NORTH OF THE SEINE, German rearguards used small villages as strong points and took a heavy toll of the armoured cars leading the Canadian advance. Withholding their fire until the leading Staghounds were confined in narrow streets, they engaged them at point-blank range with Panzerfausts, their deadly, hand-held anti-tank rockets.
Approaching the farming hamlet of Bierville, Sergeant Ross Bell ordered his driver to move slowly until they reached the church which was marked on his map but which he could not yet see. Carefully he scanned the château grounds on his right, then the scattered houses opposite. The only sign that enemy were nearby was the empty street ahead, so unlike Morgny which they had just passed through, where cheering French civilians had waved them on their way.
Past the château gates and the new village hall they crawled, alert for any sign of danger.
Around a curve to the right, beyond the duck pond, they saw the church with the road dividing in front of it. There was no one in sight. A few yards further and they would have a clear view of the road they had been ordered to reconnoitre. The driver edged the car forward.
It was then that Bell saw the wreck of Lt. Laird’s Staghound and the glint of sunlight off German helmets behind a hedge, too late to reverse out of the ambush.
The gunner too had seen the enemy and the co-ax Browning was firing as Bell ordered the driver to take the left fork at top speed. He looked back, half expecting to see an anti-tank gun taking them in its sights but there was no sign of life. He swung round to look at the road ahead as they came to a low rise.
Less than fifty yards away, on a curve in the road, was a column of Germans with three anti-tank guns.
Hastily the driver and the bow gunner closed their hatches, as did Bell and his gunner in the turret. Moments later the car crashed into the infantry. With guns blazing it ploughed through them, smashing the anti-tank guns off the road and leaving behind the screams of the crushed and wounded enemy.
At nearly fifty miles an hour, the armoured car was driving deeper into enemy territory and Bell began to search the road ahead for a turn which might lead back to his squadron. Ahead lay another village where a road to the southeast would take him in the right direction. It was as they neared the junction that he saw, coming toward them — menacing, deadly — a Tiger tank with its 88mm gun.
There was no alternative but to keep going, hold their fire and trust to luck. Apparently the driver of the German tank had not yet recognized the Canadian armoured car for the giant fifty-six ton vehicle was beginning to ease over to the right of the road to let it pass.
Bell’s eyes were glued on the ‘88’, watching for it to begin traversing toward them. A single round would reduce the Staghound to a flaming wreck. But it did not move and in a few seconds, they were past.
Ahead in the distance lay a wooded hillside where they might find cover and plan their next move.
The road now began to descend in a gentle curve through a steep-sided ravine. The car had just entered its shadows, when Bell and his crew saw coming toward them, a horse-drawn convoy of wagons and anti-tank guns. Again they charged, firing their Brownings and reducing the convoy to a rearing, screaming shambles. Men fled from the wagons and attempted to scramble up the steep, slippery banks, only to slide back into the path of the Staghound chewing its way through the mass of men and horses. Before the carnage was over, the driver’s periscope was obscured by blood and debris and Bell was directing the steering of the car from the turret.
At last they broke free from the convoy and a mile further on, came to a halt on a track leading into a wood. Wearily they opened their hatches, in time to see a civilian wearing an armband and a blue beret step from the bush.
It was the young Canadians’ first contact with the French Forces of the Interior, the ‘FFI’, and it could not have been better timed for their ammunition was virtually spent.
Next day, 31st August, they rejoined their regiment, the 12th Manitoba Dragoons, probing ahead of the Army on its way to the north.
Bell and his crew had accounted for nearly three hundred enemy dead or wounded, 70 to 80 horses and several anti-tank guns. In doing so they had proved once more that in war, what is seen as luck, goes most often to him who is skilled and bold enough to seize the fleeting chance.1
The days which followed saw the swiftest advances of the campaign as the armoured divisions of Second British Army thrust forward to capture Brussels and Antwerp. Moving with such speed that the Germans were given no time to organize resistance, they swept aside opposition, seized bridges before they could be blown and caught the imagination of the correspondents of Western newspapers who began to tell their readers that the war was all but over.
On their left the First Canadian Army watched their exploits with admiration and not a little envy for it was evident that they were to have no immediate share in any dramatic armoured thrust. Already they had taken Dieppe without a shot being fired and were investing Le Havre. 2nd Corps had crossed the Somme, its divisions heading for Boulogne, Calais and Ypres, carrying out their mandate to clear the Channel coast and a 30-mile belt which lay inland from it.
On 3 September Montgomery, now promoted to the rank of field-marshal, issued a directive to his armies on future operations. His intentions were now 1) To advance eastward and destroy all enemy forces encountered; and 2) To occupy the Ruhr and get astride the communications leading from it into Germany and to the seaports.
On 6 September Second Army was to advance eastwards from the line Brussels-Antwerp toward the Rhine between Wesel and Arnhem. The Ruhr was to be ‘by-passed around its northern face, and cut off by a southward thrust through Hamm.’ The First U.S. Army, advancing with its two left corps toward Liège, Aachen, Cologne and Bonn, would ‘assist in cutting off the Ruhr by operations against its south-eastern face, if such action is desired by Second Army.’
The Belgian and Dutch contingents were to be transferred from Crerar’s command to Second Army which already was in Belgium and was about to enter the Netherlands. As for First Canadian Army, its role was summarized in a single sentence:
Canadian Army will clear the coastal belt, and will then remain in the general area Bruges-Calais until the maintenance situation allows of its employment further forward.2
‘Mopping up!’ snorted one brigadier. ‘So much for McNaughton’s “ dagger pointed at the heart of Berlin!”’3
The ‘coastal belt’ coincided with the defensive zone which had been manned by the German 15th Army. Many of its units had not been engaged and were well equipped and up to strength. Immediately inland were the VI launching sites, a security area which the Germans had swept clean of the Resistance. To advance through it meant crossing every river of western France at its widest, and because, unlike Second Army’s zone, there were no Maquis to prevent it, every bridge had been destroyed.
On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, no one in First Canadian Army knew whether the Channel ports would be defended or not. Le Havre was, Dieppe was not. Air reconnaissance reported the Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk areas ‘deserted.’
That evening, General Simonds gave orders to the divisional commanders of 2nd Corps. The primary object of the pursuit to the Scheldt was to destroy or capture all enemy south of that river; the 2nd Canadian Division was to clear the coast from Dunkirk to the Dutch border; the 3rd was to ensure that the 2nd’s route was clear and thereafter to reorganize around Calais; his two armoured divisions, 1st Polish and 4th Canadian, were directed toward Ghent and Bruges.
Within 24 hours the 3rd Division’s brief prospect of an easy time ahead evaporated when they came up against the landward defences of Boulogne. These were held in strength and the garrison made it plain they intended to fight. Shortly after midnight Major-General Dan Spry, its youthful GOC, gave preliminary orders for the capture of the city and the destruction of its garrison. One of his three brigades, the 7th, was pushed on to seize the high ground south-west of Calais to protect his flank.
The defences of Boulogne were far too strong to be taken without a heavily supported deliberate attack. Heavy bombers, armoured personnel carriers and medium artillery would be needed by Spry’s two infantry brigades to overcome the massive defences which were held by nearly 10,000 Germans. But practically all the heavy supporting arms were committed to the 1st British Corps’ attack on Le Havre, 135 miles away. There was no hope of capturing Boulogne until Le Havre had fallen. Since Calais too was defended, the 3rd Division would be fully occupied for some time. The 2nd’s orders were amended to make it responsible for clearing the entire coast, including Dunkirk, from just east of Calais to the Dutch frontier.
On 8 September the 4th and Polish Armoured Divisions came up against strong opposition on the Ghent Canal which connects Ghent and Bruges. The bridges had been destroyed and it was probable that the enemy would make full use of the meandering waterway to delay the advance to the Scheldt.
In the meantime the 2nd Division, advancing from Dieppe, ran into determined opposition from strongly held outpost positions screening Dunkirk. The garrison of the fortress was estimated to be some 10,000 strong.
With every one of his six divisions engaged with the enemy, on a 200-mile front from Le Havre to Ghent, short of transport and supplies, his infantry battalions suffering from lack of trained replacements for their battle casualties, Crerar’s Army was the Cinderella of the Allies. Denied a front seat at the ball, it had been relegated to cleaning up the coastal ports and their hinterland so that its sister armies might be supplied for their advance into Germany. It was not long before their impatience began to show. What was taking Cinderella so long?
