Slog or Swan

Joint second runner-up for the 2025 Society for Army Historical Research Templer Medal Prize.

Operation Veritable (8 February to 10 March 1945) started with a 900-bomber raid and over 1,800 guns firing ‘the heaviest barrage of the whole war’. Then a dash by 30 Corps aimed to punch through the Siegfried Line to reach the Rhine bridges at Wesel within four days. It failed!

With close to half a million men fighting a month-long series of battles, Veritable dwarfed the Arnhem disaster that preceded it, the Rhine crossing that followed it, and all the named operations that formed the Anglo-Canadian campaign in North-West Europe. Veritable was ‘one of the most bitter series of battles ever fought by men’ and its scars of are plainly visible today in the chain of artificial lakes that mark where Allied artillery smashed through the water table along the Dutch-German border.

Despite its size, importance and immense human cost, Veritable was sold as a mundane enabling operation and later mislabelled a ‘forgotten victory’. Slog or Swan presents the first objective assessment of British Army performance in Veritable to show how fundamental problems with army organisation and fighting doctrine pushed soldiers beyond the limits of endurance.

Slog or Swan exploits a depth of previously untouched primary sources to shine new light on British Army effectiveness by showing how soldiers fought the pivotal operation of 1945. Where previous works have fixated on Normandy and Arnhem, and made broad judgements on leadership or morale, this book drills into the tactical realities that defined British fighting power.

 

"For those seeking to understand the frictions of high intensity warfare in a congested battlespace – while contesting unreliable communications, inadequate infrastructure, exhaustion and a defeated yet resilient enemy – Slog or Swan is essential reading.....Throughout Slog or Swan, Rooney questions the established narratives without appearing to take sides; examining each action on its merits. He does this extremely well and although time and space limited the number of actions he could analyse, it is hoped that further historians will follow Rooney’s methodology." British Army Review, Issue 194, Summer 2025

Listed in Prof. Peter Caddick-Adams list of “outstanding non-fiction military and current affairs books of 2025” in the Critic Magazine

"[Slog or Swan] offers a meticulous and remarkably well-documented exploration of the famous offensive of the British 30th Corps through the Reichswald forest on the left bank of the Rhine. After reading it, one better understands the reasons for its failure, and not only due to the mud or tenacious German paratroopers. Highly recommended." Vae Victus Magazine No184 (translated from French)

".....Rooney does an excellent job of explaining how quickly plans can come undone in large-scale combat operations, but also how adaptability develops as a response. Very much a book for military professionals, the positive attributes of Slog or Swan explain why it was awarded the André Corvisier Prize in 2024 by the International Commission for Military History." International Journal of Military History and Historiography