Terrible Victory
Page 26
Meanwhile, ‘C’ Company’s No. 15 Platoon was still fighting valiantly when, at 0500 hours, the Germans set a heavy machine gun up at the rear of the house and began firing long bursts of tracer fire into their position. The tracers set the straw in the barn afire and that section of the building was soon ablaze. A corporal, who was now commanding a section after its sergeant became a casualty, ran over to Marshall. “What do we do now, Sir?” Marshall felt that this “was the greatest decision that I, at that time, ever made. There were two courses open–one to stay in the house and be burned alive or to rush out and be cut down by German troops whom we supposed to be waiting outside for just that moment. I decided that we should make an attempt to reach the platoon commanded by Lieutenant Peter MacDonnel, which was about 800 yards away. We gathered our wounded together and I went out through the front door first. To my surprise there was not an enemy soldier outside. I quickly called out to what was left of my platoon and carrying our wounded we made a dash to our closest platoon. On the way we passed German officers who must have believed that we were also Germans. As it turned out this withdrawal was most timely for I had only twelve men left in my platoon and each carried an average of ten rounds of ammunition. We did, however, come out with all of our weapons.”29
Dawn was breaking when Marshall and his men joined No. 13 Platoon, and the two units were immediately subjected to heavy German fire. Until that moment, MacDonnel’s men had been little engaged and, lacking a clear line of sight to the other platoons, had not realized that the rest of the company had been virtually wiped out. Now the fire pinned them in position, preventing any attempt to break through and rescue the headquarters section.
In the basement, Schjelderup and his men would be killed if they continued fighting. They could hear the Germans emplacing more demolition charges. It was clear they were going to be soon blown up or buried. Their ammunition was exhausted. So the major ordered the maps and documents burned, then he led the men into captivity.30
With the dawn, Marshall and MacDonnel could see Germans and Canadians intermingled. “We could not fire but had to stand and watch our people being marched away.” Only those two officers and about 35 to 40 men from ‘C’ Company’s approximately 105 remained. Twenty men were taken prisoner. On October 23, close to half escaped from a train en route to Germany. Schjelderup and Gri were among the escapees, reaching friendly lines after seventy-five harrowing days on the run.31
THE ROYAL WINNIPEG REGIMENT tried to retrieve the situation with a counterattack through No. 13 Platoon’s position early on October 7 towards the part of Oosthoek that ‘C’ Company had lost. Fighting was immediately at close quarters. When heavy machine-gun fire from a brick house pinned the leading elements, Privates J. Goodall and L. Blue wriggled forward to blast the building with a PIAT gun. Then the riflemen charged in and cleared the house in hand-to-hand fighting.32 Despite this, the attack faltered. Canadians and Germans dug in just yards apart to engage in a bitter day-long exchange of bullets. Both sides were hammering the narrow bridgehead area with artillery and mortar fire. Snipers were constantly at work, and the back-and-forth pitching of grenades became a macabre sport. When the skies cleared momentarily, Typhoons rocketed and strafed German rear areas. Smoke from burning buildings drifted over the battlefield and the smell of death hung over everything.
Getting supplies across the canal was a constant ordeal, the two companies of North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment paddlers suffering heavy casualties until 16th Field Company engineers got a kapok bridge, with its narrow plank deck and cable handrails, installed behind the Reginas. With a bridge in place at both crossing points, supplies could be delivered by heavily burdened men dashing across under enemy fire. The exhausted North Shores were relieved from ferrying duties.33
In an attempt to bolster the firepower that 7 CIB could bring to bear on the bridgehead, the Regina and Royal Winnipeg mortar platoons set up immediately south of the Dérivation de la Lys just east of where it parted ways with the Leopold Canal. The position was considered far enough back to be concealed from German observation and retaliatory shelling, but the two platoons quickly drew artillery and mortar fire. The Winnipeg unit’s tubes were positioned near an abandoned south-facing World War I pillbox dug into the canal bank, the concrete structure providing good shelter to which the men dashed each time German fire roared in.
When Winnipeg Rifleman Jim Parks and the others had arrived here during the night, they had tried to dig normal mortar firing holes that could double as shelters from enemy fire, but six inches down they hit water. To create a firm firing platform, they filled bags with sand dug out of the dyke and lined the bottom of the hold. Then they “put old ammunition boxes down… to make a firm base for the plate.” This proved only marginally satisfactory. “The force of a mortar bomb going out would drive the barrel down into the ground,” Parks later recounted. “First ten rounds or so, the barrel would just keep going down until the bottom of the barrel had been driven into the water. So we’d dig down and get the base plate out and put in more sand and empty cases until we got a firm base.” Finally, they had enough sandbags and ammunition boxes emplaced to prevent the tube sinking further. But this achievement disinclined them from shifting position, even after the Germans zeroed in with airburst rounds, because they didn’t want to have to build a new firing platform.34
Both platoons threw out a terrific rate of fire during the day. “Firing was so continuous that the weapons became overheated.” The two regiments handled this problem by firing in relays. When the Regina mortars overheated, they would cease fire and the Winnipeg mortar teams would take over and vice versa. Each went through “huge quantities of ammunition.” The Reginas alone burned through 1,078 rounds in just three hours.35
Much of the mortar and artillery fire, however, was landing too far north to seriously disrupt the Germans because they were so close to the Canadian lines. To enable the mortars to bring their fire in closer, three Regina mortarmen went across the canal to provide wireless guidance. Among them was Rifleman Denis Chisholm. Arriving at the south bank of the Leopold, Chisholm was told that “ammunition and water supplies were in great demand and everyone crossing had to carry as much of these items as possible.” In addition to his own equipment, Chisholm loaded up one hundred rounds of .303 ammunition, a number of grenades, and a Jerry can full of water.
The three men were then told the drill. Scramble over the bank, slither down to the kapok bridge, run like hell across, and get into a slit trench as fast as possible. Each man went over the top, followed a beat later by another. Chisholm was third in line. Reaching the bridge, he saw one of the stabilizing floats was out of line so that the thing tipped precariously near the opposite bank. But the first two men made it over, and Chisholm dashed out. “I made it about three quarters of the way across, couldn’t keep my balance and fell in. Being a good swimmer I thought I could hit bottom, kick off and come to the top, but this being a canal deep enough for barges, there was no bottom.
“I dropped the Jerry can but still clung to the rifle, I guess the result of the years of training. I broke water, couldn’t reach the float and started down again. Now I let the rifle go and fought my way up but was pulled down again by all the weight. I thought, ‘What a hell of a way to go after coming so far.
“Just then someone grabbed me and helped me up on the float. Half drowned I lay there until this person yelled at me to get going, and disappeared the way I had come. A shell or mortar bomb landing nearby gave me all the incentive needed and I landed in a slit trench with a fellow crouched in the corner. I asked him for a dry cigarette but he didn’t answer. I then realized he was dead… the number of bodies strewn along the bank would break your heart.”36
The death toll kept mounting. Lieutenant Tom Odette, a platoon leader in the Reginas’ ‘D’ Company, was standing between his two section leaders, looking out over a low wall inside a ruined structure, when a sniper round snapped in, punched through the man on one side, and ric
ocheted off a wall behind into the other. “I felt a blow on the back of my neck from stone fragments but otherwise I escaped being wounded that time. But the other two were dead!”37
Darkness brought more German counterattacks, making the “night of October 7–8… a literal hell.” The Regina ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies fended off fierce attacks. Beyond their positions, “wounded Jerries were heard screaming all night.”38 In the Canadian Scottish area, the fighting became so “close at times that several Germans were killed with Commando knives.”39
At 0200 hours, Lieutenant Bob Gray, a Regina officer returning to the unit, crossed the bridge and entered this hell. He and another officer were to take over ‘C’ Company. They found it cut down to just the company sergeant major and forty men, who were dug into the canal bank. “The noise and uproar were deafening.” The csm reported repelling the counterattack and then the utterly exhausted man was sent to the other side of the canal for a rest. Gray took command. The area that ‘C’ Company held “was crowded, vulnerable, wet and quite small… We did not know what to do with our dead. They could not be removed because of enemy sniper fire. All we could do was to push them up on the canal bank in front of us, and leave them there.
“We could light no fires and smoking after dark had to be done under cover… It was dangerous to expose oneself… German rifle grenadiers and snipers were always looking for targets. We were dug in beneath a row of very high poplar trees. A grenade fired from a German rifle at considerable distance from us, could explode by hitting the branches of trees which were over our heads. This sent a shower of shrapnel down on those who were dug in below. Unlike a noisy mortar or a whining artillery shell, these grenades arrived silently and did their deadly work.”
This night, the Germans introduced another hazard, which was to become a regular event during 7 cib’s terrible ordeal–shelling by coastal guns. “Trust the Germans to have guns which could fire in any direction–no matter where they were emplaced!” Gray lamented. When these guns fired, the Canadians would see a terrific flash of light far off in the distance. Each time, “there was a flash of light which was followed in a few seconds by the rumble of the explosion as the shell left the gun. After a few more seconds pause, we could hear the shells rushing like express trains through the trees above our heads to land with huge explosions to the rear.” By timing the interval between the flash and the first shriek of the massive round coming in, then multiplying the seconds passed by 1100 to account for the speed of sound, they could roughly calculate where the gun was positioned. This night they figured Cadzand, almost ten miles away.
“Each salvo was fired at a lower elevation as the guns were gradually depressed. When we were in the slit trenches each salvo passed closer and closer to our heads. Usually the guns ceased firing when the shells seemed to be six or eight feet above us. Fortunately not one shell hit a tree near us, so no one was hurt. Battalion headquarters behind us were not as lucky, and they got the hell pounded out of them several times. After the first night’s shelling we had the men convinced that the Hun could not depress the guns enough to hit us.”40
Shelling by coastal guns became just another of the grim conditions that 7 CIB endured. Having gained a toehold on the north bank of the Leopold Canal, division was determined to retain it. Retreat was not an option. But the brigade was so badly shot up and hemmed in by an equal or superior German force that maintaining the bridgehead was obviously the best it could manage. Whereas it had been anticipated that 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade would quickly pass through 7 CIB and widen the bridgehead–making the Leopold Canal phase of Operation Switchback the main effort–funnelling in another brigade was no longer feasible.
Those officers in the brigade who were in the know about Operation Switchback’s overall plan were all thinking the same thing. “Perhaps the projected 9th [Canadian Infantry Brigade] assault landing will ease this front.”41 That amphibious assault across the Braakman Inlet into the rear of the Breskens Pocket was supposed to be launched on the morning of October 8. What was to have opened a secondary front now had greater significance.42 It was, in fact, the division’s only hope.
[ 14 ]
In the Back Door
NOT UNTIL IT CLEARED Boulogne on September 22, and silenced the gun batteries at Cap Gris Nez west of Calais a week later, was 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade able to begin moving on October 3 to Desteldonk, a village three miles northeast of Ghent. The move was conducted in one day-long hop by trucks that carried the brigade “from France, across Belgium, to the borders of the Netherlands by 1830 hours that evening.”1 A move over such a distance and with such haste put the troops on notice that they headed not for a much desired rest but to a new field of battle.
“An inkling of what we may be doing shortly was gained today when the c.o. and party attended a demonstration of a new type of amphibious craft,” the Highland Light Infantry of Canada war diarist wrote the next day. “A very high degree of security is being maintained at this time and as yet the c.o. alone knows what our role will be and the type of job we are to do.”2
The HLI’S Lieutenant Colonel Nicol Kingsmill and other senior 9 CIB officers were introduced to three types of amphibians: Landing Vehicle, Tracked (2), Landing Vehicle, Tracked (4), and the Terrapin Mark 1. Generally called Buffaloes, the two LVT models were quite similar. Each was lightly armoured and powered by a radial aircraft engine. On land, they ran on tracks, while on water, retractable scoops extended from the tracks to provide propulsion. Top speed on land was 20 miles per hour, and 7.5 miles per hour on water. Except for a small covered bridge at the very front, both models were open topped. The LVT(2) was principally designed to carry personnel and was accessed by scrambling over its sides, whereas the LVT(4) had a ramp mounted at the rear for loading equipment and vehicles. Its motor had also been shifted from the middle to behind the front cabin in order to create a vehicle bay. Powered by two centre-mounted Ford v8 engines and running on eight wheels, the Terrapin “had a curiously clumsy appearance owing to one pair of wheels being set higher than the rest.” These raised front wheels enabled it to gain traction on steep embankments for exiting canals and rivers. Lacking armour or any gun mounts, the Terrapins were designed to carry about four tons of supplies and equipment, and were intended to land on already secured beachheads.3
These amphibians were manned by personnel of 5th Assault Regiment, Royal Engineers from the 79th British Armoured Division. Having received the flotilla only a month earlier, their operational training was judged “most limited.” While mastering the complexities of handling and maintaining the vehicles, the engineers were also kept busy retrofitting them with additional light armour kits–a task they were unable to complete in time for the operation. Even those vehicles fitted with the additional armour were still vulnerable because it was too thin to stop either bullets or shrapnel. Although the Buffaloes came with four gun mountings, those sent to 5th Assault Regiment lacked weapons. Two .30-calibre Browning machine guns per vehicle were scrounged up to give each some inherent firepower. They also lacked wireless sets, so No. 19 radios were installed. Few spare parts were available for repairs, but the engineers planned to make up this shortage by cannibalizing Buffaloes that became disabled during the operation.4
9 CIB was even less prepared for an amphibious operation than the British engineers. Intensively trained for its role in seizing Juno Beach on June 6, one report acknowledged that “few of the original personnel remained.” The 5th Assault Regiment’s 80th Squadron commander, Major R.T. Wiltshire, also noted that 9 CIB had been the reserve and had landed after the beaches had been largely secured. Consequently, the “present attack was… its first essay at this technique under battle conditions.”5
The technique was to be learned quickly. On October 5, the North Nova Scotia Highlander non-commissioned officers were drilled on loading and unloading from Buffaloes. Now experts, each spent the following day training their sections. Most found the Buffaloes “a very striking vehicle” that
appeared “to have quite a performance.”6 But the fact remained that each battalion’s total training “consisted of roughly half a day.”7
Riding in a Buffalo was not for the claustrophobic. “For this operation a working figure of 30 ‘marching’ personnel per LVT was adopted (in addition to the crew)… The men, who had to stand, were rather cramped.” No seating had been installed and the compartment was jammed with men and battle gear.8 The target thirty-man load was intended to enable a single Buffalo to carry a full platoon. In many cases, however, platoons were understrength, providing a little more leg room.
5th Assault Regiment’s flotilla numbered one hundred Buffaloes and forty Terrapins. Most Buffaloes had the rear drop ramps– because of the many vehicles needing to be delivered to the beach. The North Nova Scotia Highlanders, for example, required only twelve Buffaloes to carry its troops, but another thirty-seven to accommodate its supporting unit’s mechanized equipment, such as the medical officer team, the mortar and antitank-gun platoons, the pioneers, and the three Wasps. Each Buffalo could generally carry only a single vehicle.9
In a small harbour on Ghent’s northern outskirts, the flotilla gathered on October 7. The Buffaloes intended to “swim” the twenty miles north by canal to Terneuzen, with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and Highland Light Infantry aboard. These two battalions would form the landing’s first wave, and it was thought that by travelling on the canal they would reach Terneuzen more quickly than by road. It was to be largely a night move to avoid German detection. Once the Buffaloes reached Terneuzen, they would enter the inlet, and the assault would begin shortly after 0100 hours on October 8. This way, 9 CIB should be firmly established inside the Breskens Pocket by first light. The rest of the brigade, including the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders, would be trucked to Terneuzen. When the Buffaloes returned from landing the first wave, the Glens and other support units would be ferried over. The Buffaloes would then be withdrawn and subsequent beachhead supply would be by Terrapins.10