With the SAS: Across the Rhine

Into the Heart of Hitler's Third Reich

Ian Wellsted

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781526745699
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526745705
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

In this WW2 memoir, the author of SAS: With the Maquis continues his thrilling account of life as a British Army commando behind enemy lines.
Colonel Ian Wellsted, OBE, served with the British Army's elite Special Air Service during World War II. In this vivid personal account, he vividly recounts his involvement in Operation Archway, a mission supporting Field Marshal Montgomery's Allied 21st Army Group in operations Varsity and Plunder.
In this offensive, the SAS teams were thrust deep into German territory, often having to battle their way through enemy lines to get back to safety. 'I quickly learned that there was no way to control an SAS battle,' Wellsted wrote of his first major encounter in charge of a patrol. 'The din was deafening – seventy odd Vickers and half a dozen Brownings all chattering together.'
In one of these encounters, as the war was drawing to a close, Wellsted's troop found itself surrounded. In the ensuing firefight, Wellsted was wounded, bringing his active front line career to an end.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Preface
• Introduction
• Abbreviations and Glossary
• Chapter 1 Three Letters
• Chapter 2 Down and Up
• Chapter 3 Entr’acte
• Chapter 4 Ecole Haute Montagne
• Chapter 5 Ski Mountaineering
• Chapter 6 Ski Patrol
• Chapter 7 From the High Mountains to the Low Countries
• Chapter 8 Before the Rhine
• Chapter 9 Snipers’ Alley
• Chapter 10 Ostrich
• Chapter 11 Rhade
• Chapter 12 Raesfeld and Sudlohn
• Chapter 13 Wullen
• Chapter 14 Easter in Elte
• Chapter 15 Reyes
• Chapter 16 Across The Weser
• Chapter 17 Schneeren
• Chapter 18 At the Intersection
• Chapter 19 Wounded
• Chapter 20 The Road Back
• Chapter 21 VE-Day
• Chapter 22 Back to Britain
• Chapter 23 The Liberation of Norway
• Chapter 24 The Morvan Again
• Epilogue
• The SAS in The Second World War: A Perspective
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Plate section