It was fought between the German Wehrmacht and allied troops at the Kapelsche Veer – a ferry crossing of the River Meuse near the village of Capelle in the province North Brabant of the Netherlands.

In a heavily water-logged area north-east of Breda, a subsidiary channel of the Maas forms along the river's south shore, a long island, amid a ferry crossing and harbor called Kapelsche Veer.

The Germans dug themselves in with remarkable thoroughness, and eliminating this foothold was a long, cold, and costly business involving attacking across the open and snow-covered ground in the face of a determined enemy.

Still, there were five icy days of thoroughly nasty fighting--the phrase of the 10th Brigade's historian is "sheer misery"--before it was reported on 31 January that all enemy south of the Maas had been liquidated.

With the 30th Corps again becoming available, active preparations for the offensive between Mass and Rhine were resumed; and on 8 February 1945 began the series of battles which was to produce in three months the total downfall of the Third Reich.