the 5th Parachute Brigade, under Brigadier Nigel Poett, and the 6th Airlanding Brigade, under Brigadier Edwin Flavell (although he was soon replaced by Brigadier Hugh Bellamy), along with various other supporting units. When Bols took command the division was back in the United Kingdom, expecting a quiet Christmas training and reorganising after being withdrawn from Normandy, where it had suffered heavy casualties, in September. However, with the situation in the Ardennes deteriorating the division was instead sent to Belgium and thrown into the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle fought on the Western Front during the Second World War, to support American forces in repelling the German counter-offensive between December 1944 and January 1945, one of only a small number of British formations to be engaged in the predominantly-American battle. The 6th Airborne Division conducted a counter-attack, beginning on 3 January alongside other British units, advancing against fierce German resistance until the division linked up with elements of Lieutenant General George S. Patton's U.S. Third Army. The division was not engaged in heavy fighting and was withdrawn back to England towards the end of February to prepare for its next mission. Bols then commanded the division as it participated in Operation Varsity, the airborne assault over the Rhine, serving alongside the U.S. 17th Airborne Division, commanded by Major General William M. Miley, both under command of Major General Matthew Ridgway's U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, in March 1945. He landed with the divisional glider troops in the initial phases of the operation, commanding from the front, and received both a Bar to his DSO and the American Silver Star (upon the recommendation of Major General Ridgway, the corps commander) as a result. Despite sustaining heavy casualties, Ridgway wrote about the operation, stating that: After the division had crossed the Rhine, it then advanced through the North German Plain until it linked up with Russian forces at Wismar on 2 May, the first British unit to do so. The end of World War II in Europe followed just days later. On 5 July 1945 Bols was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). Post-war At the end of the war Bols retained the temporary rank of major-general (and his war substantive rank was increased to colonel) and with it command of the 6th Airborne Division. On 21 September 1945 he traveled to Egypt with his HQ staff, arriving