Formation patch 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division (canvas)

The division received the order to move, arriving, after travelling some 200 miles, in the south of the Netherlands at a concentration area on 21 September, ten miles south of the Antwerp-Turnhout Canal. Over the next few days, the division liberated Turnhout and crossed the Antwerp-Turnhout Canal. It was during this period that the division was awarded its first and only Victoria Cross (VC) of the Second World War, belonging to Corporal John Harper of the Hallamshire Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment. The division, after being on the offensive since landing in Normandy, then spent the next few weeks on the defensive along the Dutch frontier, before returning to the offensive in the third week of October, with the objective, after Tilburg and Breda had fallen to the 49th, being the capture of the town of Roosendaal, which fell after ten days of vicious fighting.[37] Major General Barker described the town as "not much of a place, bombed by USAF early in the year... We have crossed 20 miles in 10 days and had to fight every inch of it". Further fighting continued until the division ended up at Willemstad at the Hollandsche Diep. The division then transferred from Lieutenant General Crocker's I Corps to Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie's XII Corps and helped in the clearing of the west bank of the River Maas, along the Dutch border, fighting in very wet and muddy conditions