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Description
In order to advance to their objective, it was necessary for Colonel Merritt to lead his men across a river bridge near their destination. However, the bridge was under fire from German forces who were dug in on the opposite river bank. Colonel Merritt would later receive the Victoria Cross from King George VI for his work here.
Transcription
The troops were unable to cross the bridge, and of course it was necessary to, that we cross the bridge if we were to succeed at all. So, I recognized I better do something about it. And I, I called out to them to come on, come on over, you see, and led chaps across the bridge and they came perfectly willingly. And we pressed on a bit and then we had another little fight with another party of Germans about twenty yards past the bridge and eventually we cleared them out from the particular area and I was able to go back to the bigger plan.
Interviewer: In fact, Colonel Merritt, the bridge was some two hundred yards long, open, without railings on either side, and it was being swept at the time by German mortar, machine guns and artillery fire.
I think that’s so. It sounds pretty bad. I survived, so it couldn’t have been that bad.
Interviewer: On the other side of the bridge some of those fortified positions that were holding the bridge in part were the ones that you just eluded to, that you and the party that got across silenced.