by Mark Zuehlke
While No. 16 Platoon had been shredded, Monkley’s No. 17 managed to dash to its assigned houses despite losing several men on the way. Those who made it chucked grenades through the doors and windows and then burst in with Bren guns, Sten submachine guns, and rifles blazing. Several paratroops fell dead and eleven others surrendered. Then about ninety Germans, who had only just arrived and were still preparing positions in adjacent houses, poured out with hands raised.
Monkley did not keep the initiative of surprise for long, as other paratroops directed their fire against the houses from three sides. Dozens of machine guns ripped away, and mortars zeroed in. Roofs were torn open by exploding rounds, while bullets ripped splinters out of wood siding or crumbled brick walls to dust. Ceilings collapsed, plaster walls erupted, the air filled with choking dust, bullets, and shrapnel, glass shattered, and furniture splintered into slivers that cut to the bone. More North Novas fell dying or wounded.
Dickson decided to reinforce Monkley’s limited success with the rest of ‘D’ Company. Gathering Lieutenant Ron Boyce’s No. 18 Platoon and the fifteen men the CSM had insisted be left behind, Dickson clawed his way to the top of the dyke. Rising to his full six-foot-three height and turning to encourage the others forward, he presented a perfect target to the sniper who punched a round through the pipe-tobacco tin Dickson carried inside his battle dress. It caused the slug that would likely have severed his spine to sheer away and exit cleanly. Blood spilling from the entry and exit wounds, Dickson collapsed. As Sergeant Edison Alexander Smith came up alongside the fallen major, a mortar round exploded on the dyke and his torn corpse was thrown upon Dickson. Slowly the body rolled free and slid down the slope.17
Bombardier Robert Muir saw Dickson’s fall from a spot on the dyke’s west bank, where he had been waiting with a wireless set for his officer to show up. Muir dragged the major to safety. He and two North Novas sporting arm wounds carried Dickson to where Private Daniel Isaac Shanks was shuttling casualties back to Rosau with a jeep via a narrow track on the west side of the dyke. Fourteen times Shanks made this trip with the wounded packed in any which way. He then drove over the top of the dyke “in direct view of the enemy” to pick up wounded on that side. Realizing the jeep would bog down before it could reach most of No. 16 Platoon’s wounded, Shanks jumped out, ran to the men, and carried the most badly injured one by one to the jeep. Roaring back to Rosau, he delivered this load to the RAP and then gathered up volunteers from Support Company personnel. This party went in and recovered the rest of the wounded. Shanks received a Military Medal for saving “very many of his comrades’ lives.”18
‘D’ Company was so badly mauled that its survivors were barely hanging on to the couple of buildings won by No. 17 Platoon. Lieutenant Boyce had been wounded, ten men were dead, and another twenty-three were wounded. CSM Bishop, who would earn a Military Medal, dashed repeatedly from the houses to the other side of the dyke to send messages back to battalion headquarters and evacuate the wounded. Struck in the shoulder by shrapnel, he refused to leave for the next six hours, his iron hand helping keep the shrinking garrison fighting.19
While ‘D’ Company had been fighting for survival west of Bienan, ‘C’ Company had struck out from behind Argyll Farm on its wide sweep towards the eastern flank of the village, along with the Wasps, Valentines, and British tanks. At first the smokescreen kept them invisible as planned. But as the force closed on Bienan, its men saw the fuzzy lines of the buildings through the thinning smoke and realized the Germans would spot them at any moment. Major Winhold shouted for his men to charge and yelled into the wireless for the battalion mortars to fire more smoke in front of Bienan. As the screech of machine guns began opening up from within the village, ‘C’ Company sprinted forward.
The supporting mortars responded instantly, drenching the edge of Bienan with two hundred smoke rounds in a four-minute continuous volley that left the crews sweating and panting. Winhold, meanwhile, climbed onto the tank commander’s Sherman and told the officer to fire everything he had over the heads of his men.20
‘C’ Company was being cut apart and was beginning to waver when No. 13 Platoon’s Sergeant George Stewart broke off with a section and overran a concentration of machine guns firing from a dugout to its left. This eased the German firing just enough to allow the leading No. 15 Platoon to reach the Bienan-Speldrop road and head for the nearest building in the village. Only eight of the men still followed Lieutenant Bill Myers. As they dashed across the road, a German officer stepped out of the building’s front door and shot Myers, just as the Canadian unleashed a burst of fire that killed the man. Myers, who received a Military Cross, was paralyzed for life.21
Seven men remained to seize the building. This they did while No. 13 Platoon was also breaking into the village. Fifteen minutes was all it had taken for ‘C’ Company to journey from Argyll Farm to Bienan, but half of its men never got there. Eight lay dead on the ground and another twenty-four had fallen wounded.22
Inside Bienan the fight was at close quarters, with the paratroops determined to regain the couple of buildings lost. Back in the open, the wounded were drawing German fire as well. No. 14 Platoon’s Sergeant Joseph Prokopchuk had been cut down by two bullets through his legs as he came up on the road. Despite his wounds, Prokopchuk dragged twelve other wounded men to safety. Turning back for another trip into the open field, he collapsed. Prokopchuk would recover and was decorated with a Military Medal.23
Inside Bienan, ‘C’ Company was withering so fast that Winhold combined two platoons into one and put it under command of the courageous Sergeant Smith, while he led the third. All the other officers were wounded. Despite these losses, Winhold decided to take the offensive. He led the men deeper into the village. They went alone, the tanks and other vehicles too vulnerable in the narrow streets to anti-tank guns and Panzerfausts. The Wasps could have helped, but all three had either broken down or been knocked out.24
The company moved through fire that came from all points of the compass. Twenty-five-year-old Private Hugh Patterson Christie of English Town, Nova Scotia, charged one machine-gun nest with his four-man section. He and his men were all killed. Christie was discovered later with one hand gripping the barrel of the MG-42 that had mortally wounded him even as he killed the entire crew.25
NOTIFIED THAT ‘C’ AND ‘D’ Companies had a tenuous hold inside the village, Lieutenant Colonel Forbes ordered Major Don Learment and Captain Jack Fairweather to bull their way into Bienan from Argyll Farm, where they had been reorganizing the survivors of ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies respectively. What each had left was an oversized platoon, but both men immediately complied, with ‘A’ Company heading for the houses immediately in front of Argyll Farm and ‘B’ Company attempting to reach ‘D’ Company. The Dragoon Guards tanks growled over to support ‘A’ Company’s advance across the open ground by setting the village’s outlying buildings ablaze with phosphorous shells.
Fairweather’s ‘B’ Company headed for the large three-storey fortress house, which was being used to pound ‘D’ Company. Seeing the Canadians coming, the Germans inside swung their weapons towards them, only to have to duck the British tank fire directed against the upper-storey windows. No. 10 Platoon reached the house first and broke into the main floor behind a shower of grenades, killing or capturing the few paratroops there.
Most of the Germans were upstairs, which became immediately evident when the ceiling erupted with bullets shot by the paratroops firing blindly downward. Fairweather responded by having No. 12 Platoon and the tanks hammer the upper storeys from outside, while the North Novas inside chucked grenades up the staircases and fired their guns through the ceiling. Men from No. 12 Platoon closed in to chuck grenade after grenade through the upper windows as they dodged grenades being flicked down at them. After a few minutes of this, the paratroops shouted their surrender. The Canadians took two officers and forty men prisoner and counted about fifty dead or dying scattered through the building. With the fortre
ss taken, the German defence of Bienan began to crack.26
‘B’ Company found ‘D’ Company under command of the wounded Sergeant Bishop. A strange quiet settled over the village, both sides standing back like punch-drunk boxers to ready for the next round. Then, at 1500 hours, the Canadians advanced through the streets with the British tanks and Valentines in support. ‘C’ Company moved its two platoons along parallel streets and managed to reach the village’s centre. Then, just after sunset, three SPGs and “a strong body of infantry” lunged out from several streets all at once. Two British tanks were knocked out, and the rest of the armour fled. Winhold could only follow, withdrawing to join ‘A’ Company in order to combine their fire. Having dashed after the surviving tank and talked its commander into returning, Winhold guided it back into position as the German SPGs and paratroops approached the fragile Canadian line. Winhold directed the tank’s fire onto the SPGs and one was knocked out with the opening shot, causing the other two to retreat. Having lost their armour, the paratroops melted into the darkness. For his inspired leadership, Winhold received a Distinguished Service Order.27
The North Novas went back on the offensive, cautiously probing towards the northern edge. Each house had to be won in turn, so the pace was excruciatingly slow. But the gains now came at little loss of Canadian blood, indicating that the paratroops hoped only to delay and no longer stop the advance. At 2200 hours, Learment’s ‘A’ Company reported reaching a large creamery close to Bienan’s northeastern corner.
If the Germans in Bienan were nearing the end of their endurance, the same was true for the North Novas. The companies were so badly shot up and the men so exhausted that the battalion was ready to collapse. Recognizing this, Brigadier Rockingham ordered a halt. As the Highland Light Infantry had finished winning Speldrop several hours earlier, giving it the briefest of rests, he directed Lieutenant Colonel Phil Strickland to relieve the North Novas at 2300 hours.
After the hand-off, the surviving North Novas trudged out of Bienan. “It was a long, hard bitter fight against excellent troops who were determined to fight to the end,” their war diarist wrote. “Over 200 prisoners were taken and many killed.” But the North Novas had paid a brutal price. Thirty-five other ranks dead, seven officers and seventy-two other ranks wounded, and a further four men evacuated with battle exhaustion, for a total of 118 casualties.28 Bienan was its second-most-costly battle of the war. And still the Germans in Bienan continued to resist.
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT Infantry, its ranks badly depleted at Speldrop, moved into a nighttime battle in which every building turned out to be heavily fortified and once again fanatically defended. The three Valentine tank destroyers proved immediately welcome when a German self-propelled gun drove one HLI platoon to ground with machine-gun fire. Warned by the burning wreck of a Royal Dragoon Guard tank, the Valentine troop was in hunting mode when the SPG opened fire. Troop commander Lieutenant John Anderson jumped out of his own Valentine and guided the one ahead along a street in search of an angle of fire on the SPG. When the gun suddenly ceased firing, they heard it start growling off towards a new location.29 Deciding to force the SPG’s hand, Anderson removed the Bren gun from its mount and slipped off to one side. He then fired a magazine in the SPG’s general direction. “This fire brought back heavy retaliatory fire,” Anderson’s Military Cross citation noted.30 The Valentine immediately fired. “There was a metallic sound of the round striking the target,” and the SPG started to burn.31
The HLI fought on from one building to another with grenades and bayonets. “Progress was very slow, as the enemy fought like madmen,” the regiment’s war diarist wrote. “Isolated houses had to be cleared and [this] proved most difficult. The enemy arty and mortars poured shells into our [troops] continually. Again single paratroopers made suicidal charges . . . They were consistently chopped down but sometimes not before they had inflicted casualties on our sections.”32
The HLI divided Bienan up, with ‘C’ Company responsible for the northeastern portion. No. 13 Platoon headed for some buildings set off from the rest of the village. As the platoon moved out from the shelter of some houses, it was struck by machine-gun and rifle fire coming from their objective. Several men were cut down. Acting Sergeant Frederick James Jarman, who was commanding, suffered head and arm wounds but led his men into the buildings as the Germans retreated. Taking advantage of the lull, Jarman accompanied the wounded back to the RAP and had his own wounds dressed. When the medical officer told him he was to be immediately evacuated over the Rhine, Jarman refused, as the platoon had nobody else to lead it. Instead, Jarman returned and led it in an attack on the next group of buildings, which were gained easily. The men no sooner entered than the Germans opened fire at close range. Only after this attack was driven off and the company’s reserve platoon had passed through No. 13 Platoon’s position did Jarman agree to evacuation. He was awarded an immediate Military Medal.33
When the sun rose behind a mask of chalk-grey clouds, the German paratroops still fighting in Bienan no longer offered a unified defence, their resistance consisting instead of isolated groups or individual snipers “who refused to quit.” Soon these were all killed or captured. ‘D’ Company pushed out from the village about one thousand yards to where a deep anti-tank ditch cut across the breadth of the Bienan gap.34 Lieutenant Colonel Phil Strickland instructed Sergeant Wilfred Francis Bunda to reinforce the company with his anti-tank-gun section.
Bunda faced a repeat of his experience in Speldrop, with the guns needing to be pulled forward across ground that was under German observation and swept by machine-gun fire from the right flank. The road was also laced with mines. Dismounting from his carrier, Bunda walked forward at the head of the column, guiding the vehicles around suspected mines as bullets zipped all around him. Just short of the designated gun position, the men met a roadblock, and from either flank paratroops opened up with machine guns and mortars.
Yelling at his men to unhook the 6-pounders from the carriers, Bunda had them manhandled up a narrow track towards their assigned firing position. Crouching low behind the gun shields as they shoved the weapons forward, the men had some scant protection from the fire. But Bunda, who constantly dodged from one gun to the other to help position them, was dangerously exposed. He was also charmed, and came through unscathed to accept a Military Medal.35 The anti-tank guns secured the HLI hold on the anti-tank ditch, and Bienan was finally taken.
From the anti-tank ditch, the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment attacked Millingen. Only after this battalion moved forward in the early afternoon of May 26 were the exhausted Highlanders withdrawn to a rest area. Given the intensity of the fighting during the long night, it was surprising that only four men had been killed. But among the dead was Lieutenant George Oxley MacDonald, who had shown such gallantry at the head of ‘A’ Company’s No. 8 Platoon in Speldrop. Twenty-eight other ranks had been wounded. A draft of reinforcements soon arrived that made good these other-rank losses but did not replace those who had fallen in Speldrop. Also there was only one officer. The regiment was terribly weak, which was true of all three 9 CIB battalions.36
[6]
More Than Battered About
THROUGHOUT 9TH CANADIAN Infantry Brigade’s struggle to uncork the Bienan gap, it had been hamstrung by limited access to artillery and armour. The latter had consisted of just one British tank troop per battalion, with the 3rd Canadian Anti-Tank Regiment’s 94th Battery’s Valentine troop dashing to wherever the need was greatest. Artillery support had been confined to the field regiments of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. With two of these firing obliquely from across the Rhine and the fighting taking place at such close quarters, the gunners had often had to shell only positions well back or provide smoke cover. While these supporting arms undoubtedly helped the infantry carry the day, the price paid in casualties would have been less if support had been closer to normal levels.
Brigadier Rocky Rockingham, who the brigade’s war diarist thought looked “a bi
t tired after not having any sleep since landing and being constantly engaged with a stubborn enemy during that time,” was consequently relieved to learn on the morning of March 26 that he would be reinforced by 3rd Division’s Canadian Scottish Regiment.1 Also his brigade was to come under the newly arrived British 43rd (Wessex) Division, which would commit its 130th Brigade to attack north from Rees through the village of Androp to Millingen simultaneously with the North Shore Regiment’s assault from Bienan.2
The NSR would also enjoy a bounty of support from a complete squadron of the British 4/7th Royal Dragoon Guards. Rockingham had priority call on the corps artillery as well.3 Timing of the attack was continuously revised as this support was geared up and the HLI laboured to secure the anti-tank ditch start line north of Bienan.
Sensing a buffet of support at his beck and call, Lieutenant Colonel John Rowley requested and was promised a strike by Typhoon fighter-bombers on Millingen before the attack. Rockingham provided seven field regiments and two medium regiments firing “a continuous barrage” that would advance two-hundred-yard lifts when the lead rifle companies requested the guns to advance. The tank squadron was to be out front “taking on everything they can.” Even Crocodiles—flame-thrower-equipped tanks—were available.
Rowley planned to advance three companies in train while sending ‘B’ Company to clear the Germans out of a group of houses on the left flank. The main body would see ‘A’ Company leapfrogged by ‘C’ Company, with ‘D’ Company delivering the final assault into Millingen. After some delay, zero hour was set for noon.4
Rowley walked among the ranks, exchanging brief words with officers and men. Thirty-three-year-old Rowley had been commissioned in 1933 as a reserve officer in Ottawa’s Cameron Highlanders along with his older brother, Roger. When war came, the two became the city’s best-known officers. As the campaign in Northwest Europe advanced, both Rowleys had risen to command battalions—Roger, the Glens in Normandy; John, the North Shores in December 1944. Both quickly overcame their regimental status as outsiders. Roger cemented a reputation for daring impetuosity that won him a Distinguished Service Order in the fighting at Boulogne and a bar to the DSO during Operation Switchback in the Breskens Pocket. Less flamboyant than his brother and more inclined to detailed planning before entering a battle, John had also proved a competent battalion commander and earned a DSO during the Rhineland Campaign. Because of their battlefield exploits, with their battalions often fighting in close proximity, the Rowleys became known as the “brother act.” On March 1, however, the act had closed with Roger’s transfer to 3rd Division Training School.