by Mark Zuehlke
Megill intervened and the Black Watch pushed off at 0800. The evening before, he and his company commanders had carefully observed the ground they were to advance across and targeted any apparent defensible positions for artillery and mortar bombardment.7 A fire plan had been devised based on 6th Canadian Field Regiment bringing seventy rounds per gun to bear, with added fire from the brigade’s heavy mortar platoon and a medium artillery regiment.8
With the Fort Garry Horse’s ‘B’ Squadron close behind, the Black Watch advanced quickly while Brecht was shattered by explosions. “Such was the accuracy of the barrage,” the battalion’s war diarist recorded, “that when the riflemen reached the point where… enemy mortars had been sited, they found all six of his mortars out of commission, and in the area over forty craters from our Medium and Field Artillery shells.”9 A bloody fight ensued. Fire from antitank guns knocked out two of the eight Fort Garry Shermans, but the remaining six pushed on with the infantry and soon were helping to clear the town.10 By noon, the Germans had been pushed out.
The “stacks of ammunition” the Germans had been forced to abandon served as evidence that they had not been expecting to lose the town. No sooner was Brecht reported taken than the Germans subjected it to heavy shelling and mortaring that further reduced the place to a ruin while snipers picked away from the outskirts.11 In the fighting at Sint-Lenaarts and Brecht, the Black Watch’s casualties numbered 119, with 26 killed. Reinforcements—11 officers and 55 other ranks—lagged badly behind this rate of loss, and the battalion would go into its next battle critically understrength.12
With Brecht taken, the Calgary Highlanders started advancing west along the canal towards Eindhoven, about two-thirds of a mile away. If the village fell easily, they would carry on a few hundred yards to a local crossroads that would become the start line for 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada. When ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies moved out with six Shermans from the Fort Garry’s ‘A’ Squadron, the squadron tank commander announced cheerfully over the wireless: “Little men now moving forward and Rattler [the tanks] right behind.”13
One of the “little men” out front was Private Don Muir, who was walking point. Normally, the section corporal did this, but had been too sick. Muir was nervous, worried about snipers, and sure “the first guy” would be the certain target.14
With the fields along the canal bordered by hedgerows, the likelihood of snipers or hidden machine-gun positions was high. But Muir and the other Calgarians were fortunate. The advance was little more than a walk in the park, although made noisy as the tanks stopped at the edge of each new field to shell the facing hedgerow, while the infantry advanced across the open. “It was beautiful to watch,” recorded the squadron tank commander, “you could observe the trace of our shells, passing in between [the infantry] and over their heads… As soon as they started forward numerous white flags appeared on our front and when we raised our fire, thirty-two scared Jerries came running to our position.”15
The Calgary Highlander war diarist praised MacLauchlan’s “carefully thought-out plan… unfold[ing] itself slowly and semi-magically. Arty and the tanks had a field day and shoots and manoeuvres were clicking like book-drills.” Soon the leading troops entered Eindhoven and headed for the tower of a distillery on the opposite side. Eindhoven was secure at 1530 hours and the Highlanders pushed on for the crossroads. With things going so well, however, one company kept right on going–“clearing the village of Locht, securing not only what was to have been the start line for the Camerons of Canada but also their objective!”16
Taking advantage of the unexpected gains won by the Calgarians, the Cameron Highlanders started their advance at 1715 hours, marched rapidly to a crossroads near Locht–about one and a half miles southwest of Brecht and two miles short of Lochtenberg–and turned hard north to drive towards Sternhoven, about a mile away. Meeting only light resistance, the two leading companies reported they were in the village at 1850 hours and considered the “objective clear.”
This capped a day of welcome progress after the earlier failures in front of the Antwerp–Turnhout Canal. 5 CIB had established a triangle-shaped bridgehead that put 6 CIB on a firm footing for its operations. The security of the bridgehead was evidenced when No. 2 Platoon of 11th Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers started work at 1600 hours on an eighty-foot-long bridge. This was the second attempt to push a bridge across the canal at the former Westmalle–Brecht road crossing. At 2300 hours the night before, an engineering party had been driven to cover by intense shelling. Five men had been caught by the blast of a single shell. Sappers Roger Charles Dionne and Robert Strahan Milne died instantly. Lance Corporal Arthur Emil Winters succumbed to wounds in an ambulance racing him and several other sappers to the nearest field hospital. Soon after the wounded were taken into the hospital, Sappers Cecil Amos Bell and Frank Arnold Lowe died. During this second bridging attempt, however, the job was completed in less than six hours “without mishap.” The bridge was named Keefler Bridge, after 2 CID’S acting commander, Brigadier Holly Keefler.17
Still, it remained to be seen if 6 CIB could drive the Germans off the rest of the canal and link up with 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade coming out of Antwerp, if that brigade could fight its way north from the city.
ON OCTOBER 2, 4 CIB was to advance on Merksem, the port town that sprawled for a mile along the Albert Canal’s northern bank, immediately east of where it met the Scheldt River. Its many port facilities were considered vital, but the town’s labyrinth of built-up streets provided ideal defensive positions from which the Germans were able to raid the Canadian lines.
Never one to expose men to unnecessary casualties, Brigadier Fred Cabeldu decided on a cautious approach. First, he instructed Lieutenant Colonel R.M. Lendrum commanding the Royal Regiment of Canada to send a strong patrol under cover of early morning darkness into Merksem. If the Germans were not in strength, the regiment was to advance one company after another into the town and gain control of its centre.18 This was Lendrum’s first battalion command combat test. But Cabeldu believed Lendrum more than competent, for the officer had commanded ‘B’ Company of the Canadian Scottish Regiment when Cabeldu had led that battalion ashore on D-Day.
When Lendrum had assumed command a couple of weeks earlier, the Royals were in poor shape. The battalion “had been badly depleted by casualties, exhausted with the fighting and movement of the Normandy campaign and the pursuit across France, and more than a little shaken by the hard knocks it had received,” the regimental historian judged. Officers and men alike, however, quickly “responded to the sure touch of the new Commanding Officer. A quiet, thoughtful man who was utterly unruffled in action, Lieutenant Colonel Lendrum proved himself a thorough and efficient leader. He hated casualties, and although willing to accept them when necessary, he always tried to minimize them by flexible planning and intelligent tactics.”19 Cabeldu’s approach meshed perfectly with Lendrum’s instincts.
Not content to limit the attack on Merksem to just one regiment, Cabeldu also ordered the Essex Scottish to enter the town from the west at first light by crossing the Groenendaallaan Bridge. A stiff fight might be required here, as the bridge was overlooked by Groenendaal kasteel, a large château the Germans had heavily fortified. Cabeldu hoped that the later timing of this attack would see most of Merksem already taken by the Royals and convince the Germans not to contest the crossing.
The Royals received welcome reinforcements in the form of a full battalion’s worth of Belgian resistance fighters. Merksem was home to many, so they were anxious to participate in its liberation. Lendrum adjusted the order of his battalion’s attack to put the Belgians in line behind his first company. Shortly after midnight on October 2, ‘C’ Company moved out from a stadium near the canal. Following right behind were the Belgians, voluntarily carrying the collapsible assault boats. Many wore white butchers’ coats to identify themselves as members of the White Brigade, and ‘C’ Company’s Majo
r E.J.H. “Paddy” Ryall was grateful that there was only a ghost of a moon, for the coats “were more conspicuous than could be wished.”20
The canal crossing went well and by 0420 hours, ‘C’ Company was moving towards the heart of Merksem still undetected.21 As the Belgians began crossing, however, ‘C’ Company bumped several pockets of Germans and sharp firefights broke out as the Canadians overran these troops. Realizing Merksem was threatened, the Germans immediately began mortaring both sides of the canal.22 Not used to night fighting, the resistance fighters bunched up. Thirteen were killed and ten seriously wounded, including one man who lost both an arm and a leg.23 When a party of Belgian stretcher-bearers rushed to gather up the wounded, the Canadians were horrified to see they were all female nurses. “These girls,” noted the regiment’s historian, “behaved with considerable heroism, but it was nerve-wracking to see women in such a position and becoming casualties. Finally the Belgians were persuaded to leave the fighting to the Canadian soldiers, and most of them reluctantly departed, except for a few who remained to act as guides.”
By 0700, ‘C’ Company controlled the southwestern outskirts of Merksem, and ‘D’ Company passed through to seize the main square. This was the key to controlling the town, for its five major streets all converged there. Meeting scant resistance, Major R.T. “Bob” Suckling led his company headquarters section and No. 18 Platoon to the square and established firing positions in several of its buildings. The company’s other two platoons moved about six hundred yards past the square, along the main highway running from Antwerp on a northeastward axis through the heart of Merksem, and established a strong blocking position to meet any counterattack.
Having set up his wireless in the tramway office overlooking the square, Suckling discovered that the many buildings between his position and the school across the Albert Canal that served as battalion headquarters prevented any communications. In the school principal’s office, Lendrum sat helplessly, wondering what was happening in Merksem and how he might help ‘D’ Company. Suddenly, the principal’s telephone jangled on the desk. Reflexively, Lendrum answered and was astonished to hear Suckling’s voice. The Belgian scouts had spliced a phone in the tramway office to a strand of telephone wire that the resistance had managed to run across the canal undetected by the Germans. Suckling’s voice kept softening, until Lendrum could hardly hear and was afraid the connection was about to be lost.24 “Bob, why are you whispering?”
“The frigging Germans are just outside the door,” Suckling replied.25 The major estimated his men “were in the midst of over 200 enemy who were marching around the street with a small [antitank] gun looking for the house in which they were located.” The Canadians lay doggo, holding their fire until a large group of Germans was concentrated on the street immediately beneath the building in which most of No. 18 Platoon was stationed. From the second-storey windows, the Canadians showered a deadly rain of Type 36 grenades and captured German stick grenades onto the soldiers milling below. The square erupted with explosions and shrapnel that left dozens of Germans screaming and bleeding on the brown cobblestones while the rest scattered.26
Soon another large German force began congregating in a nearby park. From the tramway office’s second storey, Captain Bill Dunning, the 4th Field Regiment’s Forward Observation Officer, shouted his firing instructions downstairs to the Belgian scout, who relayed them to battalion headquarters via the spliced telephone line.27 Caught in the open by the shellfire, the Germans panicked and fled.28
That put an end to serious German contention for Merksem’s centre. ‘A’ Company moved into the town, and that evening the Royals marched forty-four prisoners from the 1018th Grenadier Regiment towards the canal.29 The resistance fighters had also rounded up twenty-five Belgian SS volunteers, fanatical Nazis who had been left behind and surrendered only after a stiff fight between the two Flemish forces.30 For the Royals, the operation was an unquestionable success. Casualties were unexpectedly light, just three dead and two wounded. In the early part of the contest, however, one of ‘D’ Company’s platoon commanders, Lieutenant R.W. Davies, had become separated from his men and taken prisoner.31
While the Royals had fought for control of the town square, the Essex Scottish attack on Merksem’s eastern flank had gone in. ‘C’ Company, under Major J.W. Burgess, quickly gained control of Groenendaallaan Bridge. All buildings between the bridge and the towering Groenendaal kasteel had been levelled by earlier artillery fire and the ground badly cratered, providing the Germans an ideal position within the three-storey château with its two towers to rake the open ground with fire. Burgess had no option but to lead his men into this killing zone at the run. To their surprise, the Germans offered only fitful resistance and the Essex quickly broke into the building and rounded up fifty-three prisoners. The Essex war diarist described them “as a uniformly miserable type… only too glad to give in when rooted out of their positions.”
Lieutenant Colonel John Pangman threw two more companies into the attack on either side of ‘C’ Company, and the Essex began sweeping through the town on a broad front. The men moved slowly, picking their way up streets strewn with mines. As the soldiers advanced, they were greeted by civilians, “who were extremely glad to see us as they had been short of food and under stress for weeks.” When they reached an antitank ditch on the northern outskirts, the Essex stopped for the night. The war diarist cheerfully depicted October 2 as a “lovely day and one on which the crazy battle for Merksem was to reach a culminating point… On the whole, it was a most satisfactory day for the [battalion]… finally succeeded in getting off our backsides and pushing the enemy out of a strong position–one which… he had defended quite well.”32
But every victory carries its price, and this time the Belgian resistance had paid the most. Captain George Blackburn, a 4th Field Regiment forward observation officer, ended the night billeted in a Merksem cellar along with a number of “pretty young girls from the best families in Antwerp bravely fighting back tears, sitting in a candlelit cellar as they told what they had seen when they came across the canal that afternoon with the Maquis as ‘nurses.’”
Assigned to ‘A’ Company, Blackburn had entered Merksem that evening. By nightfall, the veteran who believed he had seen just about every aspect of combat in Normandy and the drive up the coastline to Belgium, had to admit to being somewhat disoriented by the confusion that went hand-in-hand with fighting in the built-up outskirts around Antwerp. A “story of weird experiences, crossing the Albert Canal in the dark in storm boats, of targets whispered cautiously into public telephones, of a company cut off, of 20-[millimetre] ack ack guns firing down the street, of company headquarters groups locking the door of the house they occupied in unknown territory and sleeping all night having little idea where the rest of the company or the enemy were.”33 The Streetcar War was taking its psychological toll and almost every man in 4 CIB welcomed the fact that they would now march away from the city.
THERE REMAINED, HOWEVER, a substantial roadblock west of Merksem at Oorderen, about five miles north of Antwerp, where the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and the Germans had been stalemated since September 21. The Germans held a formidable defensive line amid a major railroad marshalling yard just under a mile beyond the town. Such was its strength that each night the Rileys had been obliged to withdraw from Oorderen to avoid being overrun. At dawn, the Germans obligingly withdrew to their defences and the village again passed into Canadian hands. Hoping the loss of Merksem would disrupt the German forces all along the line, Brigadier Fred Cabeldu instructed Lieutenant Colonel Denis Whitaker to gain control of the marshalling yard on October 3.
Twenty-nine-year-old Whitaker was one of the army’s youngest regimental commanders. A star Toronto Tigers quarterback and graduate of Royal Military College, he had heroically led his platoon through a maelstrom of fire to gain its objective at Dieppe–one of few units to do so. His valour earned him a Distinguished Service Order. Whitaker had since led the regi
ment into Normandy, gaining a reputation as a gifted commander destined for rapid promotion. Despite Whitaker’s youth, he was a battle-wise officer whose athletic experience enhanced a keen tactical sense.
Tackling the marshalling yard defences head-on would get his men slaughtered. About twice as long as a football field, the yard stood on a height of ground. A series of pillboxes had been distributed at regular intervals across its length, and in between these strong-points the Germans had dug machine-gun pits beneath freight cars. Whitaker’s scouts had reported the night before that the yard held about two hundred defenders, many manning machine guns.
But Whitaker had also had the scouts probe to the west, where the twin track system merged and hooked sharply southwards to enter the port facilities. The scouts confirmed that this flank was lightly defended. If he could get a company in there quietly, they could catch the Germans by surprise. Whitaker decided that he would conduct a feint with the rest of the battalion against the German front while Major Joe Pigott’s ‘C’ Company came in from the left.
To ensure that the Germans had their heads down, Whitaker intended to smother the marshalling yard with supporting fire. In concert with 4th Field Regiment’s Major Jack Drewery, a fire plan was devised that included eight 50-calibre Vickers manned by two platoons of the Toronto Scottish Regiment (MG), the 40-millimetre Bofors anti-aircraft guns of two troops of an anti-aircraft regiment, a troop of 17-pounder antitank guns from 2nd Canadian Anti-Tank Regiment, all twenty-four field guns of the 4th Field, and sixteen additional 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns. While some of this firepower would be directed at identified strongpoints, the guns of 4th Field would provide an unusual variant of a creeping barrage by moving at right angles from west to east in lifts of one hundred yards every four minutes, directly along ‘C’ Company’s line of advance from the west, across the breadth of the marshalling yard.34