Artillery Under Fire

On the first attempt we had been told there were, on Exercise Rutter in other words, we had been told that there were one thousand untrained German troops and there were six thousand of us - five thousand Canadians and about one thousand British. We were told because of that Mountbatten who was in charge of the operation, wanted to do a circuit, an encircling movement going in on both flanks and coming in this way and he was overruled by General Montgomery who was the head of Southeast Command and he said why should we do that, we got six thousand troops to their one thousand so we can go in on a frontal assault which may or may not be right.