by Mark Zuehlke
In Nicklin’s absence, Eadie assumed command. He had joined the battalion in the last days of the Normandy fighting, then temporarily commanded it during the advance to the Seine, and was now again in charge. “His brilliant handling and inspiring leadership” that day enabled the battalion, “in spite of heavy opposition and considerable casualties,” to capture all its objectives. Eadie’s actions earned the Distinguished Service Order.40
Lacking both senior officers, ‘C’ Company organized itself loosely by platoons and within five minutes of landing had gained the intersection and the stretch of Wesel-Rees highway that formed the drop zone’s western boundary. They quickly became embroiled in a battle to clear several heavily manned bunkers and many slit trenches that connected them. The bunkers were dug deep and had log roofs reinforced with piles of earth to harden them against artillery fire. One eight-man team, led by Sergeant “Maxi” Maxwell, rushed the first bunker with guns blazing, causing the Germans inside to promptly surrender. Maxwell leapt straight up on the roof and paused, looking “angry, like a fighter in a boxing ring with his fists up, only instead in the reality of war [he was] bracing himself against the recoil of the Bren machinegun he was firing at the next dug-out.”
Another team, meanwhile, rooted out Germans manning the slit trenches to the east, killing some and accepting the surrender of more. At the same time, left of Maxwell’s group, another team closed on a bunker. The section leaders had just started divvying up the men for an organized attack when Sergeant Myles Saunders told them to give him a moment. He had a Gammon bomb—an explosive charge paratroops used as an anti-tank weapon—with two sticks of dynamite taped to it for additional effect. Unscrewing the cap that ignited the bomb’s detonator, he chucked it up against the bunker’s entrance. When the dust from the blast settled, fifteen to twenty Germans staggered out with raised arms. Resistance was beginning to crumble .41
In fact, the flow of prisoners coming into battalion headquarters—established inside the cluster of houses—quickly proved problematic “because they numbered almost the strength of the battalion. It was fortunate that Germans were killed by the hundreds, otherwise it would have been impossible to corral and guard them in the early hours of the operation,” the battalion war diarist recorded. This was an overstatement. When the fighting ebbed at about 1400 hours, there were five hundred Germans under guard and approximately another one hundred counted as killed by the Canadian troops.42
Relative to the ferocity of the fight, Canadian casualties were considered light: two officers dead, one missing, and one wounded, as well as twenty-six other ranks killed, three missing, and thirty-four wounded.43 Initially the missing count had been higher, but as the day progressed, many of the paratroops, such as Sergeant Dan Hartigan, turned up. Others stole through German lines to enter the XII Corps bridgehead. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Nicklin was among those later discovered to have been killed. Thirty-six hours after the jump, a patrol found his bullet-riddled body dangling from his tree-entangled parachute in a small wood.44
Many units were harder hit. On March 27, the casualty figures for 17th U.S. Division were calculated at 1,584, including 223 killed with 666 missing and largely presumed captured, as their planes had dropped them far from their drop zones. The 6th British Airborne Division counted only 370 men missing, but 238 dead and 736 wounded, exceeding the American figure of 695. These British figures incorporated 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion losses.45
Had it not been for one man’s heroism, more Canadians would surely have died. Medical orderly Corporal Frederick Topham was a twenty-seven-year-old blond giant of a man, who had been a Kirk-land Lake miner before enlisting. “Toppy” was quiet and reserved, never seeking the limelight but considered steady in a crisis. Topham had no sooner struck earth than he heard a man crying for help out in the bald open. Two other medical orderlies rushed forward only to be killed as they knelt at the man’s side. Ignoring the murderous fire sweeping the drop zone, Topham dashed out and started dressing the man’s wounds. A bullet pierced Topham’s nose. With blood spewing and in terrific pain, he gathered up the soldier, draped him over a shoulder, and at a slow, steady pace “through continuous fire [carried him] to the shelter of the woods.”
Refusing treatment, Topham spent the next two hours carrying in other wounded, “showing complete disregard for the heavy and accurate enemy fire. It was only when all casualties had been cleared that he consented to his own wound being treated.” Weakened by blood loss, his face extremely swollen, Topham was ordered by the medical officer to stay in the battalion aid post. Instead, he pleaded “so earnestly on his own behalf that he was . . . allowed to return to duty.”
Heading out, Topham saw a mortar platoon Bren carrier explode into flames from a direct hit. Incapacitated by their wounds, the three men aboard were trapped in the burning vehicle. Knowing its ammunition load would soon start detonating, an officer warned everyone to stay clear and leave the men to their fate. Ignoring the order, Topham lumbered to the carrier. With mortar rounds erupting inside it and German bullets cracking off the armour, Topham pulled each man free of his seat and gently lowered him to the ground. One of the men died, but Topham saw the other two safely evacuated to the cover of the woods.46 Topham’s selfless heroism garnered the Commonwealth’s highest gallantry award, the Victoria Cross. “I only did what every last man in my outfit would do,” he explained later.47
About the time Topham was rescuing the men in the carrier, the paratroops guarding the western flank of the perimeter heard tracked vehicles approaching from the river. A column of Bren carriers and British tanks arrived moments later at 1500 hours. This reconnaissance patrol by the 15th (Scottish) Division was “warmly welcomed.”48
[4]
Rugged Resistance
AS THE SUN set on March 24, the Allies declared Operation Varsity a success, the two airborne divisions now joining those that had crossed the Rhine to play a traditional ground operation role until relieved. Collectively, the task now was to extend the bridgehead.1 The 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Highland Light Infantry was already in the midst of doing this, having assaulted Speldrop in the late afternoon as part of 51st (Highland) Division’s ongoing effort to break through the “Bienan gap”—a narrow piece of ground between the Alter Rhine and Millinger Meer. The British 1st Black Watch had been so badly mauled that it was ordered to pull out and make room for the artillery to smash the German defenders. Under a covering smokescreen, “the battered members of the Black Watch [withdrew,] leaving their wounded sheltered in cellars. One platoon which could not be extricated was advised by wireless to take what cover they could from our artillery fire,” stated one report.2
A long-time HLI officer, Lieutenant Colonel Phil Strickland had risen to its command during the blood-soaked Scheldt Estuary campaign. Brigadier “Rocky” Rockingham considered him “terribly clever, full of courage and ability. I admired him most in the world.” He was a good tactician, meticulous and methodical.3
Strickland’s plan to win Speldrop “relied strongly on artillery support to cover the troops into the town. All approaches were covered by the enemy with [self-propelled] guns, making it impossible to use tanks during the initial stages.”4 The ground was billiard-table level for the twelve-hundred-yard approach and absent any ground cover. Strickland secured generous artillery support in the form of the guns of six field regiments, two medium regiments, and two 7.2-inch heavy batteries.5
One of these was 14th Canadian Field Regiment, which had entered the bridgehead and set up only a short distance behind the HLI’s start line for the attack. His Canadian gunners, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Browne declared, were the first artillerymen to cross the Rhine. They “lost no time in digging in . . . as shelling and mortaring were considerable. Presently airburst commenced coming in on the beach head so I decided to run the carrier over the slit trench which had been dug sufficiently large to accommodate the entire crew of four. This plan did not prove possible as the trench, which had been
dug in rather sandy soil, caved in, thereby necessitating some extra labour, but driving home the lesson that in soft soil the narrower the slit trench the better.”
Browne drafted Strickland’s fire plan. Realizing the advancing infantry would be naked to heavy machine-gun fire from the high ground on the left flank, Browne ordered one regiment to screen it with smoke. Two field regiments would provide a creeping barrage in two-hundred-yard lifts to the village, while the remaining field regiments, medium regiments, and heavy regiments slammed designated defensive targets “in and beyond the town. One gun per regiment would fire smoke rounds against these targets to create a ‘fog of war.’”6
Strickland opted to send his men in tight, rather than across a broad front, to lessen their exposure to fire from Speldrop. ‘B’ Company would lead. Given chronic shortages of infantry manpower, that meant only eighty to ninety men. They were to establish a firm base, securing a group of buildings along the hamlet’s northern fringe. Typical of many rural German buildings, these were large structures with living quarters in the front occupying both the first and second storeys, and an attached barn at the rear for animals, tools, and equipment. Once these buildings were secured, ‘B’ Company would cover the advance by first ‘A’ and then ‘C’ Companies. ‘D’ Company would remain in reserve.
At 1730 hours, Major Joseph Charles King and ‘B’ Company went into the attack. Only by “hugging” the artillery barrage were they able to cross the open ground, which was “still swept by [machinegun] fire and enemy [artillery] and mortar fire” despite the shelling of Speldrop.7 Gaining the building cluster, the company fought at close quarters, and casualties mounted.8 All three platoon leaders were struck down. Lieutenants Bruce Frederick Zimmerman and Donald Arthur Isner, both twenty-four, were killed and the third officer incapacitated. Non-commissioned officers took over. King ran from one farm building to the other, directing the actions of each platoon despite exposing himself to raking heavy machine-gun and mortar fire. From somewhere inside Speldrop, three self-propelled guns bowled shells up the lanes, while German paratroops in fortified buildings facing ‘B’ Company’s objective lashed out with machine guns and hand-held Panzerfausts.
King realized that if ‘A’ Company passed through as planned, it would be cut to pieces. He sent an urgent call for the HLI’s anti-tank platoon and its troop of three Wasp Mk II Bren carriers.9
Bren carriers were retrofitted into flame-throwers by hitching an eighty-gallon fuel tank on the rear and running a hose to a large spray nozzle that projected from a hole cut in the thin frontal armour plate. As the fuel gushed down the line, it was pressurized with carbon dioxide and then passed through a heat exchanger attached to the carrier’s engine. When the gunner fired the trigger, it sparked a small dribble of gasoline, and a second later fuel gushed through the main valve, passed over the flame, and burst into fire, which was projected from a nozzle to a maximum range of about 150 yards.10 This “golden rain” of burning fuel broke into millions of ignited blobs of gasoline that showered widely and set alight any vegetation or wood it struck. A few tiny blobs of burning fuel attached to a man could be quickly smothered, but larger adhesions were impossible to quell, “and in this case the fats in the human body were literally burned up,” one Wasp specialist recorded.11
‘B’ Company was unable to wait for King to get this support going. Instead, No. 12 Platoon had punched in among the buildings and immediately come under withering fire from several 20-millimetre anti-aircraft guns used in a ground-fire role and several heavy machine guns positioned in a nearby orchard. The platoon’s commander fell, and Lance Sergeant Cornelius Jerome Reidel “immediately took command of the platoon, ordered the men to fix bayonets, and taking a Bren gun, led the platoon into the orchard in the face of heavy small-arms fire. The platoon captured the orchard, and cleared the buildings beyond, killing ten Germans and capturing fifteen prisoners and three 7.5-centimetre infantry guns . . . The success of the platoon action enabled the battalion to gain a foothold in the town,” Reidel’s Military Medal citation read.12
Responding to King’s plea, Major John Alexander Ferguson had led out a column of the battalion’s Wasps and carriers towing the four 6-pounder anti-tank guns. Ferguson, who won a Military Cross for this action, rode in a jeep, the sacrificial lamb on roads “unchecked for mines.” Luckily, the column reached King’s position unscathed.
Directed to set his guns to the right of ‘B’ Company’s position to protect its flank, Sergeant Wilfred Francis Bunda faced the same predicament that Ferguson had—leading troops down a road that might be mined. Bunda headed out “on foot ahead of his guns to lead them into position.” The anti-tank gunners arrived safely but found the position subjected to “constant enemy mortar and small-arms fire.” Knowing that German SPGs lurked in Speldrop, Bunda calmly sited each gun and urged the gunners to dig in quickly. When several men were wounded, Bunda ensured that they were placed under cover. Once the guns were in action, he oversaw evacuation of the wounded.13
With the supporting weapons up, King led one ‘B’ Company platoon forward and quickly cleared the fortified buildings. The way was now open for the other two HLI companies to close on Speldrop and begin house-by-house clearing of the paratroops, who were fighting “fanatically.”14
When ‘A’ Company pushed into the hamlet’s eastern flank, it met a blast of German machine-gun fire from three fortified buildings and was forced to ground. The company commander ordered Lieutenant George Oxley MacDonald’s No. 8 Platoon to lead an attack across a two-hundred-yard stretch of open ground to take the first building. With the carrier platoon throwing out covering machinegun fire, MacDonald rushed forward, only to come under “withering fire” from two machine guns on the platoon’s flank. All his section leaders were quickly struck down, but MacDonald was able to maintain control of the platoon and establish a fighting position inside a house. From here his men laid down such heavy suppressive fire that another section was able to clear the houses. MacDonald’s “courageous and brilliant action” was recognized with a Military Cross.15
This kind of gallantry on the part of the Highland Light Infantry’s officers and men squeezed the German paratroops into ever-smaller pockets of the village. When the dreaded Wasps prowled into the streets to sear buildings with gouts of flame, resistance cracked. Not that the Germans stayed around to be immolated. Despite attending the sites of innumerable Wasp actions over many months, flame-thrower specialist Lieutenant George Bannerman never found a single immolated or even badly burned German. There was even a medical officer at First Canadian Army headquarters who had issued a standing order that any dead or even seared Germans should be delivered for examination. “If we ever found one we were to alert him at Army HQ, but we never found one . . . As soon as the gunner pressed that trigger, everyone on the other side quit.” Bannerman believed that this horrific weapon saved lives because the Germans were so afraid of it they usually surrendered at its mere appearance.16
As darkness fell upon the shattered village, Wasps growled and flamed through the streets, anti-tank guns blasted enemy positions at close range, and the rifle companies relentlessly fought from one building to the next. The paratroops lost ground steadily. Buildings burned, while others were reduced to piles of rubble by shellfire directed against them by artillery forward observation officers working alongside the HLI. Most fortified houses had been close to the edge of the village. When these were taken, the “backbone of the resistance was . . . broken.”17
Soon after midnight, ‘C’ Company slipped into the southern end of Speldrop and rescued the platoon of 1st Black Watch that had been trapped for hours in cellars. It was a potentially deadly moment for both sides. Private Glen Tomlin spotted movement in a basement and loosed a burst with his Sten before realizing he was firing at a British soldier. Struck in the shoulder by four of Tomlin’s bullets, the man thanked him “for his trip back to England.” One of Tomlin’s buddies accidentally felled another Black Watch soldier with fi
ve slugs to the body. “Careful there, mate, I’m British,” the man cried. “Screw me, chum. I’m sorry,” the gunner stammered and then shouted, “These guys are British in here!”18
Still the Germans fought on. “Houses had to be cleared at the point of the bayonet and single Germans made suicidal attempts to break up our attacks. Wasp flame throwers were used to good effect. It was necessary to push right through the town and drive the enemy out into the fields where they could be dealt with.” In the morning, ‘D’ Company “sent a strong patrol out . . . and captured several MG crews who were asleep at their guns. What they had been through in the past 24 hours of almost continual attack had apparently rendered them completely exhausted.”19
By dawn on March 25, resistance had collapsed to a few lingering snipers attempting to cover a withdrawal back towards Bienan. When these were eliminated, the HLI declared the hamlet secured. Relieved by the British 7th Black Watch, the weary Canadians walked back to the river for a bit of sleep and a meal. They were to go back into the maw shortly, as 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade would assume primary responsibility for pushing through the Bienan gap. If the brigade’s other two battalions bogged down, the HLI must fight again, despite counting two platoon lieutenants and eleven other ranks dead, with another three officers and twenty-one men wounded.20
BY LATE AFTERNOON on March 24, 9 CIB had finished crossing into the bridgehead at Rees. Brigadier Rocky Rockingham established his tactical headquarters in the same building used by the British 154th Brigade, so the Canadian relief could be as seamless as possible. At 1405, Rockingham briefed his battalion commanders. The Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders would take over the 51st Division’s left flank from the 7th Black Watch.21 British attempts to gain Bienan so far had proved futile; the 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stopped cold at a farm 150 yards short. After dark, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders would relieve the Argylls.