Battle of the Scheldt - North

The exploration of the Battle of the Scheldt continued, looking at the Action on the Northern Bank. Fortunately, I did not have to sleep in a slit trench with several inches of water. Instead, I found a funky container building tucked around a working farm in Lewedorp very close to the Canadian Memorial for the Battle of the Walcheren Causeway.

The space was great, and I sat out until sunset both nights enjoying the quiet and a Belgium Pale Ale. The breakfast was fabulous, lots of homemade goodies that fed me all day.

Battle of South Beveland

While the 3rd Canadian Division was busy south of the Scheldt, the 2nd Canadian Division moved north from Antwerp to clear the northern bank. They met their first stiff resistance at Woensdrecht just before the Beveland Isthmus. Again, the Germans had flooded areas to restrict the Canadians’ movements into tight areas.

On 13 October, the Black Watch moved forward to take a railway bridge on what has become known as Black Friday. The Division was under great pressure to take Walcheren Island, so they pushed ahead with the attack despite the unfavourable conditions. The strong defensive positions and determined enemy resulted in the Black Watch taking 145 casualties. They had suffered 300 casualties in July at Verierres Ridge off the beaches of Normandy, so their unit was in very poor shape. The 4th Canadian Armoured Division helped the breakthrough so the Second Division could continue their assault. The Germans conducted a fighting retreat across South Beveland, delaying the Canadians as much as possible while retreating to the stronghold of Walcheren Island.

Walcheren Island

Due to its strategic position in the Scheldt Estuary, Walcheren Island was the most heavily fortified location on the German Atlantic Wall, with over 30 defensive installations. Walcheren had several large guns that could take out any shipping, so it was essential to capture the island before Antwerp could be opened.

LGen Simmonds decided the best way to take the island is to blow the dikes that surrounded it as much of the land was below sea level. He was aware of the impact on the Dutch citizens, but it was felt that it was worth the cost to secure the port. The Allies dropped leaflets informing the Dutch, but most of the people didn’t have anywhere to go.

 In early October, the RAF bombed the dikes at Westkappelle, Vlissingen and Veere and eventually flooded 80% of the island. The water rose slowly, so not many citizens drowned, but follow-on bombing and food shortages caused 2,500 Dutch civilians to eventually lose their lives. All their livestock was lost, and it was several years before the rich farmland was arable again.

The blowing of the dike at Westkappelle flooded much of the city. Many of the German positions were on high points so the defences were intact, but the Germans had no ability to move defences to support attacks.

Today at Westkappelle, the breach in the dike is visible at a large sand beach.

At Vlissingen, the area blown near the harbour, near a German Bunker. Since Vlissingen was a harbour, the townspeople were forced to leave and the harbour defences increased.

Walcheren Causeway

During the war, the Walcheren Causeway was a dike 40 feet wide and 1000 yards long that supported a rail line. Since this was the only overland route to the island, the straight path was heavily fortified, large craters blown in the dike to prevent an Armoured assault.

The Germans set up their 88mm Guns to fire directly down the causeway and had massed machine guns and soldiers to repel the Allies. On 31 October the half-strength Black Watch made the first assault on the causeway, but were stopped half-way down, and they took shelter in the craters and sides of the causeway. The next day, the Calgary Highlanders, who were the most intact unit in the brigade made it further down the causeway but were again halted by heavy machine gun and artillery fire. The Regiment des Maisonneuves were next, and the combined forces had a tenuous hold on the causeway.

The cratered surface of the causeway from an aerial photo.

The water around the causeway was too shallow at high tide for assault boats or Armoured Buffalos, but Dutch Resistance personnel told the Allies about a path where troops could wade across at low tide. On 02 November, the Scottish 52 Lowland Division waded across the channel in chest deep water, towing their boats with machine guns and mortars. The accomplished their crossing in silence and attacked the Germans from the Flank. The 52nd Lowland Division continued the assault by the Canadians, crossed the causeway and pushed inland. By 03 November, the causeway was in Allied Hands.

On 01 November, the 4th British Commandos crossed the Scheldt from Breskens in Buffalos and took the port of Vlissingen (Flushing) with relatively few casualties. At Westkappelle, the 48th Royal Marine Commandos attacked using Buffalos launched from Landing Craft Tanks (LCT). The navy support squadron sent 27 small craft to deal with the many large guns around Westkappelle. By the end of the day 20 of the craft were sunk or disabled but had succeeded in drawing fire away from the assault force.

The commandos faced heavy fighting but continued to take gun batteries. The troops with reinforcements continued pushing forward, finally taking the high ground at Middelberg on 08 November. Almost 40,000 Germans surrendered, and the port could finally be opened. After more than 3 weeks of mine clearing the first ship sailed into Antwerp at the end of November.

Memorials

At the Walcheren causeway, there is a memorial to the Canadians just to the right of the railway line.

The map shows the attack across the causeway by the Canadians, the flanking attack by the Scots and the follow-on attack by 52nd Lowland Division.

The memorial stone acknowledges the Canadian losses at the causeway.

The photo looking down the causeway shows it is no longer a single narrow dike, after the war more land was reclaimed from the sea and the area is now 250 m wide.

The view from the rear of the memorial.

There is a memorial commemorating the 52 Lowland Division for their sacrifice at the causeway.

There is also a memorial to the French who tried to take the causeway in 1940.

The reclaimed land is now fertile potato country, ready to be harvested by a giant potato picker.

At Westkappelle, the dike has a wide walkway on the top that was full of people walking, cycling and walking all types of dogs on a beautiful fall day.

The height of the dike is at the roof level of many of the houses, so the impact of the breach would be catastrophic. Of the 19,000 buildings on the island over 15,000 were damaged. Attempts were made to close the breaches as soon as the Allies had taken the island, but lack of supplies and equipment, and the ever-widening gap delayed the closure at both Westkappelle and Vlissingen until October 1945, and all of the sea water was drained out by early 1946.

The memorial at Westkappelle is highlighted by a Sherman Tank.

Plaque to the 4th Commando Brigade who liberated the town on 01 November.

There are plaques commemorating the Commandos who were killed during the raid.

There is also a representation of the Commandos taking the village. The bicycle and granny are probably not original, but with the number of bicycles and grannies out and about on this beautiful fall day, I can’t be certain.

The port of Vlissingen has been defended by a fortress since 1548. The current fortress was greatly expanded by Napoleon in 1810.

The Napoleonic era fortress now converted to an awesome outdoor café.

Since Vlissingen was a port located where the Scheldt narrows, the town was cleared and established as a German stronghold.

The strongpoints are shown on the map with a circled x.

An aerial photo shows the extensive bunker locations surrounding Vlissingen.

Some remaining bunkers outside Vlissingen.

There is a major bunker complex at the waterfront near the landmark windmill.

Top view of the Bunker.

The area is called Uncle Beach as that was the code name for Vlissingen.

The memorial to the commandos is located on the waterfront.

The plaque reads:

There is also a memorial to the 52nd Lowland Division who landed as part of the assault force.

The plaque reads:

The 52nd Lowland Division landed here from Breskens on 1 Nov 1944 to liberate the island.

Troops as they landed.

Buffaloes in the background.

On the waterfront at Vlissingen, there was a Biber (beaver) one man submarine. The sub carried two torpedoes that were as long as the sub or anti-ship mines. Even after the Scheldt was cleared, the Biber subs roamed the Estuary with limited success. Out of 102 missions, 70 Bibers were lost and only 7 small ships sunk.

Antwerp remains a busy port.

Christopher Cadeau Canadian Scottish Regiment

I wrote about Christopher Cadeau, cousin to my sister-in-law Marg Allen (Columbus) last year during my visit to the Adegem Cemetery. Christopher was very briefly a member of the Canadian Scottish Regiment who fought in the Breskens Pocket. This should have been in part 1, but it was already long, so I’m including it here.

Christopher enlisted on 13 November 1943 at the age of 18. He trained as a tank driver and landed in England on 10 August 1944. On 01 September he was remustered to the infantry and after a month’s training arrived in Belgium and was assigned to the Canadian Scottish Regiment on 24 October. He was tragically killed on 27 October and first buried in an orchard new Hoofdplaat before being reinterred at Adegem Canadian Cemetery After the War.

I mapped the Canadian Scottish Regiment’s month of October 1944.

An interactive link allows you to click on each location and read the war diary entry of the day.

I drove the route the Can Scots took from 20 October when they reached the Scheldt area until 27 October. The map shows the time Christopher was with the Can Scots.

On 27 October, the Can Scots started off from this location.

From Terrible Victory by Mark Zuelke

The nature of German resistance was increasingly erratic. When the Canadian Scottish passed through the Reginas on October 27 to carry the brigade to within a mile of Cadzand, the advance went well, with thirty-six prisoners taken and a three-quarter-mile gain in the face of scant opposition. ‘A’ Company was leading, with ‘D’ Company in trail and the rest of the battalion prowling some distance behind, in case it became necessary to outflank German positions. The wireless hummed with one successful advance reported after another until noon, when suddenly a hell storm of shells ranged in on ‘A’ Company from every coastal battery in the Breskens Pocket and even the guns at Vlissingen. Fortunately, the company had just cleared an area riddled with slit trenches and dugouts into which the men dived, but the attack still caused heavy casualties.

 When the shelling eased in the mid-afternoon, ‘A’ Company moved carefully forward with Lieutenant E.W. Schneider’s No. 9 Platoon out front. As the platoon edged along a road at the base of a dyke, it was struck by machine-gun fire from all sides. Schneider realized that some Germans had allowed the platoon to pass their positions in order to surround it. The platoon runner, Private Bowling, managed to slip past the gunners to the rear and warn company headquarters. Caught in an uneven contest, No. 9 Platoon resisted fiercely. “They gathered into coordinated groups and answered the enemy with a hail of Bren and rifle fire. But the uneven battle could not last. Their ammunition was soon exhausted, their position on the open below the muzzles of the German machine guns untenable.” Twelve men managed to escape, but Schneider and the rest were either killed or taken prisoner. At nightfall, ‘D’ Company took the area without incident, rounding up thirty-five prisoners. The battalion had taken its heaviest casualties since the Leopold Canal, four killed, including Christopher, five wounded, and forty-one missing.

I think about Christopher a lot, and it was very emotional to visit his final location. I think he strikes a chord with me as I was 18 when I went to RMC, and if the fall of first year that I spent running around Fort Henry was 30 odd years earlier, that could easily have been me slogging through the flooded polders.

Aftermath

For those who fought it, the Scheldt is usually considered the worst of what were always bad experiences. In the face of that, many responded by carefully secreting their memories into parts of the mind that need never be visited. “Think I just blacked it out of my mind ever since because it was one of the worst encounters I’d ever seen,” one veteran said. Many others put the same thought only slightly less succinctly. “We were wet, always wet, always cold. The shelling never let up; the fighting just went on day after day without let up. I thought it’d never end,” remembered another. The wet, they all remember that. Days and nights spent in mud; uniforms perpetually soaked through. And more than one mentions the brutality of the fighting. How up close and personal the combat was. More men killed or wounded by gunshot and grenades thrown at close range than normal. A drenched battlefield that they came to think of as hell.

The Battle of the Scheldt has been described by historians as unnecessarily difficult, as it could have been cleared earlier and more easily had the Allies given it a higher priority than Operation Market Garden. American historian Charles B. MacDonald called the failure to immediately take the Scheldt "[o]ne of the greatest tactical mistakes of the war." Because of the flawed strategic choices made by the Allies in early September 1944, the battle became one of the longest and bloodiest that the Canadian army faced over the course of the Second World War. The documentary Against All Odds produced by the War Amps presented by an Officer of the Winnipeg Rifles makes this case very strongly.

An excellent summary of the Battle of the Scheldt is contained in a 15 minute video sponsored by the Canadian Legion and narrated by Colbie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother fame.

The number of prisoners taken on First Canadian Army front during this phase of the operations from 1 Oct-8 Nov was 38,820.

 British and Allied casualties were reported by Lt-General Simonds as 703 officers and 12,170 other ranks, killed, wounded and missing. Of these, 355 officers and 6,012 Other ranks were Canadians.