by Mark Zuehlke
Later, the three went out to retrieve the German’s rifle. “Behind the wall was a young German paratrooper, dead. He was in nearly new uniform, with new calf high jump boots, beautiful, soft, pliable, lovely, waterproof jump boots, and just my size. Obviously this poor devil didn’t need boots anymore, but I certainly did. Plus he had a new black leather belt around his jump smock, and my belt was half shot away. I took his belt too, and lo and behold, the boots were a perfect fit.”8
The elimination of one sniper did little to enable the battalion to gain its objective. Despite a persistent effort, the battalion had only advanced half the distance assigned by 1500 hours, when Brigadier Guy Gauvreau ordered it to consolidate for the night. Two officers and twenty-nine other ranks had been killed or wounded.9
While the South Saskatchewans and Fusiliers Mont-Royal had pushed north towards Korteven, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders had undertaken clearing elements of 6th Parachute Regiment out of the western part of Woensdrecht. The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry had earlier failed to do this because it had been seriously depleted just gaining a toehold in the town. Having spent most of the past two weeks guarding the right flank near Kapellen, the Camerons had seen relatively little fighting, and consequently, Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Thompson, who at twenty-three was First Canadian Army’s youngest battalion commander, was confident that he had the manpower to succeed.
‘A’ Company, under Major Art Cavanagh, advanced along a westerly running street towards a crossroads on the edge of the town, while ‘B’ Company followed behind with two tanks in support to carry out the actual house clearing.10 The Camerons were soon on the crossroads with forty paratroopers in the bag, but suddenly the area was plastered by German artillery and mortar fire. Casualties mounted quickly, particularly among Lieutenant James F. Hayman’s platoon, which had led the attack. By 1430 hours, the shell and mortar fire reached such a furious crescendo that ‘A’ Company was forced to fall back to its starting point. Hayman was among the dead. ‘B’ Company had fared no better, and the entire battalion was back where it had started.11
About the time 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s battalions dug in for the night after a day of successive failures, 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Calgary Highlanders crossed the start line to clear the remaining German-held polders below Woensdrecht. Despite the fact that German movement between South Beveland and the mainland via the isthmus had been rendered impossible by 2 CID’S previous advances here, a strong force of paratroopers remained dug in along the railway embankment, around Woensdrecht Station, and to its west, in the Hoogerwaardpolder north of the railway tracks that separated the polder area from the marshy beaches of the East Scheldt. Laced with typical drainage ditches and narrow canals, the polder was partially flooded, and the rest saturated. Across its centre, atop a dyke, ran the main highway to Walcheren Island. Rectangle-shaped and stretching two miles east to west and a half mile north to south, the ground held by the Germans roughly resembled a coffin– leading the Calgarians to dub the operation “the coffin show.”12
The plan was to attack on a three-company-wide front. Rather than going forward shoulder to shoulder, however, the two companies on the flanks would swing wide, and once past the railway embankment, turn and hook back towards the centre company. ‘A’ Company was to go out on the left, ‘D’ Company on the right, while ‘C’ Company butted up the middle. ‘B’ Company was in reserve. The 5th Field Regiment fired on known and then on suspected German positions, and the Toronto Scottish Regiment (MG) directed heavy machine-gun and 4.2-inch mortar fire on the railway embankment as the attack went in at 1500 hours. With an icy rain falling, the troops advanced across the sodden ground through tendrils of light fog.
‘A’ Company managed to creep to the railway without being detected. Major Wynn Lasher gave the signal and the entire company lunged across the tracks. But when they started the hook right towards the centre, an MG 42 opened up with its distinctive sheet-ripping sound, and No. 7 Platoon was cut off. Private Sanford Ross began shuttling through the fire to carry messages between the platoon and headquarters. On each return trip, he lugged back ammunition. Lasher decided the best way to relieve this platoon was to outflank the gun position by heading for the highway, then turning east to clear out the paratroopers dug in behind. The move worked like a charm, and soon ‘A’ Company was on its objective and waiting for the other two companies to come alongside.13
‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies, however, had advanced straight into the maw of the same network of heavy machine-gun emplacements that had cut the Black Watch to pieces ten days earlier. Captain H.J. “Sandy” Pearson’s ‘D’ Company had been pinned down only three hundred yards out. Pearson was wounded at 1526 hours, and Lieutenant Amos Wilkins took over.14 When the lead platoon appeared to be making no effort to advance, Private William C. Brown left his section and crawled forward to see what was happening. He discovered that Wilkins and all the non-commissioned officers had been hit. With no other takers, Brown took command of the platoon. Managing to crawl to the top of a dyke, he directed the platoon’s Bren guns onto several German positions, and this relieved the pressure enough to enable the company to advance a little farther.15 But it remained well short of the objective, with Brown in charge of one platoon and two corporals the others.16
Captain Dalt Heyland’s ‘C’ Company managed to advance to within a hundred yards of their dyke’s intersection with the railway before machine-gun fire forced it to ground, with Nos. 13 and 14 Platoons on the west side of the dyke and No. 15 the other. Everyone started digging in. Sergeant Ken Crockett, the hero of the Antwerp– Turnhout Canal battle, was pressed against one side of the dyke and engaged in a duel with a German sniper. Every time the sniper popped up to loose a round, Crockett snapped off a rifle shot. When his Lee Enfield’s magazine ran dry, Crockett leaned against the dyke to reload, and the German fired a single round that struck Crockett in the knee. It was a serious wound that ended his soldiering days.17
With darkness falling and the three forward rifle companies all badly cut up, Major Ross Ellis ordered Major S.O. Robinson to take two platoons of ‘B’ Company and not only reinforce ‘D’ Company, but take over its command. The carrier platoon hustled up to strengthen ‘C’ Company, and ‘A’ Company was reinforced with two platoons drawn from the Black Watch. Everyone dug in where they were for the night.18 It had been another bitter day, but due to ‘A’ Company’s success, the Calgarians had achieved every task except the capture of Woensdrecht Station itself.19
The cost had been high: eighteen dead and fifty-one wounded. Only nine paratroops had been taken prisoner. Because they often continued firing from a machine-gun position until just before it was overrun and then hastily surrendered, the low prisoner count indicated the ferocity of the fighting–many preferring to fight to the end. Although not a complete success, the regiment’s war diarist felt justified in stating: “Once again the Calgary Highlanders ‘did it.’ Supporting arms contributed a large part of the deciding factors but in the long run it took the [infantry] with men on the ground to take and hold the ground.”20
WHILE 2ND CANADIAN INFANTRY DIVISION spent October 23 trying to gain control of the entrance to South Beveland, 4th Canadian Armoured Division had struck westwards from Essen towards Bergen op Zoom. The plan was for 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade to seize the three-mile-distant Dutch village of Wouwse Plantage with a phased assault. Phase one entailed the 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders–temporarily under 4 cab command–with two tank squadrons of Canadian Grenadier Guards, advancing a mile to secure a road and woods just inside Holland. From here, the Lake Superior Regiment and a squadron of Governor General’s Foot Guards would advance to the village. If the village proved heavily defended, this formation would establish a firm base to provide fire support for the Argylls to pass into Wouwse Plantage. When the village fell, 10 CIB’S other regiments would advance north through 4 CAB to cut the main road between Bergen op Zoom and Roo
sendaal.21
At 0800 hours, ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies of the Argylls and the Grenadiers’ No. 1 and No. 3 Squadrons were moving out from covering woods when they were caught by a series of German artillery salvos. ‘B’ Company got off lightly, moving forward on schedule, but ‘D’ Company became disorganized. For almost thirty minutes, the latter company was pummelled by one concentration after another. Major John Farmer and one of the company’s two lieutenants were badly wounded by shrapnel.22 Private Sidney Webb, one of Farmer’s signallers, was hugging the dirt like everyone else. On only his second day of combat, Webb was terrified, and watched in awe as a sergeant walked calmly up and down the company line amid the exploding shells repeatedly advising, “Lookit, it’s alright.” Although so crippled by wounds to his lower body he could barely walk, Farmer initially refused evacuation until Lieutenant Colonel Dave Stewart came forward to personally reorganize the unit.23 Lieutenant Ecclestone, a reinforcement who had arrived the day before, was the only unhurt officer. Stewart told him he had command. Most of the men were as green as the young lieutenant. With Stewart’s help, Ecclestone formed the survivors up, and ‘D’ Company headed out.24
The Argylls encountered little direct resistance, but continual artillery and mortar fire took its toll. Snipers also posed a threat, particularly to the tankers whenever they emerged from the safety of their Shermans. A new Grenadier officer, Lieutenant Simeon Besen, was shot dead. So was Guardsman Donald George Hewitt. Lieutenant J.R. Fergusson and three other tankers were wounded.25 It took three gruelling hours for the force to work its way across the border into Holland and secure the road to begin the second phase. The cost to the Argylls was four killed and twenty-five wounded, mostly due to the initial shelling.26
‘A’ Company of the Lake Superior Regiment and the Foot Guards’ No. 1 Squadron passed through the Argylls’ position and advanced up the Mariabaan, a road that arced gently northwest towards Wouwse Plantage. In support was a troop of Flail tanks. When this phase had been teed up, Major General Harry Foster and Brigadier Robert Moncel had envisioned it as “a run across the two-mile approach to the town. But once again tanks were roadbound by ten-foot ditches and soft muddy fields. The ground was devoid of contour and wide open for several hundred yards on each side of the main axis of advance, except where clusters of wood and farm yards dotted the panorama.”27
Lying in ambush, several self-propelled guns opened fire from positions in the woods and behind well-concealed concrete bunkers. The first troop of three tanks commanded by Lieutenant Dan Crocker was knocked out within three minutes, as was the Superiors’ leading Bren carrier. While the infantry scattered off the road, the Shermans were trapped on it by the deep ditches. Crocker and his men all escaped their tanks, got into one of the ditches, and headed towards the rear. Major A.G.V. Smith’s No. 1 Squadron was down to eight tanks that ground carefully around the three wrecked Shermans and the carrier, their main guns blasting blindly at the still undetected antitank guns.
An armour-piercing round cracked into the rear idler on Smith’s tank, and ball bearings spewed in all directions. Coming to a drive that accessed a farmyard, the tankers turned in and deployed among the buildings, which afforded scant cover. ‘A’ Company soon joined them, and Smith jumped down to discuss the situation with the Superiors’ Major Malach. With German artillery and the spgs systematically demolishing the buildings, the farm was not a healthy place to remain for long.
Despite the incoming fire, Smith decided to set up there with the two tanks of his headquarters section, while the rest of No. 1 Squadron would continue along the road. One platoon of Superiors remained to provide security for the tanks.28 Leading the first troop onto the road was Lieutenant E.J. Canavan. Within minutes, German antitank fire blew one of his Sherman’s tracks off, but he ordered his crew to keep on fighting despite its being unable to move. The Sherman commanded by Lance Sergeant Aldege Tessier was holed, and he and Guardsman Robert Parent were killed. The other tank in Canavan’s troop was also knocked out.29
One by one, the remaining tanks were “reduced to hunks of tangled steel, blood-spattered and useless.”30 The Flails had also been destroyed, so the Superiors proceeded alone. Canavan and his crew stayed in the fight for three hours, benefiting from a smoke screen boiling around them from the nearby burning tanks and carriers, and managed to knock out one SPG that rolled up onto the road and presented a perfect target. Its burning hulk ended up crosswise on the road, creating an effective roadblock. When Canavan exhausted his ammunition, he ordered the Sherman abandoned.31 It was 1400 hours, and the squadron was reduced to just three tanks gathered at the devastated farm.
The Superiors edged “from bush to bush, and from outbuilding to outbuilding, clinging to the ground and crouching behind every miserable little hollow,” until they were about a mile from the town. Blocked by a deadly rain of machine-gun and small-arms fire and without tank support, there was no possibility of fighting through.32
Back at the farmyard, Major Smith was following the progress on his tank’s wireless. Realizing the situation, he decided to try breaking through to the infantry. But the moment the Shermans turned out of the farmyard, they came under fire from an SPG sheltered behind a concrete bunker that the Superiors had bypassed. The tankers returned fire. Then a shell pierced one Sherman’s turret, and Lance Corporal Lionel Lalonde and Guardsman Joseph Bordeleau were both killed. Another round struck Smith’s tank a glancing blow that caved in one side of the turret, seizing it up. The Sherman of his battle captain, who had been maintaining the wireless link to regimental headquarters, was knocked out, and Lance Corporal Roland St. Amand died inside.
Only Smith’s tank, with a damaged idler and a main gun rendered useless because the turret would not swivel, remained semi-operational. At 1800 hours, Smith ordered it driven from the field. As the tank rolled into the regimental headquarters, the idler burst into flames, causing a fire that was difficult to extinguish. The rest of the surviving guardsmen of the wiped-out No. 1 Squadron trickled in on foot. A little after midnight, tragedy struck once again when a Browning machine gun accidentally discharged towards the headquarters tank of No. 3 Squadron. Major Robert Fernand Major was killed by the burst and Captain E.F. Mooers seriously wounded.33
At 2300 hours, Brigadier Moncel ordered the Argylls to break through to the Superiors and carry Wouwse Plantage. Two troops of Canadian Grenadier Guards and five Bren carriers borrowed from the Superiors would be boarded by ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies. The “tanks would lead along the road with all lights on, shooting up any area that looked as if it might hide enemy or enemy weapons. A speedy break-through was expected.” It soon became evident that the attack force, slated to begin advancing at 0100 hours, could not possibly be ready until just before dawn because the night had turned bitter. Heavy rain was falling, and the dirt tracks that the tanks followed to gain the start line had been transformed into deep mud bogs. One tank after another mired and had to be hauled free by others. Waiting in the woods, the Argylls spent a cold, wet, miserable night.34
ALTHOUGH FAILING to seize Wouwse Plantage, 4th Canadian Armoured Division’s limited advance on October 23 warned Fifteenth Army’s General der Infanterie Gustav von Zangen that time was running out to safely extract 6th Parachute Regiment from the Woensdrecht area. He could not indefinitely keep the Canadians pushing towards Bergen op Zoom at bay. lxvii Corps’s General der Infanterie Otto Sponheimer had been urging such a withdrawal for days, and now von Zangen consented.
The paratroops began quietly withdrawing under cover of darkness. At the same time, the rest of Kampfgruppe Chill pulled out from around Huijbergen.35 The battle to open the Scheldt had just taken a dramatic turn, as Fifteenth Army effectively abandoned 70th Infantry Division on South Beveland and Walcheren Island to its fate, and began a fighting withdrawal to the Maas.
6th Canadian Infantry Brigade patrols that night returned reports that the Germans had withdrawn. In the morning, the South Saskatchewan Regiment and Les Fusilier
s Mont-Royal advanced towards Korteven, while the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders moved down from the heights of Woensdrecht to clear the Prins Karel Polder to the northwest. Bulking up the ranks of the understrength Fusiliers was a detachment of Flemish Belgian resistance fighters. Only light resistance was encountered, and Korteven fell without a fight that evening.36 In contrast to previous days, 6 CIB recorded only one casualty on October 24. Cameron Highlanders Lieutenant William French, who had earned a battlefield commission, died after stepping on a mine.37 That evening, 6 CIB was relieved by 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade and withdrawn to Hoogerheide for a brief forty-eight-hour regrouping, preparatory to its joining 2 CID’S advance into South Beveland.
Not all the Germans had pulled back, however, and the Calgary Highlanders had faced a stiff fight along the railway embankment to gain control of Woensdrecht Station. This mission achieved, the Calgarians were assigned the task of clearing a rectangular-shaped height of ground, about half a mile wide by a mile and a half long, to the north of Woensdrecht, called the Lidonk. Fighting from the cover of dugouts and concrete pillboxes with mortars emplaced to their rear and firing on fixed lanes down the gentle slope the Calgarians were ascending, the Germans had every advantage and were determined to hold this ground as long as possible to prevent Canadian movement on the isthmus.