Wait up, guys. It’s a baby!

I recently came across this small event in Patrick Delaforce’s book, Churchill’s Desert Rats Pound sign. It illustrates how, sometimes, there can be brief moments of honour & decency – even involving the SS – in the midst of total war.

It was during the opening stages of Operation Market-Garden in Holland in September 1944. The 5th Royal Tank Regiment, together with 71st Infantry Brigade of 51st Highland Division were tasked with taking the village of Middelbeers to the west of Eindhoven.

It became a house-to-house battle with SS troops armed with bazookas* and mortars that would last for two days.

However, Sergeant Bob Price remembered:

“While the fighting was at its height a white flag was waved and an SS man came forward [and] asked for a MO [Medical Orderly] to assist with a difficult child-birth taking place in the house they were defending. All fighting ceased and then recommenced when the child was born.”

That’s all there is. Does anyone else have any more info? Assuming the baby survived, he/she would have just celebrated their 75th birthday.


Image: Sadly, not 5th RTR Cromwells at Middlebeers. These are 8th Hussars, the armoured reconnaissance regiment of 7th Armoured Division, massing at Brunen in preparation for the next stage of the advance into Germany, 29 March 1945. (Photo: Capt E.G. Malindine, No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

* I’m guessing they mean Panzerschrecks not Bazookas.

 

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Alastair

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I'm a specialist travel journalist writing about battlefield sites, technical museums, military history, transport infrastructure, electric vehicles, amazing engineering & architecture, industrial heritage… and where you can see it. I’ve been a travel editor & presenter since 1989, originally in local radio, then national & international radio (Classic FM) before moving online just before the millennium. I’ve been an active member of the travel creative community since 2010 and a regular speaker at social media travel conferences. I’m an accredited member of the British Guild of Travel Writers (former Chair & Vice-Chair). I am co-author of Bradt: D-Day Landings – A travel guide to Normandy’s beaches and battlegrounds.

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