By early January 1945 at least 1,400 British and Canadian troops had been killed, wounded or reported as missing
During the winter of 1944-45, some 55,000 soldiers from Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks’ XXX Corps, a formation then equal to the size of the entire pre-war regular British Army, battled with the Germans in the Ardennes. Though a predominantly American campaign, the British arrived and fought in conditions of secrecy and departed with equal stealth. There are few photographs of their activities and most local civilians were unaware of the troops’ presence. At the western extent of the German penetration they left behind only a lonely Commonwealth War Cemetery, overlooking the Ourthe River at Hotton in Belgium. It contains some British dead from 1940 but most of the 666 interred are from January 1945. They include troopers of the 61st Reconnaissance Regiment, Daily Telegraph war correspondent Peter Henry Lawless, Ronald Cartland (a Member of Parliament) and Brian Sugden, the 54-year-old-commander of 158th Brigade. The cemetery is testament to Britain’s unspoken and almost unknown contribution to the greatest American battle in Europe of the Second World War – the Battle of the Bulge.
As the winter of 1944 approached, the Allied forces in Europe went into winter quarters, presuming their opponents would do the same. It grew increasingly foggy, cold and icy, with sleet and heavy snow beginning to fall across the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Having concluded Operation Market Garden in September 1944 and cleared large areas of Holland in October, and with the landings on Walcheren in November freeing the Scheldt River from the North