by Mark Zuehlke
Market Garden was an intricate plan that relied on each entwined thread weaving together to form a perfect pattern. Almost from the outset, it began to unravel as setbacks piled one atop the other. Although the initial airborne troops gained many key objectives, fog in Great Britain critically delayed or prevented the landing of reinforcements the following day. At Arnhem, the British paratroopers gained a toehold in the town, only to face the fury of SS Panzer troops and tanks present in far greater numbers than predicted. Lacking armour of their own, the British were not only outnumbered but outgunned. Unless Horrocks broke through quickly, their fate was set.
Hope of early relief died on the afternoon of September 19 when the armour arrived at Nijmegen to find the vital rail and road bridges still in German hands despite the best efforts of the American paratroops. These crossings were not won until late the next day. When the Irish Guards attempted to move out from this bridgehead the following morning, they were quickly blocked by heavily dug-in German forces. With that, Market Garden was in tatters. Despite heroic efforts by the divisions involved, which managed to establish a narrow link through to the Neder Rijn on September 24, it was obvious that relieving the paratroops in Arnhem was impossible. The Germans north of the river were too strong, the Allies too weakened by losses incurred in the advance, and they had yet to fully secure the road from German counterattacks. On September 25, the order was given for the paratroops to pull out. Only about 2,500 of the 10,000 that had dropped nine days earlier remained—the rest either killed or taken prisoner. They slipped silently into the darkness, screened by an artillery barrage. During a long, grim night, 2,163 men were safely brought over the river.19
Market Garden was over. “Had good weather obtained, there was no doubt that we should have obtained full success,” Montgomery blustered afterwards.20 Whether the offensive could have succeeded, the failure to gain a crossing at Arnhem meant he “could not position the Second Army… to be able to develop operations against the north face of the Ruhr. But the possession of the crossings over the Meuse at Grave, and over the Lower Rhine (or Waal as it is called in Holland) at Nijmegen, were to prove of immense value later on; we had liberated a large part of Holland; we had the stepping stone we needed for the successful battles of the Rhineland that were to follow.”21
Montgomery was “bitterly disappointed.” This was his second attempt “to capture the Ruhr quickly… But we still hadn’t got it.” And having failed to achieve that, Montgomery looked over his left shoulder more carefully than he had in weeks and realized that he also had failed to open the approaches to Antwerp “so that we could get the free use of that port. I reckoned that the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong.”22 How he could have thought this might happen with First Canadian Army strung out and engaged in a multitude of operations in compliance with his orders was not something Montgomery cared to elaborate.
While Market Garden had been underway, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s 8th and 9th Infantry Brigades had fought for control of Boulogne—an operation that did not end until September 22 after six hard days of battle. That day, despite overwhelmingly outnumbering the Canadians, 9,517 German defenders surrendered. It was a surprising achievement, but one that came at a price of 634 killed, wounded, and missing. This was a significantly higher rate of casualties than the 388 suffered by I British Corps at Le Havre, where two divisions had forced the surrender of a garrison little larger than that of Boulogne.23
The fall of Boulogne did not mean that 3 CID could now turn to operations on the Scheldt. Calais remained. Nor did it mean any relief soon to the critical Allied supply problem—Boulogne’s port was blocked by sunken ships and so damaged that it would not open for traffic until October 12.
Waiting behind the Calais defences were 7,500 Germans. Again, two infantry brigades—the 7th and 8th Canadian—undertook the operation on September 24. A tough fight ensued that cost about 300 casualties and ended with the German surrender on October 1. The port was badly damaged, not predicted to open until sometime in November.24 During this engagement, 9 CIB had eliminated German cross-channel batteries at Cap Gris Nez that had long harassed Dover with intermittent shelling. The batteries were captured on September 29, and another 1,600 Germans bagged as prisoners in exchange for 42 casualties.25
ALTHOUGH THESE OPERATIONS did much to complete the coastal port clearing, they ensured that II Canadian Corps could not begin seriously trying to clear the Scheldt approaches during September for simple lack of strength. After the Algonquin Regiment had been repulsed on September 13–14 in front of Moerkerke, the 4th Canadian Armoured Division had shifted its strength east with the Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) leading the way across the Dérivation de la Lys near Eeklo, about six miles from where this canal broke away from the Leopold Canal to follow a southerly route. With the Germans retreating quickly before it, the division spread out to clear the ground bordered to the north by the Leopold Canal and to the east by the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal. By September 22, the division’s 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade was preparing to test the defences guarding the twenty-five-mile-wide gap between these two major water obstacles.26
Meanwhile, east of Antwerp, the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division had completed deploying its 5th and 6th Infantry Brigades in front of the Albert Canal by September 19 and the 5th was planning to try and gain a crossing on the night of September 20–21.27 As with the previous actions by divisions of II Canadian Corps, these offensive moves were not part of the army’s formal battle plan. That was still being crafted, the senior commanders and their staffs beginning to pin down the details based on an “elaborate appreciation of the problem of capturing Walcheren and South Beveland” that Crerar’s Plans Section tabled on September 19.
The crux of the problem rested on the inaccessibility of both islands. Only the narrow—barely 2,000-yard-wide—isthmus of salt flats and polders connected South Beveland to the mainland. Forced back upon it, the Germans would enjoy a particularly narrow defensive front. Running about twenty-five miles from east to west, the peninsula itself was bisected at the ten-mile point by the South Beveland Canal, over which a double bridge provided the only rail and road crossing. The canal was a vital Dutch transportation link used before the war by barges carrying goods from the West Scheldt to northern parts of the country. Four and a half miles long, 21 feet deep, and averaging a breadth of 130 to 160 feet, of the many canals parsing the peninsula into sections this was “the most formidable as a military obstacle.” While a couple of secondary roads existed, the main road was the only one that spanned the peninsula’s length. “Given the difficulties of deployment over sodden country on either hand,” any attacker would be channelled onto this road, which would perfectly suit the defender.
Walcheren was even more formidably isolated. Separating it from South Beveland was the Sloe Channel, “a shallow, treacherous, partially silted gap, shining with ooze, runnels and water, forbidding to boat or beast, but crossed by the causeway bearing the road and railway line from South Beveland. The island is about nine miles from north to south and roughly the same distance at its widest part from east to west. The same landscape of polders and intricate system of drainage prevails as elsewhere throughout the region, though with rather more rough pasture and with the attendant hindrances to movement across country, especially after rain… the level of saturation is never deep and towards the end of September a very slippery surface laced with ditches would slacken and hinder the passage even of tracked vehicles off the roads, and the pace of infantry would be slow.” Walcheren was home to two large towns. Vlissingen, known to the British as Flushing, was a thriving small port and industrial centre through which many English tourists had passed by ferry for prewar vacations. Middelburg was the provincial capital and before the war a thriving market town. Except for the medieval part of Middelburg, still surrounded by a fortress wall, most of the island lay well below sea level and would, “but for its ancient dykes and dunes… be lost to the s
ea.”
North Beveland, the smaller island that stood midway between South Beveland and Walcheren, had “much the same configuration” and would have to be attacked in much the same manner as its neighbours.28
Simply bulling from the mainland onto South Beveland and then across the narrow Sloedam linking it to Walcheren begged disastrous losses. So the planners proposed a multifaceted operation that would see not only an attack from the mainland, but also the landing of amphibious and airborne forces. They envisaged a major drive onto South Beveland from the mainland that would push through to the canal while a parachute brigade was dropped to the west of it to “disorganize the enemy and secure the small harbour of Hoedekenskerke.” Once this harbour was secure, waterborne forces could come to the aid of the paratroops.
Having won South Beveland, another parachute brigade would drop on Walcheren directly behind the Sloe and quickly gain control of it. This bridgehead would then be built up by forces brought in by boat and over the causeway. With Montgomery waffling about whether airborne troops would be put at First Canadian Army’s disposal, the planners also drafted various schemes that resembled the first except that only waterborne forces would assist on South Beveland and Walcheren. But they considered airborne troops “a most important adjunct of this operation” and pressed Crerar to advocate strongly for them.
As both islands were protected by powerful coastal gun positions, the planners also called for Bomber Command and 2nd Tactical Air Force to carry out extensive air operations against the guns and other known German defensive positions. Once the south shore of the Scheldt had been cleared, they recommended deploying all available artillery to the coast to fire upon the enemy defences.29
Those defences were considered formidable, but the planners found it “no simple matter… to make any accurate assessment of the forces defending the islands or of their dispositions.” Fifteenth Army was still being evacuated from Breskens, and thousands of troops were moving daily from Walcheren’s Vlissingen to gain the mainland via the South Beveland isthmus. How many would be held back to defend the north bank of the Scheldt estuary could only be speculated.
As Market Garden played out, Allied intelligence gained a better appreciation of the disposition of enemy divisions. The 64th and 70th Infantry Divisions appeared to have been retained for defending the Scheldt, particularly after two Grenadier Regiments from the 64th were identified as stationed behind the Leopold Canal with “orders to fight to the last man.” This division was believed to number only about 4,000 men and it was expected that despite these orders they intended to merely hold here until the canal was breached and would then give up the Breskens Pocket and escape by ferry to Walcheren, where they would continue the fight.
The 70th was believed responsible for defending Walcheren and South Beveland. Consisting of between 6,000 and 6,500 men, the division was considered a poor one, largely composed of “men suffering from chronic stomach ailments.” Added to the strength of both the 64th and 70th divisions, they believed, were stragglers from the 226th and 712th Infantry Divisions and a catch-all assortment of “naval and artillery battalions, engineers, gunners and harbour guards” that boosted the entire Scheldt defence force to about 20,000 men. Of these, some 4,000 were thought to be defending the two Beveland islands, 11,500 Walcheren, and 4,400 the Scheldt’s southern shore.
Walcheren bristled with pillboxes and gun positions situated densely along its shoreline of dykes and sand dunes. Underwater obstacles, vast networks of barbed-wire barriers, and minefields added to its defence system. About twenty-five artillery batteries were emplaced on the island. All the large coastal batteries—one 220-millimetre, five 150-millimetre, one 120-millimetre, thirteen 105-millimetre, two 94-millimetre, and three 75-millimetre—were capable of an all-round traverse. The bigger guns could range at will over much of the Scheldt’s coastline. There was no doubting that Walcheren would be a tough nut to crack.30
One intriguing possibility considered in detail was to deliberately breach the dykes and flood the entire island. This idea was based on the realization that, as advantageous as the topography of the islands was to the defence, once “the isthmus into Beveland had been closed, the German garrison would be cut off from all contact with their own military hinterland except by sea to the northern islands. Thus imprisoned, they would share the vulnerability of Zeelanders… to the hazards of tide and flood. Deliberate inundation,” freely utilized by the Germans elsewhere, the planners declared, could thus become “a two-edged sword. Were it not for the dunes and dykes which surround [Walcheren] island as rim to a saucer, raised up with arduous ingenuity by countless generations of Dutchmen in their own unending war against the sea, its cultivated fields and thriving communities… would be reduced to the banks of mud from which they were reclaimed. All that would be left above high tide would be some of the roads, irrelevant on their dykes, the remnants of the sea defences and the dunes on the perimeter, tree-tops, the roofs of farm buildings, the port of Flushing, and the town of Middelburg, itself an uncertain and dwindling island. Such a calamity faced through the centuries of their tireless engineering, now overhung the helpless Dutch.”
The Germans might well resort to flooding Walcheren on their own, the planners thought, by causing the drainage system to cease operation. This would flood the polders and greatly restrict the attackers’ freedom of movement. But if the Allies breached the outer dykes by bombardment and “letting in the sea… the menace and destructive potentiality would grow with the tide: were it to be full and the gap wide, our Intelligence expected that a deluge from eight to ten feet deep would rush in and that, in the shape of a huge tidal wave, the sea would begin a relentless re-conquest of the land. In about three days Walcheren would be covered.”
On September 16, however, still confident that Market Garden would succeed and bring “imminent victory in the west,” they had dismissed the proposal for “reasons of morality. Apart from the physical difficulties involved,” they wrote, “are the moral questions. At this stage of the war, and for purposes so fleeting, it is unlikely that even exponents of total war would bring down on their nearest neighbours a calamity equal to an earthquake or volcanic eruption. It is possible but improbable.”31
[ 5 ]
Illusion of Victory
WHEN FIRST CANADIAN ARMY’S planning staff tabled an appreciation on September 19 that rejected deliberate flooding of Walcheren Island and set out a tentative plan for the campaign, they immediately drew fire from Lieutenant General Guy Simonds. “It is my opinion that the Plans Section appreciation is based upon too many hypothetical considerations,” he wrote caustically on September 21, “which may differ very considerably from actualities.” First and foremost was the assumption that the south bank of the Scheldt estuary must be cleared before any operations against South Beveland and Walcheren were undertaken. Clearing this area, Simonds contended, “may be a major operation and… it may be so saturated [by deliberate German flooding] that it would be useless to us for gun positions from which Walcheren defences may be commanded.” He predicted that operations to clear the Scheldt’s north bank might have to proceed before the south bank was freed from the German grip.
Simonds also thought the planners far too sanguine in their discussion of the problems his divisions would face breaking into South Beveland via the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland. This “may well turn out to be an approach down a single stretch of road some five miles in length, bordered by impassable ground on either side. It would be equivalent to an assault landing on a ‘one craft front’ on a coast where it was only possible to beach one craft at a single pre-known point on which the whole fire power of the defence could be concentrated.”
An amphibious assault on Walcheren, unsupported by airborne troops, “cannot be ruled out… It may be the only way of taking it,” he argued. “Though it would be a last resort and a most uninviting task, I consider it would be quite wrong to make no preparations for it, and to be faced at some la
ter time with the necessity of having to improvise at very short notice. I am strongly of the opinion that the necessary military and naval forces should now be earmarked, married up and trained against the contingency that they may be required.”
Simonds still hoped airborne troops could assault Walcheren and he knit their deployment into his proposed combined forces offensive plan. It would develop in five stages. First, and surely most controversial, Simonds embraced the idea that aerial bombing “should be undertaken to break the dykes and completely flood all parts of the island below high water level.” Stage two would see the few remaining unflooded areas “systematically attacked by heavy air bombardment, day and night, to destroy defences and wear out the garrison by attrition.” To add to the psychological stress, as many heavy bombers en route or returning from raiding targets in western Germany “should be routed over Walcheren so that the garrison can never tell whether the approach of large aircraft indicates attack or not. This combined with heavy bombing attacks will drive the enemy to cover on approach of large aircraft formations and will help to ‘cover’ the eventual airborne landing.” Once “the morale of the garrison has sufficiently deteriorated, waterborne patrols may be sent to determine the situation. If found to be ripe, airborne, followed by water-borne, troops should be landed immediately following a bomber raid (when defenders have been driven to ground) and mop up and take the surrender.”
Having stated his general plan for Walcheren, Simonds presented his campaign to open the Scheldt. From Antwerp, 2nd Canadian Infantry Division would push northwards to cut off South Beveland and, if possible, advance across the isthmus. Meanwhile, 4th Canadian Armoured Division would continue operations in the Breskens Pocket until it could be relieved by 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. Simonds considered this an unfortunate compromise as such fighting ill-suited an armoured division, “but I have nothing else available within the present constitution and tasks of [II Canadian Corps.]” Once 3 cid was freed from its operations against Boulogne and Calais, it would relieve 4 cad and “complete the clearing of the area north of Leopold Canal if this has not been completed by that time.” One 3 cid brigade, however, would be held back and “earmarked with necessary Naval counterpart to train… for seaborne operations against Walcheren.” At the same time, airborne forces would be selected and trained “for landings on those parts of Walcheren Island which cannot be ‘sunk’ by flooding. Bombing should be instituted immediately to “break dykes and flood Walcheren Island” and to eliminate “defences and break morale of defenders of ‘unsinkable’ portions of the island.”1