"We moved out of Herent at 8 a.m., on the 24th February and, in bright sunshine, the column wound its way back along the familiar roads of Belgium and Holland — by Diest, Eindhoven, Helmond and St Anthonis — until at Boxmeer we passed into new territory, where already the sights of recent battle became apparent. Huge guns lay camouflaged in the flat fields bordering the Maas and once more we sensed that indescribable atmosphere of disorder and discomfort, which remains even after the fighting has passed, in the untidy villages and deserted farms.

Late in the afternoon we crossed the River Maas by an enormously long Bailey Bridge and moved on through villages still plastered with bombastic Nazi slogans: "Death to the Enemy;" "We hail our Fuehrer" — "We shall conquer in the end" — and so on. To our left we could see the battered slopes of the Reichswald, which had just been cleared in heavy fighting, and the traffic became more congested as we jolted our way into the Highland Division's transport area. Gradually as ambulances began to trickle past us, we realised that we were being relentlessly drawn once more into the harsh world of battle".