by Mark Zuehlke
Southeast of Delfzijl, the Westminsters were rapidly reshaping the pocket’s perimeter. By the morning of April 29, the battalion was within two miles of Termunterzijl and Termunten. Corbould decided ‘B’ Company would go for the former and ‘A’ Company the latter, while ‘C’ Company held firm in Woldendorp. After resting through the day, the two companies advanced behind an artillery barrage. The Hussars’ ‘B’ Squadron was unable to provide much support due to the Shermans becoming mired in the mud. “Again it was a wild rainy night,” but the two companies slowly advanced across the polders—wading through ditches, crawling over dykes, and occasionally fighting through pockets of Germans. When dawn broke, ‘B’ Company was still a thousand yards short of the small port. Realizing they were going to be caught in the open, Major Ian Douglas ordered his men to charge. Staggering through the wide, marshy fields, they managed to gain the port before the Germans could respond. Some tried to mount a defence, but soon the tanks struggled through the mud to join Douglas’s men, and by early morning resistance crumbled.
When the company reached the port’s quays, they found five hundred Germans waiting to be lifted off by ships to Emden. It was soon evident that the Westminsters had arrived in the middle of a mass evacuation intended to remove the Germans from the eastern part of the pocket. The enemy caught on the quay meekly surrendered.29 ‘A’ Company had gained Termunten quite easily, and by noon both the town and the port were declared mopped up. The Westminsters had succeeded in cutting Reider Spit off from the rest of the pocket, but the guns continued to fire. Corbould sent ‘C’ Company on a wide sweep south of the battery to gain a position on a dyke from which it would be possible to observe the fortifications and plan an attack.
Soon a deserter claiming to be an impressed Russian entered Westminster lines and reported that the battery personnel were to be evacuated off the tip of the spit during the night. Shortly after midnight, the battery suddenly erupted with a massive shelling of the area, and machine guns spewed tracers across the surrounding polders. Then, at 0300 hours on April 30, all firing ceased, and a sullen quiet settled in. ‘C’ Company slipped a patrol towards the battery, which soon reported it deserted. Despite the heavy fighting encountered, total Westminster casualties in the pocket were only four killed and fifteen wounded. The Westminsters had seen their last fight. Turning the area over to the Governor General’s Horse Guards, they headed for a rest area a few miles south of Groningen.30
On the night of April 29, operations by the Irish Regiment had yielded further evidence that the pocket was rapidly collapsing. The previous night, the battalion had almost lost a company against fierce resistance, but ‘C’ Company had pushed through to the coast at Oterdum unopposed. At dawn, ‘B’ Company closed on Borgsweer near Termunterzijl. They cleared it without difficulty. Although meeting little opposition from within the pocket, the Irish were dogged by coastal guns firing across the Ems from Emden. The battalion’s 3-inch mortar officer, Captain Dick Lancaster, and another soldier were wounded. Many Germans were observed fleeing north towards Delfzijl, prompting the Irish war diarist to write that the enemy “is being squeezed into a smaller pocket every hour.”31
The squeeze was tightened when the Cape Breton Highlanders struck from the north at 2200 hours on April 30. But the Germans were still ready to fight and their defences remained stout, ‘C’ Company becoming stuck in a minefield just five hundred yards from its start line that took the pioneers an hour to clear a path through. The advance continued, with ‘C’ Company headed for a battery of coastal guns immediately north of Delfzijl while ‘D’ Company was to eliminate more guns inside the harbour itself. Once these objectives were in hand, the battalion would continue to the rail station on the town’s edge and then begin to clear the centre of Delfzijl.
‘C’ Company took its battery with little difficulty and reported fifty prisoners. This cleared the way for ‘D’ Company to pass by and head for the guns in the harbour. Delayed by three hours, the company lost any chance of surprise and had gone only two hundred yards when flares arced into the night sky.32 Lieutenant Reg Roy, commanding one platoon, realized “they had us cold.” Mortars, shells, and small-arms fire tore into the company and pinned it down. Roy, a veteran of many scraps in Italy, later described this one in his diary. “My God, but it was terrible to see our fellows cut up so . . . I hope I never see another battle like it. It was murder . . . This has been the bitterest battle I’ve been in.”
Fire was coming from pillboxes disguised as houses. An attempt by the Hussars to support the attack was stopped cold when Lieutenant Bill Gerrard’s tank was disabled and blocked the road. Standing in the turret hatch, Gerrard calmly used the wireless to direct artillery fire onto the German fortifications.
All through the night, ‘D’ Company tried, but failed, to inch forward. Soon it was running out of ammunition, and ‘C’ Company was detailed to resupply it. Lieutenant Colonel Boyd Somerville realized the attack was completely unravelled. Standing next to ‘A’ Squadron’s Major Tim Ellis, he said, “T his is a bad one, Tim. [Major] Harry Boates’ [D] Company is trapped in a barn on the polder [or] pinned down in the drainage ditches trying to keep their weapons dry.”33
Dawn found the company totally stalled, but ‘C’ Company managed to get through to it under cover of a smokescreen. Ammunition replenished, Boates led his men creeping forward. It was ‘B’ Company, however, that broke the deadlock when its attack on the right gained the railway station at 1014 hours. Somerville hurried ‘A’ Company past the station, and soon it had a platoon firm on the bank of the Eems Canal, which cleaved the town tidily in half. They reported many Germans escaping in boats across the Ems Estuary. Things loosening rapidly, ‘D’ Company completed its mission and rounded up three hundred prisoners at the gun position. In the early afternoon all resistance ceased, and those Germans left in Delfzijl surrendered. The Cape Bretoners had been hit hard. Two officers and eighteen other ranks were dead, precisely half from ‘D’ Company. Another three officers and fifty men had been wounded. They had taken 1,520 prisoners.34
All the harbour facilities were found wired with explosives, but none had been detonated. The port was secured intact, the explosives removed, and a good number of fishing boats and other small ships captured.
With Delfzijl taken, the pocket was reduced to Farmsum across the Eems Canal from the port town. The Irish Regiment compressed this area on May 1 and the following day took the surrender of the garrison commander, along with thirty-seven other officers and thirteen hundred other ranks. The Delfzijl Pocket was declared collapsed at 0700 hours.35
The only Germans remaining in Holland were those buttoned up in the west behind the Grebbe Line, and while 5th Division had fought at Delfzijl, unusual developments had taken place on that front.
[26]
Thank You, Canadians
THREE MILES EAST of Amersfoort, Achterveld lay within the operational zone facing the Grebbe Line, held by 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. When the PPCLI had established its battalion headquarters here on April 23, the village had come under its first and last German shelling. 1 While several buildings had suffered tiles torn off roofs, every window in St. Joseph’s School next to the Catholic church had been blown to shards. As the PPCLI was using the building, pioneers had hastily covered the gaping holes with tar paper.2 Due to the prevailing phony war, Achterveld often seemed much farther behind the front than it really was. Across from the church and school, a barber and tailor had re-opened their respective shops, happily serving the Canadians. Mobile baths were established, and the rifle companies rotated from the forward positions to wash up and draw clean uniforms. The auxiliary services showed films regularly in the schoolhouse.3 “Soldiers moved about with real carelessness,” one I Canadian Corps headquarters staffer noted, and discipline was becoming distinctly casual.
This all changed abruptly on the morning of April 27, when “a smart guard who stood in his best parade-squar
e manner and directed traffic with regimental pride and formality” was posted next to a sign in the main intersection that read: “Danger No Vehicles Past This Point.” No sooner had the man taken his post than he was directing a convoy of three-ton trucks “carrying loads of most unoperational gear. In the shaded grounds of the church, marquees and mess tents were set up with tables, chairs and cooking utensils complete with table cloths . . . carefully arranged. Six whitewashed flag poles appeared and were neatly pegged down and their guy-ropes adjusted with military precision. Near the mess tent a Canadian flag was hoisted. On right and left of the entrance between the school and the church grounds appeared the flags of Canada and Britain and deployed down the street in front of the school stood the flags of the United States, the USSR and Holland. There were no flags at the entrance on the other side of the school. The Dutch flag was nearest, but still quite aloof.” The tar paper was stripped away by Canadian engineers and replaced with glass. Inside, the two separate rooms—one small, the other larger—were set up for conferences. Signallers installed a phone line and hooked it into a network that directly connected the school to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Reims.
As these preparations continued, all attempts to keep secret their purpose failed locally. Soldiers and citizens alike whispered that the school was being readied for secret negotiations with the Germans. Whenever an unauthorized soldier or civilian walked across the street towards the L-shaped schoolhouse—surrounded by a tall wire fence that in peacetime provided security for the children—provosts shooed them away. Other military police drifted quietly, but watch-fully, through the clusters of citizens. When word got out that Prince Bernhard would attend, the Dutch became excited. Every house in Achterveld sprouted at least one Dutch flag and the orange pennant of the royal family. The citizens were all smiling, chattering away to each other in large gaggles, men stepping forward to shake the hands of passing Canadians and young women offering hugs, as if they were yet again being liberated. Peace was at hand, one rumour held. And it would be decided here in Achterveld, over there in their little schoolhouse.4
Once General Eisenhower had authorized direct negotiations with Reichkommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart on April 23, events had developed rapidly. Two days later, staff at various Canadian brigade headquarters reported German wireless operators cutting in on their secret radio frequencies and claiming to act on behalf of senior commanders. In English, the operators requested “that food be sent to the starving Dutch and guaranteeing a fair and just distribution through the Dutch Food Ministry.” First Canadian Army intelligence officers immediately issued instructions that the messages not be acknowledged, but that the compromised frequencies be kept clear and monitored for future signals. Repeatedly, between April 25 and 28, the Germans sent more signals, but they were met with only silence.5
Whether these messages emanated from Seyss-Inquart or someone else was never determined. They played no perceptible role in the process of arranging a meeting in Achterveld for April 28. The Allies were well aware, as Eisenhower had warned on April 23, that “the situation is so bad that something must be done to arrange for the introduction of food into Holland by free droppings and by every other possible means.” Preparations were well in hand for air drops of food, 10 million rations already stockpiled in England for this purpose. Half of these rations were provided from stocks intended as emergency aid to Allied prisoners of war abandoned by their German guards. On April 16, SHAEF had ordered Bomber Command and the U.S. 8th Air Force to keep two hundred bombers readied for immediate deployment. As the school in Achterveld was being readied on April 27, SHAEF air staff directed that aerial drops, code-named Operation Manna, commence the following morning.6
At 1700 hours on April 27, First Canadian Army ordered I Canadian Corps to ensure a complete twenty-four-hour ceasefire across its front to begin at 0800 the following morning and specified that there would be no “advance westward.” Subsequently, Twenty-First Army Group’s chief of staff, Major General Francis “Freddie” de Guingand, phoned Lieutenant General Guy Simonds to say “that it would not be possible to instruct the Germans to cease fire for the same period . . . because our only direct means of communication would be by wireless, in clear, and it would not do to create the ‘flap’ which this would cause all over the world!” He assured Simonds that his staff was “endeavouring by other means, to make this arrangement as far as the enemy forces are concerned.” This information reached Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes at 1900 hours, about the same time he was given instructions for where the Allied and German representatives were to be picked up for transport to Achterveld.7
At 1000 hours on April 28, de Guingand and several other officers descended from a plane at Kluis airfield near Nijmegen and were hurried in four First Canadian staff cars to Achterveld. Accompanying de Guingand were Prince Bernhard; Major General Sandy Galloway, the British commander of Netherlands District; and Colonel J. Zenkowitsch, who represented Soviet interests. Because of the Allied reconfirmation during the Yalta Conference in February that any surrender of German forces must be unconditional, it was imperative that the Soviets consent to the terms of any agreement. Otherwise, the Soviets could accuse the western Allies of deceit and claim this as justification for breaching other agreements reached at Yalta. Before the Germans arrived, de Guingand briefed the other Canadian officers involved on how he would guide the discussions and the concessions sought. Meanwhile, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Brigadier Pat Bogert and his brigade major were approaching the German line at 1100 hours on the Amersfoort-Apeldoorn highway. Four Germans carrying a white flag emerged and walked to meet the Canadians. After being blindfolded, they were helped into a car and driven “by a devious route to the conference.”8
Standing in for Seyss-Inquart was Reichrichter Dr. Ernst Schwebel and Dr. Friederich Plutzer, while Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz was represented by Hauptman Dr. Stoeckle and Oberleutnant von Massow. Alighting from the car, these men were led through the door beside which no flags were flying.
Before convening the full meeting, de Guingand met just Schwebel and Plutzer. The two men offered a brisk salute and then extended their hands, an invitation de Guingand ignored. Schwebel disgusted the tall, very upper-class British officer. “A plump, sweating German, who possessed the largest red nose I have ever seen, the end of which was like several ripe strawberries sewn together.”9 (De Guingand was not alone in his appreciation of Schwebel. The PPCLI war diarist felt moved to comment that battalion staff had dubbed the German senior representative “Big Nose.”) After credentials had been checked and confirmation made that each man had representative authority, the doors of the room were opened and everyone else filed to their places at the tables.
This meeting with “the enemy delegates,” de Guingand opened, was held “with the object of reaching an agreement with the least possible delay which would enable the Allies to introduce food into German occupied Holland, to be used for the Dutch population who were known to be starving as a result of the . . . German inability to feed them.” The Allies, he said, were proposing to send supplies by air, sea, rail, and barge. He “emphasized that it was essential to get something moving at once.”10
None of the Germans disputed their inability to feed the Dutch, but Schwebel cautioned that neither he nor the army representatives had authority to commit to any specific proposals. Only Seyss-Inquart could do that. Schwebel then proposed a second meeting on April 30 with Seyss-Inquart attending.
There followed a short adjournment while de Guingand telephoned Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, in Reims. The Germans could make no decisions, he reported, but Seyss-Inquart had agreed to a meeting on Monday if Smith were present. Agreement, de Guingand thought, might “lead to further developments toward surrender of the German forces.” Smith consented.
Adjourning for lunch, the Allied representatives left the school to dine on sandwiches laid out on tables under the tented ma
rquees. I Canadian Corps had been “instructed that in NO circumstances will the German representatives be included,” so they remained inside and were served separately.
Once the meeting reconvened, de Guingand summoned several more Allied representatives—including Prince Bernhard—to brief the Germans on the relief plan’s logistics. British Air Commodore Andrew Geddes said the most immediate, albeit least efficient, delivery means was by air, possibly delivering food to thirty drop zones close to the major cities. Drops could be carried out day and night. If the Germans agreed not to fire on the aircraft, Geddes said the only Allied planes allowed to operate over western Holland would be dedicated to food delivery. Geddes announced that the Allies had already proceeded with air drops without awaiting German permission and asked for a “report on the success of today’s drop.” The Germans, expressing neither surprise nor objection to the Allied jumping of the gun, “undertook to do so.”
Obviously, the massive tonnages required to relieve the situation could never depend on air drops alone—they were a stopgap measure. Major General Galloway, who had developed SHAEF’s extensive relief plan, said he had a fleet of barges loaded with tons of food and ready to go. The Germans, however, had to guarantee the flotilla “freedom of movement in rivers and waterways and [Galloway] proposed that we should introduce supplies by Dordrecht to Rotterdam.” Schwebel said this would likely be acceptable. Galloway stressed that Rotterdam’s port was essential for allowing ships to approach by sea. Basically, the more ports the Germans opened, the more rapidly food could be delivered throughout the whole region.