On to Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  Winning the bridge, Foster decided, “necessitated the immediate rushing of the town.”2 A hurried fire program using artillery, 4.2-inch mortars, and heavy machine guns created sufficient racket to cover the sounds of two 1st Hussars troops from ‘C’ Squadron running towards the bridge. Ten tanks formed for the attack, with the RCR’s ‘C’ Company saddled on eight while the two remaining Shermans were “to cross the [bridge] and disrupt the enemy.” Instructions from the RCR’s Lieutenant Colonel William Reid cautioned that ‘C’ Company “was NOT to kick off . . . until word had been sent back by the two [forward] tanks that the [bridge] was not blown and they were over.”3

  At 0300 hours, the two tanks charged forward at top speed in “a dashing attempt.”4 Smashing through a log roadblock 2,500 feet short of the bridge, the tankers saw that a second roadblock lay ahead. Hoping to smash it like the first, the troop leader slammed into what turned out to be a reinforced concrete construction.5 The Sherman bounced off like a tennis ball, was hit by several Panzerfaust rounds, and exploded in flames. Spinning around, the second tank tried to flee but was also set alight. Spewing flames, it collided with the first tank bearing infantry, and several men from ‘C’ Company were badly injured.6

  Rapid investment of Apeldoorn scotched, April 14 turned into a day “of slow progress.” When the RCR convened an O Group at 1730 close to the canal, a self-propelled gun on the river’s east side punched a round through the building’s wall. Although the shell failed to explode, it “smashed some metal furnishings which flew in all directions.”7 Captain Frederick Sims was killed. Sims had landed in Sicily, survived more than twenty months of combat, and would be the battalion’s last fatal casualty.8

  South of 1st Brigade, 3 CIB had plodded through the same kinds of delaying actions met the previous day. By day’s end, the Royal 22e Regiment (Van Doos) and Carleton and York Regiment were well short of the canal and engaging stubborn German outposts—the former in a dense woods and the latter on the Zutphen-Apeldoorn railway.9

  This railway provided the boundary for 2 CIB’s advance along the IJssel’s west bank. While the Seaforth Highlanders led the brigade’s main thrust, the Edmontons’ ‘C’ Company provided flank protection along the railroad. Setting out from Voorst, about three miles north-west of Zutphen, ‘C’ Company reported “stubborn” opposition at 0630 hours and then requested artillery on an enemy-occupied house at 0910 hours. Progress was so slow that at noon Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stone reinforced the single company with ‘D’ Company’s No. 18 Platoon. He was preparing to also send the carrier platoon, when ‘C’ Company’s two forward platoons fell back in the face of a counterattack. When No. 18 Platoon reported also giving ground, Stone took over.10 Stone had enlisted as a sergeant and worked his way up the ranks to battalion command, gaining a reputation for leading from the front.

  The Edmonton attack had bogged down in front of a narrow canal spanned by a heavily defended railway bridge. Stone called for the battalion’s three Wasps, which, in his words, “shot the flame across the canal . . . and made an awful mess.”11 This enabled the nine men left in Corporal Arthur Robinson’s platoon to overrun three mortar positions, take nineteen prisoners, and kill twenty-one others. At the same time, Private Daniel Dodd from No. 18 Platoon charged and seized the bridge with just the three men left in his section.12

  The Seaforths, meanwhile, had advanced towards Hoven on the west bank of the IJssel across from Zutphen to secure the bridge-crossing site. The battalion had undergone a leadership crisis the night before with the death of its second-in-command and Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Budge” Bell-Irving suffering a relapse of malaria. Major Oliver Herbert Mace took over.13

  Mace sent ‘D’ and ‘A’ Companies in behind an artillery barrage, but as ‘A’ Company splashed through a brook and started mucking through a marsh, its leading platoon was pinned by intense fire from a trench system that extended to the IJssel River. Left of ‘A’ Company, ‘D’ Company won a bridge across the brook, only to become entangled in a barbed-wire obstacle strung along the top of a dyke. Lieutenant Leonard Joseph Bennett led his platoon in a charge to get around the barrier, but as they turned the barrier, a bullet blinded Bennett in one eye. He ran to the rear, not looking for medical assistance but instead returning with the battalion’s Wasps. As the Wasps trundled along either side of the trench, dousing it with flame, the Germans broke. Instead of fleeing towards Hoven, however, they made for a house that ‘A’ Company had partially surrounded.

  Seeing this, Mace signalled ‘A’ Company’s Captain W.D.C. Tuck, “Enemy evacuating slit trenches towards you. Give ’em hell. Jerry is running off. Push on. Push on!” By early afternoon the Seaforths entered Hoven, but it was after dark before the engineers were free to start constructing their bridge over the IJssel. 14

  During the Zutphen battle, Hoven had been heavily pummelled and then again this day. The Seaforth’s RAP was consequently overrun by injured civilians. “Great suffering of shell-wracked civilians,” Padre Roy Durnford confided to his diary. “Children in RAP, torn—bleeding, dying. Women hear their children crying but they too are stretcher cases & knocked about. I watch & pray with one man as his wife slowly passes away on a stretcher whilst another young woman lies behind us on the verge of death. The poor man has two children in ‘no man’s land’ but can’t get to them as Germans fire on Red Cross now. Boys of 16 (Gerries) come in as POWs. They are very cruel, so our boys say, & are less likely to obey Geneva Convention re Red Cross than older men. I talk with them. They speak of Russian millions as menace of Europe as a whole & to Germany in partic[ular].”15

  ‘C’ Company witnessed young paratroops firing on wounded and stretcher parties. “From 13 Platoon we lost little [Private] Arthur Clarke,” the company’s diarist wrote. “He was shot [through] the head by a sniper’s bullet. He was on the dyke for a couple hours before we could get him out. Getting him out we had that experience of having Gerry fire on the First Aid carrier—wounding our first aid man with a machine gun burst in the legs.”

  On the morning of April 15, a German paratrooper surrendered. “He was an Austrian and a better type. [Corporal A.A.] Staub talked to him for quite some time and his story is as follows. He has been a paratrooper for 6 mon[ths]. He told us the Original Paratroopers are almost unhuman. He said that . . . he has seen things which we would not believe. He told us that he has seen his own wounded shot and killed by his own men if they were at all detrimental. He would have given himself up last night but he figured we might be mad and shoot him, so he thought he would wait until morning.”16

  Once the bridge was in place, 2 CIB was sent six miles south towards Dieren, where the river turns sharply west to spill into the Neder Rijn outside Arnhem. The Edmontons and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry advanced, the former moving along the river road and the latter on secondary roads to the west.17 At 0800 hours, Brigadier Pat Bogert issued his instructions. “We are to ‘swan’ out southward and make contact with . . . 49th Div[ision] .”18

  Lieutenant Colonel Stone first sent ‘B’ Company’s No. 11 Platoon on four carriers to test the Edmontons’ route. Lieutenant J.C. Preston returned at 0930 hours to report “the area swept practically clear of enemy.” They had encountered and killed two snipers. Stone decided to assemble a small mobile column to precede the battalion’s main body. With Preston commanding, it consisted of the carrier platoon’s six vehicles, the anti-tank platoon, the battalion’s Wasps, No. 11 Platoon (duly distributed among these vehicles), and seven carriers provided by the supporting Saskatoon Light Infantry, which were mounted with heavy machine guns and 4.2-inch mortars.19

  Underway by 1320 hours, the column embarked on “a pursuit job.”20 Other than stragglers, the Germans were running. At 1630 hours, the battalion entered Brummen, a large town midway between Hoven and Dieren, enjoying their first Dutch liberation fervour—“the wild enthusiasm of some civilians, like the tears which coursed down the gaunt cheeks of others . . . both moving and rewarding.”21<
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  The Edmontons stayed the night in Brummen with the PPCLI nearby to the west. Morning saw a leisurely start, the Eddies taking two hours for breakfast before setting off at 0800 hours, while the PPCLI dallied until 1000 hours. Stone’s mobile column soon reported Dieren clear, and he raced forward in a jeep to be “received by a cheering and grateful populace.”22

  Actual linkup was made with the British south of the town during the afternoon of April 16 by the PPCLI’s ‘D’ Company. Captain Syd Frost had lost contact with his three platoons, which, tiring of marching, had purloined bicycles and pedalled off to seek either Germans or Britons.23 Lieutenant Harvey Beardmore’s platoon cycled along in “carefree fashion into the south [when] out of the ditch beside the road a balaclava-ed head rose and in broad East Anglian shouted ‘CLOSE.’ As one man the Patricias replied ‘SHAVE.’ It was the joint codeword and the gap between 1st Canadian and 49th British Division had been closed.”24

  ARNHEM’S FALL HAD cleared a path for 5th Canadian Armoured Division to advance on a northwestward axis to the IJsselmeer and the Grebbe Line. Foulkes gave Major General Bert Hoffmeister four days to carry out this thirty-mile advance because after that, this division would be lost. On April 18, the 5th Division was to transfer to II Canadian Corps and move immediately to northern Holland—freeing divisions there to advance into Germany.25

  Hoffmeister decided that 5th Canadian Armoured Brigade, comprised of three tank regiments—Lord Strathcona’s Horse (LSH), 8th Princess Louise’s New Brunswick Hussars (NBH), and British Columbia Dragoons (BCD)—would lead, supported by only the Westminster Regiment (Motor), while his 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade followed. Each armoured regiment would have a single Westminster company attached. The Hussars and Dragoons would lead, while the Strathconas provided the reserve. Each regiment was also supported by two troops from the 79th British Armoured Division, so-called Funnies. One troop was outfitted with Flails—tanks mounting a large rotating cylinder fitted with lengths of chain to pummel the ground and detonate mines—and the other flame-thrower tanks called Badgers.

  “Running due north from Arnhem to the [IJsselmeer] is a pine-covered ridge, the highest hill in the northern half of the Netherlands; in places it rises to 300 feet while the flat lands east and west of it are rarely more than a few feet above sea level and in many places below it, with the North Sea held back by dykes. Our Divisional Centre Line was to start out on the main Arnhem-Apeldoorn highway up the steep hill through the forest which extends for the first 8,000 yards; once clear of the forest it would skirt the northern edge of the wide Deelen Airfield, then northwest through about four miles of sand and scrub pine to the village of Otterloo. From this point on, the country is low flat farmland which might, at this season be too soft to permit tanks to move cross-country. Our route was to be the secondary road through Barneveld to Nijkerk, a small town near the coast. There were no water obstacles other than small ditches,” the Strathconas’ Lieutenant Colonel Jim McAvity wrote.

  “Although . . . by no means ideal tank country, it had been decided that the armoured brigade would take the lead, and 11th Infantry Brigade would follow along, mopping up and picketing the route until First Division reached our axis and pushed on further west.” The Dragoons would use the highway and the Hussars a paralleling road to the west. Midway to Otterloo, the Strathconas would pass through the Dragoons and take the village. In the final phase, the Strathconas and Dragoons would advance through to the IJsselmeer. 26

  The Dragoons’ Lieutenant Colonel Harry Angle was so concerned by the ground represented on the maps that he asked Brigadier Ian Cumberland for permission to personally reconnoitre it before the advance started. “My request was turned down flat, almost rudely by the brig[adier],” he confided to his diary: “This is the most impossible task for an armoured reg[iment]—to break out of a bridgehead and push three miles through a wood to first objective.”27

  Both the Dragoons and Hussars kicked off at 0700 hours on April 15—late enough to assure sufficient light for gunners to see through their tank periscopes. The Dragoons met little resistance, but ‘A’ Squadron—following a utility track running alongside a row of power pylons—was slowed by undergrowth. There were also unexpected sand dunes, ranging from fifteen to twenty-five feet high, scattered through the woods that offered good firing positions for enemy infantry. As the tanks rolled forward, those in the lead raked the trees ahead and the flanks with machine-gun fire. Several log roadblocks, sometimes reinforced with concrete blocks or boulders, were encountered, but the tanks bulled around through the adjacent woods. Occasionally, a single German rose from the ditch bordering the road and loosed a Panzerfaust round with haphazard aim. Of the two hits, neither caused disabling damage. No second round was fired, as each German immediately fled.

  Just before ‘B’ Squadron burst out of the forest, it came under fire from a concealed anti-tank gun covering a stout roadblock. The gun’s first round bounced harmlessly off the leading tank, and the squadron surged into action with practised skill. “The leading tanks were . . . laying down a heavy concentration of Browning fire and the A/T guns’ shooting became very erratic. AP shells could be seen hitting trees and looping crazily down the road. The Sqn. crashed around the road block through the trees and broke out into the open. Here the Sqn. shook out into a loose box formation and started moving more quickly over very open country towards the objective which could now be clearly seen.

  “‘A’ Sqn . . . on the right emerged from the forest at the same time and both Sqns. moved quickly, using Browning machine gun fire and flame throwers liberally on the small groups of Germans encountered.” As the regiment’s war diarist dryly observed, “The use of the flame throwers to scare the enemy from his positions and the machine-gun fire to kill them once they were in the open was a terribly efficient way of reducing opposition.”28

  As the tanks closed on the objective at 0830 hours, another concealed 75-millimetre anti-tank gun hit the turret of a tank in ‘A’ Squadron’s No. 2 Troop. Its commander, Corporal Ernest J. Clue, was killed, and the gunner, Trooper George A. Wardle, wounded. The reconnaissance section stalked the gun and knocked it out, killing two of its crew and capturing the other three.29

  Left of the Dragoons, the Hussars had got off to a rocky start when both squadrons ran into roadblocks. ‘B’ Squadron was able to get past, but ‘C’ Squadron remained stymied until an armoured bulldozer and a section of engineers cleared the obstacle. Delayed an hour, the Hussars set a cracking pace, breaking out of the woods at 0811 hours.30 As ‘B’ Squadron rolled into the open, four 88-millimetre anti-tank guns struck from woods to the right, and Lieutenant Bill Spencer’s leading troop had shells striking all around.

  “A good and gallant officer,” the regiment’s historian later wrote, “Spencer moved at once to outflank the position even though it exposed him fully to enemy fire. The Germans struck his tank once; it kept on going. [Trooper] Boone, his gunner, got one gun in his sights and took it out. The crew fell around it. The crew of another gun fled. The tank wheeled towards the other two. There was a flash of hurtling explosive against the steel of Spencer’s tank, a glare and burst of exploding light. He fell mortally wounded.”31 The other tanks in Spencer’s troop destroyed the remaining guns, but a reconnaissance-section Stuart tank was knocked out first.

  The Stuart began to burn, and its commander ordered the crew to bail out. As Trooper Edward Wunsch looked into the lower compartment, he saw that the driver was badly injured and unable to escape because the main gun barrel blocked his escape hatch. With flames licking into the turret, Wunsch traversed the gun away, descended into the fiery hell of the lower compartment, and dragged the gunner out of the hatch. Both men were badly burned, but Wunsch had saved the driver’s life.

  Getting free of the Stuart provided only scant reprieve. As Wunsch lowered the driver to the rest of the crew, two more anti-tank rounds struck the burning hulk and a machine gun started raking the ground around it. Any moment the tank could explo
de, and there was no safe cover nearby. Wunsch and the others hugged the dirt, expecting to die. That was when Corporal Frank Buchanan, described by the regimental historian as “a lanky wolf from British Columbia,” rolled his Stuart between the burning tank and anti-tank gun. Sitting in the open hatch, Buchannan chucked smoke grenades to screen the men’s flight to safety.32

  Having broken free of the woods, the two tank squadrons with accompanying Westminster companies raced into the open. Seeing that Deelen airfield’s hangars and other buildings had “been reinforced until they amounted to fortresses,” the Hussars swept past on either flank and left the Westminster’s ‘B’ Company to root the Germans out. “We went hell-bent-for-election, all-out,” one Hussar recalled. “We were under fire all the way but we didn’t stop for anything. We left a lot of Germans on the airport. They were in and around the various buildings. But killing Germans wasn’t our primary objective this time; it was to [reach] those hills beyond.”33

  The Westminsters turned to the task of killing in the mid-morning and carried on until “darkness fell on a lurid scene of flame and smoke from fires started during the day by flamethrowers.” Westminster casualties were considered light. The anti-tank platoon’s commander, Lieutenant John A. Cambridge, died, as did ‘B’ Company’s Corporal Angus Arthur St. Cyr and Private Theodore Huth. Two other privates, Alfred Gammer and Stewart Arthur Mackinlay, died later from wounds.34

  The reason for the fierce defence at Deelen became evident when it developed that the airfield had served as 858 Grenadier Regiment’s headquarters. Included among the prisoners were all this headquarters’ staff and its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Otto Lais, who “admitted to having been completely taken by surprise, both as to the direction of our attack and its [strength].”35

  Caught off balance, LXXX Corps broke, only scattered resistance, which barely slowed the tanks, being offered. By noon, the Strathconas passed through the Dragoons and advanced parallel to the Hussars. The Strathconas were virtually unopposed and fully expected to laager beyond Otterloo. But when ‘A’ Squadron’s leading tank troop under Lieutenant Angus MacKinnon descended a slight hill towards the town, his Sherman was struck by an 88-millimetre shell and began to burn. Troopers George Bowman and Clarence David Graham and Corporal Harold Raymond Forde were killed. The surviving crew member saw MacKinnon roll into a ditch alongside the road. He thought the lieutenant was badly wounded.