Terrible Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  Lieutenant Don Stewart of ‘C’ Squadron had been so apprehensive about re-entering the woods that he solemnly shook the hand of another troop officer, sure neither would see the other again. Stew-art’s troop was second in line behind Lieutenant Danny McLeod’s troop. Initially, progress was encouraging and the combined force soon moved past Helmolen, little more than a mile from Bergen op Zoom’s outskirts. Then a Panzerfaust bomb sliced across the bow of McLeod’s Sherman in a close miss. Seeing that the fire came from a concrete bunker, McLeod called up a Crocodile manned by the Fife and Forfarshire Yeomanry Regiment of 79th British Armoured Division. Two Crocodiles bore right past McLeod’s tank troop. McLeod yelled at the British tankers to flame out the bunker, but they seemed to think he was just cheering them forward. A Panzerfaust blasted the lead Crocodile and it spun off the road into the right-hand ditch, while the second quickly burned out the bunker.17

  ‘D’ Company caught up to the tanks at this point to provide flank protection, but with the mines thickening whenever the troops went farther into the woods, Swayze had to keep his men within twenty-five yards of the road on either side. Even the presence of Captain Percy Easser’s pioneer platoon armed with mine detectors little speeded the advance, because the disarming mechanisms were generally booby trapped, so each mine had to be lassoed with a long rope and detonated at a distance.18

  When the surviving Crocodile was knocked out by a Panzer-faust, Major Dave Currie decided there was no point in continuing an advance that could not be reinforced. He ordered McLeod to pull everyone back to the crossroads near Helmolen, dig in for the night, and to personally attend an o Group at his headquarters. As McLeod walked back along the road, puzzling over why the force had been called all the way back to Helmolen rather than reinforced, he saw through the intervening trees that fires burned on the nearby roads. Everywhere, he realized, tanks were burning. Walking into Currie’s headquarters, he asked, “What the hell happened?” Currie told him what had befallen the squadrons supporting the other infantry battalions.19

  NORTHWEST OF WOUWSE PLANTAGE village, 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade had attempted a one-mile advance to cut the Bergen op Zoom–Roosendaal highway–along which Kampfgruppe Chill was evacuating heavy equipment from the coastal city. Beyond the village, a wide, heavily defended, antitank ditch barred the way. ‘B’ Company of the Lake Superior Regiment was ordered to clear it, but as its two motor platoons numbered no more than fifteen men each, ‘C’ Company was added to the task. Together, the two companies managed to breach the obstacle and establish a narrow bridgehead. Despite repeated German attempts to throw the small force back, it clung tenaciously to the position until night fell and the enemy withdrew. Four men had been killed and another seven wounded, including Major Murray and Lieutenant J.A. Brown.

  With the antitank ditch surmounted, 4 CAB’S Brigadier Robert Moncel decided to launch an all-out drive towards the highway in the morning, with each Superior company supported by one tank regiment. ‘A’ Company would have a squadron of the British Columbia Regiment, ‘B’ one from the Governor General’s Foot Guards, and ‘C’ one courtesy of the Canadian Grenadier Guards.20 A troop of Flail and Crocodile tanks would also accompany each column. “Push on,” was the general tenor of Moncel’s instruction at the Brigade O Group.21

  In forcing the antitank ditch, the Superiors had taken twenty-three prisoners, all from Hermann Göring Regiment or 6th Parachute Regiment. “The individual German soldier fights very stubbornly and at times brilliantly when controlled by his superior officer. When left alone he surrenders with alacrity,” commented the 4th CAB war diarist.22 The Germans had, however, pinned the Canadian brigade in place for another day, gaining more time for an orderly withdrawal from Bergen op Zoom.

  The situation in the city was chaotic, with heavy Canadian artillery fire pounding it throughout October 26. Its normal population of about thirty thousand had doubled with refugees from the south. People were sheltered in any available cellar or basement to escape the shelling, while others had dug trenches in backyard gardens and roofed them with doors and timbers that were then covered with sod and sand. Summoned to German headquarters, Burgomeister Lijnkamp was instructed to evacuate all civilians within twenty-four hours. Realizing that the Germans might intend a last stand in the city streets, Lijnkamp refused. Instead, he argued that, given the many refugees, evacuation was impossible. Finally, the Germans agreed not to defend the city, but imposed four conditions. Anybody hampering German movement would be shot, there would be no public gatherings, all German matériel was to be surrendered by noon the next day, and if there was any unrest, the city would be set ablaze by an incendiary bombardment.

  Throughout October 27, there were increasing signs that the Germans were pulling out, but they did not go quietly. The sound of demolitions thundered throughout the city, as three church towers that could be used for observation points were blown down. Radio transmission towers were also toppled, the telephone exchange destroyed, railcars overturned, rail lines ripped up, and the quayside wharves damaged with explosives. As the Germans moved across the Zoom–the ancient canal that cut through the city’s northern outskirts to the sea and had been used for centuries to ferry peat moss from the inland marsh country–they rigged the bridges with demolitions.23

  The German decision to surrender most of Bergen op Zoom without a fight was little motivated by humanitarian concerns. It was rather a response to LXVII Corps’s rapidly deteriorating situation. Across a broad front, I British Corps was pushing northward, with 49th British (West Riding) Infantry Division putting pressure on 346th Infantry Division south of Roosendaal. The German division was so exhausted, noted LXVII Corps’s Chief of Staff, Oberst Elmar Warning, “that it could not hold out long.” Only the intercession of elements of Kampfgruppe Chill on its left enabled the division to hang on. East of Roosendaal, Breda was also imperilled and its loss expected, as the 104th U.S. Infantry Division closed in from the west and 1st Polish Armoured Division from the east. The 711th Infantry Division was suffering heavy losses trying to delay the city’s fall. Elements of 719th Infantry Division east of Breda were withdrawing rapidly into the lines of 711th Division as British Second Army’s 7th Armoured Division collapsed its left flank with a drive along the southern bank of the Maas River.24

  Despite a phone call from Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Operations Chief, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, to OB West’s Chief of Staff, General der Kavallerie Siegfried Westphal, at 0215 hours on October 27 reminding him “that the Fuehrer wanted the withdrawal movements of Fifteenth Army to be carried out as slowly as possible… German forces from Bergen op Zoom to s’Hertogenbosch were being speeded on their way by strong Allied pressure.”25

  That the Germans were withdrawing was soon recognized when the Canadians renewed the advance that morning. During the night, 4 CAD’S Major General Harry Foster had informed his commanders that Field Marshal Montgomery wanted the city taken that day. Already British Broadcasting Corporation had mistakenly reported it liberated several times, and Foster’s divisional headquarters was being swarmed by correspondents eager to cover First Canadian Army’s freeing its first major Dutch city. While 10 CIB would carry out the main thrust from the south, 4 CAB would advance a smaller force from the east.26

  The South Albertas’ ‘A’ and ‘C’ Squadrons and ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment put in the attack from the south. It was a cold, dull day with intermittent showers that only made the infantrymen’s lot more miserable. At first the advance was cautious, but as “only slight opposition was met” the pace quickened.27 By noon, ‘A’ Squadron was through the woods and nearly in Zoomvliet, while ‘C’ Squadron was well past Helmolen. South Alberta Lieutenant Colonel Gordon “Swatty” Wotherspoon and his Lincoln counterpart, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Cromb, had moved their tactical headquarters forward to a dirt road south of the latter village.28

  Tanks and infantry were being met by civilians, who all reported the Germans gone. At 1345 h
ours, ‘C’ Squadron’s Lieutenant Danny McLeod was a mile and a half from Bergen’s centre and being inundated with civilian reports. Some held that German tanks were massing north of the Zoom and about two hundred infantry had dug in along its northern bank, so Wotherspoon and Cromb directed several artillery concentrations on the suspected positions. There was a grave risk that if the force bulled into the city, it would get caught in a deadly street fight. Bergen was a medieval city, its centre a maze of narrow streets where tank movement would be restricted. Finally, Wotherspoon turned to Cromb and said simply, “Hell, Bill, let’s take the damned place.” Cromb nodded agreement.

  To speed things, the infantry mounted the Shermans, Major Jim Swayze taking a moment to explain to his wet, exhausted men that the Germans were “in there and they’re nice and dry. We’re out here and we’re getting soaked. Are we going to stay out here and get soaked?”29 On the outskirts, McLeod dropped his infantry to proceed on foot, so the tanks could go faster. His orders were to make for the main square–the Grote Markt–and secure it. Left to his own navigating, McLeod would probably have got hopelessly lost in the winding, narrow streets, but Dutch resistance fighter Ad de Munck hopped on the fender of McLeod’s tank and guided the Shermans to the square. People poured out of houses, waving towels and orange flags. Clogging the streets, they slowed the tanks to a crawl. At about 1615, McLeod’s troop reached the square.

  Soon, the infantry and other tanks were in the city. Swayze’s men deployed around the square, and suggested the tankers put a Sherman at the head of each street running northwards to meet any German counterattack. Shortly thereafter, the two lieutenant colonels entered the city and set up headquarters in the elegant Hotel de Draak (Dragon Hotel), which at 547 years old was one of Europe’s oldest hostelries. McLeod, meanwhile, was already on the move again and closing on the Zoom to test whether the Germans were on the north bank. Seeing the main bridge still standing, he edged towards it, only to have an armour-piercing round crease one of the tanks in a narrow miss. The tankers hastily withdrew behind a covering screen of smoke shells.30

  The Germans on the Zoom would have been in a difficult position had 4 cab’s thrust towards Bergen succeeded. The Governor General’s Foot Guards No. 2 Squadron and ‘B’ Company of the Lake Superior Regiment had struck out on a northwesterly angle to gain the Bergen op Zoom–Roosendaal Highway and gain the city. All had gone well as the force reached the highway and proceeded west along it until being blocked by a blown bridge just before Vijfhoek. Here, the road was heavily mined, and Germans were well emplaced with antitank guns on the opposite bank of the bridge crossing.

  The tank commander, Major G.T. Baylay, reported the situation to Lieutenant Colonel E.M. Smith, who sent the reconnaissance troop patrolling for other routes to Bergen. When Lieutenant J.W. Devitt reported all other roads equally blocked, Smith advised Brigadier Moncel that the force could only get to Bergen by plowing right into the position at Vijfhoek. Moncel replied that it was more important for his brigade to push north rather than west to Bergen, so the force should turn about and take over the advance on Heerle from the Canadian Grenadier Guards.31 The Guards, meanwhile, would advance from Wouwse Plantage on a northwesterly axis to cut the highway at Vijfhoek.

  Midway between Wouwse Plantage and the highway, the little village of Wouwse Hill stood to the right of a vital intersection. It was towards this intermediate objective that the Grenadiers’ No. 2 Squadron and the Superiors’ ‘C’ Company had advanced the morning of October 27. As the column closed on the village, it came under heavy antitank fire. One Sherman was disabled, while another remained in the fight despite being hit ten times. Rushing to the front with his headquarters section, Major C.A. Greenleaf personally directed his squadron’s return fire, and a total of eight German guns were knocked out. With this antitank screen eliminated, the village was easily taken, along with about thirty prisoners.

  Half a mile to the west, however, the hamlet of Westlaar proved a thornier obstacle. Attempts to approach it from Wouwse Hill were repelled by antitank fire, so at 1600 hours, Greenleaf sent Sergeant W.M. Irvine’s No. 4 Troop around on a secondary road to attack it from the south, with a platoon of Superiors in support. Five hundred yards short of the hamlet, this force was met by antitank fire to which Irvine’s troop replied with their 75-millimetre guns. With antitank guns and tanks locked in a furious duel, the infantry went to ground to await a victor. Unimpressed, Irvine jumped out of his tank and organized a combined tank and infantry assault that broke into the village and ended the firefight. Another fourteen prisoners were taken.

  Westlaar posing no further threat, Greenleaf renewed the advance towards the highway at midnight.32 Covered by artillery concentrations against Vijfhoek, tanks and infantry rolled through a night illuminated by the many fires sparked by Canadian and German guns. With orders from the Grenadiers’ Lieutenant Colonel W.W. Halpenny to be in position to attack the village at first light, Green-leaf ensured that the advance proceeded steadily while keeping noise to a minimum–the sounds of tanks and Bren carriers were muffled by the regular detonations of artillery shells–in hopes of achieving surprise. At dawn, tanks and infantry stormed and captured the German antitank positions that had blocked the Governor General’s Foot Guards. Vijfhoek was quickly cleared and the highway cut. More than forty German prisoners were rounded up, including fifteen who Sergeant Hubert bluffed into surrendering with an empty Bren gun. The other two Grenadier squadrons came up, and a major blocking position was created astride the highway.33

  Having cut the Germans’ eastward escape route from Bergen op Zoom, 4 CAB spent October 28 tightening its grip on the highway, while beginning to prepare for a drive northwest towards Steenbergen, six miles away. Ahead lay the usual Dutch countryside– a collage of farms, villages sprouting church towers, windmills, muddy marshes, and small woods. The ubiquitous mud confined the brigade’s vehicles and tanks to roads, making it impossible to out-flank German blocking positions.

  The Superiors’ ‘B’ Company ran into problems navigating road demolitions en route to the forming-up position for the attack towards Heerle on October 29. Only a single platoon had arrived by the time the Foot Guards were ready to start. Major Baylay’s No. 2 Squadron was to lead, but after a personal reconnaissance, he realized that the village overlooked a wide stretch of fields so sodden, a spread-out frontal assault would only bog down with the tanks stranded and exposed to antitank guns. He decided to send a single tank troop and the Superior platoon up the narrow road to test the defences. Lieutenant Liddell’s troop moved out under heavy mortar and shell fire that slowed the advance to a painful crawl. Beset by heavy sniping that exacted a heavy toll on the infantry, Liddell reported there was no chance Heerle could be secured with so small a force, and Baylay told him to fall back on the squadron.34

  At 1400 hours, Brigadier Moncel ordered a renewed effort, with the main tank thrust to turn more westwards in an attempt to cut the Bergen op Zoom–Steenbergen road south of the latter town.35 Clearing Heerle would be left to the remaining Superiors. The Foot Guards accompanied by the Superiors’ ‘B’ Company headed northwest towards Moerstraten–about three miles away–at 0900 on October 30 with Baylay’s squadron again leading. Aerial reconnaissance had led First Canadian Army’s intelligence staff to declare the ground north of Heerle “impassable to tanks,” and it “was appreciated that stubborn resistance might block this attempt and its success was expected to be limited.” The only decent road passed through Heerle, so the Foot Guards’ Lieutenant Colonel E.M. Smith gambled by sending the tanks out on a cross-country run. Immediately after the Shermans crossed the start line, they came under heavy shelling and mortaring. One tank bogged down, and the others were wallowing on the verge.36 The intelligence appreciation seemed forebodingly prescient. As the tanks bypassed Heerle and struck out westwards, ‘B’ Company split off to clear the village. Heerle fell quickly, and the company dashed a short distance north to secure Hazelaar before jinking west to reunite with
the tanks.37

  To everyone’s surprise, the Shermans managed to keep clawing their way forward. No. 2 Squadron had two troops abreast, with Baylay and the other troop following close behind, a tactical formation the tankers had not been able to use for a long time because of their confinement to roads. Other than incessant shelling, they encountered no opposition until closing on Diefhoef about a mile from Heerle, where several antitank guns opened up. Able to manoeuvre, the tankers responded smartly, with the Shermans commanded by Sergeant H.S. Slater and Corporal Romeo Tremblay attacking one gun that the corporal knocked out with a shell. The rest of the squadron deployed and rolled up on the flanks of the lead troop to join the firefight. When a second antitank gun was eliminated, the Germans broke off the engagement. One Sherman had been holed by an armour-piercing round, but its crew escaped unscathed.

  Baylay continued, one troop screening the other two with smoke shells, moving in bounds to close on Moerstraten. Known to be strongly held, Baylay’s instructions were to bypass the village and leave its clearing to the Superiors. Commanding the lead troop, Lieutenant Middleton-Hope realized that the ground around Moerstraten was so mucky a bypass would be impossible. So his troop went “down the main street with all guns blazing in a confusion of dust and flying tracers while shells fell, and the enemy hurled grenades from the buildings lining the route.” The tanks broke free on the western side and Middleton-Hope deployed on the open ground to await the rest of the squadron. Jockeying for position, both Slater and Tremblay’s tanks mired in quagmire. The lieutenant moved his tank to provide protective fire for the two stuck Shermans, whose crews buttoned up because of the airburst shells exploding overhead.