Kapelsche Veer
During the winter of 1944 to 1945, General Crerar's First Canadian Army was responsible for the long Front from Tholen to Boxmeer. During those winter months it was relatively quiet, with one exception: the bloody battle at Kapelsche Veer. The reason for this battle was a tiny German bridgehead around the two houses on the southern bank around the ferry.

The beginning
On 24 December 1944, 40 soldiers from the German 712th Infantry Division (under Lieutenant General Neumann), rowed across the Bergsche Maas to Kapelsche Veer to dig in, in preparation for a new German operation 'Fall Braun'. A second company soon joined the first and around 150 soldiers found themselves in the small bridgehead, in the middle of a deserted polder.

Polish actions
This German bridgehead was a major annoyance for the side of Major General Maczek, whose 1st Polish Armoured Division guarded the sector. A first patrol on 28 and 29 December 1944 yielded nothing, except ten Polish wounded. The first serious attack on New Year's Eve ended in a bloody fiasco for the Polish troops. The flat, snowy polder landscape offered no cover and the attempt left 48 dead and wounded to mourn. After the departure of Neumann's division to the east, from 31 December the 6. Fallschirmjäger-Division (6th Paratrooper Division) of Lieutenant-General Plocher took over the positions. His mostly young parachutists were generally slightly more fanatical than the average German soldier, therefore a new Polish attack unsurprisingly again comes to nothing. The second major attack, on Epiphany, 6 January 1945, also failed, with 123 dead and wounded. A third attempt by the British 47th Royal Marine Commandos, a battalion in which Norwegians also served and which was assigned to Maczek, again failed. The unit lost a total of 49 men, and it proved impossible to drive the German troops from their positions.

Final chord
Ultimately, all these failures lead to the Canadian forces cracking German bridgehead with brute force, namely by deploying units of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division. Operation ‘Elephant’ was therefore an appropriate name for this large-scale attack. The attack was launched on 26 January 1945, but despite the superior force it took another four days for the last German soldiers to withdraw across the Maas river. From then on, things became relatively quiet along the Maas again. Relatively so, because the mutual shelling continued. In the end, there were approximately 465 Allied dead and wounded to mourn. On the German side, the number of victims was at least 600. The sad thing is that the battle was completely pointless: the minuscule bridgehead was no threat to anyone. But that fact, unfortunately, is also not exceptional in wartime.