OPERATION AMHERST: French SAS in Holland, April 1945

Wobbler · Sep 27, 2025

JimHerriot said: ↑

On my list Stolpi, thanks for the heads up!

And we've hit the ground running (for once!) here in the UK

Amazon UK release/available date:

View attachment 420839

Amazon Nederland release/available date:

View attachment 420840

The UK may be taking bit a price hit for the privilege though, 25 knicker as opposed to 28:50 Euros.

I'm staying away from the currency converter

Kind regards, September 30th, always,

Jim.
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Go here Jim, save yourself five oncers. (OK, delivery is £4.99, but that’s a penny saved!

Operation Amherst

Mind you, that’s a different cover photo - have I gorn and found the wrong book?

JimHerriot · Sep 27, 2025

Wobbler said: ↑

Go here Jim, save yourself five oncers. (OK, delivery is £4.99, but that’s a penny saved!

Operation Amherst

Mind you, that’s a different cover photo - have I gorn and found the wrong book?
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing that out Martin. Interesting.

That might be an earlier cover mock up/artwork composite before final cover design was decided on Martin (something for suppliers/sellers to have to set their pre-order webpages up).

It'll be Amazon for me, to show loyalty to Stolpi and the link he posted (free postage, if you don't mind a wait, to a pick up locker. Note, I am not a "prime" subscriber - Jeff has enough money to count without stiffing me for that )

And I wouldn't mind either cover artwork.

Kind regards, I'm supposed to have stopped buying anymore books, always

Jim.

JimHerriot · Sep 30, 2025

JimHerriot said: ↑

On my list Stolpi, thanks for the heads up!

And we've hit the ground running (for once!) here in the UK

Amazon UK release/available date:

View attachment 420839

Amazon Nederland release/available date:

View attachment 420840

The UK may be taking bit a price hit for the privilege though, 25 knicker as opposed to 28:50 Euros.

I'm staying away from the currency converter

Kind regards, September 30th, always,

Jim.
Click to expand...

Well Stolpi et al.

Clearly Amazon UK were just engaging in the modus-upperhandi-put-it-in-the-customers-pocket-and-take-said-customers-money-to-Jeff's-bank-account-for-a-year-shithousery!

Went to purchase today and lo and behold some, ahem, slippage on UK publication date!

Hence why I never, ever pre-order from Amazon since being subject to their chicanery in the past.

They must think Iwas born yesterday!

Errr well actually I was, just many many many many yesterdays ago

Kind regards, All Our Yesterdays, and unavailable books, always,

Jim.

Wobbler · Sep 30, 2025

JimHerriot said: ↑

Well Stolpi et al.

Clearly Amazon UK were just engaging in the modus-upperhandi-put-it-in-the-customers-pocket-and-take-said-customers-money-to-Jeff's-bank-account-for-a-year-shithousery!

Went to purchase today and lo and behold some, ahem, slippage on UK publication date!

View attachment 421057

Hence why I never, ever pre-order from Amazon since being subject to their chicanery in the past.

They must think Iwas born yesterday!

Errr well actually I was, just many many many many yesterdays ago

Kind regards, All Our Yesterdays, and unavailable books, always,

Jim.
Click to expand...

Pen and Sword also showing 30th August ‘26 - I can’t remember if the link I posted on Saturday already said that or whether they’ve changed it too.

stolpi · Sep 30, 2025

JimHerriot said: ↑

Clearly Amazon UK were just engaging in the modus-upperhandi-put-it-in-the-customers-pocket-and-take-said-customers-money-to-Jeff's-bank-account-for-a-year-shithousery! Went to purchase today and lo and behold some, ahem, slippage on UK publication date!
Click to expand...

Jim - You'd better print out this thread then, bundle it and put a staple or two in it. For the right amount, I might even be persuaded to sign it .

BTW - I have polished up the text a bit this week and also added some new photographs. Spot the differences!

JimHerriot · Sep 30, 2025

Wobbler said: ↑

Pen and Sword also showing 30th August ‘26 - I can’t remember if the link I posted on Saturday already said that or whether they’ve changed it too.
Click to expand...

If the publishers can't make their mind up over which cover artwork to run with we will have Jeff and his minions foisting the blame on us Martin!

Kind regards, "cover one? Or cover two? Look again, cover one? Or cover two? Ooh hang on a bit, we haven't looked at cover three yet!" always,

Jim.

JimHerriot · Sep 30, 2025

stolpi said: ↑

Jim - You'd better print out this thread then, bundle it and put a staple or two in it. For the right amount, I might even be persuaded to sign it .

BTW - I have polished up the text a bit this week and also added some new photographs. Spot the differences!
Click to expand...

Aaah dear Stolpi. The author going the extra mile I can thoroughly put up with (as long as I don't peg out beforehand ).

Another incentive for me to keep going. Never give up and all that !

Kind regards, keep up your very, very, very good work, always,

Jim.

stolpi · Nov 1, 2025

A new addition to my collection of Op Amherst publications arrived today, with courtesy of Klaas Rein Noppert .

The memoires of Edgard Thomé of his war-time adventures with (among others) the French SAS paras.

stolpi · Nov 29, 2025

Another new addition to my collection of Op Amherst publications arrived today, from Germany.

Roger Flamand, "Paras de la France Libre", (Cité 1976).

A good bargain: € 3,00 for a hardcover copy. I am busy delving into the content.

Lindele · Nov 29, 2025

stolpi said: ↑

Attack on Westerbork, 8 April 1945

The sticks of Betbèze and Puech-Samson both landed on the south side of the Oranjekanaal, far away from the assigned DZ 25 situated near the village of Elp, to the north of the canal. Captain Betbèze quickly collected his stick of fifteen men and headed for a nearby farmhouse in the hope of gaining some information about their location from the residents. Here he learned, not without difficulty, that he and his men had come down near Garminge, some three miles south of the intended drop zone, on the wrong side of the canal.

Betbèze installed a base camp at the woodlot near the village of Witteveen. Despite extensive search, he was unable to find to any trace of the supply containers. In the early hours of the morning, after a long futile search in the dark with four of his men, Betbèze returned to the base empty handed. He was convinced that the containers had not been dropped. Captain Betbèze: "It was the worst thing that could have happened to us. Without the two containers with food supplies and the two containers with weapons and ammunition, our mission was much compromised and it would be hard for us to last. It was a disaster." (1) Upon returning, Captain Betbèze, to his pleasant surprise, found Cpl. Cognet (a radio operator) and Lt. Robert Andreaota, the medical officer of the staff company of Puech-Samson, in the basecamp. Betbèze was not the only one whose stick had gone astray. Soon after a wounded Major Puech-Samson, accompanied by his adjudant, Captain Mouilé and the remainder of his staff group arrived at the basecamp, guided by a Dutch civilian, Hildebrand Lohr. They also had been dropped south of the Oranjekanaal. Puech-Samson was incapacitated by a shoulder injury, incurred during the landing.

Cpl Noël Créau, who was part of the staff of Puech-Samson, gave the following account of the parachute drop (courtesy: "Du ciel la Liberté", March 2002):

In all 29 SAS paras had assembled around Puech Samson. From the local teacher of Witteveen it was learned that a German HQ with a German general was located in Westerbork. Van Lohuizen, a meteorologist stationed at a weather station at Witteveen, who spoke French fluently, offered Major Puech-Samson to contact Westerbork by phone to investigate after the whereabouts of the German general. At 07:30 hours he called the local doctor, mr Mulder. Both men agreed not to exchange information over the phone, which could easily be tapped by the Germans, but instead to sent a trusted member of the local resistance to Witteveen. Before long two policemen, Stoel and Straver, arrived on bicycle at Witteveen. Both policemen confirmed the presence of a German HQ and provided further details of the military situation at Westerbork. Generalmajor Karl Böttger, commander of the Feldkommandantur 674, a sub-unit of the Wehrmacht-Kommandantur Assen, had established his headquarters in the village. The General 's command post was located in Restaurant Slomp, diagonally opposite the village church in the village center. The house next door held a signal section with a telephone switchboard, probably manned by attached Luftwaffe personnel. When not on duty the General stayed in a house at the eastern end of the village. On the western outskirts of Westerbork, there was a labor-camp at the Pietersberg, where several hundred Dutch civilian laborers were detained, forced to contruct German trenches, dugouts and anti-tank ditches in the area. It held a small detachment of camp guards. Enemy intervention might also come from the west, from the direction of Beilen. It was known that there was a larger enemy garrison at Beilen, according to civilian estimates some 1,500 strong, but the number was not certain, since German units were on the retreat to the north, towards Hooghalen and Assen.

The prospect of knocking out a German general's headquarters was immensely enticing and although he had only a small force at his disposal, Major Puech-Samson decided to have a crack at it. The more because the policemen told him that it was rumored that the German general was about to leave the village with his headquarters. Both policemen returned to Westerbork with the promise to return to Witteveen at 13:00 hours to lead the French to the village. In the meantime, another Dutch resistance fighter, Wim van der Veer, a secret agent who had been parachuted in October 1944 in the area to help and organize the local resistance, arrived at Westerbork and contacted Stoel. Van der Veer arrived on bicycle from Appelscha, where he had encountered the French SAS paras under Captain Sicaud (see Operation Amherst: French SAS in Holland, April 1945). Since Van der Veer knew the region well, he took on the task of guiding the French to Westerbork.

While the action was plotted, the man who would carry it out was still preoccupied with the search for the containers. At dawn, Captain Betbèze once more went out with four of his men to search for the lost containers. It took him until 11:00 hrs to find them. It appeared that they had been released after the last man had jumped, instead of halfway through the stick. The containers had landed four kilometers from where the paras came down. Unfortunately Dutch locals had beaten the French in discovering the containers and had started pillaging them, they mainly went after the food. The containers gave the French the added fire-power of two Bren guns and some spare ammunition. Only by 2 o'clock in the afternoon Betbèze and his search party returned at the basecamp in the Witteveen forest. It had been an arduous haul. Betbèze: "We were all exhausted by the enormous load we had to carry on the shoulders by the cords of the parachutes. And we all hoped for a good rest" (1). Instead Puech-Samson told him to attack Westerbork. Betbèze had preferred to delay the attack until darkness, but his subordinates, Lorang-Schweirer and Bobinec, pressed by their men who were eager to take action, made Puech-Samson relent; the attack would be launched right away, especially to make sure that the Germans would still be there (2).

Soon after, twenty-one French paras under command of Captain Betbèze left the forest of Witteveen to carry out the attack mission. A small group of about eight men remained at Witteveen to guard the basecamp, among them three of the four wireless operators (signaller Cpl Cognet had volunteered for the action), Puech-Samson and his adjudant Captain Moulllié, both having been injured in landing accidents. There had been some trouble in retrieving the container with the wireless set, but it was found shortly after daylight, enabling Puech-Samson to transmit his first wireless message to main HQ SAS at Londen at 09:40 hrs. He radioed that he had gathered two of his sticks without making contact with the enemy and all was fine. He also added that he was 'heading towards Westerbork', which means that the plan had already been already conceived before the message was sent.

View attachment 302186
In his first message, transmitted at 09:40 hrs on April 8th, Major Puech-Samson notified Main SAS HQ that he had gathered two of his sticks and headed for Westerbork (Ops Log Main SAS HQ, April 1945, serial 781)

View attachment 423756
Soon after a second message was sent, at 10:00 hrs, in which Puech-Samson gave some feedback on the intelligence information he thusfar had obtained. The blown bridges mentioned by coordinate are the Westerborker Bridge at Zuidveld and the Orvelter Bridge , both across the Oranjekanaal, see map below (Ops Log Main SAS HQ, April 1945, serial 792).

With Wim van der Veer in the lead, the French paras, avoiding the main roads, marched along dusty sand tracks and small back roads over the townships of Garminge and Eursinge towards Westerbork, which was about a two hours walk (3). En route the French paras were cheered on by the residents of the small farms they passed by, who happily lined the road in the mistaken belief that they had been liberated. All of a sudden the peaceful atmosphere was punctuated by the crackle of a distant firefight. A battle was going on somewhere to the northeast along the Oranjekanaal. Although not aware of it at the time, this was the stick of Lieutenant Georges Taylor who encountered enemy resistance along the Oranjekanaal [see below: Operation Amherst: French SAS in Holland, April 1945]. After a while, the sound of the distant fighting died down. The men of Betbèze marched on, it was a warm Sunday afternoon and they had still a couple of miles to go.

View attachment 423760
Map of the area with the approximate landing zones of the sticks in blue circles. The stick of De Camaret was the only one that dropped close to the intended landing zone. A = Westerborker Bridge; B = Orvelter Bridge, both were destroyed by the enemy.

View attachment 302201
The farmer settlement of Garminge where the French, as elsewhere along the route, were openly cheered on by the residents, in the mistaken belief that they had been liberated. At one point, the soldiers even had to send them away, because they continued to follow the soldiers in their over-enthusiasm.

View attachment 301854
The final approach of the paras most likely led along this sandy track called Walakkers, connecting the township of Eursinge with Westerbork. The village of Westerbork has expanded after the war; the edge of the modern Westerbork is visible in the background between the trees.

View attachment 301962
A pre-war picture of the small settlement of Witteveen, which was one of the most recently build villages in Drenthe. It was founded in the mid-20'ies as a project for the unemployed and their families, who were employed in the peat reclamation of the 'Witte Veen' (or White Peat marshes). On the picture the school building (right) and the school teachers house next to it. The teacher put the French in touch with Van Lohuizen. The school building was later used by the French to lock up German prisoners of war (photo courtesy Hist.Kring Westerbork).

(The story - my paraphrase - with courtesy to: Westerbork Accent, Info nr.3, 1995, "April 1945, de bevrijding van Westerbork" and Col. Roger Flamand: "AMHERST : les parachutistes de la France libre, 3e et 4e SAS, Hollande 1945"; I used the Dutch translation of this book by Jaap Jansen.) and Betbèze, "Qui ose Gagne".

(1) Betbèze, "Qui ose Gagne", SAS Bulletin 1952
(2) Col. Louis Mairet, Histoire des Parachutists, p. 8.
(3) Initially the Dutch policeman Stoel also accompanied the group, but halfway he stayed behind with a befriended farming family.
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Congatulations! Although, some of the Dutch was a bit of a problem. When I was a small boy in Hanover, a neighbor spoke Plattdeutsch to me. From memory it sounded a bit like Dutch.
Stefan.

Richard Borst · Dec 1, 2025

stolpi said: ↑

Another new addition to my collection of Op Amherst publications arrived today, from Germany.

Roger Flamand, "Paras de la France Libre", (Cité 1976).

A good bargain: € 3,00 for a hardcover copy. I am busy delving into the content.

View attachment 425430
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got this one too! Lot's of good info!

stolpi · Mar 4, 2026

Another add-on to my collection of Op Amherst publications.

An excellent (Dutch) local history on the Liberation of Pesse and surroundings in April 1945, written by Albert Metselaar, the resident historian of Hoogeveen.

This booklet, unexpectedly, contains valuable information about Operation Amherst. Finally some info on the stick Decours, thusfar the only stick about which absolutely nothing was known. I added the info into the thread, see stick Decours in: OPERATION AMHERST: French SAS in Holland, April 1945. This info also indirectly solved the issue I encountered with the actions of the stick Gayard at the Havelter Bridge, which I now have to backdate.

The booklet also provides many additional info on the operations of the sticks Paumier and Nicol, which has been added to the thread.

Richelieu · Feb 14, 2026

I came across this misfiled copy of a report by Brigadier Calvert which may be of interest - not sure if it's the same one that has been quoted from previously in this thread.

Canadian Military Headquarters, London : C-5839 - Héritage

stolpi · Mar 4, 2026

Richelieu said: ↑

...not sure if it's the same one that has been quoted
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Richelieu - Thank you for pointing out ... it is the same report used in this thread.

stolpi · Apr 8, 2026

Bump ... 81 years ago, during the night of 7 to 8 April, operation Amherst started.

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