by Mark Zuehlke
Not that Rowley thought the task easy. He described Breskens as a heavily fortified city, surrounded by an antitank ditch, an extensive network of minefields, tangles of barbed wire, and pillboxes. Rowley and Spry put together a complex attack that wove the Funnies intricately into individual company assaults. Each platoon was provided with a man-packed flamethrower called a Lifebuoy for additional punch. Even with all this added firepower, Rowley thought the operation likely to fail and that casualties would be terrific.33
Then came terrible news. The 284th Squadron, Royal Engineers tasked with supporting 9 CIB had harboured for the night in a farmyard near Ijzendijke on October 19. In the morning, a convoy from the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps joined it to deliver supplies of food, ammunition, petrol, and highly volatile liquid nitroglycerine. Shortly after 1300 hours, while the engineers and truckers unloaded cargo from the trucks, the farmyard was shattered by a tremendous explosion. The farmhouse and outbuildings collapsed, tanks and trucks were engulfed in flames and exploded, an adjacent orchard was set afire, and men were torn asunder or turned into human torches.
Thrown twenty feet into the air by the blast, Engineer Sergeant Harry Prince had clawed wildly for any kind of purchase as he soared towards the farmhouse. Then the building disintegrated and he whacked hard onto the ground in front of it. Two women stumbled out of the ruin, one with clothes shredded and blood pumping out of a wound in her breast. Prince staggered over to her and applied a shell dressing. The devastation was horrendous. Three tanks and seven trucks were wrecked. No trace of the truck carrying the nitroglycerine remained. Sixteen Canadians and thirty British died outright or were mortally wounded, the bodies of seven of the Canadians and nine Britons having been completely vapourized. Another thirty-eight men were injured. Miraculously, no civilians were killed. Although six tanks remained operational, and the surviving engineers offered to form ad hoc crews, 79th divisional command ordered the squadron withdrawn from the operation.34
Rowley learned the news hours later. He immediately went to Spry, who agreed that the attack must be delayed until the devastated squadron could be replaced. While Spry sought approval from II Canadian Corps commander Major General Charles Foulkes, Rowley went to a dinner that more resembled a wake. At 2100 hours, while still eating, news came that the operation was postponed twenty-four hours. Rowley relaxed, and for about half an hour everyone “had a hell of a good time” before another signal came in announcing “the operation is now on.” Rumours flew that the order emanated from corps, others that it was made at army level, while some even saw the personal hand of Winston Churchill at play. Rowley spent most of the night jiggering his plan into one that could be carried out by infantry alone.35
RAIN FELL FROM a slate-grey sky the morning of October 21 as the Glens formed to attack Breskens. At 0930 hours, the massed artillery opened up on the little port town with a terrific bombardment. At the same time, the sky began slowly clearing, reassuring Rowley that the promised air support should be available. No sooner did he begin to think this, however, than he received a signal that the bombers tasked with attacking Vlissingen would be delayed and so would the Typhoons aimed at Breskens and its harbour area. The artillery kept firing, though, and at 1000 hours, ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies moved forward. Immediately, the coastal guns at Vlissingen began ranging on the advancing infantry. The two heavy regiments instantly shifted their guns towards Walcheren Island, which caused the German gunners to forget about the Glens and enter into an artillery duel. Twenty minutes later, the Vlissingen batteries fell silent.
By that time, RAF had Spitfires over Breskens, but it looked to Rowley as if they were just strafing with machine guns. There were no Typhoons. Rowley bluntly messaged that he “would like to see rockets in use.” After ten minutes, the fighters roared off, leaving him “of the opinion that… the air programme… was a farce.” He was reassured by 9 CIB headquarters that Typhoons would “be over with rockets in a few minutes.”
Despite the haphazard air support, the leading companies progressed well, reaching their first objective to the front of the antitank ditch that ringed Breskens. It was a formidable obstacle–thirty feet wide and filled with water twelve feet deep.36 The warming air had created a ground mist, so when the Typhoons appeared at about 1050, it was difficult to accurately engage any targets. But the mist also frustrated German attempts to zero in on the Glens. Intermittently, the Vlissingen batteries sent over salvos and the heavy artillery regiments quickly responded with counterbattery fire.37
‘B’ Company passed through ‘A’ Company, and headed for a bridge crossing the antitank ditch that allowed entrance into the town. Although standing, the bridge was heavily damaged–its deck riddled with holes and draped in aprons of barbed wire. A German machine gun in a farmhouse to its left raked the approach.38 As the gun position was well south of the direction of the attack, brigade ordered the North Nova Scotia Highlanders to take it out. The North Novas’ ‘B’ Company quickly silenced the gun and took four prisoners, but in moving towards the farmhouse, it was caught by friendly artillery fire that wounded six men.39
It was now 1145, and Rowley was urging the Glens’ ‘B’ Company “to get across the bridge.” All the companies were slowing down, at times having to wait for teams of engineers to clear paths through dense thickets of mines. ‘C’ Company managed to get over the antitank ditch by throwing a kapok bridge across. The company made the crossing single file and up close to the seawall that sheltered the main harbour, a move that caught the Germans by surprise.
‘B’ Company was soon on the damaged bridge, but reported it “useless. It is heavily mined and fortified with obstacles. The engineers can do nothing with it.” Like ‘C’ Company, it got across using a kapok bridge. After clearing the houses on one short street, ‘B’ Company came under heavy fire from a 20-millimetre anti-aircraft gun that pinned one platoon down. Sergeant Francis Keilty and Private Val Perry were killed by its first salvo, while Sergeant Begg and a couple of men from his section were trapped inside a pillbox they had just cleared. Every time they tried to slip out, the gun spattered the concrete position with fire that forced them back inside.
Corporal “Frosty” Campbell, experiencing his first day of combat, was moving towards the pillbox, unaware that Begg and his men had already taken it. With mortar bombs landing all over the place and the flak gun drenching the area with deadly fire, he had little idea where anyone other than his five-man section was situated. Figuring the pillbox still in German hands, Campbell told his men to fix bayonets, and they charged the position. They got inside without a scratch, and fortunately neither group of Glens inflicted any casualties on the other. Inexplicably, the moment Campbell’s men reached the pillbox, the anti-aircraft gun fell silent and was not heard from again. Soon every section of ‘B’ Company reported itself inside one of the many pillboxes strung across their line on the edge of Breskens. They were deluxe affairs, one so large that a horse was tethered inside. The Glens tried chasing it out to make room, but it kept barging back in to avoid the thick fire cutting the air. Nobody had the heart to shoot the animal. In another pillbox, a section reported finding it outfitted with running water, modern toilet facilities, six bicycles, and six “healthy Germans” who had meekly surrendered.40
At 1245, RAF medium bombers appeared over Vlissingen and pounded the batteries with explosives. Rowley was finally satisfied, deeming it a “lovely show. The place is going up like a hot cake.” Typhoons, too, were doing good work now that the ground mist had lifted. They swooped down out of the sunny sky and “shot up three guns and hit an oil dump,” along with other targets.
Brigadier John Rockingham arrived at battalion headquarters at 1410 to discuss the progress. He and Rowley agreed that, although behind schedule, Breskens was being taken faster than might have been expected, given the fortifications. The biggest problem was the bridge. Until the engineers–working under intermittent fire– could remove the mines and patch the deck, there was no way to
get the antitank platoon across, or a troop of 79th Armoured Division Crocodiles that had arrived.
At 1440, the Germans pulled a favourite trick on the Glens when two antitank guns opened up from positions to the rear of the rifle companies. Positioned inside well-camouflaged concrete bunkers, their crews had allowed the infantry to go past before opening up on the units operating in the rear. With the bunkers impervious to artillery fire and considered too close to friendly forces to have the Typhoons strafe them, Rowley was forced to pull two platoons back from ‘D’ Company, which had moved up to strengthen the attack shortly after noon, to silence the guns. At 1625 hours, ‘D’ Company reported the guns taken care of.
Sporadic skirmishing persisted throughout Breskens and the harbour area, but it was clear by nightfall that the Glens had carried the day. ‘D’ Company had complete control of the harbour, its platoons strung along the pier. ‘B’ Company had taken the hardest hit in the fighting, reporting twenty-two casualties. About 150 prisoners had been taken, and an undetermined number of Germans killed.
The engineers reported the bridge open at 2150 hours, and the antitank platoon moved to take up positions in Breskens. In the morning, the Crocodiles would cross. Soon after the bridge opened, both Major General Dan Spry and Brigadier Rockingham congratulated Rowley on his battalion’s performance.41
Everyone was surprised that the Germans had failed to detonate an extensive array of demolition charges spread throughout the port facilities. The port remained functional. Rowley could only think that the heavy artillery fire throughout the day had prevented the German sappers from igniting them. In fact, it seemed by the nature of the opposition that everything had been put into the “shop window” of the antitank ditch, and once that was defeated, organized resistance had largely collapsed.
Despite Rowley’s initial dissatisfaction with the air support provided, by the end of the day RAF’S fighter squadrons had flown 232 sorties in support of 3 cid–most directly backing up the Glens. There had also been heavy bomber strikes on Vlissingen, similar attacks by medium bombers against the coastal batteries near Cadzand, and Typhoon strafing runs against Fort Frederik Hendrik, immediately west of Breskens.42
“It has been a good day,” wrote the Glens war diarist. “Night finds the boys in good heart, tired, but pleased… despite the fact that they haven’t managed to have much to eat all day.”43
[ 20 ]
To the Last Cartridge
MORNING OF OCTOBER 22 found the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders cautiously clearing the streets of Breskens and meeting little resistance. Occasionally, a German anti-tank gun tried taking them on, but the infantry just dodged into cover and left it to the Crocodiles to burn the gunners out. Mines and booby traps were plentiful, keeping the engineers busy. While tedious, sometimes dangerous work, none of it was especially taxing–what the men found more difficult was the sight of Breskens itself. The town was “utterly destroyed, perhaps the most complete destruction of any town we have yet passed through. The destruction wrought by the heavy bombers and the arty of both sides is terrific.”
West of Breskens remained Fort Frederik Hendrik. Built by Napoleon in the early 1800s, the Germans had modernized its defences while taking advantage of the historically thick earthen walls and ramparts, surrounding moat, and excellent firing positions. Strategically positioned, Breskens harbour could not be used until it was taken. As First Canadian Army’s plan for assaulting Walcheren Island hinged on using the harbour as a launch point for an amphibious assault against Vlissingen, Lieutenant General Guy Simonds had ordered the fort taken as quickly as possible. Patrols from the Glens’ ‘C’ Company warily approached the outer defensive works at 1100 hours and reported no opposition, which nurtured hopes that it might have been abandoned.
Actually taking the fort fell to the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. Around noon, Lieutenant Colonel Don Forbes had his driver take the jeep right through Breskens and practically to the edge of the moat. Standing there, calmly smoking his pipe, Forbes looked the place over and liked nothing he saw. No shots were fired in his direction, and a Red Cross flag flapping in the breeze above one building signalled that it was a hospital. But scouts said the flag had only gone up earlier in the day, so Forbes decided the supposed hospital would be his first objective, and sent ‘D’ Company towards it, with ‘C’ Company in reserve. The lead platoon under twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant Gordon Ross Creelman almost made it to the building before being forced back by heavy machine-gun and mortar fire. Creelman was fatally wounded. A cautious and thorough leader, Forbes drew his men back. He would arrange heavy fire support and try again the next day. Urgent demands from army headquarters aside, Forbes saw no need to recklessly waste lives.1
South of Breskens, 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s third battalion tossed caution entirely away with a direct assault on Schoondijke at 1530 hours. Knowing the village had been heavily fortified, the Highland Light Infantry hoped to bounce it by hitting hard and fast. ‘B’ Company met heavy opposition, but put its flamethrowers to work, and the Germans either surrendered or were burned to death in their dugouts. By 1800 hours, the HLI controlled the town centre, and despite heavy shelling, reported “remarkably light” casualties. To bring vehicles into the town, a bulldozer had to first push the streets clear of tons of rubble from collapsed houses. At 2100 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Phil Strickland reported the town “almost completely in our hands.”2
Seizing Schoondijke was the second-last task Major General Dan Spry had set for 9 CIB before it would be withdrawn for a deserved rest. Fort Frederik Hendrik was the final job. The North Novas tried again with another attack by ‘D’ Company on October 23, but were stopped cold by fierce artillery and mortar fire and what seemed a maze of machine guns spread across the line of advance. Forbes pulled the company back and put in place a plan to subject the fort to a massive air and artillery bombardment. The main problem was the German artillery, which, the battalion war diarist noted, “he throws at us wherever we go.” There seemed no end to the guns the Germans could call.
October 24 dawned a grey, dank day with heavy overcast. “Poor day for bombing,” the war diarist remarked. The rifle companies hunkered inside battered buildings on the edge of Breskens, trying to sleep, waiting for the fire program. ‘A’ Company would lead the attack and Forbes had arranged for it to be supported by Flails, Petards, and Crocodiles. The ceiling remained low, however, and the job was put off to the next day.
Everyone was ready to finish the matter that morning, but just as Forbes got ready to give the signal that would bring down a storm of hellfire upon Fort Frederik Hendrik, word came that the Glens had taken some prisoners who claimed that its garrison had withdrawn and only fifty men, eager to surrender, remained. A patrol soon came back with all the Germans in tow. The Novas’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies went in, combed the fortress works, and came out without finding anybody or firing a single shot. The job done, Spry told Forbes to prepare his men for a move to Ijzendijke for a short rest. 9 CIB was relieved.3
THE GERMANS HAD been forced to abandon Fort Frederik Hendrik to avoid encirclement by an unexpectedly rapid Canadian advance cutting across its flank to the south. On October 23, 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade had returned to the fray, after travelling by truck from its rest areas around Biervliet along badly potholed dirt roads running along the tops of the dykes. “Occasionally,” recorded the Canadian Scottish Regiment’s war diarist, “we would pass through an area where bodies had still not been buried. The sickening smell of dead humans and animals would form a vision of slaughter in our mind’s eye as we hurried on. Villages which crowded the edges of the dykes were often found to be completely uninhabitable. The few civilians who were seen poking about disconsolately in the ruins of their homes would only sometimes wave. They had been left with nothing. So different from the wide parts of France and Belgium relatively untouched by War’s ravages.”4
During the few days away from the front, 7 CIB had received ma
ny reinforcements and was almost back to full strength. The Can Scots, for example, reported having 805 men, which put it just 45 below normal. Although quality remained low, morale was surprisingly high, with the return to combat seen as positive because “every advance means that the pocket of enemy resistance is decreasing and Antwerp’s harbour facilities are soon to be used.”5
Not that anyone expected clearing the rest of Breskens Pocket to be easy, but there was a sense that keeping the pressure on could prevent development of another stout defensive line. Major General Dan Spry had correctly concluded that Generalmajor Knut Eberding’s last-ditch plan was to use Oostburg as a pivot upon which he could slowly swivel a fighting withdrawal of 64th Infantry Division’s units on the left flank back from one system of concentric dykes to another, until he was forced into the heavy fortifications at Cadzand. Executed well, this would force 3 CID to mount an endless series of frontal attacks that would grind its strength down while costing the Germans little.
Spry had no intention of giving Eberding time to implement this plan. No sooner was Breskens in hand than 8 CIB struck hard against Oostburg to knock the Germans off their pivot and then punch through to Sluis and Cadzand. At the same time, 7 CIB passed through 9 CIB to advance along a two-mile-wide front west along the coast from Breskens. Spry believed the many coastal fortifications were directed towards the sea, and that if 7 CIB hugged the shore closely, it could outflank the Germans and quickly gain Cadzand. With Cadzand threatened by two pincers, the Germans would be unable to mount an effective defence.6