by Mark Zuehlke
Instead, knowing the opportunity was surely fleeting, they embraced the luxuries afforded them. Most were billeted in private homes or above taverns in Belgian villages and towns for the duration of the refit. In Terhagen, 3rd Canadian Field Regiment was welcomed “by the gay and friendly population in their comfortable and scrupulously clean houses. There were plenty of pubs, everyone loved dancing and parties, and leave to England and Continental cities was started immediately. It was unanimously agreed that it was the ‘best go’ of the war.”10
Scattered by companies through three villages, the 48th Highlanders of Canada could hardly believe their luck. Drink was plentiful, but so too were other pleasures. Major Jim Counsell savoured the first buttermilk he had tasted in years. “The countryside seemed immaculate, and the contrast of the Flemish way of life was sharp to the filth, flies and primitive hovels of the Italian peasant. The Highlanders had almost forgotten such things as white curtains, and rugs on the floor. Life was sheer pleasure.”11
Not far out of view, however, the war ground on, and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry’s Captain Syd Frost soon realized his men were ready to return to combat. With each day the men in his company seemed increasingly weary of the training, the luxuriousness of their billets, and the chickenshit spit and polish that First Canadian Army insisted of men when they were not in the fighting lines. He thought his men were “ready and anxious to rejoin our old comrades in the Canadian Army and show them how to fight. This may seem strange to someone who has not served with the fighting troops, but it is a fact. It is the eternal dilemma of a soldier—he is never completely happy for long. After a short rest he becomes bored and itches to get back into the fight. But when he has been in action for a prolonged period, gone days without proper sleep, food or shelter, endured constant shelling, narrowly escaped death or injury a hundred times and seen his comrades blown to bits—after these and other discomforts, he can’t wait to get back to the rest area. As P[rivate] Norton succinctly puts it: ‘Why the hell did I ever join the goddamn army in the first place!’”12
THE CANADIANS FROM Italy would not have long to wait for a return to action, for even as they settled into this new theatre, their corps commander and his staff had already, on March 15, started work in the town of Wijchen, about seven miles southwest of Nijmegen. At first, however, Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes found himself in the unusual circumstance of commanding no Canadians. Instead, his sole unit was the 49th (West Riding) Division, which had been engaged for weeks in planning the clearing of the so-called Nijmegen Island as a preparatory requirement to assaulting Arnhem.
Operation Market Garden had left the Allies in possession of a bridgehead on the north bank of the Waal immediately opposite Nijmegen that extended about five miles towards the Neder Rijn and stretched about ten miles from east to west. One of the Rhine River’s diversions, the Neder Rijn had been subjected to a series of canalization projects started in the 1700s and continued into the early 1900s that enhanced its usability for shipping and reduced flooding of the adjacent flood plain to create farm and pasture lands. The resulting approximately five-and-a-half-mile-long waterway was named the Pannerdensch Canal and extended to where the IJssel broke off from the Neder Rijn to meander on a northwesterly course into the IJsselmeer. The Pannerdensch was about four miles east of the bridgehead’s boundary and ten miles west of Emmerich. The Neder Rijn, with Arnhem standing on the northern bank, was five miles from the bridgehead’s apex. To the west, the bridgehead stretched to a point just south of the town of Randwijk—which stood close to the south bank of the Neder Rijn opposite the larger city of Wageningen.
The ground enclosed on three sides by the Waal, the Neder Rijn, and the Pannerdensch Canal comprised the Island. It was so named because the Waal and the Neder Rijn come within about three miles of joining each other at the Island’s western extremity close to the town of Opheusden. Crisscrossed with ditches, the low clay country of the Island had been transformed into a quagmire by the Germans, who disabled or destroyed drainage systems and breached dykes to inundate it. All main roads were confined to the tops of dykes, so any vehicle movement was extremely vulnerable to enemy fire. Before the 49th Division’s changeover to I Canadian Corps control, several plans had been devised to clear the Germans out of the Island, but they were abandoned when winter conditions made such operations either too difficult or too vulnerable to counterattack.
With the improving weather and the success of Operation Plunder, Foulkes and Major General G.H.A. MacMillan agreed the time was now ripe. Once Emmerich and Hoch Elten fell, the British Division would lead the operation. To enable MacMillan to concentrate his division’s operations to the east opposite Arnhem, Foulkes planned to deploy 5th Canadian Armoured Division’s 11th Infantry Brigade against the western portion of the Island. The 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade’s Ontario Regiment would provide tank support to the British division.13
I Canadian Corps’s chief of staff, Brigadier George Kitching, worked closely with Foulkes on the overall plan. This late in the war, the thirty-five-year-old Kitching was one of the Canadian Army’s most experienced chiefs of staff—and one who had also commanded both a brigade and division in battle. From December 14, 1942, to October 30, 1943, he had served as 1st Division’s chief of staff before being given command of 5th Division’s 11th Infantry Brigade for a short three months. On January 30, 1944, Kitching was promoted to acting major general and commander of 4th Armoured Division. Just thirty-four at the time, Kitching had been Canada’s youngest general officer. Kitching’s stellar rise proved short-lived. A combination of bad luck, faulty communications, and possibly poor judgement resulted in the division performing poorly in the Normandy fighting from August 7 to August 21, 1944. Kitching had been sacked, demoted, and returned to Italy as the I Canadian Corps chief of staff on November 12, 1944. Shortly thereafter, Foulkes had arrived as the new corps commander, and the two had overseen the last months of Canadian operations in Italy and the subsequent movement to Northwest Europe in February and March of 1945.
In Italy, Kitching had been “impressed with Charles Foulkes’ military decisions.” Now, working through an ever-changing panoply of schemes rendered down from Montgomery’s headquarters—which seemed unable to make up its mind about how to put this new corps to best use—Kitching saw Foulkes quickly exert a controlling hand over each potential task. The “many plans we worked on were all based on sound common sense and I think his eventual orders to the commanders of our 1st and 5th Divisions and the British 49th Division were as well thought out and as well executed as any other battle plans of World War II.”14
Foulkes had always been something of an enigma within the Canadian officer corps. English-born but educated in London, Ontario, he had entered the army in 1926. Starting off as a major, he had been rapidly promoted during the early war years. By 1942, he was a brigadier and soon received a posting to the army’s general staff. Here he caught the eye of Crerar, who considered Foulkes both a skilled administrator and a knowledgeable tactician. Crerar smoothed the way for his promotion to major general and command of 2nd Division in January 1944. Foulkes had led this division through the fighting in Normandy and in the process attracted the ire of Lieutenant General Guy Simonds. The II Canadian Corps commander would have axed Foulkes for what he considered incompetence had it not been for the man’s closeness to Crerar. Since then, Foulkes’s career had continued to prosper.
Although Crerar’s patronage helped advance Foulker’s career, his patron’s unpopularity within the officer corps tarnished Foulkes’s reputation as well. Physically, he was a short, rather dumpy man, which denied him the command presence and sharp appearance so prized within the Permanent Force. Like Crerar, he was also dour and aloof, attributes fed by an introverted personality. Foulkes mixed with his peers only when necessary. Fishing was his sport and he cast his lines alone. While many senior officers were known for their standoffishness—Crerar, Simonds, and Lieutenant General Tommy Burns were al
l considered cold fish—Foulkes’s brand was often interpreted as concealing a cunning, wily, and ruthless nature, which meant he was not to be trusted.15
When his performance was questioned, as it had been by Simonds after the Normandy campaign, Foulkes seemed able to evade any negative consequence, not only by relying on Crerar’s patronage but also by passing blame downwards. If 2nd Division had performed poorly in Normandy, Foulkes attested that the cause was the inferiority of the soldiers and not the quality of command. Upon assuming command, Foulkes later said, he had considered the division “about as perfect a fighting machine as we could get. When we went into battle at Falaise and Caen we found that when we bumped into battle-experienced German troops we were no match for them.”16 This simple analysis enabled Foulkes to hide within the ranks of the division’s other eighteen thousand soldiers—appearing no more responsible for its failures than any private.
CLEARING THE NIJMEGEN Island was critical to Crerar’s larger plan for future First Canadian Army operations, which he explained to Foulkes and Simonds in an April 2 directive that coincided with 49th Division opening its offensive. Crerar’s immediate concern was to secure the route for rapid movement of supplies from Antwerp’s vast port to meet Second British Army’s requirements as it swept into the heart of Germany. Montgomery repeatedly reminded Crerar that such a route was “essential to his broader intentions.” Accordingly, Crerar told Foulkes to first concentrate on clearing the Island, then seizing Arnhem, and finally clearing a transportation lane between this city and Zutphen. At the same time, Crerar directed that Simonds should secure “the line of country between Almelo and Deventer [and subsequently] advance to clear the enemy from the northeast Netherlands . . . providing that . . . this [could be done] without detriment to the rapid conclusion of his responsibilities for forcing the crossing of the IJssel and clearing an area sufficiently far westwards to enable [Crerar] to develop the very important road and railway communications between Nijmegen, Arnhem and Zutphen; and which run thence through Hengelo into north-western Germany.”17
Crerar was pleased with the situation as it stood on April 2. II Canadian Corps had finally won Emmerich and Hoch Elten, and its northwestward advance along the east bank of the Rhine was proceeding well. So well, in fact, that the First Fallschirmjäger (Paratroop) Army, “our stubborn adversary,” had been split in two, with its II Fallschirmjäger Corps “reeling backwards [to] the north,” having “lost contact with the [LXXXVI] Corps in the south.”18
One factor that remained in flux and bedevilled Crerar’s plans for the new Canadian corps was that SHAEF and Twenty-First Army Group remained undecided about how best to approach the plight of the Dutch in western Netherlands. That a growing humanitarian crisis existed was clearly recognized, but no consensus had been reached on how to alleviate it. Any diversion of First Canadian Army forces to the west would necessarily dilute its strength for the drive through northeastern Netherlands and into Germany as part of Twenty-First Army Group’s main offensive. Montgomery had assumed that he would lead the main advance into Germany with three armies under command—the British Second, First Canadian, and U.S. Ninth—and hoped to gain Berlin ahead of the Russians. The full strength of the Canadians would protect his left flank, the Americans of the Ninth his right, and the British would lead the charge in the middle. But Montgomery’s dream was scuttled on March 28 by General Eisenhower. Instead of the main thrust being made on the Allied left flank, it would come in the middle and be an American show. Consequently, Ninth Army reverted to command of General Omar Bradley’s Twelfth U.S. Army Group. Montgomery’s task was now to guard Bradley’s northern flank in an advance to the Elbe River. Along the way, his forces would secure the vital German northern ports and liberate Denmark.
Relegated to a supporting role, Montgomery was horrified to also learn there would be no western Allied drive on Berlin. With the Russians just thirty miles east of the German capital and the western Allies three hundred miles distant, the Americans—in Europe and Washington both—had decided the race was unwinnable. Further, they discounted the political and post-war ramifications of ceding Berlin to the Russians. Eisenhower felt Berlin had ceased to be an important objective. What mattered more was to advance his forces by the quickest route to “join hands” with the Russians and cut Germany in half. This would enable him to direct forces to break up any German attempt to withdraw into the Austrian Alps, where it was feared a “National Redoubt” might be established and defended to the last man.19
Even after these decisions were made, Montgomery still expected that all First Canadian Army would march at his side towards Germany—that was just militarily sensible. Would not the best way to bring relief to the Dutch be to defeat the Germans and bring the war to a speedy conclusion? Yet Montgomery was too politically astute not to recognize that military logic might well be overruled by political exigencies. So he warned Crerar to be ready at any moment to direct some of his army towards western Holland. By April 2, Crerar assumed this course of action likely and made his plans accordingly. Like Montgomery, he still hoped military logic would prevail and consequently directed his corps commanders that “should it be decided that the clearing of West Holland by I Canadian Corps is not to be undertaken, then First Canadian Army will regroup on a two Corps front, and advance into Germany between the inter-Army boundary on its Right [with Second British Army], and the sea on its Left. Destroying, or capturing, all enemy forces as it proceeds.”20
Crerar’s desire to avoid trying to directly liberate western Holland had been inspired by a Twenty-First Army Group planning staff analysis, released on March 28, of the challenges of such an operation. It was a grim read. Before the operation could even begin, I Canadian Corps must first secure a twenty-two-mile line running from Hilversum next to the IJsselmeer, south through Utrecht, and down to Vianen. This meant that the Grebbe Line—a fortified barrier dating back to 1745—would first have to be broken. With its northern flank butted against the IJsselmeer, the Grebbe Line ran along the crest of a modest and heavily forested series of hills and ridges that bordered the Eem and Grebbe rivers to Rhenen on the Neder Rijn. In 1940, the Dutch had laced this main defensive work with pillboxes linked by trench systems to meet a German invasion. When the invasion happened, the poorly equipped but hard-fighting Dutch defenders checked the German advance here for three days, despite knowing their cause was doomed. In the ensuing five years, German engineers had strengthened, modernized, and expanded these defences. The Grebbe Line was deemed a tough nut to crack, especially as the Germans could be expected to make a tenacious stand.
Assuming that the Canadians persevered and gained the Hilversum-Utrecht start line, actual operations in northwest Netherlands would be a nightmare. The majority of the country’s largest cities were here, and the British planners foresaw Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and IJmuiden being “turned into fortresses, thus forcing us to expend time and lives on street fighting, quite apart from destroying the towns concerned and causing numerous casualties to civilians.” Outside the cities, the countryside was “a vast expanse of polder intersected by numerous water obstacles, ranging from large ditches to widespread deliberate inundations.” The flooding of huge areas of this polder country—billiard-table-flat land reclaimed from the sea by draining and erecting dykes around each new section—would channel the Canadians onto raised roads. To deny free movement on these roads topping the dykes, the Germans had constructed clusters of mutually supporting pillboxes that could smother each approach with machine-gun and artillery fire.
The planners considered four possible strategies and found each fraught with difficulty. A general advance across the whole front was deemed “impracticable” due to the extensive inundations and a lack of sufficient roads. Concentrating on Amsterdam, which was closest to the existing Allied line, was rejected because the Germans had already “wrecked the port” and “demolished the locks and harbour installations at Ijmuiden.” Amsterdam could not therefore be used to ship fo
od and other supplies into the western region, which was the sole purpose of the advance. Making for just Rotterdam, or alternatively The Hague and Leiden, would allow the Germans to concentrate their substantial forces to meet the Canadians head on. Recognizing this, the planners suggested as their fourth and final proposal that these last two courses be somehow combined, so that the Canadians advanced on The Hague and Leiden while also driving towards Rotterdam. Such an approach would liberate the national capital and secure the great port of Rotterdam, which “although heavily demolished [was] still likely to prove of value.” The hitch was that these three cities were all strongly defended by excellent fortified lines or lay behind extensive areas of inundation.
Because of the lack of good roads and already widespread flooding, the planners envisioned there being operational room for only two brigades at a time. Therefore, rather than suggest that I Canadian Corps commit both its divisions, they foresaw the offensive being carried out by a single infantry division supported by just one armoured regiment (tanks being entirely confined to the roads topping the dykes) and a complement of artillery.
“Operations in Western Holland will be fraught with difficulty and will be very slow,” the planners concluded. They also feared that the Germans might stalemate the operation by flooding virtually the entire region. Except for a line of hills 250 to 300 feet high that ran through the area and a coastal belt of dunes, everything lay below sea level. “Flooding may be caused by the breaching of dykes or by stopping pumps,” the planners warned. “As the pumping stations throughout Holland have recently very largely been converted to electric power, interference with power stations can easily and rapidly have a wide and disastrous effect.” Assuming that the operation would occur only because “political pressure has forced us” into it, the planners concluded that such an advance would likely only escalate the existing humanitarian crisis.21