The World at War (TV Series)

Pincers: August 1944-March 1945 (1974)

Brian Horrocks: Self - 30 Corps Commander

Quotes 

• Self - 30 Corps Commander : They came to me and said, "Do you want Cleves taken out?" By "taken out" they meant all the heavy bombers putting on to Cleves. Now, I knew that Cleves was a fine old historical German town. Anne of Cleves, one of Henry VIII's wives, came from there. I knew that there were a lot of civilians in Cleves, men, women and children. If I said no, they would live. If I said yes, they would die. A terrible decision you've got to take. But everything depended on getting a high piece of ground at Materborn. The German reserves would have to come through Cleves, and we would have to breach the Siegfried line and get there. And your own lives, your own troops, must come first, so I said yes, I did want it taken out. But when all those bombers went over the night, just before zero hour, to take out Cleves, I felt a murderer. And after the war I had an awful lot of nightmares. It was always Cleves.