ON 23 OCTOBER, the United States’ 104th (Timberwolf) Division joined First Canadian Army for the balance of the Scheldt operations. Simonds assigned it to 1st British Corps to help in clearing the enemy from south of the River Maas.
Rarely in the War did the Americans place one of their divisions under the command of an ally for its initiation into battle. Simonds was conscious of the implied compliment and that the Americans might not be too happy about fighting their first battle under a foreigner. He was determined to give them all possible help and encouragement. While they were in Belgium, he visited every regiment in the division to brief the troops on the operations which were to come. No senior general had ever before taken the trouble to tell the men what the future held in store, let alone take them into his confidence about operational plans. They liked the experience.
The Division had arrived fresh from mild weather in the States into a cold damp Belgian autumn. With only their standard issue of one blanket per man, they were feeling the cold. Simonds learned of this during his visit and that night 18,000 grey Canadian Army blankets were delivered to the troops. There was no mistaking them for the GI version.
The result of these two actions was that the Americans went into their first battle feeling that they were among friends and that the Army Commander was personally concerned about their welfare. Major-General Terry Allen, their commander, was one of the most experienced officers in the U.S. Army, having commanded their 1st Division in North Africa. In 1962, he recalled:
Simonds made sure that our first mission was well within the capacity of a new division — enough opposition to teach the boys that war is a serious business but not so much that they’d get a bloody nose. They came out of it with a nice balance of prudence and confidence. The next battles were tougher, more of them got hurt but, like with the first one, they won. Before long they were veterans.1
With four divisions under command, Crocker’s 1st Corps now had sufficient strength to clear the enemy from south of the Lower Maas. On 27 October the Polish Armoured Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade advanced toward Breda. The 104th U.S. Infantry Division, on their left, in their first battle, took Zundert, and the 49th Division was approaching Roosendaal while the 4th Canadian Armoured Division had entered Bergen op Zoom. Two days later the Poles were clearing Breda in house-to-house fighting and the 4th Division had captured Bergen.
The German Fifteenth Army, operating under instructions from Hitler, was again in danger of being destroyed. Second British Army, advancing to the west, had taken Tilburg and the enemy’s line from Bergen op Zoom to Breda and ’s-Hertogenbosch had been broken. Von Rundstedt asked for permission to withdraw behind the River Waal, the main stream of the Lower Rhine. Hitler ordered him to stand fast but the old field marshal was determined not to lose the Fifteenth Army if he could avoid it. He ordered them to pull back to the line of the River Mark and its canal.
Crocker now instructed the Poles, with 2nd Armoured Brigade under command, to drive hard for the vital Maas bridges at Moerdijk, the Americans to swing north-west to the River Mark at Standdaarbuiten, the 49th Division to secure the route northward from Roosendaal and the 4th Armoured to advance through Steenbergen to the coast of the estuary.
By the end of the month, despite hard-fought actions, neither the Poles nor the Americans had succeeded in securing a bridgehead over the Mark. Every attempt to do so had been met by prompt and effective counterattacks. But by now Hitler had authorized the Fifteenth Army to make a ‘deliberate’ withdrawal adding that if the Moerdijk bridges fell intact into Allied hands the commander of its strong covering forces would pay with his head.
On 2 November the 49th and 104th Divisions, supported by bomb and rocket attacks of 84 Group, crossed the Mark. On the 6th, as the Poles and Americans closed in on Moerdijk, the Germans blew the great road and railway bridges across the estuary. The Poles finally cleared the last Germans from south of the River on 9 November.
To the west the 4th Division’s advance ran into strong opposition at Welberg. Two companies of the Algonquin Regiment entered the town but were immediately counterattacked by members of the Hermann Goering Replacement Regiment supported by a Tiger tank and two SP guns. By first light the Algonquins had pulled back to their start line having lost half the strength of two companies, including their commanders. Patrols identified the 6th Parachute Regiment in Welberg.
Next day, in an attack by the 10th Brigade, the Algonquins took the town while the remainder of the Brigade closed on Steenbergen under very heavy shell-fire. During the night the shelling suddenly stopped. The enemy had departed. Troops entering Steenbergen found the population ‘none too friendly; whether their animosity stemmed from pro-German sentiments or from antagonism over the damage done by our Typhoons we were unable to ascertain.’2
The last action for the 4th Division in the Scheldt campaign took place when tanks of the British Columbia Regiment and a company of the Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) opened fire across a channel of the sea on German naval vessels in the harbour of Zijpe at the eastern end of the island of Schouwen. Three were sunk and a fourth damaged.
The Argyll’s War Diary described 6 November as ‘the most peaceful and uneventful day the Argylls had spent in many a month. Even the weather turned in our favour and the troops enjoyed a real day of rest. They were physically refreshed by bath-parades, mentally rejuvenated by “ Sally Anne” movies and internally cleansed by the cognac which the good people of Steenbergen bartered for a few cigarettes or chocolate bars.’
The Battle of the Scheldt was over and thousands of tons of stores would now flow through Antwerp. The British Official History comments:
Sixty days had elapsed between its capture on September 4th and the winning of the land defences of the Scheldt on November 4th. In those sixty days the First Canadian Army had been wholly responsible for the land operations in the coastal area, culminating in the seaborne assault on Walcheren Island, the clearance of both banks of the Scheldt estuary and the freeing of Antwerp’s port. During those two months they had advanced from the Seine to the Scheldt and the Maas, capturing the ports of le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais and Ostend. In that time they had taken 68,000 prisoners and killed an unknown number. They had also bottled up in Dunkirk the German garrison. In this achievement they had themselves suffered some 17,000 casualties of whom 3,000 were killed in action or died of wounds. The part they played in the Allied actions of those months was outstanding.3
Casualty statistics convey little to most people except perhaps, a sense of horror and revulsion at the evil of war but sometimes comparing them can prove enlightening. Twenty-seven years before the Battle of the Scheldt, at the same time of year, 18 October to 15 November, 1917, sixty miles south-west of Antwerp, the Canadian Corps fought a series of battles which culminated in their capture of Passchendaele. The name still strikes horror into the hearts of those who know of the appalling conditions under which the battle was fought and of its terrible casualties. In 29 days the four Canadian divisions lost 15,654 men killed, wounded or missing, 3,914 per division. On the Scheldt the 2nd Canadian Division lost 3,650 in 33 days.
But in the First World War each division had twelve battalions, in the Second, only nine (in both cases, disregarding machine-gun units which were similar in size). At Passchendaele the average loss per battalion was 326 men. On the Scheldt the losses of the 2nd Division were 405 per battalion in much the same length of time.
Without attempting to compare the muddy swamps of Passchendaele with the sodden polders of the Scheldt or to make other than this rough comparison of casualties, it is fair to say that the soldiers of First Canadian Army who fought to free Antwerp had endured much and needed no instruction from their fathers in the horrors of war.
Unlike Passchendaele, no one afterwards would claim that the Battle of the Scheldt had been fought for no good purpose. But there were mistakes. Field-Marshal Sir Alan Brooke noted on October 5, ‘I feel that Monty’s strategy for once is at fault. Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem, he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place.’4 In his Memoirs, Montgomery wrote:
I must admit a bad mistake on my part — I underestimated the difficulties of opening up the approaches to Antwerp so that we could get the free use of that port. I reckoned that the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong.5
But Eisenhower had approved the Arnhem operation and had given Montgomery the task of seizing the Ruhr as well as securing Antwerp. He allowed matters to drift until 9 October before expressing dissatisfaction about progress at Antwerp and making a definite request that more be done. He denied the Canadian Army the use of airborne troops and agreed to the Air Forces’ refusal of the great bomber effort needed to overwhelm the Walcheren defences.
Both underestimated the enemy. When Montgomery overrode Crerar’s plan to have 1st Corps secure Bergen op Zoom, he opened the way for the Germans to send a strong force to counter the 2nd Division’s advance near Woensdrecht, to commit that Division to protecting its flank — in effect, to fighting with one arm tied behind its back.
That he was little interested in the Antwerp operations until required to be by Eisenhower is reflected in his biography which makes only passing reference to them. It is plain that before and during them his concerns were Arnhem, the Ruhr and his disagreement with Eisenhower over who should command land operations. Too late, he did put his weight behind them. But Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander who had assumed control of ground operations himself, never visited First Canadian Army to see for himself what was going on or what was needed in a battle which he considered to be of vital importance to the future of his forces.
During the last weeks of September, when the German’s every effort was concentrated on countering the Allied airborne operations in Belgium and Holland, Crerar could not use the grounded 51st Division for lack of transport. With it he could have attacked the Breskens pocket before the enemy consolidated their positions on the Leopold Canal. Yet during this time Eisenhower was reinforcing the Allied right wing, even to the extent of allowing Bradley to move a division from Belgium to Lorraine. Patton’s Moselle offensive was mounted at the expense, not only of the attack on the Ruhr, but of the operations to open Antwerp.6
Since the First World War Field-Marshal Lord Haig has been criticized for not visiting the Passchendaele front. When General Kiggell, his chief of staff, did so after the battle, he exclaimed ‘My God! Did we send men to fight in that?’ and burst into tears.
Montgomery came to realize his mistake. It is doubtful if anyone ever pointed out to Eisenhower the price paid by First Canadian Army for his neglect. Certainly the Canadians would not have done so. They were far too polite.
