Of the Red Army formations met in action up to a week ago there was now little sign in the forward areas, though some were known to be dispersed well in the rear. Of those which had taken part in the initial assault on 4 August, no unit at all, on the unquestionable evidence of reliable local sources, now remained on Federal German soil. The Soviet practice of using divisions for three to five days in all-out assault, to very near the point of total exhaustion, and then extracting them for replacement by completely new formations, was clearly to be seen in action. On the Allied side most formations had already been in action more than once.
At 0400 hours on 14 August Warsaw Pact forces, after very heavy air and artillery preparation, but no chemical attack, opened the expected assault on the Venlo position. Airborne attack in battalion strength on the flanks fifteen kilometres in rear, on Neuss and Roermond, proved fortunately to be of little more than nuisance value. Two German Home Defence Groups, one on each flank, each of nearly a brigade in strength, gave an excellent account of themselves in a role for which they had done much training: after some very tough opposition the German reservist and civilian soldiers triumphed over both attacks. Allied air defence entirely prevented any heliborne follow-up. The crossings over the Rivers Rhine and Maas remained in Allied hands, under the control of severely harassed engineers, open at least by night and even sporadically by day. The enemy’s attempt to isolate by airborne action the forward edge of the Allied battle area was thus a total failure.
In the attack on the Venlo position the forward concentration of Allied forces, four divisions deployed between two rivers on a front of thirty kilometres, with anti-tank defences that were strong and well disposed in depth, put any use of the enemy’s light lead forces on the usual pattern out of the question. The attack came surging in, at first shooting light, after thirty minutes’ intense artillery fire aimed at suppressing anti-tank defences, with three motor-rifle divisions up, each led by its tank regiment, the tank companies coming in first and the motor-rifle companies following, mounted in their BMP, some 200 metres behind. Direct ATGW hits on leading BMP soon indicated that a mounted attack could only bog down. A dismounted infantry attack in great strength followed, under fire support from tanks, SP guns and BMP, with heavy concentrations from the tube artillery and rocket launchers of the enemy’s divisional artillery, and air-to-ground attack pressed hard in spite of considerable losses in aircraft. The very heavy weight of the assault, with unit after unit piled on regardless of casualties, began to tell before long. Here and there NATO defences, swamped by numbers, began to crumble. The enemy, within an hour or two, was seen to be gaining a clear advantage.
At the same time as the main assault on the Venlo position, another attack was being made by one Soviet motorized division west of the Maas, southwards towards Roermond. Heavy Allied missile concentrations on crossings over the Maas and Lower Rhine, which were being kept open with great difficulty by Soviet engineers, took sufficient of the edge off this attack to enable one US brigade, operating with two Dutch regiments under command and anti-tank defences disposed in depth, which the enemy had found it impossible entirely to suppress, just to hold its own. Ground was given, but sufficient of the network of ATGW remained in action to foil the enemy’s first attempt at doing to the Venlo position on the west bank of the Maas, on a smaller scale, what the general Soviet offensive had been trying to do to AFCENT as a whole, that is, to roll it up from the rear by attack from north to south along the west bank of the Rhine.
An even stronger enemy attack than that west of the Maas developed at the same time east of the Rhine, where units of II British Corps, with a Dutch brigade and a strong and very recently regrouped German division, together with three German Home Defence Groups, the whole force under a German general-lieutenant, had up to now succeeded in preventing the movement of any but light forces across the hardly formidable water obstacle of the River Lippe. Three things had here contributed to an extremely important delay in the enemy’s advance: flooding, which had done something to canalize movement from the north-east; the extensive use of mines; and close air support, exploiting the slight but growing advantage in the air the Allies now enjoyed and the evident superiority in electronic warfare which was contributing so largely to it.
