Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website

Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website



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265137

Gnr. George Henry Charlesworth

British Army 196th Bty. 73rd Anti Tank Regiment Royal Artillery

from:Camberwell, London

Grandad George Charlesworth was drafted into the Royal Artillery in 1940. We're waiting for his service records and currently have no information on his early years.  In mid 1943 he was in Hampshire with 196th Battery, 73rd Anti Tank Regiment training as a gunner with a 17lb static gun crew. The training, although at the time they didn't know,  was in preparation for the Normandy invasion, D Day. The regiment was mostly made up of men who were new to it due to severe losses in earlier campaigns. George and his regigment would later serve under 30 Corps.(Also listed as XXX Corps) Led by Field Marshall Montgomery. The Regiment was made up of 4 Batteries each containing 200 men. There were a further 150 men for HQ consisting of Map readers, runners etc bringing the total to 950.

He was part of the D-Day landings and landed at Gold Beach, Normandy on the 7th of June 1944. The regiment landed in two waves, half on the 6th and the other half on the 7th. After landing on the beach on D Day +1 they made their way to a French town called Crepon and waited 2 days for the rest of the battle group to catch up. The Americans were bogged down on Omaha beach where they lost 95% of those who landed on D Day. From there they went to Bayeaux where they fought the 21st SS Panzer Division consisting of hard core troops. The Regiment was to have many encounters with SS troops during the campaign. The successfully liberated Bayeaux with very few losses. They spent 3 months in France and fought a major battle in an area called the Falaise Gap just outside Caen, which they later helped liberate, as part of Operation Overlord.

On the way to Arnhem the US 82nd Airborne Division had failed to capture the road bridge at Nijmegen. 30 Corps brought up boats, allowing two companies of the 82nd to assault across the river, eventually capturing the rigged-for-demolition Nijmegen bridge. The Guards Armoured advanced and quickly established positions on the northern bank. The 43rd Infantry (Wessex) Division was brought up to continue the offensive, and they managed to defeat elements of the 10th SS Panzer Division that penetrated the Nijmegen area, and advanced to the Neder Rijn and the area called The Island. There the 4th Dorsets successfully crossed the Rhine as a diversion, so that 1st Airborne could withdraw more safely, but many men of the 4th Dorset’s were themselves left behind on the north Bank of the Rhine when the Division withdrew. Failure by the 30 Corps to arrive at the Arnhem bridge as planned caused most of the 1st Airborne Division to either die fighting, surrender, or withdraw to the Polish 1st Independent Brigade positions, and effectively ended the offensive. Further south, in the 101st Airborne sector, many units from the 30 Corps had to be detached to fight off repeated attempts by the German 106th Panzer brigade to cut the highway. After the success in France and Belgium, General Montgomery commanding the 21st Army Group turned his attention to outflanking the Siegfried Line and invading the Ruhr. This required passing a number of choke points over water obstacles, the last of them a road bridge at Arnhem, allowing ground troops to trap the 15th Army, and split it from the 1st Parachute Army on the way around the northern flank of the Siegfried Line. To do this, he requested from General Eisenhower to deploy the 1st Allied Airborne Army, with the US 101st Airborne Division dropped at Eindhoven, to secure the Son and Wilhelmina Canal bridges, the US 82nd dropped at Nijmegen, to secure the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, while the British 1st Airborne dropped at Arnhem, to secure the bridgehead over the Neder Rijn. This would become the Market part of the operation. 30 Corps which consisted of about 50,000 men would advance along the main axis of the British Army's line of the offensive, and pass through Arnhem within 48 hours, and continue into Germany. This was to be the Garden part of the Market Garden operation.

During the Battle of the Bulge, units of 30 Corps moved to secure the bridges over the Meuse. On 27th of December 1944 the Corps pushed the 2nd Panzer Division out of Cells. After the German collapse, 30 Corps quickly advanced north-east and liberated Brussels and Antwerp. There the advance was halted because of a shortage of fuel.



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