End of the advance
On 5 October 1944, Alphen and the surrounding area had been liberated but the planned breakthrough towards Tilburg had stalled and the British-Polish advance had come to a standstill. The 1st Polish Armoured Division of Major General Stanisław Maczek had now been fighting almost continuously for eight weeks. The losses of soldiers had increased so much that it was questionable whether the division could continue to participate in the fight against the German occupiers.

Bad news
Maczek sent the deputy commander of the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Antoni Grudziński, to London with the official figures. They were shocking: the tank units were a quarter smaller than at the start in Normandy. As every tank crew member has a task, every wounded or killed soldier meant a tank could not be thrown into battle. The figures for the infantry, the foot soldiers, were even more alarming. In total, Maczek was short 800 men, about one battalion. In other words, instead of four infantry battalions, he now had to fight with three. Worse still, if losses continued at the same rate, the only Polish division in Western Europe would only have a few weeks left. The three weeks of relative peace around Alphen came just in time.

What next?
Because Poland was occupied by Germany, it was impossible to replenish the losses from the homeland, therefore a special solution was chosen. Because the place of residence of Polish men had been incorporated into the Third Reich, many originally Polish men fought in the German army. When the Allies captured these so-called Volksdeutsche, they gave them the choice to either spend the rest of the war in captivity, or to fight with their compatriots against the Wehrmacht. Thanks to this emergency measure, and also replenishments from England, the worst deficit was ultimately alleviated.

On to Breda
The division was therefore ready just in time for the next phase, Operation Breda, which started on 27 October 1944. Although it would never reach full strength, the 1st Polish Armoured Division was able to continue on to fulfil its task as part of the Canadian liberation army until the end of the war.