Hiding in the brick oven

Brickworks battles

On 24 September, the battle erupted. With the help of local resistance fighters, the 49th Infantry Division was able to cross the canal at Sint-Jozef, a hamlet of Rijkevorsel. They built a makeshift bridge there. A battalion then moved on across the northern canal bank to the hamlet of Den Hout.

But there their attack soon stalled. The Germans had dug in around the cement factory and brickworks on Kwikstraat. They surrounded the British battalion. Days of fighting followed. The British troops even deployed a Wasp, a flamethrower tank. The terrible weapon caused some German soldiers to surrender.

Poles force breakthrough

The population of Mercury Street was in agony. British and German guns damaged their houses. Residents therefore sought shelter in cellars or in factory buildings - even in the empty kilns of the brickworks. Several Beersen residents died in the firefights. On 29 September, reinforcements came from the Polish 1st Armoured Division, which drove out the Germans with a heroic action of infantry and tanks.

More than 20 British and Polish soldiers died in the battle. As early as 1946, the Liberation Committee Den Hout Noord erected a monument to them in a new street. This was given a symbolic name: Heroesweg.