It appears that the Regiment was out of the line resting, or on leave in Brussels, until it took up its positions on the Rhine in preparation for the great set-piece battle to come, since there are no records of bases occupied or surveys undertaken until then. There is a strange exception in the case of C Troop who are shown on the HB report as holding a base in the Hochwald for the period 21 to 26 March. It was during the period that we were thus relaxing that 30 Corps had the unpleasant assignment of clearing the enemy out of the Reichwald and up to the banks of the Rhine from east of Nijmegen to the bank opposite Wesel.

When the progress of the Reichwald battle eventually enabled us to take up our positions on the banks of the Rhine, the first problem lay with getting the survey to the guns. On this occasion, since the surveyors were dealing with a prepared battle, they had to do what the Y Troop commander casually refers to as ‘some proper survey in order to fix the guns accurately for the battle ahead’. This meant performing the calculations necessary to put the whole of the Corps artillery on a common grid. The commander further comments:

"I had my HQ/Computer Centre in a farm behind a knoll on a bill about one mile from the Rhine. (We thoroughly enjoyed the farmer’s abandoned cellar in which there was a brine bath full of salted pork and lamb). While the barrage started for the battle some military police jeeps with machine guns mounted drove up followed by a convoy of staff cars and out stepped Winston. He proceeded with his staff and the news reel cameras up to our knoll as the gliders and paratroopers came over. Gunner Dodds offered him a special cup of sweet Sgt. Major’s tea which he accepted, purring with delight for the cameras, and then handed it back, saying he never touched the stuff, and called an aide forward for his Bovril (no doubt suitably laced). I had a 20 minute conversation with the great man as the troops flew overhead and had his analysis that the war was as good as over.

That was virtually the end of the serious survey work. We proceeded from the Rhine pell-mell up to Hamburg with no real action that I can remember."

Col. Clegg’s memorandum contains an interesting passage on this phase of the Regiment’s operations. He points out that because of the thaw and the morass it made of the countryside, as well as the vicious resistance put up by high class German divisions, progress through the Reichwald was slow. This limited the time the Regiment had to prepare the survey for the guns, collect the essential counter battery information and acquire as much data as possible about enemy dispositions within the forward FDL.s. The comments of the Survey Troop commander quoted above must be read within this context. The CO’s memorandum continues:

I think we had about ten days to find the hostile batteries and other information. In this build-up the flash spotters excelled themselves in their secondary role of locating forward defended localities. Though hindered by smoke screens, OPs were excellent and visibility generally good. From 8 OPs between 100 and 200 accurately map read spottings of enemy movement and positions reached RHQ each evening. Gradually the map (shown in Appendix C) developed and was issued or given to assaulting formations, and I had subsequent messages about its use and accuracy.

Apart from this, B Troop knocked off Wesel church spire. We knew it had observers in it. I also knew that two divisional artilleries were to deploy in full view of the spire in the corner of the Rhine opposite Wesel on the night before the night of the crossing. This meant one whole day for them in full view of Wesel spire.

We were given one gun and 20 rounds of ammunition. It was sited about 6000 yards from Wesel and the shell aimed to hit the ground 200 yards or so beyond the church, but with a time-fuse put on to burst just in front of the spire. All 4 Flash Spotter OPs lined on the spire - and bang! Flash Spotter HQ gives the necessary correction to the gun to bring its trajectory dead on to the spire: the time fuse is removed and replaced with a percussion cap. Two misses were followed by a satisfying flash on the stonework of the spire. Another 6 or 7 hits before our ammunition ration was finished. Still the spire stood firm.

Next day a repeat performance with no ammunition limit. The second or third hit caused the spire to wobble - increasing until it collapsed completely. A Troop a little later dealt similarly with another church."

The bases taken up by all the Troops of 7th Survey can be seen on the map of Regimental dispositions mentioned above as constituting Appendix C.

All three operational 4-Pen Sections were deployed within the loop of the Rhine which had Wesel at its apex on the German side. (They were

supplemented for the battle by a contingent from 10 Survey). The HB report cites bases centred on Ginderich and Buderich , occupied at different times by all three sections, and as can clearly be seen from the map, there were in fact three bases that faced both the sides and the top of the loop, so HBs from all directions could be ‘heard’. They were occupied at different times between 12 to 25 March. Collectively they were responsible for recording 146 HBs, 108 of which came from the base facing due north - that is, the left side of the loop and the woods on the other side of the river. This was not achieved without cost, one of the Section’s jeeps being blown up on a mine, causing several casualties. There was a sequel to this tragedy. After the war one of the friends of the wounded driver was looking through a feature article in ‘Picture Post’ about a convalescent home in Blighty, when he was startled to see a photograph of his wounded comrade surrounded by a bevy of attractive nurses. The driver seemed to be very satisfied with his lot!

D Troop had a long 10,000 metre base facing north east and ‘looking at’ the woods which lay about 4 to 5 kilometres on the other side of the river. The centre of the base lay just west of Xanten. However, in the 14 days of occupation the base registered 158 HBs, all of them guns, most situated in those woods. The AP in the charge of Sgt. Jones was heavily shelled in its forward and somewhat exposed position, and Sgt. Jones was subsequently awarded the MM for his cool-headedness in command.

The C Troop sound-ranging base lay to the north of D Troop’s, just west of the village of Wardt. Oddly, there is no record of their successes which most certainly would have included the longer range German guns deployed beyond the wooded country around Haldern, for they lay perpendicular to their base.

The purpose for all this preparation became evident on the 22 March when Wesel was heavily bombed. A gunner from 4-Pen tells his own succinct story:

"The 200 bomber raid on Wesel took place on the 22 March. Then, at 1730 hrs that day the entire artillery of the British Second Army opened up and continued until about 0900 bins on the 23rd.

At 1100 hours the Airborne attack went in and it was an impressive sight as the planes and gliders moved steadily across the sky as if on some invisible conveyor belt."

It is impossible to congeal the thoughts of all who watched that armada into a single impression. What were the parachutists standing at the doors thinking? - their objective probably. Was our work accurate enough to save their lives? Would the engineers get the bridges built quickly enough? How rapid would the advance over the Rhine then be?

The Survey Troops went forward with the armoured divisions, but the remainder of the Regiment was grounded until mid-April. There was then a swift move forward on the axis Rheine - Osnabruck - over River Weser. D Troop deployed three times in the region of Verden (about 20 miles south-east of Bremen) and over nine days registered 75 HBs, but this was the last of the enemy’s resistance.

The 4-Pen Sections are shown to have set up about 20 bases on the general axis Rheine - Osnabruck - S. of Bremen, advantage no doubt being taken of their flexibility. One of the most significant deployments was at Reide in support of the 53 Division attack on Bremen.

Understandably, memories of those days are now episodic. No matter how horrifying may have been the ravages of war, such as in the Falaise gap, nothing prepared us for the sight of those relics of human degradation that roamed the roadsides of the area around Belsen. Clad in the brown and cream broad-striped uniforms that hung on them as on scarecrows, they struggled along, their skeletal heads bowed as though the shame was theirs, going one knew not where. Further along, nearer Hamburg, there was talk of ‘horror pits’ at Schneverdingen. The whole war seemed justified in an instant.

Even during this last stage there were casualties. A young X Troop gunner, going to wash one evening with a white towel around his shoulders and back, presented an ideal target to a sniper - fortunately he was not fatally wounded. There were several stories of groups of German soldiers emerging from woods and surrendering to a solitary British ‘Tommy’. An RAF pilot ran out of the bushes to hail the members of a 4-Pen Section, saying he had been shot down, and had been hiding and waiting for the British to catch up with him.

The end could not be far away. It came on the morning of the 7 May 1945 with a phone call from the adjutant. All ranks received it with an exhausted sense of gratitude.