British logistics in the Siegfried Line campaign

The British Second Army liberated Brussels on 3 September, but the subsequent effort to cross the Rhine with the aid of airborne forces in Operation Market Garden was unsuccessful.

Although the port of Antwerp had been captured virtually intact on 4 September, major operations were required to clear the German defenders from the Scheldt estuary, and it was not opened for shipping until 26 November.

[4] The bulk of the German forces were drawn towards the British sector,[4][5] with the result that the advance was much slower than planned, and the lodgement area was considerably smaller.

[7] When the American Operation Cobra, launched on 25 July 1944, succeeded in breaking through the German defences,[8] six additional transport companies were shipped from the United Kingdom.

To permit this, the tonnage being shipped from the UK to France was reduced from 16,000 to 7,000 long tons (16,300 to 7,100 t) per day; the difference being made up by drawing down stocks held in the Rear Maintenance Area (RMA) in Normandy.

[18][26] The HQ of Lines of Communication, under the command of Major-General R. F. B. Naylor,[27] initially established itself at Malines in September, but moved to Roubaix on the French-Belgian border, a more central location, in December.

[44] It was calculated that the Channel ports of Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Dunkirk and Calais had sufficient capacity to support the proposed advance of the 21st Army Group all the way to Berlin.

I personally have no doubt from a purely administrative point of view that, based as we were on the Channel ports, it would have been possible to carry out successfully the operation which Field Marshal Montgomery desired.

The transport situation was exacerbated by the loss of nearly thirty vehicles from the Guards Armoured Division in a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Eindhoven on the night of 20/21 September.

Relief came when a major German supply dump was captured at Oss which provided XXX Corps with 120,000 rations per day, although tea, sugar and milk were lacking.

Although Dieppe's port facilities were almost intact, the approaches were extensively mined and several days of minesweeping were required; the first coaster docked there on 7 September.

[26] Boulogne was captured on 22 September, but was badly damaged:[74] most of the port equipment had been destroyed, and the harbour mouth was blocked by twenty-six sunken ships.

[78] It too was so badly damaged that repair work was initially confined to the construction of the railway terminal for LSTs equipped with rails and the ferry HMS Twickenham.

[72][75] A berth was lost when the SS Cedarwood was sunk in the harbour by a mine, but by November it was normally working three landing ships, infantry (LSIs), a hospital carrier, five LSTs and several coasters a day.

[76] The shipping available to the 21st Army Group in early September was limited by the inability of the recently-captured Channel Ports to handle vessels larger than coasters.

[87] The first order placed for direct shipment from the United States was for 18,000 long tons (18,000 t) of flour, sugar, dried fruit, condensed milk, powdered eggs and luncheon meat, to arrive in January 1945.

The first ocean-going refrigerated vessel docked at Antwerp on 2 December 1944, and daily issues of fresh meat from South America became possible, although transhipment via the UK was still sometimes necessary.

[95] This was mainly attributable to insufficient warehouse space, a shortage of railway rolling stock, and delays in opening the Albert Canal to barge traffic.

[98] Whenever possible, US Army stores were moved directly from the quays to depots maintained by the Communications Zone around Liège and Namur, but these too were frequent targets of V-weapons.

The First Canadian Army converted a tank transporter trailer into a load carrier by welding pierced steel plank onto it to give it a floor and sides.

[121] Their delivery was slow, owing to the SHAEF's inadequate allocation of locomotives and rolling stock on the British account at Cherbourg, the only port that could receive them.

[121] Rolling stock was only part of the problem; the railway operators had to contend with damaged tracks, depleted staff and a non-operational telephone system.

The other design, known as Hamel, used steel pipe that was welded together and wound around special floating drums 50-foot (15 m) in diameter known as Conundrums, which deployed the cable like giant bobbins.

Two systems were planned: the first, with a pumping station codenamed "Bambi" was established at Sandown on the Isle of Wight to supply fuel to a terminal near Cherbourg, 65 nautical miles (120 km; 75 mi) distant, and one, with a pumping station codenamed "Dumbo", at Dungeness on the coast of Kent, to supply fuel across the Strait of Dover to a terminal near Boulogne, 23 nautical miles (43 km; 26 mi) away.

[133] During the German occupation of Belgium the Union Pétrolière Belge (UPB) had controlled the Belgian oil companies, and the 21st Army Group retained its services for the distribution of civilian petroleum products.

[137] A severe coal shortage developed in Belgium in December that threatened to bring the civilian economy and military railway traffic to a standstill.

Severe restrictions were placed on electricity, but these also affected industrial facilities used for military purposes, such as steelworks, footwear, clothing factories and laundries.

[150] Civilian workers were paid by their national governments under mutual aid, but the offer of a free British Army meal proved to be the greatest attraction.

A reluctance to undertake outdoor activities was overcome by issues of surplus military clothing and footwear, but by far the biggest disincentive was the German V-weapons.

Getting them ready for winter involved the repair of concrete runways, the erection of hangars, the construction of accommodation, and the preparation of 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of hard standings where stores could be unloaded from aircraft onto lorries.