Slog or Swan

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 Army performance in Veritable to show how fundamental problems with army organisation and fighting doctrine pushed soldiers beyond the limits of endurance.

Slog or Swan exploits a depth of previously untouched primary sources to shine new light on British Army effectiveness by showing how soldiers fought the pivotal operation of 1945. Where previous works have fixated on Normandy and Arnhem, and made broad judgements on leadership or morale, this book drills into the tactical realities that defined British fighting power.