The World at War

Brian Horrocks:
Then they came to me and they said, “Do you want Kleve taking out?” By taking out they meant the whole of the heavy bombers putting on to Kleve. Now, I knew that Kleve was a very 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 Kleve, 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 Kleve, 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 taking out. But when all those bombers went over, the night just before zero hour, to take out Kleve, I felt a murderer. And after the war I had an awful lot of nightmares. It was always Kleve.