Seine. They were ordered to halt and by September had been withdrawn back to England. While in Normandy, the division's three medical units had treated 6,722 casualties. Germany The next airborne operation the 224th was involved in was Operation Varsity the crossing of the River Rhine in March 1945. The divisions drop zones were on the high ground to the east of Hamminkeln. As this was the first airborne operation in daylight without the element of surprise, the 224th were warned to expect around 600 casualties. The 224ths airborne contingent was transported across the Rhine, in seven aircraft and three gliders. The flight was successful apart from one glider having to land in France when its tow rope snapped. The rest of the 224th landing under fire had four men killed and a number wounded by the German machine guns. Still under the German guns, they started clearing the casualties from the drop zone. At midday brigade headquarters ordered the 224th move to Bergerfurth, where they established the MDS in the village church. Casualties continued to mount and the supply of stretchers was exhausted. Two of the unit's stretcher bearers were awarded the Military Medal, for returning to the landing zone which was still under fire, to retrieve stretchers from the crashed gliders. It was around the same time that Corporal Frederick Topham was awarded the Victoria Cross. Two medics had been killed trying to assist a wounded man on the drop zone. Topham left cover to help, he was wounded in the face but succeeded in carrying the casualty to safety. By the end of the first day the 224th had seven dead, nine wounded and seven missing. They had treated 212 wounded and conducted nine surgical operations. The ground forces caught up with the 6th Airborne division on 24 March and by 2 May the division had advanced across Germany to Wismar on the Baltic sea. From then to the end of the war a week later the 224th remained static treating wounded soldiers, civilians and ex prisoners of war. They also provided a medical team to treat the survivors from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Palestine After the Second World War, the 6th Airborne Division was named the Imperial Strategic Reserve in the Middle East. The division moved to Palestine between 15 September and 6 November 1945. The 224th landed at the port of Haifa on 3 October.