Terrible Victory
Page 47
Behind the tank troop, a fierce battle was underway for control of Moerstraten, as the tanks exchanged fire with concealed antitank guns and the Superiors shot it out with German paratroopers. A shell whacked into the cargo box on the back of Lieutenant Liddell’s tank, sending the contents of a flour sack spewing into the air. Baylay got into a duel with an antitank gun, which his gunner won on the third shot by lining his sights up with the fall of the incoming rounds smashing against the Sherman. Shrapnel from the last German shell riddled the rear cargo box, however, and the squadron’s rum issue gushed onto the ground. With dusk falling, the Germans pulled out. But they also used the covering darkness to push an anti-tank gun into range of the two bogged-down Shermans on the western flank. Both tanks were knocked out. Tremblay and Guardsmen R.R. Burns, L.R. Kirker, and J.D. Stronach died, while Slater and Guardsmen A. Draper and B.A. Maloney were seriously wounded.38
Moerstraten was slightly higher than the ground to the west, so the tankers were able to observe and range in on the Bergen op Zoom–Steenbergen highway. But Lieutenant Colonel Smith’s orders had been to cut it and this he intended to do. Major G.C. Lewis’s No. 3 Squadron, which numbered only eight tanks instead of the normal fifteen, set out in the dark across very difficult ground. Lewis split his force into two echelons, with three tanks right, four left, and his tank serving as a tactical headquarters. From in front of Moerstraten, No. 2 Squadron lay down a heavy bombardment ahead of the advancing tanks. Groping across treacherously marshy ground illuminated only by the fires of farmhouses set afire with 75-millimetre incendiary rounds, each echelon soon lost a tank to the muck. The rest carried on until blocked by an impassable canal one thousand yards short of the road. Lewis ordered his remaining six tanks to deploy in line to dominate the road with their main guns and soon managed to knock out an antitank gun firing from a position fifteen hundred yards off.
No. 2 Squadron, leading the rest of the Foot Guards, descended from Moerstraten, and the night advance continued by circumnavigating the canal on a wide sweep. To avoid one tank chewing up the path in front of the others, Lieutenant Colonel Smith had the regiment advance widely spaced as it ground over a mile of marshes cut by deep ditches. Although many Shermans bogged down, the regiment’s three specialized recovery tanks were able to pull most free. First light found the regiment close to the highway and No. 1 Squadron came astride it at 0830 hours on October 31. Quickly rolling north on the good road, the squadron overran the village of Oude Molen, about two and a half miles north of Bergen op Zoom.
The regiment firmed up inside this village, while No. 1 Squadron continued north on the road with a company of Superiors towards Steenbergen. But this force was brought up short south of Lepelstraat–midway between Bergen op Zoom and Steenbergen–by a partially destroyed canal bridge that proved impassable. Attempts to force a crossing were blocked by heavy German opposition, and by nightfall there had been no further progress.39 That evening, Major General Harry Foster, realizing that Steenbergen would be strongly defended and that 4 cab’s “limited infantry resources” were “worn out from lack of rest,” ordered the brigade to hold in place until 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade could come from Bergen op Zoom to take over.40
IN BERGEN OP ZOOM, an unexpectedly bitter battle along the Zoom had developed on October 28. During the night, the Lincoln and Welland Regiment had established a defensive line along the southern bank to prevent German infiltration into the city. The morning passed fairly quietly, each side harassing the other with only desultory artillery and mortar exchanges, while 10 CIB waited for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to arrive to carry out the attack.
At noon, the Argylls unloaded from trucks and their officers considered the problem ahead. Rather than blowing the main bridge, the Germans had cratered it with explosives and dumped a huge concrete cylinder square in the centre that effectively barred tanks or carriers getting across. Major Stockloser was not overly concerned, because he believed that the canal had terraced sides ensuring easy passage, was only a few feet wide, and that the water running in it was shallow. The Zoom, he declared, “constituted no great obstacle,” and little heeded Brigadier Jim Jefferson’s suggestion that where it flowed through a culvert to gain the sea, the narrow neck of land “offered some chance for an outflanking movement.”
Stockloser decided to bull straight ahead, to pound the Germans senseless with artillery and have ‘C’ Company establish a secure crossing point on the canal bank. Then, with ‘C’ Company providing covering fire, ‘D’ Company would dash across the Zoom and seize the buildings around the bridge intersection, “thus making a firm bridgehead beyond which the other two companies would exploit.”41
“You don’t like me, do you?” Stockloser had growled at ‘C’ Company’s Major Bob Paterson earlier that week. Paterson offered no reply. What he wanted to ask today, however, as Stockloser set out his intentions, was, “Why couldn’t they hit with three companies forward instead of one?” Time and again, the same drill prevailed. Advance one company with the rest behind. “Shit, you didn’t have a hope in hell,” Paterson figured, particularly when a company mustered barely fifty or sixty men.
More officers than Paterson mistrusted Stockloser. Carrier platoon commander Captain Hugh Maclean considered him careless and forgetful. He was unsurprised when summoned that morning only to find that the acting battalion commander could not recall the intended mission. Then suddenly Stockloser pointed at a map and told Maclean to patrol way off on a flank to a point nobody had any information about. “Jesus, I don’t think Stewart would have done this,” he thought, as he headed off on a reconnaissance of the narrow neck of ground that Jefferson had proposed using for the attack.42
At 1400 hours, the battalion started advancing through the streets towards the Zoom, and immediately the Germans struck with accurate 88-millimetre artillery firing airburst rounds, quickly joined by heavy mortaring. The men in the lead companies hunched against this deadly rain as some fell wounded or killed. Civilians, who had been crowding around, scattered. A few minutes later, the Canadian barrage opened up, but several 5.5-inch medium gun battery shells fell short, adding to the casualty toll.43 One landed in front of the headquarters of the South Albertas’ ‘C’ Squadron, killing one man and wounding six others.44
When Paterson led his men from the line of buildings into the park that bordered the Zoom, the Germans opened fire from the opposite bank. Men dodged and jigged to gain the protection of trees and other vegetation, and by 1445 hours, having gained control of the canal’s southern bank, were trading bullets with the paratroopers. ‘D’ Company plunged out from the buildings, only to be driven to ground immediately by machine-gun and sniper fire. The men started crawling. Private Philip Kazimir’s helmet kept falling off, and he found it better to throw his rifle out ahead and then belly forward to retrieve it rather than cradling it across his arms as trained. At the edge of the canal was a tangle of wire, the banks steeper and the narrow channel full of more water than they had been told to expect. Nobody was going to cross the Zoom here alive. ‘D’ Company pulled back to some buildings behind the bridge, and the two companies dug in while the Germans pounded them with artillery and mortar fire. Exhausted, Kazimir lay down in a barn and rolled into his ground sheet. “I didn’t care… because you got to that stage you didn’t care.”45
Frontal attack having failed, Stockloser decided to follow Jefferson’s advice and attack across the coastal neck. Maclean had patrolled it earlier and gone two hundred yards east along the north bank without encountering any enemy. While the Argylls crossed the neck, the Lincs would put on a diversionary assault to gain some factory buildings across the Zoom east of the bridge that might serve as a firm base for further advances.
The Argylls’ ‘A’ Company went forward at about 2130 hours. The lead platoon managed to cross undetected before Lieutenant Johnny Gravel and another man from the second platoon were wounded when they stepped on mines. At once, German machine guns began raking the area a
nd the lead platoon frantically withdrew to safety. “The neck of land was too narrow to permit… a large scale advance under such fire,” the regimental historian noted, “so the attempt was abandoned.”46
The Lincs, meanwhile, had launched the diversionary assault with Captain Herbert Lambert’s ‘A’ Company leading. Some of his fellow officers were convinced that the eccentric company commander had been “half tight” during the battalion O Group. But he went into the attack right on the sharp end of the company. Coming to an elevated railway track, the men became badly exposed to heavy fire. Some fell wounded, while everyone else hit the dirt. Bullets were spanging off the steel rails. At least three machine guns poured fire in their direction.
Lambert never halted, skidding down the side of the canal and shouting, “Are you coming with me or am I going alone?” Some followed, more didn’t. Those who did splashed into the canal and swam to the other side. Then it was up the other bank, cross a narrow park, clamber over a fence, and pause in front of a factory. Lambert did a tally. He had thirteen men. Breaking into the factory, the Canadians chased the German defenders out into an alley. Next moment, the Germans were chasing the Canadians in what became a surreal roundabout where the pursued soon turned into pursuer. Eventually, the two groups took cover in alternate ends of a factory and exchanged insults and epithets as often as bullets. Lambert managed to get a report back that he was cut off and needed reinforcement.
Lieutenant Colonel Cromb told ‘C’ Company to break through, but a concentration of friendly medium artillery fire fell short and threw it into disarray. So Major Jim Swayze’s ‘D’ Company took over. Knowing that the Germans had likely pulled back in anticipation of an artillery concentration, he scrapped the program in hopes of getting over before the paratroops realized the Canadians were coming and returned to their positions. Swayze had a barn door torn off its hinges and skidded down into the canal to provide a springboard the men could use to dash across without having to swim. Easily gaining the other side, ‘D’ Company got into the cover of a factory and then called in the artillery. When it lifted, they cut down the Germans rushing to firing positions, taking about fourteen prisoners.47 The Lincs had a toehold across the Zoom, and Lambert’s dash garnered him a Military Cross.48
To the west, Major Stockloser decided that the Argylls’ ‘B’ Company should give the frontal crossing a go. Major Gord Armstrong led his men forward warily and quietly, slipping down to examine the Zoom closely. Fifty feet wide, he judged, and full of water easily higher than a man’s head. Sending his men back to facing houses, Armstrong slipped down the bank and–still with his arm in a cast–breast-stroked through the icy cold water to the other side. The opposite bank had a well-maintained path running along its edge that would allow rapid movement by infantry. If all his men could swim over undetected, the bridge would be his, but Armstrong knew that would be impossible.49 So he swam back and told Stockloser that, given four of the pioneer platoon’s rubber reconnaissance boats, the company could cross. These were quickly supplied, but found to have been punctured.
Stockloser was in no mood to give up, and dawn was fast approaching. Either the Argylls got across before first light or they would have to wait until the next night to try again. So ‘A’ Company was ordered to give the land route another try, with ‘B’ Company behind. This time, the Germans apparently not suspecting that anyone would try such a suicidal-seeming approach twice, the Argylls picked carefully through the mines and gained the other side in full strength. Staying below the crest of the canal bank, the men moved towards the bridge, but eventually were spotted and the Germans began sniping and mortaring the column. As the Argylls closed on the bridge, the German positions were close enough to the edge of the canal that they could throw stick grenades down at them. Most exploded harmlessly in the water, but casualties rose. The situation was critical because the Argylls were unable to look over the edge of the bank without drawing enemy fire, so they could only respond by blindly throwing grenades.
In an attempt to relieve the pressure on the two companies working along the Zoom, Stockloser had ‘D’ Company attempt to cross the bridge itself. A small number of men managed to get through the heavy fire and took up position in two houses on the right-hand side of the intersection. ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies had now run out of options. Either they went over the top in an attack towards the left-hand side or were trapped. ‘A’ Company went first, with one platoon that made the dash relatively unscathed except for its lieutenant being wounded. But the second platoon “was heavily engaged as soon as it emerged into the open and had several casualties,” including Sergeant Victor John Mann, who was killed.
Major Armstrong and Captain Pete McCordic, acting commander of ‘A’ Company, decided it was time for personal action. Armed with a rifle and Sten that soon jammed so it only fired a single round at a time, the two officers provided covering fire from the lip of the bank. This tipped the balance, and most of the two companies were soon in among the buildings, beginning the tiresome and deadly task of house-to-house fighting for control of the Zoom frontage. By 1630 hours on October 29, the three companies had forced the Germans back two hundred yards, creating sufficient protection to enable engineers to remove the concrete cylinder and open the bridge to traffic. The Lincs were similarly engaged to the right of the bridge. Having lost the Zoom, the Germans resorted to heavy artillery and mortaring that made movement on either side of it deadly. But the Argylls and Lincs clung to their positions, widening them wherever possible through the night.
In the morning, the Algonquin Regiment relieved both battalions. When the three Argyll companies that had breached the Zoom moved back to the south shore, they numbered only 125 men, barely more than one company’s normal strength. For his leadership during this operation, Armstrong received the Distinguished Service Order.50 The Lincs, too, had been roughly treated, with thirty-eight casualties, eleven fatal.51 For the Algonquins, the only real problem came in gaining the north side of the Zoom. Shellfire inflicted fourteen casualties during the crossing.52 By late afternoon October 30, the battle was over and the Germans were withdrawing to escape being cut off by 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade, now astride the Bergen op Zoom–Steenbergen highway.
[ 25 ]
The Damned Causeway
THE CLEARING OF the Zoom canal was concluded on the same day 2nd Canadian Infantry Division gained control of the South Beveland entrance to the causeway to Walcheren Island. At first, 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Bill Megill had understood that the 52nd (Lowland) Division’s 157th Infantry Brigade would be responsible for seizing the causeway. Then Brigadier Holly Keefler declared that, come the morning, 5 CIB must undertake clearing “that part of Walcheren which is not yet flooded, with Middelburg and Flushing [Vlissingen] our two main objectives.” The brigade war diarist captured Megill’s sentiments, writing: “This comes as an unpleasant order as we were definitely informed that we were to go no further than the WEST end of ZUID BEVELAND and in fact had been promised a week’s rest once we had done this job.”
A few hours later, this order was countered: “The show was off and we would come out of the line and get our rest after all as there is no forecast of future ops.” Everyone relaxed, only to learn during the early hours of October 31 that the “plan has been changed again and we are now to… cross the causeway and secure a [bridge]head on Walcheren Island to enable 157 Bde… to pass through.” Megill’s staff scrambled to retrieve maps, aerial photos, and other information they had turned in as no longer relevant. These had to be redistributed to the battalion officers during a series of hastily held O Groups.1
One look at any of the relevant maps or photos confirmed that the causeway was a perfectly engineered killing ground. The Canadian army’s official historian later described it as “singularly uninviting. It was some 1200 yards long and only about 40 yards wide, with sodden reed-grown mud-flats on either side. It was as straight as a gun-barrel and offered no cover except bomb-craters and some roadside s
lit trenches dug by the Germans in accordance with their custom. The line of spindly trees fringing its southern edge had been badly blasted. The causeway carried the railway line (a single track, the second track having been removed) and the main road; also the characteristic Dutch bicycle-path. At its western end, although it abutted upon one of the few dry areas of Walcheren, there was a wide water-filled ditch on each side of the embankment. The German engineers had been unable to cut the causeway completely, but they had cratered it very heavily just west of its centre, creating a transverse ‘furrow’ which filled with water armpit-deep. This made the causeway impassable to tanks or other vehicles. The Germans’ artillery had certainly registered carefully upon it. They had infantry positions dug into the eastern dyke of Walcheren on either side of the causeway; the road at its western end was heavily blocked; there was a tank or possibly a self-propelled gun dug into the railway embankment just west of the block, and in addition there are reports of a high-velocity gun firing straight down the road.”2
Megill wanted to avoid sending his men out there entirely. He planned to invade Walcheren via an amphibious operation whereby the Calgary Highlanders paddled across in storm boats. Once they secured a toehold, Le Régiment de Maisonneuve would be ferried over. Meantime, Megill wanted to test the German defences by having the Black Watch “push a strong fighting patrol on to the other side” in a “quick operation.”3 By the time a Brigade O Group was held at 1040 hours, a more ambitious scheme had been hatched. “It is the intention that this brigade shall form a bridgehead across the causeway, on Walcheren Island, 1000 to 1500 yards deep.” This was to be achieved by a full-scale battalion attack, with ‘C’ Company leading, followed in line by ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘D’.4