AFTER REFITTING AT DIEPPE, Maj-General Charles Foulkes’ 2nd Canadian Infantry Division moved foward on 6 September to its next task, the clearing of the entire coast from just east of Calais to the Dutch border beyond Ostend. Its 5th Brigade was to take Dunkirk. Approaching from the southwest, they soon ran into determined opposition at Bourbourg. As an attack was being mounted, the Brigade’s orders were modified. It was now to ‘contain’ the garrison of Dunkirk which was believed to be some 10,000-strong, manning well-prepared defences. These were covered by an extensive outpost line from Mardick, west of the port, through Loon Plage, Spycker and Bergues to Bray Dunes on the east.
Much of the area had been flooded by the Germans, severely restricting the attackers’ ability to manoeuvre off the roads, most of which were raised above the level of the surrounding fields. Many roads and their verges were mined and registered by the enemy’s artillery and mortars — a foretaste of what was to come along the shores of the Scheldt.
The Brigade’s first experience of fighting under these conditions was not encouraging. Le Régiment de Maisonneuve’s attack on Bourbourg came to a halt in the face of an enemy who showed no inclination to give ground. The Brigade Commander, Brigadier W. J. Megill, believing the town to have been taken, ordered the Calgary Highlanders to pass through and take Loon Plage some six kilometres to the north. Blocked by the Maisonneuve, their column stopped on a dyke road where they were promptly heavily shelled by long-range guns. Darkness brought orders for the Highlanders to clear their own way through the northern part of Bourbourg. By 3:30 a.m. they had done so at a cost of two officers and 30 men killed or wounded.1
Early next morning a reconnaissance party of three men led by Captain Mark Tennant set off in a jeep for Loon Plage. In less than an hour they returned with 18 prisoners, nine of whom they captured in an outpost position, others when they forced a German troop carrier off the road, the remainder being the crew of a tank which they knocked out with a PIAT. Tennant reported that Loon Plage was defended by the enemy.2
The advance on the village was a slow and costly business. Well-sited enemy machine guns, mortars and artillery took a painful toll of casualties. As the leading companies drew closer, the battalion’s six-pounder anti-tank guns succeeded in blowing a German observation post out of the tower of Loon Plage church. In an attempt to break the deadlock imposed by crossfire from camouflaged pillboxes, Lt-Colonel Donald MacLauchlan sent a company to outflank the village from the west. At a considerable cost in casualties, they succeeded in reaching some farm buildings 400 metres from the town centre.
From behind a railway line to the east, German infantry swept the battalion area with machine-gun and sniper fire. An attempt by Le Régiment de Maisonneuve to clear the area failed.
When darkness fell it was plain that no further progress could be made, and the depleted rifle companies were withdrawn a few hundred metres south of Loon Plage. By now they had been without food for 42 hours and had had little if any sleep. Resumption of the attack would have to wait until morning.
That night the Germans evacuated Loon Plage.
An interested witness of the battalion’s operations was Earl Wrightman of the 14th Canadian Hussars, (the divisional reconnaissance regiment) who had been ordered to contact the Calgaries and probe forward as far as possible. He came upon a young officer with about 30 men, all that was left of a company, except for a sniper further head.
We found a small and very brave sniper vigorously firing from two corners of a house (he kept dashing between the two). Corporal J.A.M. Smith, in the lead car, shouted to him, ‘What have you got up there, mate?’
The sniper replied, ‘There are about three hundred Germans just over the railroad tracks, but I got one of them.’
‘Good,’ Corporal Smith told him. ‘Then I guess there is nothing to worry about.’3
What was written as an example of humour in adversity points a chilling finger at the fighting strength of this most durable of battalions. Three of its four rifle companies, which normally were about 125 strong, had been reduced to less than 30 men each. As one would expect, its headquarters and support companies had not suffered so severely, but the whole battalion could muster fewer than 400 out of an authorized establishment of more than twice that number.4
The day after the capture of Loon Plage was a Sunday. A few miles behind the Canadian outposts there was no visible sign of war. Cattle grazed under white puffy clouds in the sunlit fields of a Flemish landscape — windmills turned lazily in the warm and gentle breeze. Along a poplar-lined canal white houses with red-tiled roofs splashed colour on the lush green of late summer.
In villages near the French and Belgian border, families walked to church, men in their best dark suits, older women in severe black, girls in beribboned flat straw hats and flowered dresses. At Roesbrugge, halfway between Ypres and Dunkirk, there was a fair. In the square by the church a merry-go-round moved in time to the music of a steam calliope, a laughing child on the back of every painted horse. No one made the slightest sign of hearing the guns of the field battery a kilometre away near Oost-Cappel which was firing on the enemy outpost at Bergues, or the more menacing sound of German heavy shells from Dunkirk seeking to silence them.
During the next few days the Calgary Highlanders’ fighting patrols probed toward Dunkirk and swept the area between their widely separated companies. Far from docile, the Germans reacted aggressively with raids and counterattacks. Early on 14 September an observation post manned by a section of C Company near Mardick watched in fascination as a 20-man German patrol, lit by the moon, approached their position. Holding their fire until the enemy were too close to miss, they opened up with their Bren and a shower of grenades.
From the bottom of a slit trench a signaller was reporting the approach of the enemy by telephone to Battalion Headquarters. Suddenly Major Ross Ellis was startled to hear the signaller scream, followed by silence. Moments later, a sheepish voice said, ‘Sorry, sir. A dead Kraut just fell on top of me.’
Next morning two men from A Company, Privates MacDonald and Field, were sent to capture a lone Pole whose presence had been reported by the Maquis. About 90 minutes later they returned, breathless and bathed in perspiration, with 22 German prisoners, including a warrant officer. They reported that they had been unable to bring back the paybooks of two Germans they had shot because they had come under heavy mortar fire. Asked to tell how they managed to make such a ‘bag,’ MacDonald explained, ‘While I gave covering fire, Field outflanked them.’
For two more days the Highlanders continued to harry the enemy and edge forward toward Dunkirk. Little more could be expected of them. Not only were they sorely depleted in strength, their supporting arms could do little to help. Artillery ammunition was rationed to three rounds per gun per day, heavy mortar bombs to five. On the 15th they learned that they were to be relieved by a commando of the British 4th Special Service Brigade and would be moving to the vicinity of Antwerp. As a farewell to an uncongenial area, on the 17th the Calgaries captured Mardick.5
To the east the 6th Brigade cleared the coastal towns of Furnes, Nieuport and La Panne in the vicinity of the Belgian border, then turned toward Dunkirk. Under-strength and limited by restrictions on artillery ammunition, its battalions were unable to make any more impression on its defences than had those of the 5th Brigade. Their probes confirmed that Dunkirk could only be taken by a heavily supported major attack.
In the meantime the 4th Brigade took over Ostend from the 12th Manitoba Dragoons, cleared the coast from there to Nieuport, moved to Bruges, which the Germans abandoned without a fight, then returned south to the Dunkirk perimeter. Following an unsuccessful attack by the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry upon the enemy outpost position at Bergues on the 15th, the Germans withdrew from the village next day.
As the 2nd Division was being relieved by commandos a considerable number of reinforcements arrived for its battalions, though not enough to bring them up to strength. They would soon need many more.
September 8 had found both the 4th Canadian and the Polish Armoured Divisions, which had been directed north-east toward the Scheldt, halted before the Ghent Canal by strong opposition. That night the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada attacked across the canal at Moerbrugge, on the southeastern outskirts of Bruges. No assault boats being available, they used two large punts which they found in the vicinity. Immediately they began to cross, mortar and 88mm fire came down, causing heavy casualties. By midnight it was touch and go in their narrow bridgehead and the Germans were counterattacking. The Argylls managed to hold them off long enough for the Lincoln and Welland Regiment to join them. Together they defeated the enemy’s strenuous efforts to drive them back into the canal.
All next day engineers struggled to bridge the waterway but, ‘For the first time since we left the Falaise area the enemy was able to put down a truly effective concentration of fire with the result that the engineers could not get the bridge across in daylight.’6 That night they succeeded in doing so and by morning a tank squadron of the South Alberta Regiment had crossed to support the hard-pressed battalions.
Closer to Ghent two attempts by the Poles to cross the canal failed. Their operations in the area were abandoned on the 11th when they received orders to relieve the British 7th Armoured Division near Ghent.
On 8 September Lt-Colonel James Roberts of the 12th Manitoba Dragoons near St Omer received orders from General Simonds to head for Ostend and, if possible, take the city. Roaring across the Belgian border, his leading squadrons passed through Poperinghe and swung north, avoiding Dunkirk, on the roads to Furnes and Dixmude. Approaching a canal south of Ostend, two armoured car troops (each of two Staghound armoured cars and a Lynx scout car) commanded by Lieutenants Charlie Phelps and Ken Jefferson found the road ahead mined with heavy naval shells, their noses upright. The ground on either side of the road was too sodden to bear the weight of their vehicles. Fortunately one Staghound in each troop carried a set of steel trackways and these were brought into play. Using planks and beams which they found nearby to support them, the trackways were laid above the noses of the shells. Then each officer drove one of the small Lynx scout cars across the obstacle.
Beyond, they found bridges over the canal which the Germans had prepared for demolition and removed the charges. But it would take time to clear the minefield beyond and another squadron, guided by the Belgian Resistance, found a safe route into Ostend. Apart from German engineers working on demolitions, the port had been abandoned by the enemy. The rapturous population swarmed over the armoured cars, making it difficult to move without injuring the cheering, singing Belgians.
As evening fell, it started to rain heavily which did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm and excitement of the citizens. I ordered C Squadron to dismount machine guns and to set up guard posts … the poor troopers sat all night behind their guns facing a possible enemy counterattack, while countless civilians sat with them, fed and kissed them, asked for cigarettes, and generally distracted the attention of the guard posts. Fortunately no one counterattacked and the wet and dreary night passed. Most of the regiment were given food and beds in hotels and homes and were so well treated that they wished never to leave again.
Roberts set up his headquarters in a large hotel. During the night he received orders to move north and re-establish contact with the enemy. Next morning, as he prepared to leave, the hotel proprietor presented him with a bill for the night’s lodging for himself and his headquarters. He signed the account and left. ‘Somehow, I have the queer feeling that, sometime later when things settled down, this ingrate may have collected his account.’7