Tim Saunders

This book seeks to explore the little appreciated part in the Battle of the Somme played by the Regular and Volunteer Service battalions of two famous West Country regiments; the Devonshire Regiment and the Dorset Regiment.

During winter 1944/45 few German officers believed that the Allies would attack the wooded Reichswald Plug on the narrow neck of land between the rivers Rhine and Maas. Consequently, relying on the natural defenses of the forest, the vaunted Siegfried Line had been allowed to peter out. The 84th Infantry Division held field defenses that had been worked on all autumn, but the defenders were thinly spread, and most German soldiers now faced the certainty of defeat.