The force he took, whilst enhanced by the 75th AT Achilles SPs and the 15th/19th Hussars’ Comet tanks, was light one complete Squadron for most of the battle.
His air controller was lost early in the battle, claimed by a Soviet air attack that simply should never have been permitted to get through in the first place.
The location of the 9th Guards Mechanised Brigade was not known, and its arrival on the battlefield was a total surprise. I am unclear as to why a full missing mechanised brigade did not set off alarms with those who planned the attacks, particularly as 3rd Guards Mechanised Corps was identified as being in the area, and known to consist of the three mechanised brigades; 7th, 8th, and 9th, plus the 45th Tanks.
Lastly, it is undoubtedly the case that Prentiss suffered his debilitating head injury during the farmhouse collapse, probably enhancing its effect during the subsequent tank battle. In my humble opinion, that makes his subsequent command performance all the more remarkable.
The battle attracted the attention of the media, and as a result, those who fought there were feted and their names spoken of around dining tables from Wick to Redruth.
The officers and men of 23rd Hussars received a shower of medals, Kreyer’s Cheshires featured heavily in the subsequent Gazette announcements too.
DSOs and DCMs were the order of the day for most of the senior commanders and NCOs, and MCs and MMs were commonplace, a total of eighty-one awards placed for a single battle that lasted just over four hours.
Perhaps there are two matters that are surprising, given the allocation of awards.
Captain Lysander Chandos Montagu, the portly support officer who wasn’t ‘quite the ticket’ as far as his fellow officers were concerned, and to whom Prentiss had trusted the ad hoc command, for no other reason than he was all that was available, was a deserving recipient of the Victoria Cross for his personal bravery during the defence of Brahmstedt-land. His superb leadership and command throughout the difficult hours of the Battle of the Streams quickly became the stuff of legend.
The last matter is more surprising.
Colonel Prentiss, destined to spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair, received no recognition for his efforts, perhaps because of the debate over the soundness of his decisions.
In my humble opinion, a travesty occasioned by the need of the military establishment to make ready a scapegoat for a battle that, for some, was seen as a defeat, or at minimum, an unnecessary bloodletting.
23rd Hussars and 1st Cheshires were both withdrawn from the 11th Armoured Division.
A decision was quickly reached, and the Cheshires were reinforced and returned to duty within four weeks.
The 23rd Hussars passed into history, being officially disbanded on 8th April 1946.
Twenty-First Army Group pressed, and pressed hard, profiting from an air superiority that was rarely challenged and never overcome.
Soviet units melted away in front of them or, as in the case of Hamburg and some others, stood their ground, permitting the Allied soldiery to flood around them.
McCreery, bold as the young cavalryman he had once been, drove his divisions forward, moving south and to the east, opening up the route out of Denmark.
Known for his planning and attention to detail, McCreery’s efforts were often hampered by surprisingly poor intelligence, often as a result of superb maskirovka and camouflage on the part of the Soviet forces.
Despite the Allied mastery of the air, the 1st Baltic, the formation into which the British and Commonwealth troops punched, had clandestinely assembled large numbers of units that had escaped the attention of Allied intelligence.
These units had been intended for the renewed Soviet offensive, but circumstances overtook the Red Army plan, providing Marshal Bagramyan with excellent reserves with which to disrupt the Allied offensive.
Bagramyan was not called the Armenian Fox for the way he looked, but for the way he thought and then created orders to suit.
Initially, Bagramyan was most concerned about hanging on to the neighbouring 1st Red Banner Front, who had their work cut out dealing with the US Corps of the British Army Group and the German Republicans, both of which forces were hurling themselves on top of Malinovsky’s men, who in turn had to worry about holding on to 1st Baltic and 2nd Red Banner, whilst carefully watching the mighty US Twelth Army Group battering away to the south.
But out of the chaos, Bagramyan saw an opportunity, one that might, in another age, have earned him a bullet in the back of the neck.
1st Baltic Front gave ground, not easily, rarely without pain and heartache but, none the less, each day, each hour, Soviet soldiers were a few steps nearer to Moscow.
McCreery, pressured by his need to drive to the relief of Polish forces, and encouraged by some success, seeing nothing untoward, pressed his Army commanders hard. In turn, they cascaded the pressure down through Corps to Divisions.
Eventually the pressure came to rest on the young subalterns of shire regiments, or NCO tank commanders in van of the armoured squadron.
“Push hard… push hard and they will crumble!”
“Press forward, keep the enemy in sight, and drive him back to the Volga!”
“Charge on, men, charge on and relieve our valiant Polish allies!”
Such words had their effect and the efforts redoubled, assisted by a magnificent logistics effort from both RASC and RAF commands.
As matters like the unexpected appearance of the 9th Guards Mechanised Brigade become more numerous, 21st Army Group staff began to get twitchy, and McCreery could only agree.
Photo recon flights were increased and some startling discoveries were made, but nothing that appeared that it could not be handled by a change in plans and the application of sufficient force.
Photos were ‘appreciated’ more than once, cutting down on human error.
Such a process revealed something interesting occurring in and around Waren, Northern Germany.
‘Some sort of fixed fortification’ was the best guess, and recon flights were stepped up. Similar works were seen to the north and south.
Where the Allies made a clear error, and history has already pointed the finger of blame, was in the area around Wolinow and Ludwigslust, where units waiting for the new offensive had assembled, and were now sat waiting for the right moment to turn the advance of 21st Army Group from a victory into a complete disaster.
Acting under orders, the northern group of Bagramyan’s armies fell back slightly faster than the rest, bringing the Allied forces forward quicker there, slowly but surely creating a bulge into the Soviet lines.
The manoeuvre did not go without problems, and Gusev’s 21st Army was pressed into the area surrounding the Hemmelsdorfer See, where it was pummelled from land, air, and sea. The Red Army soldiery had not been on the receiving end of 16” naval shells before, and HMS Rodney and her consorts crushed Soviet morale and will to fight more and more with the delivery of each huge shell.
Only a handful of Gusev’s men escaped across the water to the Priwall Peninsular, to the illusion of safety in the Soviet positions in Mecklenburg-Pommern.
Escapees and defenders alike swiftly realised that more distance was needed to escape the Rodney’s big guns, and the backwards move came close to a rout, before NKVD troops moved up and selected a few ringleaders as examples.
The traditional disposal stopped the rot and Marshal Bagramyan’s plan was back on track.
Further west, Canadian First and British Eleventh Armies toiled heavily against stiff opposition, occasionally being held up, sometimes bypassing strongholds.
Whilst the press reported success after success, a shambolic attack at Wunstorf, where the 117th Royal Marine Infantry Brigade was all but destroyed in a Soviet pincer attack, went hardly recorded.