Slog or Swan: British Army Effectiveness in Operation Veritable, February and March 1945

Operation Veritable (8 February to 10 March 1945) started with a 900-bomber raid and over 1,800 guns firing 'the heaviest barrage of the whole war'. Then a dash by 30 Corps aimed to punch through the Seigfried Line to reach the Rhine bridges at Wesel within four days. It failed. With close to half a million men fighting a month-long series of battles, Veritable dwarfed the Arnhem disaster that preceded it, the Rhine crossing that followed it, and all the named operations that formed the Anglo-Canadian campaign in Northwest Europe. Veritable was 'one of the most bitter series of battles ever fought by men' and its scars of are plainly visible today in the chain of artificial lakes that mark where Allied artillery smashed through the water table along the Dutch-German border. Despite its size, importance and immense human cost, Veritable was sold as a mundane enabling operation and later mis-labelled a 'forgotten victory'. Slog or Swan presents the first objective assessment of British