On to Victory
Page 36
‘C’ Company led the assault on the naval barracks, which were surrounded by a high wall. Private John Shaw’s platoon found a gate, which could only be unlatched from inside. Stripping off his equipment and handing his rifle to another man, Shaw scaled the wall and dropped down. As he regained his footing, a naval officer with his staff milling behind approached and announced he would surrender to an officer of matching rank. Weaponless, Shaw feigned ignorance while slipping the gate open to let the rest of the platoon in. The sergeant stepped up, handed Shaw his rifle, pointed at the officer and said, “He is surrendered, and if he gives you any trouble shove your bayonet up his you know what.”48 It was 1728 hours, and the Calgaries had won all their assigned objectives and bagged about four hundred prisoners.49
WHILE 5TH BRIGADE had advanced on the city from the west in the early-morning darkness of April 15, 6th Brigade had jumped off from the springboard won earlier by 4 CIB. Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal led with their advance lit “plain as day” by parachute flares. Major Elmo Thibeault’s ‘B’ Company was out front with Major George Bergeron’s ‘A’ Company in trail, and by dawn the rest of the battalion was across the canal and pushing into the old centre.50 At 0615 hours, the South Saskatchewan Regiment joined the operation and both battalions made “slow, but steady progress.” The FMR found “street fighting on such a large scale . . . quite a new task for the unit, but on the whole the job was nicely accomplished.” While the regiment’s casualties were considered moderate, Major Bergeron was among those killed.51
The two battalions advanced towards the Grote Markt (Great Market) with its 318-foot Martini Tower and large attached church dominating one corner, but the narrow streets lined by ancient brick buildings were easily defended. The advance ground on for hours of surreal fighting, as “great crowds of civilians . . . thronged the streets—apparently more excited than frightened by the sound of nearby rifle and machine-gun fire.”52 Adding to the chaos was the fact that “hundreds of the inhabitants were drunk, or partially so, from liquor stolen from a German liquor dump. Looting from stores and depots was out of hand for hours until the civilian controls were established by Military Government officials.”53
Private Charles “Chic” Goodman was a nineteen-year-old wireless signaller in the South Saskatchewan’s carrier platoon, having transferred to it from ‘B’ Company after being passed over for promotion to corporal. The carriers joined the battle soon after the rifle companies, and it seemed to Goodman that the operation was easy. Most of the Germans simply gave up after a few shots were fired their way. When the leading companies came to a long row of barges tied up to the side of a canal, a couple of riflemen would jump down into one and knock on the cabin door. Out of several barges, five or six Germans emerged with hands up, surrendering to a polite knock.54
By late afternoon, the situation on the Saskatchewan front was sufficiently stable that Company Quartermaster Sergeant Mickey Faille loaded a jeep with rations and set off to deliver them to his riflemen. Losing his way in the winding streets, Faille strayed into the FMR’s boundary, only to have a German officer step in front of him and declare that he would surrender his command to someone of equal or greater rank. Telling him to stay where he was, Faille hurried back to battalion headquarters and returned with Lieutenant Colonel Vern Stott in the passenger seat. They found a large party of Germans all milling about with arms already stacked. Stott told the officer to line his 181 men into a column three abreast and then turned them over to the Fusiliers. Among the officers taken were five oberstleutnants and eight majors.55
The fact that so many senior officers were among the surrendered clearly revealed that organized resistance in Groningen was disintegrating and increasingly the defence consisted of small independent units. Some were only looking for a safe opportunity to surrender, while others fought on even as their grip on the city rapidly loosened.
As April 16 dawned bright and sunny—becoming hot during the afternoon—the battle for Groningen neared its end. The South Saskatchewan Regiment and Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal pushed through the morning towards the Grote Markt with the Fort Garry Horse Shermans of ‘B’ Squadron following. Despite the divisional orders to minimize damage to the old city, Brigadier Jean Allard was in no mood to shed Canadian blood to save architecture. To keep the German defenders pinned, the Toronto Scottish laid down continuous fire with its 4.2-inch mortars.56
When the two regiments gained the square, they met fierce resistance from German machine-gun positions in the buildings on the northern side. Approaching from the south, infantry and tanks faced the enemy positions across the square’s wide and open expanse. One Fort Garry Sherman inched into the open and was immediately fired on from a gun positioned behind the corner of a building on the square’s northeastern corner. Unable to gain a direct angle of fire on the German position, the gunner ricocheted an armour-piercing round off the town hall’s west wall and knocked the enemy weapon out with a remarkably deft shot.57
With the infantry unable to cross the square, the order was given for the tankers to pound the buildings with their main guns. Soon the enemy—mostly German or Dutch SS—were forced to withdraw, setting fire to many of the buildings as they went. The damage to this sector of the old city was heavy, but both the cathedral and Martini Tower were largely untouched.
Private Chic Goodman reached the square as the battle ended. Out in the centre a horse’s corpse sprawled. The moment the last shots were fired, bells in the cathedral and the city’s other churches started to peal and people spilled into the square. “Suddenly they’re all out there with knives and meat choppers and within minutes there was nothing left of that horse, but its hooves. That was when I realized how hungry these people all really were.”58
The square was cleared about noon, and soon two German adjutants from the garrison’s headquarters approached the FMR’s lines waving a white flag. They were hustled to Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Dextraze’s headquarters. Groningen’s commander, they reported, still refused to surrender, but “his officers and men were fed up and would gladly give themselves up.”59 Deciding to attempt an audacious coup, Dextraze went with the German officers back to their headquarters. He took with him only his interpreter, Sergeant W.T.H. van Workum, and two privates, Gaby Morly and A. Dumaine. The garrison’s commander consented to meet Dextraze and after about ten minutes of discussion, during which the futility of the German position was made clear, agreed to march the troops remaining under his control to the FMR lines so long as no civilians were permitted to stand on the streets and jeer them. Dextraze isolated civilians from a route and then marched the German colonel and some three hundred officers and men into captivity.60
Except for a few lingering pockets of SS and other die-hards unwilling to surrender, the city was taken. The southeastern sector extending from the Grote Markt to the Van Starkenborgh Canal, which marked the outer limit of the old city, was still not cleared when the fighting mostly ceased at noon. It fell to the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to check the area. Little opposition was met until ‘B’ Company closed up on a major bridge over the Van Starkenborgh Canal. The bridge’s lifting station was located on the German side and had been raised. As Captain J.H. Ross directed mortar fire, two civilians—one of them the bridge tender—volunteered to help lower the span. To do so, however, meant crossing the canal by throwing a long ladder over to create a catwalk. A small section of Camerons and the two men raced across under heavy machine-gun fire. The section leader, Lieutenant W.C. McNeill, and one of the civilians were wounded. Once across, the small party forced its way into the lift station and the two Dutchmen managed to lower the bridge. The moment the rest of the company streamed across the bridge, the twenty-six Germans surrendered—ending the Battle of Groningen.61
The battle had cost 2nd Division 209 casualties—all from the infantry battalions. About 2,400 Germans were taken prisoner.62 German fatalities were later determined by Dutch sources as numbering 160 killed outright and about forty dying of w
ounds.63 Those Germans who escaped streamed northward in a bid to reach the pocket developing around Delfzijl.
Even before the battle had been joined, plans were afoot to rush 2nd Division eastward to slot in between 4th Armoured Division and the XXX British Corps for an advance on Oldenburg. This movement was quickly put into motion. Brigadier Cabeldu’s 4 CIB was among the first to leave, moving more than two hundred miles on April 18. By the afternoon of the following day, the brigade’s regiments were all in Germany and taking over a sector of frontage from British battalions. 64 The men would never forget the heady days of liberation in Holland, but henceforth their war was one of conquest.
[22]
Operation Cleanser
THE POTENTIAL OF a prolonged and bloody battle to liberate even one of the great cities in western Holland haunted First Canadian Army headquarters staff, and Groningen had reinforced those fears. By April 16, Twenty-Fifth Army had no prospect of escape and Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz and Reichkommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart remained under strict orders to fight to the bitter end. Despite the latter’s entering into secret ceasefire negotiations, no agreement had been reached. And on April 17, the Germans demonstrated the catastrophe they could unleash at a moment’s notice by opening a dyke near Den Helder to inundate the country’s newest polder—the seventy-five-square-mile Wieringermeerpolder.1 Seyss-Inquart then warned that if the Canadians attacked beyond the Grebbe Line, he would blow another dyke between Rotterdam and Gouda, causing massive flooding all the way north to Amsterdam—effectively destroying western Holland.2
Preferring, however, to successfully conclude the ceasefire negotiations, Seyss-Inquart agreed on April 13 to provide safe passage for two resistance leaders, Dr. Lambert Neher and Jacob van der Gaag, to Allied lines. Fearful that the Reichkommissar would renege on his assurance of “immunity for everything you have done in the past,” the two decided their chances of betrayal would be lessened if they crossed separately. Van der Gaag crossed the River Maas that evening by boat, while the following day two German soldiers rowed Neher across later in the evening. Both men were met by Canadian officers and taken to meet Prince Bernhard and other Dutch government officials in Breda.
The prince then flew to Reims to meet General Eisenhower. Neher was flown to London on Sunday, April 15, where he briefed Prime Minister Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, who met afterwards with Prime Minister Churchill. Churchill was sick in bed and grieving the sudden death of U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt three days earlier, but he received Gerbrandy at Chequers, his official country home. Also attending was South African prime minister Jan Smuts. At first, Churchill considered the ceasefire proposal requiring the Canadians to stop east of the Grebbe Line too great a concession. When Gerbrandy and Smuts finally convinced him that the Grebbe Line formed a logical demarcation point, he agreed to pursue the idea with the Americans.
The Dutch, particularly Queen Wilhelmina and Gerbrandy, were dismayed when the Americans and British appeared reluctant. The flooding of Wieringermeerpolder only heightened their anxiety. Dutch resistance leaders were now meeting openly with Seyss-Inquart and his close associate, Dr. Ernst A. Schwebel. Events of each meeting were filed with London, with the NBS commander, Colonel Henri Koot, cautioning on April 18 that “with progressive conquest, foot by foot, nothing but water would be left.” He urged acceptance of the German proposal.
Churchill now concurred, fearing operations “would be marked by fighting and inundations and the destruction of the life of Western Holland.”3 General Eisenhower had also written that “for sheer humanitarian reasons something must be done at once.”4 Further, Eisenhower argued that Seyss-Inquart’s proposal benefited the Allies, “as it would allow them to hold the Grebbe Line with minimum forces.”5 First Canadian Army might be free to send far more divisions to Germany.
Not until April 24, however, did the Combined Chiefs of Staff telegram Eisenhower permission to negotiate directly with Seyss-Inquart. Two days later, Eisenhower cabled Colonel Koot authorization for a German officer to enter Allied lines and begin negotiations in the vicinity of Amersfoort.6
Acting on his own initiative, Eisenhower decided that the Canadians should conform to Seyss-Inquart’s Grebbe Line boundary and sent orders via Field Marshal Montgomery on April 12 that First Canadian Army “stand fast before the Grebbe Line, a dozen miles east of Utrecht.”7 Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes confirmed this intention on April 15, writing, “I [Canadian Corps] will clear enemy from Western Holland between the IJssel and the Grebbe Line.” This completely reversed instructions he had issued three days earlier to “clear the Germans out of Western Holland,” with 1st Canadian Division directed towards Amsterdam and the 49th Division towards Rotterdam.8 Foulkes was already faced with losing 5th Canadian Armoured Division once its April 18 deadline for concluding the Operation Cleanser advance to the IJsselmeer passed. “Jesus, George,” he carped to his chief of staff, “I wouldn’t be surprised if our next orders will be to vacate Arnhem and come back over the Rhine.” Brigadier George Kitching replied that the corps should just go back to Italy “where we could be used to better purpose.”9 It helped little that the two Canadians knew they must still drive the Germans back to the Grebbe Line and could expect a tough fight achieving this purpose.
GERMAN FORCES BETWEEN Apeldoorn and the Grebbe Line had been thrown into disarray by Fifth Canadian Armoured Division’s rapid thrust north from Arnhem to the Apeldoorn-Amersfoort highway at Voorthuizen. To the east, 361st Volksgrenadier Division was on the run from Apeldoorn. Despite 5th Canadian Armoured Brigade’s tanks and mobile infantry having reached Voorthuizen, no cohesive barrier blocked the Germans’ lines of escape through to the Grebbe Line. Even Voorthuizen and nearby Barneveld were in German hands and too strongly defended for the armour to clear alone.
Major General Bert Hoffmeister had established his divisional headquarters about a half-mile southeast of Otterloo on the evening of April 16. Captain D. Wagner, in charge of headquarters’ security, realized the rapid advance had left the division “stretched all the way from Arnhem to Barneveld” and lacking protected interior lines. Neither flank to the east or west was secure and divisional headquarters could well face an attack. Wagner posted a guard of fifty-four infantrymen and positioned four Shermans travelling with the headquarters on the corners of the perimeter. The division’s three command tanks—stripped of main guns to make room for large radios but still equipped with Browning machine guns—were to cover the approaches from the north and west.10
Hoffmeister’s headquarters was not isolated. The Irish Regiment of Canada, having cleared the town during the day, remained inside Otterloo while preparing a morning attack on Harskamp—two miles to the north—where a sizeable German force was reported. The division’s Governor General’s Horse Guards (GGHG) reconnaissance regiment would support the attack, so their regimental headquarters was inside Otterloo’s tall-spired church next to the building the Irish commander was using. ‘C’ Squadron’s Shermans were parked on one side of the town.11
Close to Hoffmeister’s headquarters was a British 3rd Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery battery, while in open fields bordered by a pine forest on the eastern outskirts 17th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery had deployed its guns to fire on Harskamp. Lieutenant Alex Ross had laid out the gun lines for the regiment’s 76th Field Battery and deployed its ‘F’ Troop on the west side of a street running out of Otterloo that intersected with the road from Apeldoorn in the town’s northeast corner. ‘E’ Troop was on the opposite side of this street. A short distance behind ‘F’ Troop, the 37th Battery’s ‘C’ Troop was positioned, while ‘D’ Troop was farther to the west and north of the Apeldoorn road. ‘A’ and ‘B’ troops of the 60th Battery were to the south on the western edge of the town. Because all the regiment’s flanks were exposed, Lieutenant Colonel G.A. Rankin had ordered the guns not be dug in as usual. Rather, the gun line was set out in the open, so each 25-pounder could be turned to fire in any direction. Lackin
g protective infantry, Ross arranged “for the Brens, rifles, and small arms ammunition to be brought to the guns of my [‘F’] Troop and for the gunners to dig slit trenches sited so as to give us as much defence as possible.” The battery’s vehicles were hidden in nearby woods or parked next to the town’s cemetery, which lay just behind the gun lines. Ross established his gun troop headquarters in a small brick house that had a lean-to on one side, where wireless equipment and the artillery board for directing fire were positioned. Ross took a jeep and drove a couple of miles north without seeing any signs of life. The dirt road was “dusty, unused, and unmarked.” Shortly after dark, Ross was relieved to see three Irish infantrymen walk through the gun position and set up a 2-inch mortar and Bren gun. “It was a thin screen but better than none at all.”12
Immediately to the north of Otterloo, the road from Apeldoorn forked—one branch proceeding southwest to Ede and the other northwest to Barneveld. Another road followed a more northerly track, through Harskamp to join the Apeldoorn-Amersfoort highway east of Voorthuizen. With 361st Volksgrenadier Division on the retreat, a large number of its troops headed this night directly along the Apeldoorn road towards Otterloo. Leading the march were four understrength battalions. These totalled about one thousand men drawn from the 953rd Volksgrenadier Division, 858th Grenadier Regiment, and a hodgepodge of other units—mostly artillerymen fighting as infantry. The best troops in this formation were the grenadiers of the 858th Regiment, which had been in almost constant action since June 6, 1944. Under orders to retain their heavy equipment rather than abandon it, the Germans had two possible routes, the closest being through Harskamp. Four hundred Germans went that way and escaped without incident. The remainder marched straight into Otterloo just after midnight.13