by Mark Zuehlke
Kicking off at 1600 hours, ‘D’ Company had an easy time. Encountering an extensive German trench system “that crisscrossed the area,” Major Ben Dunkelman and his men wound through it. “But for the mud and water that half-filled the trenches there was no opposition,” a QOR report stated.
For the other two companies, the story was entirely different. Approaching a small outpost south of Rha with two platoons forward and one back, Major W.J. Weir’s ‘B’ Company was greeted with a hail of mortar and small-arms fire. “The situation rapidly became hopeless,” and only the following platoon providing covering fire enabled the two forward to extricate themselves. Lieutenant John Gordon Kavanagh was killed and three men wounded before the company escaped.
‘A’ Company “was even in a worse state of affairs.”15 This company had been in poor shape before the attack. Like the rest of the battalion, it had been badly mauled in the Rhineland battles and recently rebuilt with about thirty reinforcements, which still brought its strength to just seventy men. Its commander, Major D. Hogarth, had previously served in the battalion’s anti-tank platoon and only recently been promoted. A tall man, he loomed at least thirteen inches above the veteran Company Sergeant Major Charlie Martin. Only No. 8 Platoon had an officer, a young fresh-faced lad newly arrived from Canada. Sergeant Jackie Bland had No. 9 Platoon, Sergeant A.T. Caverley No. 7. Both platoons had freshly promoted corporals leading the sections.
From the moment Hogarth stated his intentions, Martin disliked the plan. Instead of going straight at Rha with everything the company had, Hogarth was going for its flanks, with No. 8 Platoon sent to the north and No. 7 Platoon the south. Once each platoon had gained the edge of the hamlet, flares would be fired and then the two would push towards the centre in concert. This was all by the textbook, but Martin thought it tactically outdated. Worsening the situation, Hogarth had decided to lead No. 7 Platoon himself, as Caverley was new to his rank. Martin’s job was to do what Hogarth should be doing—run the company headquarters section and coordinate with battalion any artillery, mortar, or air support.
Within an hour of the two platoons pushing off, a rifleman from No. 8 Platoon marched in a number of prisoners. He told Martin the lieutenant had led them past the edge of the hamlet without firing the flare or waiting to coordinate the advance with No. 7 Platoon. With the Germans surrendering in droves, the platoon just kept going, rounding up more prisoners until “they became prisoners of the prisoners.” No. 8 Platoon kept heading west, and company headquarters lost all contact with it.
On the right flank, No. 7 Platoon had entered a deep trench system full of waist-deep water and mud. As Rha came in sight, Hogarth and Caverley’s party came under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. Sheltered by the trench, the platoon suffered minimal casualties. But advancing through the incoming fire was impossible. One man with a broken arm and chest wound was sent back to company headquarters. He told Martin the platoon was soaking wet and covered in mud, and most weapons were so clogged with filth and water they were useless. Hogarth had also been shot in the shoulder when he tried peeking out of the trench.
As the man finished his account, Martin heard someone from the direction of No. 7 Platoon shout: “Fix swords! Let’s take them with our bare hands.” This was followed by the long sheet-tearing screams of several German MG-42 machine guns and a deathly silence. Eventually the platoon trailed into company headquarters. It had lost six men wounded and a dozen missing. Hogarth was evacuated with his wounds. No. 8 Platoon still wandered somewhere in No Man’s Land, and the survivors from No. 7 Platoon had weapons rendered useless by filth. Martin decided No. 9 Platoon would have to take Rha alone and divided it into two combat sections. He then had the hamlet drenched with mortar and artillery fire followed by rocket-firing Typhoons. While one section provided covering fire, the other dashed to a new firing position through which the other section leapfrogged. In this manner, the little force gained Rha, only to have Dalton order it to pull back to the battalion start line because it was too weak to hold the town.16
The QOR remained in place throughout April 6, giving Rha “a good dusting off during the day” with mortars and 6-pounder anti-tank guns. Joining in this fire were the tanks from the Sherbrooke’s ‘B’ Squadron. A new attack plan was worked up for the following day. Just before dusk, however, the battalion was ordered to rejoin 8 CIB.17 Divisional intelligence had decided that “the sting had been taken out of Rha.”18
The final casualty count proved less than initially feared. Lieutenant Kavanagh and four other ranks were dead, another man had been lost as a prisoner and later died, and two officers and ten other men had suffered wounds. To Martin, Rha exemplified an action in which men “were too brave . . . took on too much themselves . . . and . . . did not . . . carry the day.”19
NORTH OF RHA, the battle for Zutphen had also shown that bravery alone was not always sufficient. Regional wisdom held that Nijmegen, with a pre-war population of 25,000, was the oldest local city, Arnhem the gayest, but Zutphen the wealthiest. A picturesque old city wrapped in a network of waterways, it was an ideal fortress.20 Preliminary reconnaissance by the North Shores determined that the ground they must cross alongside the railway embankment was too soft for tanks but would support their Wasps.21 In front of the Chauds on their left, the ground was harder, and two troops of Shermans gathered behind the infantry.22
Both infantry battalions formed in the dark behind a road about twelve hundred yards from the city. Before them the ground was flat, absent any cover, and marshy. At 0430 hours, Le Chaudière led off and quickly crossed the open ground to gain a row of houses. Behind the houses were a canal and the remains of a blown bridge. While the infantry were able to dash down the steep embankment and splash through the shallow water, the tankers looked for an alternative route.
Sergeant Hubert Atkinson, commanding No. 1 Troop, spotted a likely crossing point to the left. Despite heavy sniper fire, Atkinson and his crew dismounted to create a crude bridge by dumping logs in a row across the water. Three of Atkinson’s men were wounded and, just as the job was finished, the twenty-six-year-old Montrealer was shot dead.23 Atkinson’s heroic effort enabled the other tanks in his troop to reach the Chauds and provide badly needed support.
No sooner had the infantry crossed the canal than they had become locked in a deadly fight with a pack of fanatical young paratroops. At the head of his platoon of men from ‘D’ Company, Lieutenant Paul Piché seemed to be everywhere that trouble erupted. When the company was forced to ground by a German machine-gun post, Piché and four volunteers sprinted across two hundred yards of open ground to kill the crew, the lieutenant personally accounting for five Germans. Seeing a group of civilians trying to find shelter in an area subjected to German artillery fire, Piché guided the twenty-four people to a building with a stout basement. For his gallantry in assisting these people, Piché was awarded the Netherlands Bronze Lion medal.24
When the first Sherman across Atkinson’s improvised bridge turned its 75-millimetre gun and machine guns onto the paratroops at point-blank range, resistance quickly collapsed. By 1000 hours, ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies had gained the regiment’s first objective despite “beaucoup de résistance.”25
To the right, the North Shores had attacked before dawn, and ‘B’ Company was now searching for a crossing over the waterway. The company’s newly promoted Major Harry Hamley was not surprised to see the bridge blown. Knowing the battalion risked being caught in the open when the sun came up, Hamley began frantically seeking a way over the canal. Already things were bad, the paratroops opposite “thoroughly aroused and fighting back with the desperation of cornered rats. Machine guns and rifles had opened up on the company from both right and left flanks.”
At 0625 hours, Hamley reported that he, his signallers, and one platoon were pinned down. Small packs of five or six Germans had separated Hamley’s group from the other platoons farther back. They were firing in both directions at the North Shores and chucking stick grenades a
round with wild abandon. Spotting about twenty Germans forming behind a dyke to overrun his embattled position, Hamley grabbed a Bren gun from its wounded operator. Charging into the face of enemy fire, Hamley burned through a magazine as he ran, shooting eight Germans dead, wounding several others, and scattering the rest.
Despite the breaking up of this attack, the situation kept worsening. Surrounded, Hamley’s men were engaged in a constant shootout at point-blank range. Casualties mounted fast. Hamley took a slug in the chest and was forced to relinquish command to the platoon leader, Lieutenant W.J. Kearns, only to see him fall wounded a few minutes later. Having led his platoon through to Hamley’s group, Lieutenant N.H. Whiston assumed command.
Off to one side, ‘B’ Company’s remaining platoon worked its way along the dyke towards the others. Repeatedly, two or three men were forced to charge German positions with bayonets while the rest provided covering fire, so the advance was slow and bloody. Lieutenant Dave Doig personally led one assault. As he approached a trench, a teenager popped up and shot him in the head. Although the bullet slashed a furrow clean to his skull, it only staggered Doig. A Bren gunner at his shoulder emptied his magazine into the German.
Doig had just regrouped his team when a group “came over the top of the dyke like devils, but we had our grenades ready and gave them the works, then following in with machine-gun and rifle fire,” the lieutenant recounted. “We had a few casualties but wiped out three times our number of those crazy young devils.”
BACK AT ‘B’ Company’s main position, Whiston was desperately keeping its shrinking ranks fighting. Company radio signaller Private Ernest Fowlie Watling kept coolly reporting the situation to Lieutenant Colonel Neil Gordon while loosing regular bursts from his Sten gun.
Deciding ‘B’ Company had to be extricated, Gordon advanced ‘D’ Company to wipe out the Germans behind it. Major M.W. Carroll’s men managed to fight through and then the two companies began slowly withdrawing under fire. Last to leave was Private Watling, who stayed behind to the last moment, covering the withdrawal with Stengun bursts. His courage was recognized with a Military Medal.26
While this withdrawal was underway, Lieutenant Colonel Lett and the Chaudière commander arrived at Gordon’s headquarters. The three decided that the front facing the North Shores was too favourable to the defence to breach and Gordon’s battalion should move to the right of the Chaudière sector, where the advance was proceeding relatively well. Due to a delay in carrying out this realignment, Lett postponed further advance until the following day.27
The next morning, the two battalions renewed their attack. On the right, the North Shores were led by ‘C’ Company. Encountering a blown bridge, Lieutenant Jack McKenna’s platoon waded through waist-deep water to the far shore. Because the approaches on either side were mined, Major Blake Oulton held the rest of the company back and sent the pioneers to clear the mines. While this was going on, Oulton crossed to the other side alone. In a building he was considering for a temporary headquarters, the major discovered a rubber boat equipped with an air pump. Oulton inflated the boat, floated it across to the company, and the men paddled over in small groups to land dry-shod.
‘A’ Company soon joined ‘C’ Company across the canal and the two pushed hard into the heart of the city, with the Wasps in support under command of Sergeant Ray Savoy. ‘C’ Company met stiff resistance almost immediately near a railway that crossed in front of it, and Savoy raced to assist. Savoy “came down the exposed street at full speed with his Browning machinegun spewing a steady stream of bullets. His carrier wheeled around the intersection and let fly its flame full upon the enemy position. He then gave covering fire for the other two carriers . . . It was something to see those three carriers come up with machineguns chattering and wheel in with flame streaming from their noses and withdraw in a hail of bullets,” Oulton recalled. Aboard Savoy’s carrier, nineteen-year-old Private Lionel Valley was killed.28
To the left of the New Brunswick battalion, the Chaudière had carriers and tanks prowling alongside. Whenever the infantry was pinned down by snipers or machine guns, the armour and carriers soon drove the Germans off. As the day dragged on, divisional intelligence staff was able to conclude that “for the first time there was evidence that the enemy’s attitude was gradually changing and although he fought well at times, the old tenacity was lacking.”29
And yet this grindingly slow process was still underway at dusk on April 7, when the Canadians paused for the night in a large warehouse district. The next morning, Major Oulton’s ‘C’ Company again led the North Shore advance. This time it was accompanied by Wasps and Crocodiles. His company met little resistance. But when ‘A’ Company struck out on the flank into the main freight-marshalling rail yard, some of its men were shot down crossing a stretch of open ground. Lieutenant Ernie Finley was among those killed. Under a rain of sniper fire, several volunteers ran out and carried the wounded to the safety of a large warehouse, which soon caught fire. Lieutenant M.H. Rogers, Lance Corporal Doug Bevan, and Private John Barry, along with two other men from Rogers’ platoon, started hauling the wounded men out of the building. Before it collapsed in flames, they successfully carried all the men to the battalion’s Regimental Aid Post.30
By nightfall the rail yard had been cleared, and on the morning of April 8, the two battalions pushed deep into the factory area bordering the IJssel River. Within a few hours, most of the surviving paratroops escaped across the river in rubber boats. Those who lingered were either killed while sniping at the Canadians or taken prisoner.31 The battle for Zutphen had lasted the better part of four days. Neither infantry battalion bothered noting how many men it had lost in the battle, but the North Shores’ Padre R. Miles Hickey buried twenty of his men there.32
“Canadian soldiers rate the boyish defenders of Zutphen among the most fanatical troops they have encountered,” wrote Douglas Amaron, a Canadian Press war correspondent. “The S.S. had some sense but these Hitler youths were absolutely mad . . . Nazis to the core.”33 In the late afternoon, the Chaudière left the city and the North Shores set up a defensive line along the IJssel to prevent German infiltration from the opposite shore.34 The Queen’s Own Rifles came in from their debacle to the south and assumed responsibility for defending and policing the city’s southern outskirts, freeing 9 CIB’s Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders to move with that brigade’s other two battalions to support 7 CIB’s advance on Deventer. As the tired and muddy Queen’s Own trudged into the city, the citizens poured out to give them a “royal welcome,” which became a literal one the next day when Prince Bernhard arrived to tour Zutphen.35
In the midst of the festivities the war intervened, when both the North Shores and the QOR were ordered to immediately mount trucks for a hurried move northward. The rest of the division was closing on Deventer, and 8 CIB’s job was to take over positions held by 7 CIB, so that the latter could attack the city from the south.36
AS THE BATTLE in Zutphen had raged, 7 CIB had pushed in a straight line out of the 3rd Division bridgehead across the Twente Canal at Eefde at 0630 hours on April 6. The Canadian Scottish Regiment led with sights set on Gorssel, a small community midway between Zutphen and Deventer. Although one trench and bunker system after another was encountered, none was defended. Resistance was limited to light artillery fire from guns stationed west of the IJssel and small handfuls of seemingly disorganized and demoralized infantry that the battalion’s war diarist dismissed as “nuisance resistance.”
When a patrol returned five prisoners, battalion headquarters translator Lance Corporal W. Winkleman interrogated them. A corporal said the men had been sent from a strongpoint immediately south of Deventer and on the north side of the Schipbeek Canal. The Germans there had reportedly blown the bridge and were digging in on the canal’s north bank. As the enemy apparently intended to make its stand behind the Schipbeek, which ran from the east past Deventer’s southern outskirts to spill into the IJssel, Lieutenant Colonel Larry He
nderson ordered his rifle companies to make haste for the canal.37
By 1010 hours, the Can Scots had marched through their earlier objective of Gorssel without pause. Brigadier Graeme Gibson, meanwhile, had met with Major General Holly Keefler and, on the basis of the new intelligence, been ordered to advance the Royal Winnipeg Rifles up the Zutphen-Deventer railway a mile east of the road the Can Scots were following. The brigade war diary reported that the “advance was quick and unhindered and the [battalions] made the most of the easy going.” At 1600 hours, the Can Scots entered Epse and sent patrols a few hundred yards north to the Schipbeek Canal.38
On their right flank, the Winnipeg Rifles had set up battalion headquarters in Oxe, a small cluster of buildings that until the previous day had been the area’s Gestapo headquarters. Several riflemen poking around in an adjacent “solid brick building” discovered that one of its exterior walls was spattered with blood and bits of flesh. “The earth at the base of the wall was extremely soft and one of the men was curious enough to start digging. In a few minutes time the battered body of a middle-aged man appeared. This was only part of the dismal and gruesome sight for after a few hours ten similar bodies lay on the surface. The bodies were identified the following day by a member of the Dutch underground. He told us that the German Gestapo had held these people as prisoners for they were suspected to be members of the Dutch underground. We were also informed that when the Gestapo heard that we were coming they murdered their prisoners and evacuated the camp,” reported the Winnipeg war diarist.39
Even as this discovery was being made, the battalion had attempted to force a crossing over the Schipbeek. Although the rail bridge had been blown, the Winnipeg pioneers managed to salvage enough timbers from its wreckage to erect a footbridge, despite heavy small-arms fire from the opposite bank. By 2100 hours, ‘D’ Company was across. Casualties were light, and when the usual counterattacks failed to materialize, ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies moved into the bridgehead at 0300 hours and, under cover of darkness, pushed it out about a quarter-mile from the canal bank.40 By dawn, Lieutenant Colonel Lochie Fulton had his headquarters inside the bridgehead and patrols out well beyond. These soon returned with seventeen prisoners and several captured medium machine guns. Most of the prisoners were noted to be “extremely young fighters.”41