On to Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  Seeing his company being butchered, Dunlop called for artillery directly onto its position. Most of the men were in buildings while the Germans were stuck in the open, and Dunlop figured that gave his men an edge. If he did nothing, they died anyway.

  A terrific barrage of shells and mortar rounds hammered down. Rounds exploded all around Challice’s house, and the roof suddenly blew apart. Sergeant McEachern had been outside when the barrage fell and suffered a terrible wound. He lay screaming in agony forty yards from the building, but Challice and the rest knew they would be killed if they attempted a rescue. With all the non-commissioned officers wounded or dead, Challice was organizing the platoon’s defence and still working the Bren.

  Once the artillery lifted, the Canadians saw that the open ground around the houses was littered with German corpses. “We were inside, they were outside,” Dunlop said. “Blew the Germans all to rat shit.” Although the enemy kept probing and sniping, they made no further attempts to overrun ‘C’ Company.

  Two hours later, at 0200 on April 4, Major John Martin led ‘B’ Company through Dunlop’s battered position, and the Germans withdrew. ‘D’ Company had meanwhile reached the railway, and patrols were probing Delden. By dawn, the Lincs had the town and thirty-four prisoners.

  Challice’s war was over. After helping evacuate the more badly wounded, he collapsed from exhaustion and shock. Challice was one of sixty-seven Lincs wounded or killed. Most were from ‘C’ Company. He would spend the rest of 1945 in hospital. His friend Sergeant McEachern miraculously survived, although he lost both legs.24

  WEST OF THE Lincs, the Lake Superior Regiment had decided against a direct attack on the lock. Instead, Major R.A. Colquhoun’s ‘A’ Company was directed to cross in assault boats five hundred yards to the west and catch the Germans defending the lock from the rear. Due to the fortuitous appearance of a British artillery officer from the 8th Armoured Brigade, the attack was to be lavishly supported by two XXX British Corps field regiments and four searchlights to create artificial moonlight. Lieutenant Colonel Faire promised that his gunners would plaster the woods that lay behind both the lock and the proposed landing site to ensure that the Canadians got across with little interference.25 Also lashing the woods would be the New Brunswick Rangers’ medium machine guns, the Superior’s own mortar platoon, its three Wasp flame-thrower carriers, and one squadron of Canadian Grenadier Guards tanks.

  Problems manhandling the assault boats cross-country and then down the steep dyke to the water’s edge delayed the assault to 2300 hours. Once underway, however, things proceeded smoothly. Although the leading platoon was fired on by several Germans armed with Panzerfausts, it suffered only one casualty. Surging up the dyke, the men formed a line and silenced the enemy fire with their rifles and machine guns. The other two platoons quickly moved through their position and fanned out towards the lock. Despite encountering more Panzerfaust fire, which killed Sergeant Martin Hellsten, the lock was soon secured. Hellsten and the man wounded during the landing were the only casualties. Ten Germans were taken prisoner.26

  Within minutes of the lock being secured, 8th Canadian Field Squadron engineers started work on a bridge. Finding the lock in surprisingly good condition despite German efforts to demolish it, the engineers had only to create a span over a ten-foot gap and widen the decking on the rest of it to ready it for vehicles. At first light, the Superiors’ armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles rolled across and started running northward, facing only light opposition.

  Lieutenant Bruce Wright and his No. 13 Platoon scouts were again on point and making straight for Almelo with ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies in trail. Wright took the column through Delden, where the Lincs were being overwhelmed by the deliriously happy townspeople. The Superiors waved off the crowds, including the town Burgomaster, still dressed in his nightshirt, and headed up the highway. On one side lay Holland and on the other, Germany. The weather was sunny, the faces of the civilians gathered in clutches alongside the road likewise. “This was warfare such as the Lake Sups had known it earlier, as it had been in France and Belgium; not like that grim, gruesome battling four weeks before in the devastated Rhineland. No longer was there that depressing sense of desolation and destruction. Again the troops enjoyed the heady elation of being looked upon as ‘liberators. ’ And if there were glum countenances and little white flags hanging out of the windows of the German houses, they were forgotten in the profusion of orange bunting that always seemed to hang from those in Holland.”27

  The Superiors moved so quickly they kept overrunning German troops. About a third of the way from Delden to Almelo, Wright’s band caught the paratroops in the midst of preparing to blow a bridge. They killed three and took the other five, including an officer, prisoner. Racing on, the platoon won an even larger bridge intact.28

  Behind the Superiors, the rest of 4th Armoured Division mustered—a great straggling snake of tanks, trucks, carriers, and artillery. At 1300 hours, the British Columbia Regiment nursed its Shermans gently over the lock bridge. At Delden, engineers were still erecting a large Bailey bridge that could handle the vehicles more quickly than the lock bridge, but by the time it opened at 1600 hours, 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade had all passed over the narrower bridge and was pushing north. By last light on April 4, the Superiors and tanks of the Canadian Grenadier Guards entered Almelo—a city of about 35,000 people—unopposed. Behind, most of the division was across the Twente.29 From Almelo, Vokes planned a thirty-mile thrust by 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade on April 5 into Germany, to Meppen on the east bank of the Ems River.

  “Thus commenced one of the most successful armoured dashes . . . the brigade has ever made,” 4 CAB’s war diarist recorded on April 5. “Original objectives were overrun in a matter of a few hours and plans were changed on the move.” The Germans seemed in complete disorder, either taking to their heels in a desperate attempt to escape the juggernaut or giving up at the first sight of the Canadians.30

  By mid-morning of that day, the leading Superiors had covered fifteen miles and occupied Emlichheim. From here, the battalion split, with the main body turning east towards Meppen, while ‘A’ Company headed northwest to test the defences of the Dutch fortress town of Coevorden, which lay just across the border behind the defensive barrier of the OverIJsselsch Canal. As the company approached Coevorden, the bridges over the canal exploded, and a force estimated at about three hundred Germans opened fire with Panzerfausts and machine guns. One of the rounds struck a Bren carrier and it burst into flame. Private Mervin Brampton and Private Montgomery Cliff died, and two other men were wounded. With dusk gathering, ‘A’ Company pulled out of range and dug in for the night. During the short action, three more men had been wounded.31

  Last light found 4th Brigade’s main column “well into Germany and probably the most northerly tip of the spearhead of Allied armies in Western Europe moving toward the North Sea. Another highlight of the day and another first in the [brigade’s] history . . . was that . . . for the first time our [troops] met the Volkstrum and armed [civilians]. These warriors primed as they were to fight to the last man and the last round met our oncoming [troops] with NOT one but both arms raised in a Nazi salute and their weapons piled neatly at their feet ready for the inventory.” The brigade also liberated its first prisoner of war camp at Bathorn, and over the ensuing two days 4th Brigade would free more than seventeen thousand Allied POWs from an assortment of camps.

  As night fell, the Superiors were still bound for Meppen and far ahead of the brigade’s main body. Deciding that the rest of the brigade was moving too slowly, Lieutenant Colonel Keane warned Moncel that if the main column didn’t pick up the pace, it would soon be “bloody well . . . out of contact” with the Superiors.32 Gaining the outskirts of Meppen in the middle of the night, Keane decided to await the dawn before testing its defences.

  Far back, Brigadier Jim Jefferson’s 10th Infantry Brigade had already lost contact with the rest of 4th Division. Instead of joining
the race to Meppen, most of Jefferson’s brigade had been left behind to consolidate the Canadian grip on the Twente Canal about Delden and the stretch of the Almelo-Nordhorn Canal that extended from the Twente to the west of Delden up to Almelo. The Germans were trying to retain control of the west side of this canal to keep an escape route open for their forces being pushed north from the Twente by the 2nd and 3rd Canadian divisions. Jefferson’s brigade found itself fighting “a sort of private war miles behind the racing armoured group . . . It was an odd situation for 4 Brigade was miles away . . . as was divisional Headquarters and the (10th) Brigade was left so far behind that any wireless or line communications was out of the question.”33

  Mopping up German resistance was tougher than anticipated, a fact the Algonquin Regiment discovered on the night of April 5-6 when it tried to seize the suburban community of Wierden, immediately west of Almelo. Major George Cassidy thought the plan “rather weird,” because it divided his ‘D’ Company into three separate bodies that were to work independent of each other. One platoon crossed the canal at Almelo and advanced along its western bank, while a second paralleled it on the opposite shore. Company headquarters and the third platoon, meanwhile, moved from Almelo along the highway leading to a crossing into Wierden with a bulldozer in tow, which was to start cutting approaches for a bridge once the two leading platoons had secured the area. Lacking radios, all communication between the three groups depended on runners.

  When runners informed Cassidy that the two platoons had both reached the crossing site unopposed and were digging in, the major rushed his group up the road towards the canal, only to be met by a “terrific hail of small arms fire spraying the length of the road.” Moments later, another runner reported that in the dark, the two platoons had turned north rather than west and belatedly realized they were dug in eight hundred yards away.34

  A second crossing attempt next to the destroyed highway bridge was made in broad daylight at 1330 hours on April 6. Carrying two assault boats, the two wayward platoons of the previous night were caught in withering machine-gun and mortar fire.35 The lead platoon suffered fourteen casualties, three-quarters of its strength, and the following one lost three men wounded. Lieutenant Robert Louis Richard died, and the other platoon leader was injured. ‘D’ Company secured a toehold on the edge of the canal across from Wierden, but otherwise its operation was an “utter fiasco.”

  For the next three days, the Algonquins remained engaged in “this queer sort of sideshow battle,” until a patrol entered Wierden on April 9 and discovered that the Germans had slipped away into the darkness during the night.36 Within hours, 10 CIB was racing north to catch up to the rest of the division.

  [11]

  Fierce Rearguard Actions

  THE BREAKOUT BY 4th Canadian Armoured Division conformed with similar advances by XXX British Corps’s Guards Armoured Division, which had gained the Ems on April 3 and disrupted German work on a defensive line along the river’s eastern bank. Left of 4th Division, meanwhile, II Canadian Corps’s two committed infantry divisions had been equally busy liberating Dutch real estate between April 2 and 5. The 2nd Division’s 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade had gained the most ground on April 2 when Major General A.B. “Bruce” Matthews formed it into a flying column of infantry mounted on carriers and tanks sent towards the Twente Canal. An artilleryman by training, the thirty-six-year-old had been promoted to divisional command in November 1944 and proved as capable an infantryman as gunner. Sensing that the front had gone mushy, Matthews decided on bold action, instructing Brigadier Fred Cabeldu to load the Royal Regiment of Canada onto its carriers and the hulls of the Fort Garry Horse’s ‘B’ Squadron. To protect the vulnerable infantry, the division’s reconnaissance regiment, the 14th Canadian Hussars, led the advance. This Easter Monday had dawned heavily overcast with a strong wind that lashed the men with sporadic icy rain.1

  At the column’s head, 14th Hussars’ Lieutenant Lorne MacKenzie and No. 1 Troop made nineteen miles unopposed. Emerging from a patch of thick woods, MacKenzie was relieved to see the bridge over a small brook called the Berkel still standing and about a mile beyond the Twente’s high dyke. Next to the bridge, a German soldier stood talking to a Dutch civilian. One of the gunners snapped off a burst that hit the Dutchman instead of the German. As the civilian fell dead, the soldier raised his hands. Spotting more Germans in a nearby thicket, the armoured cars riddled the area with fire. Several surrendered while the rest fled.

  The bridge’s approaches were strewn with mines and its deck had been wired with explosives. Dismounting, MacKenzie and his men threw the mines and explosives into the brook. As the last mine sunk from sight, a Dutch SS soldier stepped out of the thicket with a shouldered Panzerfaust but was cut down before he could fire.

  As soon as the other Hussars arrived, No. 1 Troop made for the Twente, only to see the bridge crossing it explode while they were still three hundred yards short of its ramparts. “As it sank to the bottom of the canal,” MacKenzie’s “soaring spirits went with it. In sheer anger we shot up everything we could see on the other side and then moved back . . . and . . . took up positions guarding the approaches.” As they sullenly watched the canal, doodling along the dyke came six Germans on bicycles. “We were still boiling with anger [and] at 75 yards 6 MGs and 3 Brens made quite a mess of them. We felt better after that.”2

  When the Hussars’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ Squadrons caught up, patrols searching along the dyke found only destroyed crossings. By early afternoon, the tanks and Royal Regiment arrived, the latter bringing up eighteen assault boats. Taking to the boats at 1730 hours, ‘A’ Company gained the opposite shore unopposed. Scrambling up the dyke, the Royals surprised some German engineers digging fighting pits for a company of infantry just approaching from the left to take up its positions. The Royals opened fire, scattering the Germans into a cluster of nearby houses.

  The moment it crossed the canal, ‘D’ Company advanced across a wide expanse of pastureland, riven with drainage ditches, towards the German-occupied houses. Sergeant Garnet William Eldridge’s No. 18 Platoon drew immediate machine-gun and Panzerfaust fire. A hard driver—who would win a Distinguished Conduct Medal that day—Eldridge had never shirked a firefight since first seeing action in Normandy and was out front as usual, replying to the fire with his Sten gun while running right into “the very muzzles of the enemy machineguns and bazookas.” Raw recruits, the Germans made the common mistake of the inexperienced and fired so high that their rounds passed harmlessly overhead.3 As Eldridge approached one house, a German stepped out of the door with a Panzerfaust shouldered. Grabbing a PIAT from its operator, Eldridge did the same with it, despite the weapon being intended for prone firing. Eldridge’s 2.5-pound hollow charge struck the German squarely in the chest before he could fire, and he disappeared in a shower of gore. The remaining Germans among the houses fled.4

  Lieutenant Colonel R.M. “Richard” Lendrum spread his Royals along the canal, with ‘D’ and ‘A’ Companies in the centre and the other two companies on either side. Without a bridge, there were no means yet for getting the battalion’s support carriers or any armoured cars or tanks into the bridgehead. A party of engineers started work on a ferry at midnight and had it ready to carry one vehicle at a time across at 1000 hours on April 3. Other engineers had been working on a bridge, but it was not scheduled for completion until the end of the day.5 The ferry service had just finished shuttling the battalion’s support troops, half of the Hussars’ ‘B’ Squadron, and half the armoured cars across by 1400 hours when the Germans started heavily shelling the entire bridgehead—forcing the bridging effort to shut down at 1730 hours. German infantry also counterattacked ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies, but were thrown back with heavy losses. At 2100 hours, the Germans scored several direct hits on the ferry, smashing it to pieces. Artillery and tank fire soon silenced the German guns, and a last-gasp counterattack at 2230 hours was easily driven off. As night fell, the Royals counted three men dead, four missing,
and twenty-three wounded.6

  Brigadier Cabeldu suspected that the veteran paratroops had been used up and only inferior units remained, noting that the “enemy tactics appear almost juvenile at times—he is doing everything the book says as usual, but his training here shows that the calibre of troops opposing us is not what it used to be. Each enemy attack suffered very heavy casualties and usually a number of PW [were] taken—grubby, dirty, slender youths, boys and old men.”7

  On the morning of April 4, shelling of the bridgehead “rather mysteriously ceased,” and the engineers launched a newly constructed ferry. Repeated German counterattacks directed at the bridge site were easily driven off but still delayed the work. Toiling through the night, 2nd Field Company’s engineers were able to complete the bridge and open it for traffic at 0900 hours. By noon, the battalions of 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade crossed the Twente and headed for Laren, a village immediately north of the bridgehead.

  Also using the bridge were the Regina Rifles of 3rd Division’s 7th Infantry Brigade. By passing through 2nd Division’s lines across the Twente, this battalion was able to move westward along the bank of the canal towards Zutphen—3rd Division’s main objective.8

  OPERATION PLUNDER HAD seriously depleted 3rd Division’s infantry brigades. The troops were worn out, but there was to be no letup, as the division was ordered to advance simultaneously due north via Wehl towards Zutphen and westward in the direction of Zevenaar on the Emmerich-Arnhem highway. This latter move was to keep the two Canadian corps connected.