On to Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  ON THE NIGHT of April 8, 9 CIB’s battalions had established themselves across the Schipbeek Canal and opened a second bridgehead for 3rd Division to the south of Bathmen. By the morning of April 10, the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders had reached the Zijkanaal to the north of 7 CIB’s frontage and gained a crossing, while the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and Highland Light Infantry pushed up the eastern bank of the canal with elements of 2nd Division to their right.

  The afternoon found the North Novas closing on Wesepe, a village about five miles to the northeast, astride the Deventer-Raalte road. From Raalte, three miles farther on, the brigade could hook to the right towards Zwolle or bypass this city to the east and follow roads leading directly towards Leeuwarden.29 During most of this advance, Brigadier Rocky Rockingham was heartened by the absence of resistance and believed “the enemy’s line was crumbling fast. If this was the case, then speed in following up was vital.”

  Also on April 10, several miles farther back, the Canadian Scottish Regiment and Royal Winnipeg Rifles launched a joint assault on Deventer at 1215 hours. The Rifles advanced into the southern part of the town and the Can Scots into the north. Both were supported by the Sherbrooke’s ‘B’ Squadron and each had a troop of Crocodiles. Forward observation officers from the 12th Field Regiment also accompanied the infantry, and the division’s three field regiments shelled previously identified enemy positions. Due to an unusual oversight by the Germans, the telephone line between Deventer and Schalkhaar remained intact. Dutch resistance fighters attached to the infantry battalions phoned friends inside the city and acquired details on the enemy defences. They also reported that the Germans were “in a most unhappy state of mind.”30

  The Can Scots advanced fifteen minutes ahead of the Rifles, with ‘B’ Company on the left and ‘D’ Company on the right, followed respectively by ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies. Before them lay a five-hundred-yard-wide open field with the wide anti-tank ditch in its centre. As soon as the infantrymen stepped into the open, they came under heavy fire from the front and left flank. Rifle grenades, machine-gun fire, and 20-millimetre rapid fire anti-aircraft guns shooting over open sights tore into the Can Scots. At the anti-tank ditch, the fire thickened. Lieutenant Clayton Leroy Mitchell at the head of ‘B’ Company’s lead platoon was killed and another platoon leader, Lieutenant K.M. Little, fell wounded.

  Realizing the attack was crumbling, Major Earl English sent a plea for Lieutenant Colonel Larry Henderson to unleash the Crocodiles, rather than holding them back until the city was gained. This decision proved to be the best possible, English later related, “for when the flame throwers blasted at the 20-mm. guns, the enemy broke and allowed the company to carry through.” The Crocodiles soon burned the Germans out of their fortified bunkers on the edge of the city, and the Can Scots quickly pushed into Deventer. The two leading companies kept “hard on the enemy’s heels instead of waiting for the other two companies to pass through them as previously planned. Once the enemy was on the run the best idea was to keep him running, even though it called upon the last reserves of the men who were dead tired after two days with almost no sleep.”31

  To the left, the Winnipeg Rifles had gone forward at 1230 hours with ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies out front. The supporting tanks and Crocodiles followed close behind, with the other two companies back of the armour. “The Germans were waiting,” the battalion war diarist concluded, “for no sooner had the [troops] entered the open ground . . . when all hell broke loose. Our [troops] were met by everything the Jerry had. Our [tanks] retaliated, the Crocodiles swept the area with flame and the mortars and [artillery] blanketed the approach to the town. The rugged riflemen overran the Hun with every step and shortly after the first assault almost 200 PWs were ours.” The anti-tank ditch proved so wide and deep that the tanks and Crocodiles were unable to get across, and “precious minutes were lost awaiting a bulldozer” to fill it in. The riflemen “dashed on” without waiting for the armour. “Finally the first buildings were reached and the tough half of the battle was won. Fresh and eager ‘B’ and ‘D’ [Companies] now entered the fray.”32

  Inside Deventer, the Can Scots had been met by more Dutch underground fighters—identified by orange armbands—who volunteered as guides. During a pause, ‘C’ and ‘A’ Companies took over the lead. At this point, ‘A’ Company commander Captain S.L. Chambers wrote, “We had far more difficulty forcing our way through the jubilant civilians than we had from the enemy. The Underground men with me kept popping into houses to telephone into the next block to find out where the Germans were and in this way we eventually reached the railroad embankment. We came under fire from a small park but No. 8 Platoon, under Sgt. J.H. Diamond returned this fire with such vigour that most of the Germans fled and the German officer working around the flank surrendered to Lieutenant Cornish of No. 7 Platoon.”33

  As the infantry pushed on, 12th Field Regiment’s forward observation officer (FOO) established himself in the upper storey of a building. To the east he could see the regiment’s gun lines, and on a street between him and the 25-pounders stood several German 88-millimetre guns. Realizing that FOO protocol for directing fire had never anticipated a situation where he would be behind the target rather than facing it, the gunner spent several puzzled minutes working out how to provide coordinates that would make sense back at the regiment. When the shells started to drop, however, he was pleased to see they fell right on target and that two of the six German artillery pieces were destroyed. The crews manning the rest managed to hurriedly drag them into another street and out of sight.34

  Despite sporadic firefights, incoming German artillery, and the occasional shells called down by the 12th Field Regiment FOOs, the “happy, rejoicing citizens, free for the first time in five years, thronged the streets, singing, dancing, waving flags, rooting out a few collaborators . . . all in a state of intense excitement that the long-awaited moment of liberation had come . . . Now and then shells from German guns would land in the streets, killing or wounding some of the Dutch civilians.”

  When the underground informed the Canadian Scottish that they had taken control of the telephone exchange but were having trouble staving off German attempts to regain it, Lieutenant Colonel Henderson ordered ‘C’ Company to hurry two platoons to the building. Lieutenant W.K. Wardroper set off with Nos. 13 and 14 Platoons. In the lead was No. 14 Platoon, and as it moved “along a small lake in a park area to open ground on the [IJssel] River embankment, [it] got itself pinned down in a firefight with some of the enemy who had crossed the river. Before proceeding with clearing the centre of town I had to take No. 13 Platoon to extricate them,” Wardroper later wrote. “With the two platoons I turned south-east and with the assistance of the Dutch Resistance Forces seized the telephone exchange which I left in the hands of a Dutch Lieutenant and proceeded to the main square of the city and the City Hall. We went down the main streets while the Dutch soldiers scoured the back alleys catching the Germans as they popped out of back doors. At one point my platoon was mobbed by fifty deliriously happy girls from a nursing school who flung themselves about the necks of my men amidst the odd burst of machine-gun fire and stray shells from across the IJssel. We rounded up about forty or fifty Germans.”

  Wardroper was taken to city hall, where the council had already convened its first post-liberation meeting. The young lieutenant managed to convince the burgomaster to issue a directive warning all civilians to stay off the streets until the fighting was finished. By this time, however, the German defence was collapsing. At 1700 hours, the Canadian Scottish and Winnipeg Rifles reported Deventer in hand, with only a few isolated pockets remaining to be mopped up.35 When at midnight the Queen’s Own Rifles pushed ‘A’ Company across the footbridge and into the southern corner of the city, they met no opposition beyond twenty-five Germans eager to surrender and easily passed through to the IJssel River.36 None of the rifle battalions recorded casualties suffered during the fight for Deventer, but the Can Scots repor
ted that on April 9 they had three men killed and twelve wounded. April 10 was more costly, with twenty-seven casualties, of which five were fatal.37

  PART THREE

  BREAKOUTS

  [15]

  Long Way Out Front

  WHILE 3RD CANADIAN Infantry Division had been clearing Zutphen and Deventer, 4th Canadian Armoured Division had closed on the Ems River at Meppen in Germany. After its stunning dash from the Twente Canal to the Ems, a pause would normally have followed—enforced either by the Germans digging in behind the river and offering a fight, or by the division outrunning its resources. In this case, neither circumstance arose. Although 4th Division’s supporting arms straggled back for miles behind the leading infantry and armoured battalions, Major General Chris Vokes had decided on the afternoon of April 6 to bounce the river with the forces on hand.

  Meppen straddled both banks of the Ems. ‘C’ Company of the Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) had been first to reach the city’s western outskirts with orders to bull through to the main bridge. The company’s agile wheeled armoured-personnel carriers had pulled far out ahead of the main body of 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade because the cobblestone roads built on compacted sand that led to Meppen had begun breaking up under the relentless weight of hundreds of passing military vehicles. On either side of the roads, heather and peat bogs stretched to the horizon. As the carriers, trucks, and tanks from various regiments ground the road down, “the difficulties of maintaining a mobile force in the midst of a peat bog became all too apparent.”1

  Company Commander Major Leslie Edwin Pope’s scout car was out on point when it came under fire from heavy machine guns and 20-millimetre anti-aircraft guns. Rounds from one of the rapid-fire flak guns shredded the car’s thin armour. As Pope jumped clear of the wreckage, he was knocked down by a sniper round. Captain G.U. Murray, the company’s second-in-command, took over as Pope was evacuated.2 Despite several more casualties, the company advanced until it could see that the bridge had been demolished and then withdrew from the city.

  “It immediately became obvious that the crossing at Meppen would be a considerable task,” the 4th Brigade’s war diarist reported. Brigadier Robert Moncel ordered the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to hasten to join Murray’s company and told Lieutenant Colonel Fred Wigle he was to coordinate a planned attack across the Ems. The tanks of British Columbia Regiment’s ‘A’ Squadron also ground forward with instructions to help Murray’s company gain control of the city’s western section.3

  Just getting to Meppen was difficult. “The condition of the roads and the thick traffic caused by supplies which were being passed up to forces already at Meppen, made this one of our hardest journeys,” one tanker wrote. “Matters were further complicated by some trouble with [XXX] British Corps which was moving on the same centre line. No less a personage than the British Corps Commander . . . descended from his vehicle to order Captain Lungley to remove his tanks at once. As one generally prefers to argue with Corps Commanders as little as possible the tanks were driven off the road, where they bogged down completely and [hours were lost] digging them out.”4

  Despite the delays, ‘A’ Squadron joined the Superiors in time for a night attack. The presence of the British Columbia Regiment (BCR) tanks proved decisive, and shortly before midnight the combined force gained the riverbank, and western Meppen was reported clear.5

  The Argylls, meanwhile, had been on the move from where they had only just completed pacifying the area of Coevorden, about twenty-two miles west of Meppen. The road demarcated the Dutch- German border, and the Argylls found it “unusual to see children with orange flags . . . on one side of the road, waving to us, while a mere 50 yards away would be German farmhouses displaying their white flag of surrender.”

  Wigle, meanwhile, had raced to Meppen ahead of his battalion to begin planning the river assault. Divisional intelligence reported that only a few days earlier a strong garrison consisting of armoured and infantry formations had withdrawn. Left behind were some infantry and paratroop remnants. When a German sergeant—who proved to be Polish—was brought in, he provided “a very detailed account of German defences and positions. The information was as accurate as it was detailed and the positions were engaged with artillery during the late afternoon.”6

  In the Netherlands, artillery bombardments and air strikes were limited in order to reduce civilian casualties. Wigle exercised no such discretion against a German city. At 1430 hours, thirty-two Typhoons appeared overhead, and “although the aircraft ran into a good deal of light anti-aircraft fire, each dived repeatedly to rocket and strafe the offending positions.”7 Completing their “very thorough going over” at 1500 hours, the Typhoons flew home unscathed by the anti-aircraft fire. No sooner had the Typhoons faded from view than the anti-aircraft gunners depressed their 20-millimetre guns and started firing “point blank” at the Argylls now forming on the riverbank. Meppen-defending remnants seemed determined to fight.

  Observing the amount of 20-millimetre and small-arms fire thrown across the river convinced Wigle that preparations for an assault would have to occur under cover of darkness but that the attack itself should take place in daylight, with artillery blanketing the river with smoke just before the boats hit the water at 0600 hours.8 Promoted to battalion command in February, the thirty-one-year-old officer was facing his biggest attack. Prior to taking over the Argylls, Wigle had served on 4th Division’s general staff and seen little combat. In short order, however, he had led the battalion through the Rhineland campaign and then Operation Plunder, earning both a Distinguished Service Order and appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). The latter was a sure sign that he had the eye of the army’s high command.

  Even as Wigle made his plans, Brigadier Moncel and Major General Chris Vokes looked beyond Meppen’s fall to their next moves. Previously, they had expected the division to operate on the western shore of the Ems, but with 1st Polish Armoured Division slotting into place there, Vokes was free to range out from the other side of the river on a northeastern axis towards the North Sea. Although this change of direction required major regrouping, Vokes was determined not to lose momentum. The moment the Argylls secured Meppen, Moncel would reprise the Twente Canal breakout with another flying column dashing east from the Ems. The Lake Superiors would lead. Provided with motorized transport, the Lincoln and Welland Regiment would be second in line. Following in order behind would be Moncel’s headquarters (protected by II Canadian Corps’s armoured car regiment, the 12 Manitoba Dragoons), the 12th Canadian Light Field Ambulance, the tanks of the Governor General’s Foot Guards and Canadian Grenadier Guards, and finally the self-propelled artillery of the 23rd Field Regiment. The goal was the Küsten Canal and ultimately the city of Oldenburg.

  From assembly areas near Coevorden and Emlichheim, the column began rolling towards Meppen at 1500 hours. Like the BCR before it, the column encountered heavily damaged roads that only worsened as each vehicle passed over.9 The main body of the Lake Superior Regiment, advancing from Emlichheim, followed the exact same route taken by the BCR and encountered ever-worsening conditions, until “finally at about 2000 hours [the road] gave up the ghost completely and the cobble stones disappeared into the peat bog and in places the [road] ceased to exist. Move came to a complete halt and our position was not enviable.” Scouts finally located an undamaged “sandy trail.” Picking their way carefully through the darkness, the Lake Superiors reached Meppen at 0400 hours and the rest of the column straggled in well before the assault’s commencement at 0600 precisely.10

  Thirty minutes before the attack went in, 23rd Field Regiment (Self-Propelled)—which had hastened to get its guns deployed— started dropping smoke shells along the riverfront. Smoke blanketed the river as “in the dim light of breaking day the men rose . . . hustled their boats over the dyke with feverish haste, scrambled . . . into the frail craft and were paddled furiously over to the far side, where they lost no time in leaping ashore and making fo
r their objectives . . . Except for two or three ineffective bursts of 20-millimetre fire and a few snipers, the crossing had been unopposed. There was in fact only one fatal casualty, but that one was an irreparable loss to the Battalion, Captain [Malcolm Stewart] Smith, commanding Support Company, who was shot through the heart by a sniper in carrying out his duties as beachmaster during ‘A’ Company’s crossing. This officer had made himself beloved of all ranks by the sheer power of the gaiety, energy and wit of his personality. Known to everyone as ‘Smitty,’ he had been an invaluable adjutant and had just two days previously arrived from hospital in England to assume command of Support Company.”11

  The Argylls crossed into the centre of Meppen expecting a hard fight, but the Germans proved unwilling to engage in close-quarters combat. As the Canadians closed in, the Germans offered only token resistance and then either fled or surrendered. “Opposition broke quickly and clearing proceeded with little difficulty,” the 4th Armoured Brigade war diarist recorded.12 At 0730 hours, Lieutenant W.J. MacArthur’s ‘A’ Company platoon rushed three 20-millimetre guns, captured two crews, and destroyed all the guns.13 Despite the weak resistance, the Argylls moved cautiously through this large German city. They were in the home of the enemy, so mopping up was “systematic” and thorough. Although it took the morning and most of the afternoon to complete, the Argylls took about seventy-five prisoners and suffered no casualties other than the unfortunate loss of Captain Smith.14

  INSTALLATION OF A Bailey bridge by engineers from the 8th and 9th Canadian Field Squadrons, with assistance from the Argyll’s forty pioneers, had started at 1130 hours. The 215-foot span opened to traffic at 1930, and Moncel’s column immediately started crossing. The Lake Superior Regiment struck a course due eastward from Meppen towards the village of Lohe about two miles away. At Lohe the column would turn to the north and make for Sögel, about another eight miles beyond.15