Terrible Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  AT 0015 HOURS on October 9, two Calgary Highlander scouts lay hidden in a grove of trees west of Hoogerheide watching a gathering of shadowy figures. That patrol from ‘C’ Company, one suggested, before hearing the guttural sounds of soft German voices. Careful not to be heard, the scouts withdrew and headed for battalion headquarters.23 As more reports of Germans massing on the outskirts filtered in, the ongoing infiltrations also escalated in size. At 0400 hours, Major Del Kearns’s ‘A’ Company, guarding the vital Raadhuisstraat crossroads on the western flank, was struck so hard that it requested reinforcement. In ‘D’ Company’s position just to the east, Major Bruce MacKenzie radioed: “Will give assistance immediately,” only to call again that the “promise could not be kept because… they themselves were busily engaged in breaking up a Jerry infiltrating party.” Both companies had to call in artillery close to their fronts to prevent being overrun. At 0515, ‘A’ Company remained engaged in scattered house-to-house fighting with running groups of Germans, but reported “a perceptible decline in the ferocity of the Hun attack.”

  Then at 0600 the paratroops struck in force–‘A’ Company reporting that it “was once again in the throes of another counterattack.”24 Two German battalions, one from Zandvoort to the northeast and the other from Nederheide to the northwest, attempted to break into Hoogerheide.25 German artillery saturated ‘B’ Company’s position east of the church, while ‘C’ Company was treated to heavy mortaring. When Major Frederick “Franco” Baker radioed headquarters that he was under mortar fire, the war diarist noted that his “usual cheery voice… was grim and tight.”

  Although the attack concentrated on the Calgarians, the Black Watch were heavily shelled and harassed by many snipers. Small fighting patrols managed to capture several of the snipers, identified as paratroopers who were “definitely the cream of the crop. They range in age from 20 to 26 years, are fine physical specimens, keen to fight and with excellent morale.”26

  The pressure on Kearns’s ‘A’ Company mounted alarmingly as the morning wore on and about a dozen self-propelled guns began jockeying in the facing woods for firing positions. Had it not been for the fire direction provided by a 5th Canadian Field Regiment forward observation officer, the company would have been overrun. Besides the SPGS, another grave threat was posed by paratroopers who had manned several concrete bunkers studded at regular intervals inside a small wood dominating the village’s northern edge. To wipe these out, Major Ross Ellis assembled a fighting patrol consisting of No. II Platoon from ‘B’ Company and a tank troop from the Fort Garry Horse’s ‘C’ Squadron.27 After the Shermans shelled the wood, No. 11 Platoon rushed it. Still dazed by the fierce shelling, the Germans were just moving towards the bunker firing apertures when the Calgarians started chucking grenades in at them. Thirty-three paratroops immediately poured out with arms raised, calling, “Kamerad.”28 This action provided ‘A’ Company with a welcome respite, and gave Kearns a chance to hurry back to brief MacLauchlan on the company’s vulnerability. At the farmhouse, Kearns dropped into a chair across from the lieutenant colonel just as a shell exploding outside blew in a window, and was struck in the leg by shrapnel and glass.29 As Kearns was carried to the Regimental Aid Post, headquarters advised Lieutenant Don Munro that he now commanded ‘A’ Company.30

  All that morning and into the afternoon, the Raadhuisstraat crossroads was caught in the maw of a fierce artillery and mortar duel, with each side bombarding the section controlled by the other. Virtually every building along its length was reduced to rubble. The rest of Hoogerheide was also carpeted by German shells. In the late afternoon, the shelling only intensified, with all three 5 CIB battalions reporting being smothered by shells.31 The heightened rate of fire coincided with the three battalion commanders assembling at brigade headquarters for a briefing. Brigadier Bill Megill calmly began explaining division’s orders that the brigade “take the next bite to the NW at the neck” to expand its hold on the Brabant Wall.

  The three men all jumped to their feet, forcefully arguing as one that “it cannot be done with three [battalions] only and still prevent the Hun from coming in from the NE–it would need at least one more [battalion].”32

  Megill knew they were right and asked divisional headquarters for reinforcements, which Brigadier Holly Keefler passed up the command chain to II Canadian Corps. In short order, Major General Charles Foulkes promised that the 4th Canadian Armoured Division’s 29th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (South Alberta) and one company of 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Algonquin Regiment would be immediately sent from the Breskens Pocket to relieve the South Saskatchewan Regiment and Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders at Brecht and Brasschaat. This would free these battalions to replace the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and Essex Scottish, currently securing the division’s right flank near Putte, so they could take over Hoogerheide and renew the offensive against Woensdrecht. Moving these 4 CAD units constituted the first step in the already agreed plan to bring the entire division east from the Breskens Pocket to cover 2 CID’S flank and join the drive on Bergen op Zoom.33

  While Megill had been getting this reinforcement plan in place, MacLauchlan had been racing back to Hoogerheide in his Bren carrier–having sent a wireless message that his company commanders were to come in for a face-to-face briefing at 1600 hours. He arrived to find the officers displeased at being called away from their commands at such a critical time. Lieutenant Munro curtly reported that ‘A’ Company faced attacks from three sides. MacLauchlan became “visibly upset,” seeming almost in despair when a wireless report came in that the company was in danger of “being overrun.” ‘A’ Company also reported that it, along with ‘D’ Company, was “under heavy mortar and terrific shelling,” but could not counter with artillery because the paratroopers had “moved in swiftly and it would have endangered our own positions.”34

  Realizing the battle had reached a climax, the company commanders rushed back to their units. Lieutenant Munro found the tattered remnants of ‘A’ Company had already lost control of the crossroads and retreated past ‘D’ Company into the village. Intent on regaining the crossroads, Munro caught his men up and began reorganizing them. In ‘D’ Company’s perimeter, Major MacKenzie was yelling that there would be no retreat, while pleading with headquarters for tank and artillery support. A shell exploded and he fell severely wounded. Captain Bob Porter took command. Porter had no idea what had happened to ‘A’ Company. Unable to raise it on the wireless, he phoned headquarters to see if it was still in contact with ‘A’ Company. Negative, MacLauchlan said.

  When the attack on ‘A’ Company had come in, many of its men were still trying to shake off the effects of the preceding heavy bombardment. A shell blast near Privates Don Muir and John Bowron had knocked Muir unconscious. Bowron had helped Muir into the shelter of a basement already containing two other injured men. With another man, Bowron had gone looking for a stretcher just as the company broke and started retreating. Bowron was swept along with the tide. Back in the basement, Muir awoke to find a German “taking off my watch. I think it was one that I had taken off a German before that. I slipped into unconsciousness again. When I woke up next day, they were all gone and I managed to crawl up the cellar stairs. There was just nothing left of the house.”35

  Scattered along the embattled Raadhuisstraat, much of ‘A’ Company was fighting in small, isolated pockets within houses where two or three men controlled only the rooftop while paratroops were beneath them on the ground floor. Germans and Canadians squared off with grenades, bayonets, rifle butts, and fists.36

  Lieutenant Munro and the small number of men he had rounded up used ‘D’ Company’s front as a start line and started up the street towards the crossroads. Munro hoped to gather up the other men as he went, but all he met were Germans, and he could see that they were establishing a strong defence around the crossroads. About forty paratroops were spotted coming across open fields towards it from the north. Munro directed artillery onto them “with
devastating effect,” but that alerted the Germans on the crossroads to his presence. Realizing that he was about to be surrounded, Munro concentrated his men next to the church on the Raadhuisstraat for a final stand. Among the men with Munro was Private Bowron. “We had eight Bren guns, a few Stens, a six pounder and a seventeen pounder for support. We had roughly six thousand rounds of .303 ammunition… We fired steadily all that night.” All around lay the bodies of dead comrades and enemy soldiers.

  Lieutenant John Anderson of Vulcan, Alberta, who had signed up as a private when war was declared in 1939 and worked his way up from the ranks, was killed. So, too, was recently promoted Sergeant Raymond A. Harold, who had been Sergeant Ken Crockett’s right-hand man on the Antwerp–Turnhout Canal locks. ‘A’ Company had a staggeringly high fifteen fatal casualties and an equal number wounded.37

  With night falling, MacLauchlan sent Captains George Stott and Del Harrison to find ‘A’ Company. They groped through the darkness, dodging parties of paratroopers, before finding Munro and his men still fighting. There was no way his small force could regain the crossroads or break out of the encirclement.38 MacLauchlan had also lost contact with the Black Watch on his right flank, so had no idea whether they were holding or not.

  The Black Watch had been under far less pressure throughout the day. But as night fell, a sixty-eight-ton Ferdinand self-propelled gun that packed an 88-millimetre gun edged in between two of its companies, so unexpectedly that it was in the battalion’s midst before artillery could be brought to bear. Menacingly, the behemoth “continued to roll forward, down the street, where our ‘C’ Co[mpany] was located. As it came close to one of the houses one of our men inched a PIAT over the window sill of an upstairs window, and with one bomb put it out of commission.”

  Casualties had been relatively light for the Black Watch, but the grim news passed through the ranks that its carrier platoon commander, Captain John Ethelbert Orr, had been killed by a sniper’s bullet within thirty yards of battalion headquarters. The twenty-eight-year-old from Moose Jaw was widely regarded as “one of the most courageous officers this unit has ever known.”39 As night tightly wrapped the embattled town, the paratroopers, except for those still trying to eliminate Munro’s surrounded troops, pulled away.

  During the night, another O Group was convened at the small, cramped farmhouse south of Hoogerheide that served as brigade headquarters. When all the officers had crowded into the stuffy living room, the brigade war diarist thought the place looked more “like Grand Central Station on a Sunday night than the place from where brigade is supposed to be fought.”40 Brigadier Megill and his battalion commanders were all tired and shaken, so there was less incredulity and more outrage when Brigadier Keefler “announced his intention to attack.”41 When Megill calmly outlined the condition of the battalions and the stiffness of opposition, Keefler changed his mind. There would be no attack for at least forty-eight hours and it would be carried out by 4 CIB while 5 CIB moved into reserve.42 But the Calgary Highlanders were to regain the vital crossroads that ‘A’ Company had lost before being relieved on the afternoon of October 10.

  At the end of the session, Megill took MacLauchlan aside and ordered him temporarily relieved for an obviously needed rest. Major Ross Ellis of ‘B’ Company would take over the battalion for a few days. MacLauchlan agreed, but returned to battalion headquarters to monitor events until the regiment was pulled out of the line.43

  Captain Bob Porter’s ‘D’ Company, supported by Ellis’s company, moved out at 0500 hours to rescue the isolated remnant of ‘A’ Company and then push through to the crossroads. Although it managed to raise the siege of Lieutenant Munro’s small unit, the attack failed to gain the crossroads. By mid-afternoon, Brigadier Megill decided to leave that job to the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and pulled the Calgarians out of the line. In the fighting, Porter had been wounded and evacuated.

  The Calgary Highlanders had thirty killed and seventy wounded in the Hoogerheide fight–about 25 per cent of their effective fighting strength going into the action.44 The Black Watch had also suffered heavily, but mostly during its abortive October 8 advance on Korteven. Twelve dead, fifty-three wounded, and sixteen missing.45 Nonetheless, 5 CIB had fought a larger force of paratroopers to a bloody draw and barely lost any ground. In doing so, they retained the vital jumping-off point for the forthcoming attack on Woensdrecht.

  Hoogerheide itself had been martyred to the cause of an Allied victory. Seventy-two houses were destroyed by fire and 355 by shell-fire. Another 235 were lightly damaged. By the end of October 10, barely an undamaged structure remained.46

  IN THE POLDER country to the west of the Brabant Wall, the Royal Regiment of Canada had continued its attempt to gain control of the isthmus linking South Beveland to the mainland. Before advancing on October 8, the men of Major Tim Beatty’s ‘D’ Company had substituted extra ammunition and grenades for their hard rations, so had passed the ensuing night dug into the muddy ground of a dyke on the western flank of a wide polder becoming ever more cold and hungry. “The bleak, mist-shrouded polders had an eerie, unearthly look even by day” that had grown only “grimmer and more menacing” during the hours of darkness. There were constant alarms. At one point, a lance corporal awoke in his slit trench to find a German paratrooper standing over him. Beating the German to the draw, the Royal killed him with a Sten gun burst that alerted the rest of the company in time to drive off an infiltrating enemy patrol.47

  The dawn did little to raise spirits. Grey cloud hung over the featureless polders. Their uniforms were damp, boots sodden. Beatty intended to seize a sluice gate and pumping works the Germans were using to threaten the company’s current position. He would have liked to have gone even farther, but Lieutenant Colonel R.M. Lend-rum had cautioned against rashly going too far and getting cut off from the other companies–two still concentrated in Ossendrecht.48This instruction, combined with the sudden appearance of a force of German tanks, self-propelled guns, and infantry that began digging in along the road northeast of his position, convinced Beatty to restrain his naturally aggressive instincts.

  Just before this German force appeared, ‘D’ Company had been reinforced by several guns of the British 1st Royal Marines Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment. Armed with mobile 3.7-millimetre guns, the Marines opened fire with disappointing effect. The rounds from the guns exploded in air bursts that seemed to do little damage. It was, however, apparently enough to discourage the Germans from attacking.49

  The day progressed with Beatty directing either the Marines or the Toronto Scottish mortars to break up German attempts to organize a counterattack, while waiting his opportunity to assault the sluice gates. In the mid-afternoon, a force of about fifty Germans materialized from the other side of a dyke facing ‘C’ Company’s position with their hands up. As a platoon went out to gather them in, the Germans suddenly snatched up weapons and opened fire. Falling back under the cover of a quickly laid smokescreen, the platoon managed to escape.

  Towards evening, Beatty sent a platoon commanded by Lieutenant L.L. Pleasance against the sluice gate and pumping works. Sprinting across the polders, the platoon surprised the Germans and took fifty prisoners. The action garnered Pleasance a Military Cross and Sergeant H.E. Foster a Military Medal.50

  That ended ‘D’ Company’s actions for October 9, which the Royals considered one of frustration. The war diarist reported being surprised by the “strong resistance to our attempts to cut off the peninsula. Unfortunately, as long as he is in control of the mouth of the Scheldt, our supply problem will still provide many headaches.”51

  The next morning, Lendrum and Brigadier Fred Cabeldu hammered out a plan for the Royals to put in a two-company attack “to seize the main road through the neck” of the isthmus. Heavy cloud precluded air support, so a major artillery fire plan would precede the infantry as they advanced across the open polders. Much of the morning was spent by the artillery observers identifying German positions between the Royals and the road
and parallelling railroad that ran across the northern edge of the isthmus. Once the Royals gained the road, the isthmus would be severed.52

  By noon, the two companies in Ossendrecht and battalion tactical headquarters had moved out into the polders to form up behind ‘A’ and ‘D’ Companies. At 1300 hours, with the artillery, Marine anti-aircraft guns, and Toronto Scottish mortar and machine-gun platoons all firing madly at assigned targets, ‘C’ Company passed through ‘A’ Company’s lines. Major Paddy Ryall led his men into open ground where they could easily have been slaughtered had the Germans not been forced to ground by the intense and highly accurate supporting fire. Within an hour, Ryall’s leading platoon reached a farm less than a quarter-mile from the road.53 On the dyke behind the farm, the Royals overran and captured a 75-millimetre antitank gun and its crew. From there, ‘C’ Company was within firing range of both the road and railroad.

  Realizing that the link to South Beveland was in jeopardy, two reserve companies of paratroops from the 6th Regiment rushed forward and counterattacked. One company moved to block any Canadian attempt to attack Woensdrecht from the west, while the other sought to eliminate ‘C’ Company. Supporting the latter operation were two self-propelled guns. Ryall brought artillery fire down on the Germans advancing across the polder, while an antitank gun of 2nd Canadian Anti-Tank Regiment took on the SPGS. When the antitank gun knocked one of the spgs out of action, the other became mired in mud and immobilized while taking evasive action. The German counterattack collapsed.54