brigade) were in action both prior to Peter White's battalion assault on Haus Loo and during the battle. On 8th March, 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards (2 SG) advanced from from the Bonninghardt high ground (down the gully I believe P.W. advanced) and their objective was to push the Germans back to the railway embankment (where P.W. took shelter). Their task included securing the Start Line for 4 KOSB and the armoured 5th Battalion Coldstream Guards (5 CG) for the attack the following day, 9th March.

The Scots Guards account sheds light on the start of Peter White's journey. Specifically, it names the watercourse over which he advanced as the River Romer. Further, the account identifies the bridge over the Romer which was to be secured by 2 SG to enable their advance. The bridge was nicknamed 'Nigel' after SG Capt N.H Barne MC, who led the reconnaissance patrol that identified the structure as intact. Further, the SG account also details that the bridge collapsed on 8th March ("Nigel is crumbling") - which would correlate to Peter White's account of seeing a "newly laid tank bridge" over the feature.

Overlays of 2 SG positions on 8th March and 5 CG and 4 KOSB advances on 9th March.