On to Victory

The Canadian Liberation of the Netherlands, March 23—May 5, 1945

Mark Zuehlke

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781553658139
• eBook ISBN:
  9781553656197
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The eighth Canadian Battle Series volume is the little-told story of the tense final days of World War II, remembered in the Netherlands as "the sweetest of springs, ” which saw the country’s liberation from German occupation.The Liberation Campaign, a series of fierce, desperate battles during the last three months of the war, was bittersweet. A nation’s freedom was won and the war concluded, but these final hostilities cost Canada 6, 298 casualties, including 1, 482 dead.With his trademark "you are there” style that draws upon official records, veteran memories, and a keen understanding of the combat experience, Mark Zuehlke brings to life this concluding chapter in the story of Canada in World War II.May 4, 2010, will mark the 65th anniversary of the Netherlands’ liberation.

PART ONE

OVER THE RHINE, THEN, LET US GO

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[1]

No Possibility of Doubt

“THOSE ARE THE kinds of things that make you an old man,” Brigadier Stanley Todd thought, as he meticulously worked through the minutiae of his current artillery fire plan. So many variables, so many possibilities for error, for an overlooked detail to cost Allied lives.¹ On Todd’s shoulders lay much of the responsibility for the largest and most complex artillery program the western Allies had ever fired. As II Canadian Corps’s artillery commander, Todd was responsible for half of the 3,500 field, medium, and heavy guns supporting Operation Plunder.²

The artillery-firing plan was just one piece of an intricate puzzle that included devising a scheme to sneak all the gun regiments assigned to II Canadian Corps’s sector into position unseen by the German observers on the Rhine’s opposite bank.³ There were “so many guns,” Todd thought at first, “that we didn’t have enough real estate to put them on.” Methodically, he and his staff had sketched positions on the maps from Kleve eastward to just short of Wissel, checked the ground, and determined where each and every gun could be sited and hidden.⁴

II Canadian Corps and the xxx British Corps to its right held a stretch of the Rhine overlooked by higher ground on the German side. Hoch Elten—a 270-foot wooded ridge to the west of Emmerich and almost opposite Kleve—provided the Germans with a bird’s-eye view while concealing them within the trees. The forest rendered their own guns invisible to the British 2nd Tactical Air Force fighter-bombers hunting them.

To blind the observers on the heights, First Canadian Army used smoke generators to cloak the river shore and ground behind throughout the buildup to Operation Plunder. Gradually, as Second British Army had come up alongside the Canadians, this screen had been widened. Newspaper reporters declared it a “man-made sixty-six mile long fog.” Knowing that a sudden lift of the smokescreen on the day of the attack to enable the Allied artillery to find their targets would alert the Germans, the Canadians had the smoke generators roar and spew their clouds on some days and on others lie silent. During these “no-smoke” days, preparations for the offensive lessened, so that the front looked idle.⁵ When the generators fired up again, men and machines moved at a furious pace.

The gunners particularly depended on the smoke. Lieutenant Colonel Roland Humphreys Webb first saw 12th Canadian Field Regiment’s assigned position immediately east of Wissel on March 11.⁶ “Scarcely any cover,” he grumbled.⁷ The “position would have been impossible had there been no smoke screen along the length of the Rhine,” he wrote, and only if it was maintained until the guns went into action could “the area be considered suitable.”⁸ Captain Thomas Bell was less sure of its suitability. “Our proposed gun position was within small arms and mortar range of the enemy. The future did not look too promising!”⁹

Because of the no-smoke days, gun pits could not be dug, since the disturbed earth would be a telltale sign. Instead, when the guns were brought up under cover of smoke, they were carefully scattered “behind buildings and hedges.” Even with the cover, men visited their gun areas only on foot to prevent leaving any vehicle tracks in the soft earth.¹⁰

The 7th Canadian Medium Regiment’s position was about a mile back from Wissel and next to the hamlet of Till. Captain A.M. Lockwood considered the smokescreen “a very remarkable thing. Thousands of canisters were kept burning.” Behind it, the regiment moved into place two hundred shells for each of its sixteen 5.5-inch guns. There was nothing discreet about a medium gun. Each weighed 5.5 tons, had to be towed by a six-ton tractor, and required a ten-man crew. Its shells weighed seventy-nine pounds each and could range out 11.25 miles, with the gunners capable of firing two rounds a minute.

All the artillery regiments stowed their ammunition and vehicles in barns or carefully camouflaged under netting in farmyards. They worked in a land devoid of civilian life, for the Germans had been forcibly evacuated from the farms, villages, and towns. Military police maintained an exclusion area that stretched back two miles from the river shore.¹¹

Through the long, lingering winter, the gunners had been mired in mud—first on the Maas and then during the Rhineland Campaign, which had won the ground where they now worked. Suddenly on March 21, the first day of spring, the muck disappeared, and they returned to “the dust-choking days of Caen and Falaise.”¹² Towing the medium guns to their final hiding positions, Lockwood saw other reminders of those dry summer days in Normandy after the invasion. Provost officers directing traffic at each road intersection looked the same as then, “caked in muddy sweat, with black bushy eyebrows and a rim of dust around their goggles.” Again smoke saved the day, concealing the great dust clouds that billowed up behind the hundreds of vehicles plying the roads, laden with everything that had to be brought up to the river before the start of the great offensive—one that transcended any in size and complexity that Twenty-First Army Group had carried out since the D-Day invasion itself.¹³

EVEN BEFORE THE Rhineland Battle had ended on March 11, with First Canadian Army’s southward advance meeting the northeasterly drive of Ninth U.S. Army’s XVI Corps at Wesel, the Allied command had been planning to cross the Rhine. Fed by alpine glaciers in eastern Switzerland, the 820-mile-long Rhine descends between Austria and Liechtenstein, serves as the border between much of Germany and France, and enters German territory before splitting west of Emmerich into several branches in the Netherlands and draining into the sea. This latter stretch is a study in confusion, with the various arms undergoing rapid name changes and running off in different directions in their seaward quest.

On September 17, 1944, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery had learned the hard way how this maze of rivers west of Emmerich could defeat grand military ambitions. Seeking to bring the war to a rapid end with a deep penetration into the German industrial heart-land, Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden had dropped three airborne divisions to capture a series of strategically vital bridges across these rivers, while the British XXX Corps carried out a sixty-mile-long dash up a narrow highway to relieve each in turn.

An intricate plan in which every phase had to succeed with clockwork precision, Market Garden began to unravel almost immediately as one setback followed another. Out on the tip of the spear at Arnhem, the 1st British Airborne Division had dropped to seize the rail and road bridges over the Neder Rijn, as this stretch of the Rhine was known. These crossings were Market Garden’s ultimate prize, the bridges enabling Second British Army to plunge deep into Germany’s heart. Despite heroic attempts, the British paratroops failed to capture the bridges and were instead surrounded by a superior German force within the city. Lacking the bridges, XXX Corps was unable to reach the embattled paratroops. On September 25, Montgomery accepted failure and ordered the paratroops to evacuate their position. By this time, only about 2,500 of the 10,000 dropped remained in the fight. A total of 2,163 were successfully evacuated by engineers manning a flotilla of small boats in the darkness. Many of these engineers had been Canadians, men of the 10th, 20th, and 23rd Field Companies, Royal Canadian Engineers—involved because their large motorized storm boats had greater capacity than anything the British possessed.

With Market Garden’s failure, Montgomery had realized—as did Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commander General Dwight G. Eisenhower—that the best place to cross the Rhine was north of the Ruhr, between Emmerich and Wesel. Montgomery argued that there should be only one Allied attempt on the Rhine and that it must be his to command. Eisenhower, however, favoured establishing a second bridgehead more than a hundred miles upstream between Mainz and Karlsruhe, because having two crossings would render the Ruhr industrial zone vulnerable on two flanks and also position the Allies well for armoured breakouts into Germany’s heart.

The British objected, fearing that the dispersion of resources and manpower would jeopardize success. By this stage of the war, the difference of opinion was tiresomely predictable. Repeatedly the British had advocated concentration of strength while the Americans favoured overwhelming the Germans with operations across a broad front. Eisenhower’s temperament and training inclined him to favour the American position so ardently presented by both Twelfth U.S. Army Group’s General Omar Bradley and his Third Army’s General George S. Patton. But the Supreme Commander could not simply dismiss the British, particularly as Montgomery was backed by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alexander Brooke, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Consequently, Eisenhower sought compromise. With the Americans still closing on the Rhine, he agreed that Montgomery could proceed first with Plunder and promised the resources to enable its launching “with maximum strength and complete determination.”¹⁴

Scheduled for March 31, Plunder was advanced by a week. On March 9, Montgomery convened a meeting of his army commanders—First Canadian Army’s General Harry Crerar, Second British Army’s General Miles Dempsey, and the U.S. Ninth Army’s Lieutenant General William H. Simpson—at his headquarters in Venlo, Holland. The Ninth Army had been seconded from Bradley’s command to Montgomery’s during the February Rhineland Campaign. For Plunder, it was reinforced by stripping Patton of his 95th Infantry Division and five artillery battalions.

It is unlikely that any other American general was better suited to serve under Montgomery than Simpson. A tall man, who shaved his hair to the skull, Simpson possessed a self-deprecating wit that fit well with the British temperament. The fifty-six-year-old sought at every turn to mesh seamlessly into the British command structure, despite the fact that most Americans found both Montgomery and his staff arrogant and idiosyncratic.¹⁵

Montgomery came to the meeting with a well-devised plan courtesy of Dempsey and his Second Army staff. While the Canadians and Americans had been winning the Rhine’s west bank, Dempsey had worked out how to “isolate the northern and eastern faces of the Ruhr from the rest of Germany.” At forty-eight, Dempsey was a highly experienced soldier who had entered the army in 1915 after graduating from Sandhurst Military Academy and won a Military Cross while serving with the Royal Berkshire Regiment in the Great War. In 1940, he had led the 13th Infantry Brigade through to its evacuation at Dunkirk, garnering a Distinguished Service Order. Dempsey first served under Montgomery in North Africa, commanding the Eighth Army’s XIII Corps, and subsequently played a key role in planning the July 1943 invasion of Sicily. In January 1944, Dempsey returned to Britain to command Second British Army. Montgomery considered him a “first class” army commander, whose loyalty to the field marshal and his opinions was beyond question.¹⁶

Montgomery’s relationship with his third army general had always been more fractious. Harry Crerar had served Montgomery briefly as commander of I Canadian Corps in Italy before assuming command of First Canadian Army. Each man’s personal style and temperament grated on the other. Fifty-six-year-old Crerar was fussy about proper dress, a stickler for detailed and extensively written operational plans, and a prickly Canadian nationalist. He was also shy and retiring. Montgomery dressed casually, preferred terse and often orally delivered operating instructions, and was an outspoken, shameless self-promoter. In Italy, Montgomery had concluded that Crerar had no idea how to fight a corps and appeared to think the same of the man’s handling of an army, even after his most capable performance during the Rhineland Campaign. Eisenhower had taken note, however, extending personal “admiration” for how Crerar “conducted the attack.”¹⁷

Lieutenant General Sir Brian Horrocks, who had served under Crerar as commander of the British XXX Corps, thought the Canadian “much underrated, largely because he was the exact opposite to Montgomery. He hated publicity, but was full of common sense and always prepared to listen to the views of his subordinate commanders . . . I grew to like him very much, though, I am afraid I must have been a terrible pain in his neck, for during part of this long-drawn-out battle I was feeling unwell . . . The outward and visible sign was that I became extremely irritable and bad-tempered, yet Crerar bore with me very patiently.”¹⁸

Command was taking its toll on Crerar. He had visibly aged during the Rhineland Campaign. Always a heavy smoker, he was now smoking more cigarettes than ever. The resulting hacking cough was so bad his batman moved out of the general’s caravan.¹⁹

At least one of his subordinates emerged from the Rhineland Campaign convinced that Crerar should no longer command the army. Major General Dan Spry thought Crerar “too old for it and [that] a lot of his thinking was back in 1917-1918. He didn’t get along with Monty . . . My own feeling was that, although I liked the man and never had any difficulty with him . . . at his age, and compared to Guy [Simonds]—who was really on top of the situation—[we] might have been better served with Guy in command.”²⁰

Spry liked the forty-one-year-old II Canadian Corps commander despite acknowledging that he could be “icy cold.” When angered, Simonds would not shout or become agitated. Instead, his jaw set, his eyes glinted, and his words and manner left “no doubt what he wanted. [He was] very straightforward, determined. He ranked with Monty, way above most.” Although Spry found Crerar an able enough manager, it was Simonds, he thought, who really commanded. “Lots of corps and [divisional] plans were Guy’s. [He then] got Crerar’s okay.”²¹

Simonds’s meteoric rise from major to lieutenant general in just three and a half years had led many to think he would replace Crerar. Indeed, Crerar’s evacuation to England in September 1944 with jaundice had resulted in Simonds leading the army through the Scheldt Estuary Campaign and raised expectations that he would retain command. Certainly Montgomery had lobbied for this. However, Crerar had returned in November and been promoted to the rank of full general.²²

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BY THE TIME Montgomery convened his March 9 meeting, the Rhine assault plan was well massaged. The general intention, Montgomery told his three army commanders, was to “cross the Rhine north of the Ruhr and secure a firm bridgehead, with a view to developing operations to isolate the Ruhr and to penetrate deeper into Germany.” Two armies—the Second British and U.S. Ninth—would force the crossing between Rees and Rheinberg. On the left, Second Army would cross with its XXX Corps in the area of Rees, while XII Corps struck near Wesel. Right of Wesel, the Ninth would protect Second Army’s flank with crossings at two points along its six-mile frontage from Wesel to Rheinberg.

The primary thrust would be delivered by Second Army’s XII Corps at Wesel because this town, with a pre-war population of about 24,000, was a vital rail and road communication hub. Once a lodgement here was secure, XXX Corps would expand the bridgehead northward, so the Rhine could be bridged at Emmerich. The Americans would meanwhile widen the bridgehead southward.²³

To hasten the expansion, there woul...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Epigraph
• PREFACE
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE - OVER THE RHINE, THEN, LET US GO
• PART TWO - DELIGHTED WITH THIS ENTIRE SHOW
• PART THREE - BREAKOUTS
• PART FOUR - RISKY BUSINESS
• [EPILOGUE]
• APPENDIX A: - PRINCIPAL POLITICIANS, COMMANDERS, AND UNITS IN THE LIBERATION CAMPAIGN
• APPENDIX B: - THE CANADIAN ARMY IN THE LIBERATION CAMPAIGN
• APPENDIX C: - CANADIAN INFANTRY BATTALION
• APPENDIX D: - CANADIAN AND GERMAN ARMY ORDER OF RANKS
• APPENDIX E: - ARMY DECORATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• NOTES
• GENERAL INDEX
• INDEX OF FORMATIONS, UNITS, AND CORPS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Copyright Page