VE DAY: The Scots fighters who paved the last road to allied victory in Europe

Over one million troops crossed The Rhine to overcome the last great natural obstacle to Allied victory in Germany. Thousands of Scots troops were among them.

The road to German surrender: Privates H McIvor, W Harton and D Mill from the 10th Highland Light Infantry,15th Scottish Infantry Division, roll a wooden Swastika emblem through Kranenberg during Operation Veritable on February 10, 1945 at Kranenberg. Scots had a heavy presence in Germany during this period, which led to Operation Plunder and the crossing of the Rhine, the last big set piece ahead of the German surrender. British Official Photo B. 14427 (WT). (Photo by Sergeant Norman Midgley/No.5 Army Film & Photographic Unit/BIPPA/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images). | Getty Images

In the last stages of World War Two in Europe, thousands of Scots soldiers fought their way into the north of Germany in the operations that paved the final way to the Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945.

All three Scottish battle divisions - the 15th Infantry, the 51st Highland and the 52nd Lowland - were engaged in the last major manoeuvre that led to Allied victory. That was set with Operation Plunder and the crossing of the Rhine on March 23, 1945, with more than one million troops from three countries involved.

A column of British Army six-wheel-drive amphibious vehicles assembles in a foret clearing ahead of Operation Plunder on March 24, 1945. PIC: Getty. | Getty Images

Among them were battalions from regiments such as the Gordon Highlanders, the Black Watch and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who fought to overcome the last major natural obstacle to the Allied advance.

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“This was 'D' Day as far as we were concerned,” was the entry in the 5/7th Gordon's war diary for March 23, 1945.

Operation Plunder marked the “beginning of the end of the war,” according to military historian Trevor Royle, author of A Time of Tyrants: Scotland and the Second World War

He said: “But what followed was very hard fighting. Nobody should think it was a picnic.”

“The soldiers taking part in the final push into Germany, having landed in northern France and fighting their way through the Low Countries and then into northern Germany, recognised that the war was near to end.

“Although there was a lot of hard fighting still ahead of them, they still felt that they had got the upper hand but the Germans were determined to fight. The Scots divisions were fighting into what Germans considered to be the Fatherland.”

British reinforcements move up in the advance east of the Rhine on March 27, 1945 through the shattered town of Rees, Germany, which fell to the Gordon Highlanders after fierce house-to-house fighting, during the last stages of World War II. | GAIGER-PLANET/AFP via Getty Imag

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The Allies gathered over 4,000 pieces of artillery on the West bank of the river while over 250,000 tons of supplies were amassed near the front.

The largest smoke screen ever laid was set to obscure the preparation, with 14,000 paratroopers dropped east of the Rhine behind enemy lines.

The first part of Operation Plunder was initiated by the 51st (Highland ) Infantry Division, led by the 7th Battalion, Black Watch and the 7th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who landed between Wesel and Rees on the east of the river on the night of March 23.

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At 2am the following morning, the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division joined them. At first, there was no opposition, but later they ran into determined resistance from machine-gun nests.

That day, the 51st Division's commander, Major-General Tom Rennie, the distinguished officer educated at Loretto who escaped imprisonment at San Valerie en Caux in France and led the Black Watch through the Second Battle of El Alamein, was killed by mortar fire.

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Field Marshal Montgomery, the commanding general of British and Canadian forces, chose his “opening batsmen” for the operation with the selection of the 15th Scottish infantry division and the 51st Highlands, Royle said.

He added: said: “At this point Montogomery knew he was fighting against what he called the ‘First 11’ .

“When you are fighting against the first 11, you send in your opening batsmen. That is why he chose the 15th Scottish division and the 51st Highlands. They were his opening batsmen.”

Onwards to victory: Winston Churchill arrives on the east bank of the Rhine on March 25 1945 following Operation Plunder after allied fighters - including several thousands Scots - took part in the crossing of the last great natural obstacle to victory. PIC: Getty. | Getty Images

Lieutenant Colonel Martin Lindsay of the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders, which fought as part of the 51st Division, later said his fighters “never wavered” under fire.

Royle said: “The last analysis was ‘we were the Gordon Highlanders, we were the Highland division’

“And I think that gives you a good example of the esprit de corps which the Scottish regiments while encountering the Germans fighting at their hardest and most determined.”

Lieutenant Colonel Lindsay later wrote of the 48-hours of hard streetfighting in Rees as the town was secured, with each street cleared house-by-house.

In his memoir, So Few Got Through, he wrote: “ It all sounds very easy when one writes it down, but this is far from being so.

“The clearing of every single house is a separate little military operation requiring a special reconnaissance, plan and execution.

“And the enemy have been resisting fiercely all the time with spandaus, bazookas and snipers, and only withdrawing a little further back at the last moment when their position becomes untenable.”

He wrote of the final capture of the town and an encounter with a captured German captain, who was brought to him.

Lindsay said: “He was marched in front of me as I sat at my table poring over the map, and gave me a spectacular Hitler salute, which I ignored.

“ I was very annoyed that, instead of being killed to a man, they had apparently won in the end, escaping with their lives after shooting lots of our chaps.

“He was a nasty piece of work, cocksure and good looking in a flashy sort of way, but I had to admire the brave resistance which he has put up.

“The strain of the battle was apparent in the dark black of his eyes. He said that they had left eight badly wounded men in two dug-outs.

“’Very well’ I said. ‘You will guide C Company to them and you will have your hands tied behind you so that you do not slip away in the dark.

“He began to complain that the soldiers who had taken him prisoner had stolen his note-case.

“My good man,” I replied, “the German Army has plundered everything they can lay their hand on in Europe. You surely don’t expect any sympathy from me?”

In the last weeks of war, Scots battalions continued fighting up towards Bremen and Bremerhaven, two ports on the north coast of Germany. A battalion of Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) were then involved in the opening of a concentration camp.

Royle added: “They had never come across anything like that before - or that they would ever forget it. It encouraged them to believe they had been fighting a decent battle to try and get rid of the evil of Nazism.”