by Mark Zuehlke
For three days, the Calgarians fought yard by yard for mastery of Lidonk. October 25 was the worst day, with seven men killed and twenty-five wounded. During the afternoon, the gunfire exchange became so intense that the rifle companies used ammunition faster than it could be replenished. Despite this, little ground was gained. The next day, six soldiers died and another six were wounded, while the situation remained deadlocked. Backed by a full Fort Garry Horse squadron, the Calgarians tried again on October 27 and found the paratroops had abandoned Lidonk during the night. Brigadier Holly Keefler, commanding 2 CID, commented: “The Calgary Highlanders have done a damn fine job for the division.”38 Almost five days of constant combat cost the regiment 140 casualties, 31 being fatal.39
Kampfgruppe Chill’s Oberstleutnant Friederich von der Heydte had decided to pull the elements of 1st Battalion, 2nd Parachute Regiment out of Lidonk in order to shorten his lines and strengthen the German forces heavily engaged by 4 CAD. This coincided with a general contraction of LXVII Corps’s front by several miles to recover from a 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division breakthrough of the 346th Infantry Division’s lines at Nispen on October 23.40
DESPITE HEAVY CASUALTIES and increasingly foul weather that favoured the defence, 4th Canadian Armoured Division relentlessly pursued its drive towards Bergen op Zoom–badly straining Kampfgruppe Chill’s resources. When the Lake Superior Regiment failed on October 23 to capture Wouwse Plantage, Brigadier Robert Moncel immediately ordered the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Canadian Grenadier Guards forward. After being postponed several hours because of difficulty forming up, the attack went in at 0445 hours, with the infantry and tanks moving along the same stretch of the Mariabaan where No. 1 Squadron of the Governor General’s Foot Guards had been destroyed the day before. The Argylls had two companies up front, ‘A’ in the ditch on the left side of the road and ‘C’ in the one on the right. No. 3 Squadron provided the Shermans, with No. 1 Troop in the van.41
It had rained so heavily that the road was awash, the tanks wallowing through mud so deep they could barely make headway. The column had advanced just four hundred yards when the lead tank came up against the self-propelled gun knocked out by the Foot Guards’ Lieutenant Canavan. Trying to creep around it, the troop leader’s Sherman slid into the ditch. The rest of the squadron carefully picked past, and No. 4 Troop, commanded by Sergeant Samuel Hurwitz, headed towards the first objective–a low rise overlooking Wouwse Plantage.42
The tanks bypassed a couple of small pockets of infantry, quickly rounded up by the Argylls. These were from the Hermann Göring Division’s 1st Battalion.43 When opposition stiffened, the Shermans opened up on likely positions. A number of farm buildings were soon burning fiercely, with the unfortunate effect of silhouetting the tanks on the road.44 A German hiding in a slit trench popped up and fired a Panzerfaust at the second tank in No. 4 Troop. Although the Argylls immediately cut him down, the charge struck the rear of the turret. The Sherman burst into flames and halted square in the middle of the road. When the crew bailed out, they were taken prisoner by the Germans. The road was too narrow for the rest of the tanks to work around the destroyed one, and the ground on either side too boggy to bear a Sherman’s weight. Except for Sergeant Hurwitz’s tank, which had been in front, No. 3 Squadron was effectively stalled. Hurwitz headed towards the high ground alone.45
Dawn was breaking, and the Argylls were taking heavy fire, but still trying to gain the heights and the village beyond. Both ‘A’ Company’s Captain J.D. “Pete” McCordic and ‘C’ Company’s Major Bob Paterson sent a platoon to their flank, in an attempt to loop behind the German positions while the other platoons provided covering fire. The platoons staying put attempted to dig in, but the first shovel strike came up dripping water, so the men lay behind whatever surface cover they could find and began shooting.46
Hurwitz, meantime, had gained the high ground, which was really only a few feet above the surrounding country, only to find Germans with Panzerfausts on every side. He and his crew fought a frantic engagement for a few minutes until the tank was knocked out. The mortally wounded Hurwitz and his crew were taken prisoner.47
Meanwhile, Brigadier Keefler had ordered a company of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment advanced from near Nispen up the northwest-running Bergse Baan towards the Bergen op Zoom– Roosendaal highway. If successful, the Lincs would outflank Wouwse Plantage about a mile and a half to the north and cut off the Germans defending the village. Major J.L. Dandy’s ‘C’ Company, with a troop of British Columbia Regiment tanks and two troops of Crocodile flamethrower tanks from the 79th British Armoured Division in support, undertook this task at 1345 hours. The force moved across open country towards a wood two thousand yards distant. In short order, Dandy reported reaching an intermediary objective of a crossroads five hundred yards short of the wood. Here, however, the tanks mired in mud and could go no farther, and the infantry came under intense machine-gun and antitank fire from the woods.48
One platoon under Lieutenant W.E. Edwards, who had returned to the regiment only three hours before the attack, fought through to the woods, only to be overrun. Edwards and ten men were taken prisoner. Caught in the open, the rest of ‘C’ Company was pinned down by relentless fire, and Dandy requested either reinforcements or permission to withdraw. Finally, at 1645 hours, he was permitted to pull out, and the company retreated to the start line under cover of a smokescreen. Of the hundred men in the attack, nine had died and thirty-five had been wounded.49
The Argylls’ flanking attempt also came to misfortune when supporting Bren carriers from the Lake Superiors spotted the soldiers moving in the distance. Mistaking them for Germans, the crews opened up with their Bren guns and forced the Argylls to ground. Both platoons returned to their companies and the infantry hunkered down alongside the line of tanks. Attempts by the Grenadiers to hook cables onto the destroyed tank and drag it aside resulted in nothing more than a few wounded tankers. In an attempt to restart the attack, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Stewart ordered ‘B’ Company forward. But the moment Captain Raymond George McGivney led his men out of the woods, they were caught by a heavy mortar concentration. McGivney was killed, and Company Sergeant Major Charles McDonald lost a foot. The loss of these key leaders threw the company into disarray.
Stewart tried again at 1600 hours to get ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies and the Grenadiers going, with the Argylls’ Wasps up behind the tanks. Heavy mortar fire immediately tied the infantry down, and an antitank gun ranged in on the Grenadiers, which still faced a blocked road. The tanks backed towards the rear. Heavily outmatched by the massive Shermans coming their way, the crews aboard the Wasps drove into the ditches to avoid being crushed. The attack collapsed. “It is useless, of course, to attempt to assess reasons for the failure,” observed the Argylls’ regimental historian. “Probably fatigue, cold and wet played as great a part as any. The battalion had been pushed to the limit.”50
When Moncel radioed Stewart with fresh instructions, the latter officer’s headquarters was under a rain of mortar and artillery fire. “Push on! I can’t even get out of my headquarters!” Stewart snapped and held the handset of his radio out the window so the brigadier could hear the explosions shaking the building. The attack order was scrubbed. That sort of behaviour endeared Stewart to his men. He stood up for them when things turned bad, and October 24 had been rough indeed, with thirteen killed and another twenty wounded.51/52That night, two companies from the Lincoln and Welland Regiment came under 4 CAB’S command and took over the forward position from the Argylls.
In the morning, with two Governor General’s Foot Guard squadrons in support, the Lincs and Superiors launched a joint assault. The Superiors’ ‘C’ Company was to work through a brickyard on the southern outskirts to gain Wouwse Plantage, while ‘A’ Company provided covering fire. ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies of the Lincs were to drive directly up the main road “regardless of the cost.”53 Brigadier Moncel had even issued a deadline–the village must
be taken by 1400 hours.54
Under covering fog, the companies slunk close to the German lines and, as it lifted, struck the village from three sides. A vicious firefight ensued, each company with supporting tanks advancing “through the bursting shells and flying fragments. It was fighting of the fiercest kind,” the Superiors’ regimental historian recorded. “The Germans were tough and persistent, and worked with frenzy as they fed shells and bombs into their guns and mortars. They had to hold this, the key to their defences in the whole area, and so they used their weapons with savage ferocity.”55
The Superiors tore a path through the brickworks, bypassing enemy strongpoints, then drove the Germans from the village cemetery and gained the village itself. ‘A’ Company’s Major Malach was wounded in the cheek. Lieutenant James Kallethe Brown, commander of the scout platoon, took over, but was killed when the Bren carrier he was aboard took a direct hit from an antitank gun. Casualties mounted so alarmingly in ‘A’ Company that it had to be reinforced by thirty men drawn from the battalion’s support echelon.56
Major M.J. McCutcheon’s ‘B’ Company led the Lincs into the village and Captain Herbert Lambert’s ‘A’ Company was also soon fighting through the houses. With Wasps borrowed from the Superiors, the Lincs burned many defenders out of their fortified houses. At 1530 hours, Wouwse Plantage was declared taken. For his leadership during the gruelling action, McCutcheon received a Military Cross. His company had been shredded, thirty of the fifty men in the two forward platoons killed or wounded.57 During the three-day battle for the village, about 80 Canadians had died and another 230 had been either wounded or taken prisoner. An estimated 70 Germans died in the fighting and another 100 had been captured.58
While the battle for Wouwse Plantage raged, divisional command had been visited by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. He emphasized the urgent need to take Bergen op Zoom. Foster accordingly assigned 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade the task of attacking the city, with 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade charged with protecting its right flank.59 The British 49th Division would shift its left flank slightly westwards to maintain contact with 4 cad–a move made possible by 104th U. S. Infantry Division’s joining the operation immediately east of the 49th.
By mid-afternoon on October 25, 4 CAD began probing the German lines with 29th Reconnaissance Regiment (South Alberta) patrols advancing north from Huijbergen. Major Dave Currie’s ‘C’ Squadron drove up a dirt track identified as the Huijbergsche Baan, warily eyeing the forestry plantation woods after which Wouwse Plantage was named that pressed in on either flank. The squadron was down to just three troops, but the lead troop under Lieutenant Danny McLeod surprised and captured about twenty-six Germans from 6th Parachute Regiment and the Hermann Göring Regiment.
At 1830 hours, however, the squadron suddenly came under deadly Panzerfaust and antitank fire from the rear. Currie realized that the Germans had allowed it to pass through the first line of defence and were now springing an ambush. Lieutenant Don Stewart’s troop fended off Panzerfaust-packing paratroopers and Lieutenant Harold Kreewin’s troop went to his aid. In the furious exchange of fire, Kreewin’s tanks eliminated six Panzerfaust positions but lost two of four tanks. Up front, Lieutenant McLeod was running out of ammunition when the tank commanded by Corporal Frank Moan took a tremendous hit and began to burn. His crew escaped, but Moan died.
The squadron fought its way back to Huijbergen. It lost four tanks and four men wounded in an action the war diarist declared “unsuited to tanks.” More galling, he believed, “if the higher command had been quick enough to exploit this initial breakthrough by ‘C’ Squadron there would have been little difficulty in dislodging the enemy completely from this area and pushing on to Bergen op Zoom.”60
[ 23 ]
The South Beveland Race
WITH THE CAPTURE of Wouwse Plantage imminent and Woensdrecht cleared, the long-anticipated clearing of South Beveland and Walcheren Island had begun early on the morning of October 24. South Beveland was shaped rather like a turkey drum-stick; its tip, the isthmus linking it to the mainland. In planning this operation, Lieutenant General Guy Simonds had appreciated that once 2nd Canadian Infantry Division advanced to the Beveland Canal–where metaphorical leg joined thigh–it would face a formidable obstacle cutting north to south across the peninsula. Mirroring Operation Switchback, Simonds intended to outflank the canal with an amphibious operation out of Terneuzen, which would land between Hoedekenskerke and Baarland at precisely the same moment the other brigades reached the canal.1 When it became clear that 2 CID would have its hands full with the initial assault, Simonds assigned the amphibious phase to the 52nd British (Lowland) Division’s 156th and 157th Brigades.2
The land assault across South Beveland to Walcheren Island was codenamed Operation Vitality. It constituted the first prong of a complex operation to overcome the island’s formidable defences. The second prong–Operation Infatuate–would require two separate amphibious assault landings on Walcheren itself, one at Vlissingen and the other at Westkapelle. These landings would coincide with the land attack from South Beveland. By striking the Germans on three fronts, Simonds hoped to avoid a drawn-out battle for mastery of Walcheren.
But first South Beveland had to be taken. The plan was “to get forward rapidly, by-passing opposition, and seize crossings over the Beveland Canal.” The first line of the 70th Infantry Division’s defences was to be cracked by 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Royal Regiment of Canada. Then, two mixed columns composed of Fort Garry Horse tanks, armoured cars of 8th Reconnaissance Regiment (14th Canadian Hussars), and Essex Scottish infantry companies riding in Kangaroos–the converted Priest 105-millimetre self-propelled guns that Simonds had redesigned to carry infantry in Normandy–would dash to the canal.3
The isthmus was narrowest where it met the mainland, barely fifteen hundred yards wide. Consequently, only one battalion could operate here. The Royals’ Lieutenant Colonel R.M. Lendrum had studied this small patch of ground for three days and knew the task was a tough one. The start line was immediately behind a fourteen-foot-high dyke, in front of which lay salt marsh, bordered on the left by a narrow raised road that hugged the coast of the West Scheldt. To the right, the railroad and main highway ran atop a causeway towards Walcheren. About a mile ahead stood their objective, another dyke. The Germans were dug in there, but they were also positioned along the causeway and the road to the south. Trying to cross the marsh exposed men to three-sided crossfire. Knee-deep coarse grass covered the marsh and concealed a crisscrossing network of ten-foot-deep drainage ditches. Deep ditches also bordered the road and causeway. Through binoculars, Lendrum could see that the facing dyke bristled with brick and concrete bunkers. Out in the marsh were a few cottages the Germans had fortified.4
Obviously, one company must move straight along the side of the road to the south and another along the causeway to the north, eliminating German strongpoints as they were encountered. The Royals would go as far as they could at night because Brigadier Holly Keefler was convinced that a daylight attack would be suicidal.5 Even at night, artillery support would be critical, and a total of seven field and medium regiments were committed. A creeping barrage would precede the company attacking along the southern flank, while a series of timed concentrations would protect the one following the causeway. Heavy mortars would keep German heads on the facing dyke down, while anti-aircraft guns firing tracer overhead kept the infantry on line. Major Hank Caldwell’s ‘A’ Company and Major Bob Suckling’s ‘D’ Company would lead the assault, with ‘C’ Company moving up the centre of the marsh later to clear whatever Germans lurked there. ‘B’ Company would be in reserve.
At 0430 hours on October 24, the guns began firing and the Royals attacked. “The soldiers,” recorded the regimental historian, “had almost to feel their way along in the inky darkness; and as they surged determinedly forward through the noisy night, they bumped successive German posts along the dykes. These were cleared, although often only after bitter hand-
to-hand fighting.”6 Five hundred yards from the facing dyke, ‘A’ Company ran out of steam. ‘B’ Company leapfrogged it and pushed on to the objective.7 By 0700 hours, the dyke was secure and the battalion turned to clearing out bypassed pockets. Suckling’s men rounded up fifteen prisoners and put them in a sheltered position behind the safety of the dyke, only to see them killed minutes later when one of the first salvos of German mortar fire fell directly on top of the men. The Royals by comparison got off amazingly lightly for such a hard-fought and dangerous attack–six men dead and nineteen wounded.8
The roads were so mud-drenched that the armoured columns bearing ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies of the Essex Scottish only managed to reach the start line by fitting the vehicles with chains. To gain the highway, engineers had to first cut a gap in the railway and bulldoze a grade that the tanks, armoured cars, and Kangaroos could claw up.9 Three armoured cars from ‘A’ Squadron of the 14th Canadian Hussars led the way, followed by three ‘A’ Squadron Fort Garry Horse tanks and several Kangaroos, all maintaining “regular, neat-looking intervals.”10 Less than six hundred yards out, a German antitank gun tore into the column, and the leading armoured cars and tanks were knocked out. “So the armoured thrust ended there,” noted the Essex war diarist, “and the marching troops were ordered to march once again.”11
Brigadier Keefler’s conclusion that a daytime attack across the salt marsh would be suicidal applied equally to an advance along the raised highway up the isthmus. The Essex Scottish headed for another dyke codenamed “Mary,” which was a short distance east of Krabbendijke. One officer soon commented over the wireless that “Mary” was proving “a very tough girl.”12 Raked by machine-gun fire and pounded by mortars, the two companies made little progress. Lieutenants Stewart Jones and Harold Lindal were killed and another lieutenant wounded as the officers dangerously exposed themselves. Finally, Lieutenant Colonel John Pangman ordered a withdrawal to the start line of the dyke won by the Royals, and “the artillery plastered all suspected positions and Typhoons were also called in.”13 The 4th Canadian Field Regiment directed the firing and controlled the Typhoons, while its guns alone fired five hundred rounds against targets to soften them for a second attack under cover of darkness.14