During the Second World War, Operation Clipper was an Allied offensive by British XXX Corps (which included the U.S. 84th Infantry Division) to reduce the Geilenkirchen salient in mid-November 1944. Clipper was a part of a wider Allied operation, named Operation Queen to gain control of the Roer valley and the Hürtgen Forest.
Geilenkirchen is situated on the Wurm river, some 20 km (12 mi) north of Aachen. The surrounding area is undulating, alternating between woodland, farmland and industrial villages. The area was crossed by a network of passable minor roads, some major roads and a railway line. The Wurm is the major geographic feature.
The salient was a German position on the Siegfried Line (or Westwall) at the boundary between the British 2nd Army and the U.S. 9th Army. It was a restriction to the movement of Allied forces and a potential threat.
Read more about Operation Clipper: The Plan, The Defences
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)