IN MAY, 1944, before 1st Canadian Corps had fought its first battle in Italy, Ottawa requested the British Government to arrange for it to rejoin First Army as soon as it conveniently could. On 9 February, 1945, the day after ‘Veritable’ began, the Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting in Malta agreed that it should return to North-West Europe.
Operation ‘Goldflake’ began almost at once. The Corps was lifted by sea from Leghorn to Marseilles, from whence it motored up the Rhone valley, its armoured units to re-equip in Belgium, the 1st Division to concentrate in the Reichswald.1
On 15 March, Lt-General Charles Foulkes, commanding 1st Canadian Corps, took over the responsibility for the Arnhem ‘island’ and for planning operations across the river lines into Holland. For the present the British 49th (West Riding) Division was the only formation under his command. The future employment of the 1st and 5th Divisions would depend upon the development of Allied operations beyond the Rhine.
Planning for the Rhine crossing began well before the Rhineland offensive was launched on 8 February. The 21 Army Group attack would be led on the right by the Ninth U.S. Army, crossing in the vicinity of Rheinberg, while Second British Army crossed at Xanten and Rees. 2nd Canadian Corps would be under General Dempsey’s command during the initial stages of the operation (as 30 Corps had been under Crerar’s in the Rhineland), although it would not take part in the initial assault.
Once Emmerich and the Hoch Elten ridge beyond it were captured, Crerar was to bridge the Rhine there and take command of operations on the northern flank.
Before that time 2nd Corps would cross the river and be deployed on the left flank to facilitate their coming under Crerar’s command. Specifically, the 3rd Division was directed to take Emmerich, whose capture was a prerequisite to First Canadian Army’s entering the battle.
For the crossing near Rees, Rockingham’s 9th Brigade of three Canadian Highland battalions were under command of the 51st (Highland) Division. Before the dawn following the initial assault, which began at 9 p.m. on 23 March, the Highland Light Infantry of Canada crossed the river in Buffaloes. Soon they were heavily engaged with enemy paratroops in the village of Speldrop where parties of the 7th Black Watch had been cut off and surrounded. It took two days of house-to-house fighting before the HLI overcame resistance in the village and relieved the British.
On the left of the Allied advance, to quote the Official History, ‘the Canadians had, in fact, drawn in the lottery the area on the British front where resistance was fiercest.’2 During the 24th, the remainder of the 9th Brigade crossed the river and began expanding the bridgehead so that the 3rd Division could move down the right bank toward Emmerich.
Inland from Rees, the initial attack of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders on the 25th was stopped by intense shelling and automatic fire laid down by the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division defending the little town of Bienen. There the road along the Rhine passes through a bottleneck between swamp and open water. Early in the afternoon Lt-Colonel Don Forbes organized a second attack with the help of armour and Wasps. As the light began to fail the Maritimers fought their way into the town at a cost of 114 casualties, 43 of which were fatal. The HLI now passed through and overcame the last resistance. During the morning of the 26th, as their diarist commented ‘Progress was very slow as the enemy fought like madmen.’
Later the same day the Brigade pushed further inland making room for the remainder of the 3rd Division. On the 27th General Keefler, with two brigades across the river, took over the left sector of 30 Corps’ front and at noon next day, 2nd Canadian Corps (still under command of Second Army) assumed control.
In the meantime the attack on the eastern approaches to Emmerich had begun on the night of 27/28 March when the Canadian Scottish and the Regina Rifle Regiments began clearing villages on its outskirts in the face of units of the 6th Parachute and 46th Infantry Divisions.
Vicious street fighting followed in which the 7th Brigade were supported by tanks of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers and Crocodiles of the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. Emmerich had been heavily bombed (‘completely devastated,’ according to the 2nd Division; ‘only Casino in Italy looks worse,’ according to the 1st which passed through the town nine days later).3 Fortified houses and hidden tanks formed the framework of the enemy defences. As the attack moved into the centre of the town, supporting tanks found it almost impossible to manoeuvre in the rubble-choked streets. As expected, the Wehrmacht were not content simply to fight hard, then fall back. On the 30th they mounted a fierce counterattack, supported by tanks and SP guns, against the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. When it failed, resistance began to slacken and by next morning Emmerich was clear of the enemy.
Beyond the town, some three miles to the north-west, the Hoch Elten ridge dominates the river and no bridge could possibly be built at Emmerich until the Germans were driven from it. For several days the enemy positions on it had been pounded by artillery and the Air Force. When the Queen’s Own Rifles and Le Régiment de la Chaudière attacked on the night of 30/31 March they met little resistance. Major Armand Ross commented that the ground was ‘peut-être le plus bombardé dans l’histoire de la guerre.’4
Bridging began next day and by 8 p.m. on 1 April the first of three bridges across the Rhine at Emmerich was open for traffic. One minute before midnight that night Headquarters First Canadian Army took control of 2nd Corps operations east of the Rhine.
On 27 March Montgomery issued orders to his army commanders for their future operations. His intention was to drive hard for the line of the River Elbe between Magdeburg and Hamburg with the Ninth U.S. Army on the right and Second British Army on the left. Meanwhile First Canadian Army would open up the supply route to the north through Arnhem, then clear north-east Holland, the coastal belt eastward to the Elbe, and west Holland. The Ninth U.S. Army was also to assist the American 12th Army Group in mopping up the Ruhr.
When he received a copy of Montgomery’s directive, Eisenhower informed the Field-Marshal that he was changing the main target of the Allies’ eastward thrust from Berlin to Leipzig and, that after the Ruhr had been encircled, the Ninth U.S. Army would no longer be under 21st Army Group. This abrupt change in strategic direction was to have little effect on speeding the end of the war, but it resulted in the Russians capturing every major capital of eastern Europe, including Berlin, Prague and Vienna, and altering, irretrievably, the political complexion of post-war Europe.
During the last three days of March the 2nd Infantry and 4th Armoured Divisions had crossed into the bridgehead. Next day 1st British Corps, which had served in First Canadian Army since Normandy were returned to Second Army. The lower Maas front and the Scheldt islands now came under a new organization known as Netherlands District, which took under its command the 1st Polish Armoured Division and the 4th Commando and 116th Royal Marine Brigades. From its boundary some 30 kilometres west of Nijmegen, the front to the east was covered by 1st Canadian Corps, with the 1st Armoured Brigade south of the river and the 5th Armoured and 49th British Infantry Divisions on the Arnhem island.
The immediate task of the Army as defined by Montgomery was to liberate Holland and to clear the North Sea coast of Germany. The advance into western Holland, that part of the country bounded on the east by the Ijssel river, would take second priority to the operations in Germany.
Resulting from that instruction, Crerar’s plan was for Simonds to advance northward into Holland from the Emmerich bridgehead. South of Deventer he was to launch the 1st Division across the Ijssel river to take Apeldoorn, where it would come under command of 1st Canadian Corps. The remainder of 2nd Corps would clear eastern Holland to the North Sea coast. In the meantime Foulkes would capture the remainder of the Arnhem island between the rivers Waal and Lower Rhine and capture Arnhem. A major maintenance route would then be opened from Nijmegen through Arnhem and across the Ijssel to support 21 Army Group’s operations in Germany. At this stage, early April, it was uncertain whether Foulkes would be required to deal with the German forces in the western Netherlands or, having contained them, advance into Germany on the flank of 2nd Corps.
Simonds directed the 2nd Division to spearhead the advance of the Corps with the 3rd and 4th Divisions on its left and right respectively. It moved on 30 March and by 1 April had reached Doetinchem, 15 kilometres north of Emmerich across the Dutch frontier. Moving behind them, the 4th Armoured Division headed north-eastward. By 2 April both formations had reached the Twente Canal which runs east from the Ijssel to Enschede near the German border. It was defended by the 6th Parachute Division.
The speed of the 2nd Division’s attack that night after a 20-mile advance, caught the Germans off guard. Crossing in assault boats, the Royal Regiment of Canada captured enemy sappers preparing positions for infantry who had not yet arrived. Using rafts, the 4th Brigade moved tanks, armoured cars and self-propelled guns across the Canal. By the evening of 3 April their bridgehead over this major obstacle was secure and 5th Brigade was preparing to continue the advance.
Thirty kilometres to the east, the Lincoln and Welland Regiment had a much stiffer battle in crossing against an enemy who held the far bank in some strength. While the enemy’s attention was concentrated on driving them back, the Lake Superior Regiment made a diversionary attack across some lock gates about a thousand metres to the west. Here they discovered a 30-foot gap suitable for bridging. As soon as the Germans were driven away on the far side, the 9th Field Squadron came forward and, in little more than two hours, had erected a bridge and tanks of the 4th Armoured Brigade began to cross. By next day they had taken the important communications centre of Almelo, 12 kilometres north of the Canal, and were racing toward the Ems river at Meppen across the German border.
Meanwhile on the left flank, the 3rd Division advanced steadily northward, clearing the enemy from the right bank of the Ijssel, their objectives Zutphen and Deventer, the main road and rail crossing points on the river.
On 5 April the 7th Brigade advancing astride the Twente Canal closed in on the eastern outskirts of Zutphen while the 9th moved in from the south and east. In fighting their way across the old water defences of the ancient town, the latter was strongly opposed by young soldiers of a parachute training battalion. When the leading brigades reached the inner perimeter of the town, General Keefler gave the task of clearing it to the 8th Brigade. The 7th was to take Deventer and the 9th to cross the Schipbeek Canal east of that town and continue the advance to the north.
The enemy resistance in Zutphen itself was uneven. In places they pinned our infantry down with sniper and machine-gun fire and were prepared to fight hand-to-hand for their positions. Elsewhere they lacked the tenacity our troops had come to expect. Nonetheless it was not until the morning of the 8th that Roberts’ men, supported by Crocodiles, extinguished the last resistance in the factory area of the town.
Next day the 7th Brigade began their attack on Deventer. Like Zutphen the town lay on the east bank of the Ijssel and its defences were based on a network of canals, streams and drainage ditches for which the Germans were prepared to fight. By noon on the 10th the Brigade had crossed the two main canals which radiated from the town and began to advance toward the outskirts from the north-east and south.
The enemy attempted to hold the line of an encircling antitank ditch but failed. Some fell back to be trapped in the town and killed or captured by the advancing Canadians and the Dutch Underground. Others tried escaping to the west, across the Ijssel through a curtain of fire laid down by guns of the 1st Canadian Division, being heard for the first time in North-West Europe.
With Zutphen and Deventer in this hands, Simonds was ready to launch the 1st Division westward to join 1st Corps. Mean while his other three divisions, which had been joined by the Poles on the 8th, were fanning out to the north and east as they drove the enemy from the eastern Netherlands.
Intelligence reports showed that approximately three German divisions faced 2nd Corps. Crerar had no wish to trap them, since doing so would pin down forces which could better be used in advancing into Germany. He therefore planned to sweep northward and force them to retreat to the east. Montgomery, too, was well aware of the bitter price the Army had paid in reducing the trapped enemy garrisons of the Channel ports and the Scheldt. He approved of Crerar’s strategy.
To help speed the advance, units of the Special Air Service were made available to First Canadian Army early in April. On the night of the 7th two French units, the 2nd and 3rd Régiments de Chasseurs Parachutistes, were dropped in a wide area some 50 to 100 kilometres in front of 2nd Corps. Organized in small detachments of an officer and a dozen men, their task was to prevent the demolition of bridges and of the two airfields at Steenwijk, to cooperate with the Dutch Underground and to provide information on the enemy. Contact with some detachments was made as early as the 9th, but others fought for nearly a week before ground forces reached their area. The small force of less than 700 men killed or captured 350 Germans and added considerably to the confusion of the enemy. Simonds was delighted with their work and reported to Crerar that as well as preventing the destruction of bridges, ‘it was largely through their help that we were able to capture Steenwijk airfield intact.’5
In the centre the 2nd Division was driving hard toward Groningen. Lt-Colonel Peter Bennett, its GSO 1, later commented that the enemy had been unable to muster any significant support from guns or mortars. As a result, his tactics were to hold important crossroads and villages and to defend every water line. When these were breached, he would withdraw, generally at night. However, in the last nine days before the Canadians reached Groningen, the Germans seemed to lose their old skill in fighting rearguard actions. Co-ordinated direction disappeared and he seemed disposed to withdraw at any hour of the day, generally leaving it too late to be successful.6
No sooner had the Germans departed than every village along the route turned out to greet their liberators. Within minutes, fear and repression gave way to carnival. Orange flags waved from every window and, bathed in the warm spring sunshine, the crowds waved and cheered, sang and wept for joy. No one who took part in that advance could fail to be moved by the almost overwhelming gratitude of the Dutch. It was a very emotional time.
On the 13th the 4th Brigade drove back the last German rearguards before Groningen. That evening as they moved toward the southern outskirts they — and the rest of the Division — anxiously waited the first German reaction. In infantry parlance, would the city be ‘soft’ or ‘hard’? If it were strongly held, the battle would be particularly unpleasant.
Any house-to-house fighting is costly in casualties, but here the streets of four-storey apartment blocks would be particularly difficult to clear. To make matters worse, the Dutch Underground reported that most of the population of 140,000 were still in the city. Despite the probability of additional casualties, the Canadians were not prepared to increase the suffering of the Dutch by blowing the Germans from their positions with aircraft bombs or artillery shells.
The answer was not long in coming. The leading company of the RHLI had barely reached the first street when it came under fire. Machine-gun positions, well-protected in basements, covered the roadways while snipers infested the upper storeys. When the Canadians smashed their way into apartment buildings, they met an enemy who was not prepared to give an inch. The bloody hand-to-hand battles which followed were a new experience in this part of Holland and were an ominous indicator of what the battle for Groningen might prove to be. It gradually became apparent that most of the enemy who fought with such ferocity were from SS units raised in Holland. Death in battle or at the hands of their outraged countrymen was their inevitable fate.
Fortunately it was soon found that most of the city was defended by German troops who had easier options open to them.
Next day the 6th Brigade joined the 4th in clearing the city from the south, while the 5th moved in from the west. It took four days before Groningen could be declared free from enemy units but still the Dutch SS, in civilian clothes, lay hidden waiting for an easy kill. Orders were issued to shoot them on sight.
Groningen had suffered little physical damage from the war and its people had continued to go about their business, albeit under the ruthless restraints of the Germans, since 1940. It was also a major supply centre for the Wehrmacht with warehouses of warlike stores and food and a hospital filled with wounded German soldiers. Throughout the city members of the Dutch Underground joined in the battle. ‘In spite of the severe fighting … great crowds of civilians thronged the streets — apparently more excited than frightened by the sound of nearby rifle and machine-gun fire.’7 But the euphoria of the first hours of their liberation soon changed to thoughts of retribution against the hated Nazis, collaborators and the traitors of the SS.
Into this stew of conflicting emotions came the Canadians. For most it had been months since they had seen an undamaged city. The people were friendly and their sympathies were with them, yet the tensions and danger of battle were not over. Every battalion of the 2nd Division had experiences which varied from the bizarre to the ludicrous.
‘We came into Groningen from the west,’ reported Captain Sandy Pearson of the Calgary Highlanders:
I was commanding B Company and we carried portable lifebuoy flamethrowers for the first time. We had pretty heavy house-to-house fighting and used the flamethrowers several times. By evening we had consolidated within reach of the city centre. Sometime during that day, another company had captured a warehouse full of Dutch gin, all marked ‘Reserved for the Wehrmacht.’ Before a guard could be put on, the boys had their blouses bulging with bottles and that night all hell broke loose. Someone tried to shoot RSM Bowen, a Bren carrier was driven into a canal, and in general it was a bad night.
In the early evening, I had a visit from the postmaster, a distinguished man in a morning coat, silk hat, etc. He explained that the Germans were concentrated in the post office which he did not want burned. He wanted me to walk to the post office with a white flag and to persuade them to surrender peacefully. I told him I’d much sooner burn the post office than risk any Canadian lives and he left in a bad mood. Next morning we attacked and the Germans tumbled out in a hurry to surrender.8
The fighting in Groningen ended late on 16 April. The day before, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, who had been protecting the Division’s left flank during the advance, swept on to the North Sea coast and to the town of Leeuwarden, some 50 kilometres west of Groningen. That afternoon they were joined there by the 17th Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars, the reconnaissance regiment of the 3rd Division. With only demolitions to delay them, Rockingham’s 9th Brigade had led the 70-mile advance from Deventer. The garrisons of the North Sea coastal towns were quickly overcome and on the 18th the Queen’s Own Rifles, with tanks and the help of RAF Typhoons, seized the eastern end of the causeway across the Zuider Zee which the Canadians were now learning to call the Ijssel Meer.
To the east the 1st Polish Armoured Division struck northward from Almelo on 8 April, clearing broad areas on the flank of the 2nd Division’s thrust. On the 10th they widened their advance by moving eastward across the German border and the Ems river near Haren, then turned north to advance astride it to its mouth. As they did so, they began closing the escape routes of the Germans in the Dutch province of Groningen. To the west of the river the Poles, and the 1st Belgian Parachute Battalion operating under their command, ran into increasing resistance as they approached the coast. On the 15th they reached the Dollart, the bay at the mouth of the Ems. Between it and Groningen were several thousand German troops, the last of their forces remaining in north-east Holland. Their only route of escape now was by boat from the Dutch port of Delfzijl to the German coast near Emden. For the next four days the Poles worked forward against strong resistance toward the Dutch port.
On the 20th the 3rd Division relieved their Allies of their commitments west of the Ems. Next day the Canadian Scottish Regiment with tanks of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers, closed the noose tighter at the cost to the Scottish of 64 casualties. That day General Keefler learned that his division, in turn, would be relieved by the 5th Canadian Armoured Division, now completing its operations in western Holland.
With the exception of the pocket around Delfzijl, 2nd Corps had cleared the enemy from north-east Holland and would now throw its full strength into a familiar task, clearing the coastal belt eastwards to the Elbe. The Canadian role on the Allied flank promised to produce many of the difficulties they had faced before — crossing canals and fighting over boggy ground too soft for armour. But there was a difference. To the south and east the Russians and the western Allies were crushing the life out of the German Army.
