FIFTEEN KILOMETRES NORTH OF BOULOGNE, at Cap Gris Nez, the line of the Channel coast turns north-east. From there, along the narrow Strait of Dover, to beyond Calais, some twenty kilometres distant, were positioned the 10 batteries of German heavy guns which for four years had periodically shelled the coastal towns of England. On 5 September the 3rd Division’s 17th Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars cut the landward communications of Calais and the Gris Nez batteries on a front of more than 30 kilometres. Five days later the eastern half of their line of picquets was taken over by the Toronto Scottish of the 2nd Division.
In the meantime, south-west of Calais, the 7th Brigade had isolated the garrison from Boulogne and was closing in on Cap Gris Nez. On the 16th two of its battalions supported only by an armoured regiment and some field and medium artillery attempted to take the three heavily fortified batteries at the Cape. Their attack served only to confirm that a far heavier weight of weapons would be needed to capture them. But while the infantry made no progress against the formidable defences, the enemy did not end the day unscathed.
Two observation posts of the 3rd Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, directed the fire of its guns in support of the attack and, for once, they had an almost unlimited supply of ammunition. On 15 September they engaged nine of the enemy’s batteries. The next day proved equally eventful.
3 Cdn Medium Regiment took on the role of a naval ship today. With dawn, the OPs were away again on their orgy of shooting and harassing fire on enemy batteries. Finally, stung to reply, three guns on the ‘Cap’ took us on. They were big ones, about 16 inch. After some excellent ranging (5 rds) they got onto the gun positions. There they showed marked impartiality, and threw their rounds into successive troops. Large splinters reached a distance of 1400 yds. Despite the fact that our own fire never lagged, we suffered only one casualty — an arm wound. Capt King rose to the occasion and committed one gun to a duel. He quieted the huge casemates quickly and kept them quiet by intermittent sniping during the day. At dusk, the enemy’s nerve revived and one of the guns (which was disappearing-carriage-mounted) reappeared. Capt King promptly landed a shell on the piece, setting fire to the gun pit and destroying the initiative of the crew if nothing else. For the rest of the day, all their guns remained silent.1
The landward approaches to Calais were limited by large areas of marsh and inundated ground to the south and east of the city. Except where these were crossed by roads and railway lines radiating from the port, the only practical approach for a combined force of infantry and armour was from the west along the coast where lay the main German coastal batteries. From Cap Blanc Nez and the village of Escalles ten kilometres west of the city, the enemy had constructed a series of strongly defended areas at Noires Mottes, Belle Vue Ridge and the villages of Coquelles and Vieux Coquelles inland from the sea which effectively covered both the road along the coast and that from Boulogne. Minefields and wire had been laid in profusion and these were covered by anti-tank and machine guns in concrete emplacements. Some of the six naval batteries on the coast were capable of firing inland and the defences were supported by field, antitank and anti-aircraft artillery. The German commandant, Lt-Colonel Ludwig Schroeder, complained that most of his 7,500 troops were ‘mere rubbish,’ a fact not obvious to the Canadian infantry until the later stages of the battle.
The city’s old fortifications were still formidable in their way. Behind an outer ring of canals and forts a wet ditch and a bastioned wall surrounded most of the built-up area. These waterways divided it into a series of islands at the heart of which lay the old citadel.
General Spry’s plan was to clear the coastal defences west of the city with two brigades, close up to its perimeter, then mount a concentric attack on every possible approach. The third brigade, when it had completed mopping up in Boulogne, would capture the batteries at Cap Gris Nez. In the meantime these would be screened by smoke from interfering with the attack on Calais. Each phase of the assault would be preceded by bombardments by heavy bombers and artillery and the infantry would be supported by tanks and the specialized armour, ‘the Funnies,’ of Hobart’s 79th Armoured Division.
The heavy bomber preparations began on 20 September, before the capture of Boulogne was complete, when 600 aircraft dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs on Calais’ defences. Bad weather prevented another attack until the 24th. Unfortunately the 3rd Division were told that this attack, like those on the preceding days, had been cancelled and the artillery did not shell the enemy’s anti-aircraft batteries. Eight RAF bombers were shot down. The War Diary of the 7th Brigade reflected the frustration and bitterness of the watching soldiers:
We felt very helpless watching this attack — the casualties to aircraft could have been lowered if someone along the lines somewhere hadn’t messed things up. However, one has to expect this sort of thing in war. Patrols were sent out from battalions to try to pick up some of the bomber crews — those we did find were dead.
Next morning, the 25th, following another air attack, the assault began. By that night Le Régiment de la Chaudière and the North Shore Regiment, supported by the Fort Garry Horse on the left, had penetrated to the coast, the former taking the garrison of Cap Blanc Nez — 200 prisoners, most of whom ‘were found dead drunk.’2 Next morning the huge gun emplacements at Noires Mottes and the Sangatte battery surrendered to the North Shore.
On their right the 7th Brigade advanced to clear the western approaches to Calais. The heavy bombers had missed many of the concrete emplacements and the Regina Rifles attacking Vieux Coquelles and the Royal Winnipeg Rifles at Coquelles, both supported by the 1st Hussars, met fierce resistance from pillboxes and in house-to-house fighting. Late in the afternoon, their Brigadier, Jock Spragge, ordered the 1st Canadian Scottish to help the Reginas shake free by moving around their left flank. By morning they had reached the coast and were advancing eastward.
That morning Bomber Command struck again and the three battalions of the 7th Brigade closed up to the inner line of fortifications in front of Calais. Ahead, barring the coast road, was Fort Lapin with its heavy guns protected by anti-tank ditches and minefields. Both it and Bastion 11 nearby were armed with flame throwers. Inland lay Fort Nieulay and the wide flooded barrier which protected the south of the city.
Once more, on the 27th, Bomber Command came to the support of the 7th Brigade’s attack. With the help of tanks, Crocodiles and a smoke screen, the Scottish subdued Fort Lapin and by nightfall were probing for crossings over the old water defences at the western edge of the port. During the night two companies crossed south of Bastion 11 to find, as day broke, that they were under furious machine-gun fire from the bastion and the Citadel. So intense was it that they could neither be reinforced nor withdrawn and there they remained, cut off from food and ammunition supplies for forty-eight hours.
On their right the Winnipeg Rifles, using flame-throwers, subdued Fort Nieulay and the Reginas crossed the floods to the factory area on the southern fringes of Calais.
By now German morale had slumped. The 28th brought yet another heavy attack by Bomber Command and Lt-Colonel Schroeder asked for a truce in order to evacuate the civilian population. Spry gave him until noon on the 30th. Two hours after it expired the attack was renewed and German resistance crumbled. That evening Schroeder surrendered, and by 9 a.m. next morning all resistance had ceased.
During the period of truce on the 29th Rockingham’s 9th Brigade captured the huge German batteries at Gris Nez. Two heavy raids by Bomber Command which preceded their attack shook the confidence of the defenders, though they inflicted little material damage. The two battalions involved, the Highland Light Infantry of Canada and the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, had thoroughly reconnoitred the ground. Lt-Colonel Don Forbes, the North Nova’s commanding officer, whose reputation for cool nerve became a legend, had himself found a way into the defences of Battery Todt.
At 6:45 a.m. the infantry and armour attacked. Flails cleared paths through the minefields, AVREs dropped fascines into anti-tank ditches for tanks to cross and the artillery kept the enemy’s heads down. By mid-morning Forbes’ men had taken Battery Todt, about the same time as the HLI, having completed the capture of the four guns of Grosser Kurfurst, began to move on Battery Gris Nez. That afternoon men of the 141st Regiment Royal Armoured Corps (the Buffs), who supported the HLI with Crocodiles, watched as the Germans fired their last shot at Dover.
One (gun), the last to fire, with Canadian infantry actually on the revolving turret, fired one shell wildly out to sea, another in the direction of Dover and one more inland before sappers could put it out of action with hand-placed charges.3
For a loss of 42 casualties the two battalions had taken 1,600 prisoners and had ensured that from that night the people of Dover would no longer suffer shelling by enemy guns.
Two days later, when Calais was finally cleared, it was found that another 7,500 prisoners had been added to the 3rd Division’s total. Like those of Le Havre and Boulogne, its port installations had been systematically demolished. The harbour would receive no ships until November.
