Terrible Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  That the most battered battalion in the division would be sent into this kill zone struck the Black Watch’s Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Ritchie as “monstrous.”5 Still reeling from the slaughter it had suffered eighteen days earlier on Black Friday, the battalion was barely fit for combat. “The morale of the Battalion at rest is good,” Ritchie wrote in a summary to close the October War Diary. “How-ever it must be said that ‘Battle Morale’ is definitely not good due to the fact that inadequately trained men are, of necessity, being sent into action ignorant of any idea of their own strength, and after their first mortaring, overwhelmingly convinced of the enemy’s. This feeling is no doubt increased by their ignorance of field-craft in its most elementary form.”6

  In the past four months, the Black Watch had suffered more than 1,400 casualties. This was a loss rate surpassing those common to infantry battalions in the Great War. Officers and non-commissioned officers had been particularly hard hit, seriously diminishing the number of experienced hands that normally guided new soldiers through their first combat.7 Each company was still at half-strength, mustering only fifty to sixty men, including several designated Left Out of Battle.8

  A little past noon, Captain H.S. Lamb led ‘C’ Company onto the causeway and into an immediate storm of artillery and mortar fire. Hiding in the marshy grass on the causeway’s edges, snipers opened up with deadly fire.9 Only 5th Canadian Field Regiment’s guns were firing in support of the Black Watch, the division’s other two field regiments having been sent to new firing stations near Breskens to support the next day’s landing by British troops at Vlissingen.10 The 5th Field fired a thirty-round-per-gun Mike Target bombardment to force the Germans to ground, but to negligible effect. Repeated concentrations of the same degree little slowed the rate of deadly fire.11

  From a slit trench just back of the causeway, Royal Regiment of Canada’s Lieutenant Maurice Berry–a former Black Watch officer– watched with a mixture of horror and admiration ‘C’ Company’s gallant but doomed drive into the maelstrom. “The Germans, of course, had the whole place taped and they simply plastered it with shells, mortar bombs and mg fire. They even put the odd AP shot down the road and very unpleasant it sounded when it bounced off the road and went [w]hirring over our heads. They do this for its demoralizing effect, but it never checked the BW. Our boys were very impressed with the way the first two Coys went through, and it made me proud that I had once worn the Hackle.”12

  One heavy German gun was dropping shells that “raised plumes of water 200 feet high when they fell short,” but had devastating effect when they struck the causeway. The ricocheting armour-piercing rounds, contrary to Berry’s observation, “was hard on the morale of the men.” At the midway point, what was left of ‘C’ Company plunged through the armpit-high water in the crater and clawed their way across. But the attack was coming apart, the Canadian shellfire failing to disrupt the German defences. Only No. 13 Platoon under Lieutenant J.P. Jodoin managed to keep going until it was stopped seventy-five yards short of the end by fire from four mg 42 gun positions. Unable to send a runner back with map coordinates for artillery fire, Jodoin and his men went to ground. Lamb’s company started digging in wherever they were pinned down.

  Captain William Ewing’s ‘A’ Company was out on the causeway right behind ‘C’ Company. Ahead, he could see that the artillery fire was striking five to six hundred yards wide. “I don’t know what the hell they were trying to do,” he said later. Investigation afterward determined the 5th Field this day was calibrating its gun support on a faulty 75-millimetre field piece that resulted in the shells going wide.13

  Hearing that ‘B’ Company was preparing to move onto the causeway, Ewing got on the wireless and advised that it stay put. There were already too many people lying in terribly exposed positions and nothing to be gained by putting more at risk. A lot of the causeway was surfaced with bricks or rocky ground, and even to dig a six-inch-deep trench meant hacking away with shovels or knives. His wireless knocked out, Ewing left Company Sergeant Major Alan Turnbull temporarily in command and crawled to the rear to impress the futility of the situation on Ritchie. Turnbull felt as if the company were lying in the middle of a bowling alley, with his men the ten pins and 88-millimetre ap rounds the balls. Nobody was getting anywhere at digging a decent hole. Finally, Ewing returned with permission to get out. Whereas ‘A’ Company extricated itself easily enough, ‘C’ Company was so strung out and burdened with wounded that it was hard pressed to fall back.14 Captain Lamb was wounded, but a couple of men managed to carry the officer to the end of the causeway and load him onto a jeep.

  Some of ‘C’ Company withdrew safely to the concentration point about two hundred yards west of the South Beveland causeway entrance, but more crawled into German slit trenches well to the front and hunkered down. Everyone knew that the plan was for artillery to hammer the rest of the causeway once the Black Watch had withdrawn. Jodoin and four of his men, two of whom were wounded, had worked forward to within twenty-five yards of the causeway’s western end when the withdrawal order came. Knowing they could not possibly get back before the artillery arrived, the five men went to ground in a German slit trench.15 Few of the other wounded in ‘C’ Company could be evacuated either, for “at the slightest sound of movement the enemy plastered the roadway with shells and mortar, and [MGS] firing on fixed lines.” The thirty-minute artillery concentration started at 2340 hours, so for many of ‘C’ Company’s men– wounded or not–the month closed as “the red fire of Bofors laced the dark sky, mortar shells could be seen bursting on the far bank, and the sound of our heavier artillery was everywhere.”

  From the day after Black Friday to October 31, the Black Watch recorded eighty-five casualties, the majority of those suffered on the causeway. During the last week of October, the battalion had received only thirty-four reinforcements. This all too common attrition-versus-replacement ratio kept chipping the battalion closer to the bone.16

  THE ARTILLERY CONCENTRATION was to support the Calgary Highlander attack. Major Ross Ellis and his ‘B’ Company commanders had spent the day anxiously working out the details for Megill’s proposed amphibious crossing next to the causeway. As ‘B’ Company was to lead the effort, Major Francis H. “Nobby” Clarke drew the duty of boat captain. He and his sergeants, all trained in amphibious operations, sketched the outlines of assault craft in sand and then walked the men through boat-handling procedures. All the time, Clarke “couldn’t believe the storm-boat idea.” He had asked Ellis if he was joking after being told what they were to do. As his men dutifully clambered in and out of the sand-sketch boats, he kept “praying that sanity would return to someone in a position and prepared to stop it before too late.”17

  Launch time was midnight because intelligence predicted the Sloe, as the channel was called, would be fourteen feet deep.18 This and the fact that the quarter-inch-to-a-mile map at brigade headquarters showed a half-mile strip of nice blue water had convinced Megill and his staff that the assault boat scheme was practicable. Then in the early afternoon, Megill and Brigade Major George Hees were finally able to look at the channel itself. They stared at a mud flat. Elsewhere, the Sloe perhaps could be crossed by boat, but not near the causeway. And there was no time to reconnoitre the channel for a different crossing. If a bridgehead was to draw Germans away from Vlissingen and Westkapelle before the amphibious landings on November 1, it had to be won that night.

  Megill and Hees realized the only possible way across would be “on the damned causeway.” The brigade commander hoped that he could still keep the operation limited to a “quick and easy in-and-out,” with the British taking over the bridgehead soon after 5 CIB won it. The men were exhausted and he wanted to limit casualties. Frankly, the brigadier reminded himself, nobody in the brigade was “really interested in fighting at [this] point at all.”19

  Megill broke the news to Ellis, who in turn informed his battalion at 1830 hours that there would “be no ‘boating.’” Instead, Clarke�
�s ‘B’ Company would lead the way onto the causeway, with ‘D’, ‘A’, and ‘C’ following in line. ‘B’ Company, Ellis said, “would traverse the Causeway and fan out North, South, and West” to form a narrow bridgehead. ‘D’ Company would pass through and thrust southward. ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies would then push the bridgehead out farther, with ‘B’ passing through ‘C’ at first light to carry the village of Arnemuiden, a little over a mile west of the causeway. An impressive support fire program was prepared that included the 52nd (Lowland) Division’s artillery regiments, 5th Canadian Field Regiment, a medium artillery regiment, the 40-millimetre Bofors of an anti-aircraft regiment, 4.2-inch mortars of the Toronto Scottish Regiment’s ‘A’ Company, and the Black Watch’s mortar platoon. Once the Calgarians had attained their objectives, Le Régiment de Maisonneuve would expand the bridgehead even farther. As the O Group broke up, one wag boasted that “Jerry would not forget the Halloween party… the Calgary Highlanders calculated to put on for [his] benefit!”20

  It was a clear, cold night as Major Clarke’s ‘B’ Company moved towards the causeway just before midnight in single file, with five yards distance between each man. Signaller Private Frank Holm dogged Clarke, a No. 18 set strapped to his back. Holm had only one earphone on so that he could hear sounds around him. All seemed quiet, calm. Then the artillery opened up as the company came onto the causeway, and immediately the Germans responded with intensive shelling along its entire length. The same type of high-velocity shells that had rattled the Black Watch ricocheted off the hard road in a shower of sparks and screeched overhead. Shrapnel sang through the air.21

  ‘B’ Company was about a hundred strong, Lieutenant Walter Lafroy at the head with No. 12 Platoon. Despite the intensity of incoming fire, Lafroy and his men got to the midway point before a major concentration of mortar caught them. Everyone piled into the massive crater for cover. When the firing eased, the platoon slithered out along the southern edge. Most of the German machine-gun fire was high, but men were still getting hit. Private John Morrison caught some shrapnel seconds after a rifle grenade explosion killed a man just behind. Lafroy had a chest wound and a bullet had gone through Corporal D.H. Richardson’s arm. Finally, the platoon came up against a roadblock made out of steel railroad tracks anchored with cement. They could hear a lot of Germans chattering on the opposite side, far too many for a platoon as badly chewed up as No. 12 to take on.22

  Behind the platoons, Clarke and signaller Holm had taken cover in a German slit trench. Holm was impressed to see it was nicely brick-lined, an impressive shelter that had obviously been constructed at leisure. Telling Holm to stay put, Clarke took off towards the front with his runner, Private David Maxwell. The Germans were now pounding the causeway with what Holm figured had to be Walcheren’s coastal guns. Each explosion sent a shock wave coursing through his body, leaving his nervous system so jarred Holm feared he was going to crack up. “I swore that if I ever got out of this hellish place alive I wouldn’t mind eating dirt for the rest of my life.”23

  Suddenly, two men plunged into the trench and Private Maxwell was panting in Holm’s ear that “Clarke was a hard man to keep up with.”24 The captain grabbed the microphone and asked Ellis for permission to withdraw. Ellis contacted Megill, who consented. Slowly the men started pulling back, taking with them their wounded and those Black Watch soldiers–including Lieutenant Joidin and his four men–who had been stranded on the causeway earlier. By 0300 hours, everyone was clear.25

  The withdrawal was but a brief respite, Ellis and Megill working frantically to draft another artillery fire plan to support a renewed attempt at 0530 hours. Major Bruce MacKenzie’s ‘D’ Company would lead, followed in line by Major Wynn Lasher’s ‘A’ Company, Major Clarke and ‘B’ Company, and lastly Major Frederick Baker’s ‘C’ Company. The new fire plan called for two field artillery regiments to concentrate across a 750-yard-wide frontage to catch any snipers positioned out on the mud flats either side of the causeway, with fifty-yard lifts every two minutes to keep just ahead of the infantry. Delays teeing up the artillery pushed the attack back first to 0545, and then to 0605.26

  As they formed at the head of the causeway, ‘D’ Company glimpsed in the starlight what they were to enter. A lot of the troops were replacements that twenty-five-year-old Private George Teasdale thought of as young kids, and he could see them “getting upset.” Despite the creeping barrage, the Germans were still replying with heavy artillery and mortaring, as well as a lot of machine-gun and sniper fire coming in.

  MacKenzie suddenly stepped to the front and yelled, “Come on, you sons-of-bitches!” Teasdale and the others started running, glancing nervously at the Canadian corpses strewn across their path.27 Leaning on the barrage, at 0652 hours, ‘D’ Company reached the roadblock that had stopped ‘B’ Company’s leading platoon, and came under intense machine-gun and 20-millimetre cannon fire that drove the men to ground. From a slit trench twenty-five yards short of it, MacKenzie glared at the roadblock. The only way past was by direct assault, right into the teeth of that fire.

  “Shit,” he growled to Sergeant Emile John “Blackie” Laloge, and then called for a two-minute heavy barrage on top of the obstacle. When the last shells exploded, the company charged into withering MG 42 fire that punched one man after another down. Then the survivors were on the roadblock, some clambering over, while others sprayed Sten and Bren guns through gaps into the chests and faces of the defending Germans. Moments later, they had fourteen prisoners and the lead platoon was darting off the causeway onto Walcheren Island.28

  At 0933 hours, MacKenzie reported that he was past the causeway and had a platoon creeping south along the dyke bordering the Sloe. The prisoners taken at the roadblock were being sent back, and MacKenzie wanted another company brought up pronto, although he warned that “care should be taken because of the high velocity gun firing down the road.” ‘D’ Company was too badly torn up to silence the thing.

  ‘A’ Company began crawling along the north side of the causeway, while ‘B’ Company did the same on the south flank, with ‘C’ Company following it. Reaching the other side, Major Wynn Lasher turned ‘A’ Company north against “light opposition.”29 Major Clarke soon had ‘B’ Company past the ‘D’ Company platoon on the southern dyke and headed towards some farm buildings about six hundred yards off. The company was hugging the bank facing the channel, moving in single file. Soon it was directly opposite the farms, but Clarke realized that the ground between the dyke and the buildings was too exposed and wide for the company to cross without artillery fire. He had no means of calling up such support, for his wireless had been damaged and Holm had gone back across the causeway for a replacement. So Clarke lay there on the muddy edge of the dyke looking with “despair and exasperation” first at the objective and then out across the Sloe, where he could plainly see battalion headquarters set up and monitoring the operation. Knowing it was a ridiculous hope, he thought perhaps they would see ‘B’ Company’s predicament and provide artillery on their own initiative.

  Major Ellis and his headquarters staff believed all was going well. So much so that at 1210, his reports to brigade prompted Brigadier Megill to alert Le Régiment de Maisonneuve to be ready to cross at 1305 hours. In fact, it was about this time that the Calgary assault began to fall apart. ‘B’ Company was still stalled on the dyke for want of a wireless set. To the north, ‘A’ Company had been stopped cold when it came face to face with a bunker complex. Lasher, with Lieutenant Howard O. Schoening in tow, dashed forward to try getting things going again. The officers paused to discuss the situation with two men in a slit trench, and a bullet hit Schoening in the right arm with such force that he was spun around before being thrown to the ground. Lasher was also down, a bullet in his back. When the German fire paused, the two men helped each other crawl to the rear. That single German burst of fire had taken out the last of ‘A’ Company’s officers.

  Ellis and Brigade Major George Hees crossed the causeway at 154
5 hours to assess the situation personally. Moving from one front position to another, Ellis calmly stood on the edges of the slit trenches chatting with the men in them. Shells exploded all around, bullets whipped the air, but Ellis seemed unconcerned. Discovering that ‘A’ Company was leaderless, Hees–a staff officer who had never been in combat–volunteered to take command. As Hees was from brigade, permission had to be secured from Megill. Once that came in, he traded soft cap for steel helmet and Sten gun. Captain Bill Newman, an artillery forward observation officer, volunteered to act as company second-in-command. The two men set off on their new assignment. Ellis thought it “took a lot of guts for a guy who had never been in action to go into a hell-hole like that one.”30

  Out on the causeway, the engineers had a bulldozer filling in the crater to open the way for tanks, but it was soon driven off by heavy fire. Even the arrival of a squadron of Typhoons, which rocketed and strafed German positions at about 1545 hours, and two Spitfire squadrons soon after, failed to dampen the resistance. Instead, the Germans counterattacked, concentrating their fury at the axis where ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies’ lines joined.

  The Germans came in supported by men carrying flamethrowers. ‘B’ Company’s Lieutenant Johnny Moffat and No. 10 Platoon out on the far flank were caught in a fiery fray that wiped out the forward section. Moffat was shot dead. The company was strung in a long line along the dyke, and with ‘D’ Company behind it also under attack there was no going back or forward. In ‘D’ Company’s sector, Sergeant Laloge was up with No. 18 Platoon throwing German grenades back at the charging enemy. When a Bren gunner was cut down, Laloge picked up his gun only to find it damaged. Calmly taking the time to repair it, Laloge then opened fire.

  Over at ‘B’ Company, Lance Corporal Richard G. Wolfe volunteered to stay behind with his two-inch mortar while the rest fell back on ‘D’ Company’s position. With Wolfe punching out rounds, Clarke pulled the men back. Wolfe’s fire held up the German advance, but the soldier was captured. (He would be returned by the Germans two days later bearing a note asking that artillery stop firing on a position that housed a field hospital.) His bravery was rewarded with a Military Medal.31