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Scot Liberated Dutch Town On Bicycle

Discussion in 'WWII Today' started by GRW, Sep 28, 2014.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    The true life war stories are always more amazing than the fictional ones to me.
    "A SECOND World War veteran has relived the moment he liberated a Dutch town from Nazis – on his bicycle.

    During the critical stages of conflict in the Netherlands in 1944, the Inns Court Regiment, nicknamed The Devil’s Own, were sent to the country.

    Angus Mitchell, a 20-year-old lieutenant at the time, commanded a small troop of eight men and three armoured cars.

    The men had been dispatched to the town of Boxmeer with orders to find crossings along the River Maas, about two miles from the current border, on 26 September 1944. Another troop with similar instructions had come under heavy fire and was captured by the Germans.

    Mr Mitchell and his men waited beside a railway track outside Boxmeer, when they were joined by a Dutch resistance fighter who claimed the Germans had withdrawn.

    As the most senior officer, Mr Mitchell decided to trust the man, named Frans, and together they cycled into Boxmeer to see whether the area was clear.

    Speaking on the 70th anniversary of the liberation, Mr Mitchell, of Inverleith, Edinburgh, said: “We were told to wait at a certain railway line, just outside the town of Boxmeer, which is only a mile from the river. On the other side, the RAF had orders to shoot up any vehicles moving on the other side.

    “I said ‘we can’t move forward because the RAF may shoot us up’. He suggested we should borrow bicycles from the pub and go into Boxmeer to have a look, so I did. I was the senior officer present and the only person who could do it.

    “As our cars could not safely go further at that point, Frans and I borrowed bicycles from an inn and had a short cycle ride into the town to make sure it was clear of enemy troops.

    “That didn’t take very long. I guess, ten minutes to cycle into the town. I checked that it was free from Germans.

    “It was really a rather pleasant little bike ride. I was the first British solder into Boxmeer, but I wasn’t being kissed by beautiful Dutch girls or anything.

    “I checked it was free from Germans. I went back to my troop and radioed my squadron. By that time we hoped the RAF had been called off so we would not be shot up by them.”

    The troops who soon moved into town were greeted with cheers by around 5,000 people."
    http://www.scotsman.com/news/scotland/top-stories/the-scot-who-liberated-a-dutch-town-on-a-bicycle-1-3555829
     
  2. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    A good story, Gordon. You're right, truth is always better than fiction.
     
  3. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    Technically Frans and his friends are the liberators of Boxmeer. Mr Mitchell was the first Scott.
     
  4. Drew5233

    Drew5233 Member

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    315912 Lieutenant John Angus Macbeth Mitchell Military Cross, Inns of Court Regiment

    From the Normandy Landings until the completion of this campaign, except for a period of a fortnight when he was away suffering from wounds, this officer has commanded a troop of armoured cars with conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. At all times his skill and dash has been exceptional, and his behaviour under fire over a long period has been a wonderful example to his men. On 29 March 1945, and for two days that followed, Lieut Mitchell's troop led the advance of 6th Airborne Div on one of their axis. With cool courage and complete disregard for his own safety, he remained personally under heavy fire for a long period to obtain information of strong enemy positions that were holding up the advance, and on another occasion remained to direct mortar fire against enemy positions under extremely heavy fire, in order that our advance could continue. On innumerable occasions Lieut Mitchell's devotion to duty has been exemplary.

    Gazetted 24th January 1946
     
  5. Drew5233

    Drew5233 Member

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    Not much in the units war diary. He joined the regiment on the 6th Sept 1944 according to the Officers Field Returns which is odd when reading the citation.

    [​IMG]
     
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  6. Ariwara

    Ariwara New Member

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    I'm one of Angus Mitchell's children. In answer to Drew5233, he was off wounded from 15 August (west of the Falaise pocket) to 6 September. In answer to Kommodore, my father always emphasises his admiration of the people of the Netherlands in 1944 (see end of extract from his unpublished memoirs below) and will say that Frans (sadly killed in action later that year) was in truth the first 'liberator' of Boxmeer. This is his account of July-September 1944 in his own words. Steel splinters were still coming out of his face a few years ago!

    "On 1 July we disembarked with dry feet on the Mulberry harbour at Courseulles, and drove forward a few miles to the village of Reviers. I was then made commander of 5 Troop in B Squadron, replacing an officer who went to fill a vacancy in C Squadron. My troop had two Daimler armoured cars and two Dingo scout cars (I have Dinkytoy models of both vehicles), with a Sergeant, two Corporals and 6 troopers. I was the youngest at 19, so the older men may well have felt wary of their inexperienced new officer. I disliked having to censor their letters home (to ensure that they did not contain any military secrets); one trooper had a wife called “Louvain Mons”, showing that she had been born in 1914 when the Germans invaded Belgium.

    Each vehicle carried its own rations, and one of the troopers would cook a meal for the rest of us over a tin of sand laced with petrol. Our tinned food usually came in a box for 10 men for 2 days, including powdered tea, cigarettes and toilet paper; this could often be supplemented locally by potatoes and other farm produce in exchange for cigarettes. We usually slept in small tents beside our vehicles, unless an empty building was available.

    On 7 July we went forward to the front line - not in our armoured cars but in trenches north-west of Caen recently occupied by Canadian infantry; the carcasses of unburied cows killed by gunfire left a nasty stench. Here we had a grandstand view of the huge RAF raid on Caen by Lancaster bombers, preceding the main ground assault on the following day, when we returned to our cars for reconnaissance around Carpiquet aerodrome. For the first time I saw a nervous German soldier surrendering with a white cloth.

    In the next few weeks the infantry and tanks had much heavy fighting, but the armoured cars were mainly held in reserve (like cavalry divisions in World War 1) for a possible breakthrough. In early August the regiment began to reconnoitre south of Caumont with 11th Armoured Division, and my Squadron leader, Major Read, was killed by a mortar bomb about 40 yards away from my car. As the Germans began to retreat, our patrols could move forward cautiously, but had to look out for snipers, mines and booby-traps. I found one dead German whose boots had been removed, probably by a French farmer.

    On 15 August my troop was reconnoitring north of Vassy when I was wounded by rifle fire. I was standing as usual with my head and shoulders above the car turret to see better, and a well-aimed German bullet hit the periscope in front of my chest; it sent bits of metal into my right cheek, but luckily missed my eyes. In line with our normal drill when meeting opposition, we put down smoke, reversed round a corner, and radioed back a report to Squadron HQ. As my face was bleeding freely, I had to leave my Sergeant in command of the troop and be driven back to HQ to be bandaged up by the regimental doctor.

    I was then taken by ambulance about 40 km to a Canadian Military Hospital in tents outside Bayeux, where I was anaesthetised to allow a surgeon to remove several bits of metal from my face. I wrote home to my parents the next day, and this letter reached them some days before the official telegram from the War Office. We were very well cared for by the Canadian doctors and nurses, and our morale was further improved by the attractive Red Cross girls - my first female contact since leaving Britain, since most French civilians had left the area. I had my 20th birthday there, but do not remember any celebration.

    At first I could not shave, but after a week I shaved off my growing beard (not allowed in the British Army) and kept a short moustache - but only for about 6 months, when I grew tired of it. I was now entitled to wear a wound stripe on the sleeve of my uniform. The small scar on my cheek is now barely visible, but was sometimes mistaken for a duelling scar of the kind often seen on the faces of German students before the war.

    I was discharged from hospital after about 10 days, and was posted to a Forward Delivery Squadron near Bayeux with orders to take some armoured cars and reinforcement troops back to rejoin the regiment. In late August the Germans had lost the battle of Normandy and were retreating fast to Belgium, so I missed the exciting “Great Swan” when the regiment led the 11th Armoured Division swiftly through Northern France into Belgium. It took us over 2 weeks to drive through Normandy, cross the Seine on a new Bailey bridge, cross the frontier into Belgium, and at last catch up with the regiment at Wilrijk, on the outskirts of Antwerp; everywhere we were warmly greeted as liberators by the French and Belgians after 4 years of German occupation.

    Belgium and the Netherlands
    I returned to B Squadron in September as troop leader of a small troop of 8 men in two armoured cars and a “Sod” - a Daimler whose turret had been removed to turn it into a scout car. Our new squadron leader was Major Pat Smyly, who was a regular soldier from a cavalry regiment; the second-in-command of B Squadron was “Doc” O’Connor, who was later a linguistics Professor in London University. In early September we patrolled along the banks of the Albert Canal, and then up to the Escaut Canal flanking the Guards Armoured Division, but we saw little sign of German activity on the other side.

    On 17 September the “Market Garden” operation began; airborne troops were dropped at Arnhem with the aim of capturing a crossing over the Rhine, while the Second Army fought its way up from Belgium to join them. The role of 11th Armoured Division was to widen the right flank of the narrow corridor made through Holland by the Guards Armoured Division. We were as warmly welcomed by the Dutch as we had been in Belgium, but met a good deal of enemy opposition; in one empty house in Asten I found some excellent German maps of the area, much better than the maps provided to us - but unfortunately without any markings of enemy operations.

    Boxmeer
    The battle of Arnhem ended sadly on 26 September with the evacuation of the remaining airborne troops across the Rhine to rejoin the Second Army. This was also a memorable day for me, about 20 miles to the South of Arnhem; we had by then reached Saint Anthonis, some 5 miles away from the River Maas, and our task was to reconnoitre up to the river to look for possible crossing places. The Germans were thin on the ground in that area, fighting a rearguard action to slow us down.

    On the following day, my troop of three armoured cars was one of four troops ordered to reconnoitre up to the river on separate routes to look for possible crossing places. As one of the other troops approached a railway bridge over the Maas, it was blown up by the Germans. Another troop leader and his driver were wounded and captured nearby, and spent the next 8 months in German prison camps.

    My troop was luckier, and did not meet any opposition during the morning. We were ordered to stop when we reached a railway line two miles south of the Maas, as any vehicle movements beyond that line would be attacked by RAF Typhoons. A young Dutchman called Frans, wearing the orange arm-band of the Resistance, came up to me and said “Why have you halted here? The Moff (Dutch slang for the Germans) have just left Boxmeer” - the town beyond the railway. As our cars could not safely go further at that point, Frans and I borrowed bicycles from an inn, and had a short cycle ride into the town to make sure that it was clear of enemy troops. I reported this back to my squadron leader on the radio, and soon after we were ordered to cross the railway and enter the town. We earnestly hoped that the RAF had been told to hold their fire; thank goodness they did so!

    As the first British troops into Boxmeer, we were of course enthusiastically welcomed as liberators - a heart-warming experience which we had enjoyed several times before in France and Belgium. We could not stay there long, however, as we had to reconnoitre two possible crossings over the Maas; neither of these had any boats visible, and we were fired at ineffectively from the other side. We stayed in the area for several weeks, sometimes climbing high buildings to watch our enemies across the river. After miles of flat land, we now enjoyed our first sight of low hills in Germany 10 miles away.

    We did not then suspect, however, that the Maas would remain as the front line for another 5 months. The Germans often sent patrols over the river to blow up our observation posts, and the good people of Boxmeer had to be evacuated southwards for their own safety. Nobody in this area had any news of their relations in the Northern Netherlands, who remained under German occupation until the end of the War and suffered great hunger through the winter of 1944-45.

    In September 1994 Ann and I went back to Boxmeer to join in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation. I laid a wreath from my old regiment at the town’s war memorial, and gave a talk to the citizens (with a short introduction in Dutch, but mainly in English) about our arrival in the area. People brought out their photographs and mementos of the German occupation for an exhibition, and the librarian wrote a book “Oorlog aan de Maas” (War on the Maas), which includes a photograph of me and my troop. As the first British soldier to enter the town, I was presented with a bronze figure of the civic emblem, a fierce goat (bok means goat, so Boxmeer means goat’s lake). It was a very sentimental occasion for an old soldier.

    As recent events in Afghanistan have shown, war reports tend to highlight the military side and to give less attention to the grievous effect on civilians in the area. There are many fine examples of the bravery of the Dutch civilians who risked their lives in helping the allies, and I later met a Dutch Jew called Max Israel (married to our 1953 au pair, Olga Leemhuis) who as a boy was hidden on a farm to save him from the Nazi death camps. My visits to the Netherlands during and since the war left me with warm admiration for the courage and kindliness of its brave people; I feel proud to have helped to liberate them from German occupation, and to have been awarded after the war the fourth class of the Dutch Order of Oranje-Nassau (this has the title of “Ridder” in Dutch and “Knight” in English, but is not equivalent to a British knighthood). "
     
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