'Orange Deal' was a Dutch attempt by Colonel de Ruyter van Steveninck’s Royal Netherlands Motorised Brigade (Prinses Irene Brigade) to secure a bridgehead on the right bank of the Maas river (23/26 April 1945).

The Royal Netherlands Motorised Brigade had been formed from some 1,500 Dutch troops who reached the UK in May 1940 following the defeat of the Netherlands. Elements of this force became the nucleus of what was originally called the Dutch Legion and was later increased in strength by conscription among Dutch citizens in Canada, the USA, the Middle East, Dutch Antilles, Argentina, Surinam and South Africa. It also detached troops for other duties, and as a result grew only slowly.

On 11 February 1941, by approval of Queen Wilhelmina, the Dutch Legion was redesignated as the Prinses Irene Brigade. On 6 August 1944 the first troops of the Prinses Irene Brigade landed at Graye sur Mer in Normandy and, once available at full strength, the brigade served under General H. D. G. Crerar’s Canadian 1^st Army until it moved forward with Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey’s British 2^nd Army, in the process encountering heavy fighting around the Château St Come ('Hellfire Corner') and liberating Pont Audemer.

In the middle of September 1944 the Prinses Irene Brigade became involved against the Germans in Beeringen, and crossed into the Netherlands on 20 September 1944 at Borkel and Schaft. Around this time it was involved in combat with a Dutch volunteer SS formation, SS-Standartenführer Martin Kohlroser’s 1^st SS Grenadierregiment 'Landstorm Nederland'. From 26 September the Prinses Irene Brigade guarded the bridge of Grave, then the longest bridge in Europe.

After 'Market' and 'Garden', the Prinses Irene Brigade was moved farther to the south, and on 24 October was ordered to attack Tilburg from the south while Major General T. G. Rennie’s British 51^st Division attacked the town from the east. The Prinses Irene Brigade could not reach Tilburg, however, and was stranded at Beethoven.

The Prinses Irene Brigade spent the winter of 1944/45 in the region of Walcheren and North Beveland (Zeeland), and then moved back to Noord-Brabant. On 31 March 1945 the commander of the Prinses Irene Brigade, de Ruyter van Steveninck, lost three platoons of marines, constituting the 2^nd Independent Company, which were despatched back to the USA to rejoin their comrades of the Royal Netherlands Marine Brigade, which had loaned these men so that the Prinses Irene Brigade would have sufficient strength to participate in the liberation of Europe as requested by the British. The shortfall left by the departure of the marines was made good by replacements from the volunteers of the liberated southern Netherlands, who had been training at Bergen-op-Zoom under the command of a South African officer, Paul van Looringh van Beeck.

On 2 March the Prinses Irene Brigade came under the control of the Netherlands District under Lieutenant General Sir Alexander Galloway, with its headquarters in Tilburg. The Prinses Irene Brigade was involved in heavy fighting in Hedel, to the north of Den Bosch, on the Maas river during April 1945, when it was to join forces with No. 30 (Royal Marine) Commando, part of Brigadier C. F. Phillips’s British 116^th Brigade Royal Marines, in Kerkdriel, for an attempt to liberate the Bommelerwaard. The Royal Marines were forced to pull back in the face of determined German resistance in the town of Kerkdriel, however, leaving the Prinses Irene Brigade stranded in the bridgehead of Hedel. The Dutch troops fought the Germans with great courage and held the town for three days, inflicting many casualties, but at 11.15 on 25 April the order to withdraw from the bridgehead in Hedel came from the 116^th Brigade Royal Marines. At 23.00 the 3^rd Independent Company, the final element of the Prinses Irene Brigade on the northern side of the river, withdrew from Hedel, the undertaking being completed by 00.30 on 26 April.