Terrible Victory Read online

  The thirty-five-year-old officer, who commanded ‘A’ Company, and prior to the war had eked out a living as a teacher in Cobalt, Ontario, was more worried that the promised reinforcements would have long forgotten whatever infantry combat training they had received. Providing enough replacements to keep First Canadian Army’s fighting battalions fully manned was proving a chronic problem. As it was, the 90 men promised to each company fell well below the mandated strength of 126 officers and men.

  But there was no time to brood. Cassidy had to rush to join Algonquin commander Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bradburn and the rest of the battalion’s officers for a hasty reconnaissance of Moerkerke. Everyone crowded into five jeeps for the short trip from their current base in the village of Sijsele. The three-mile stretch of road having been swept earlier by the scout platoon, there was no need for caution. At least, not until everyone was piling out of the jeeps in the village square and a sniper round cracked overhead, causing a disorderly scramble for cover. Any time one of the Canadians ventured into the open, a shot rang out.

  Unable to determine the sniper’s position, Bradburn decided that only the company commanders would join him on the reconnaissance, while the platoon commanders were directed to an inn that was open for business despite the sniper. Noting that the platoon lieutenants settled into the challenging duty of drinking Belgian beer “with visible reluctance,” Cassidy and the other company commanders followed Bradburn into a three-storey building where a corporal from the scout platoon had set up a telescope that, because of intervening groves and lines of trees, provided a limited view of the canals.5

  None of the men liked what he saw. The crossing was to be made immediately to the east of a blown bridge, with each company forcing its way over at different points. Gaining the south bank of the Canal de Dérivation de la Lys (known to the Flemish as Afleidingskanaal van de Leie) without being detected should be relatively easy under cover of darkness. Roads lined by trees and farmhouses extended out of the centre of Moerkerke all the way to each jumping-off point. But the canals constituted a damnable obstacle. Each was ninety feet wide, and separating them was a flat-topped dyke of the same width. The Leopold had been dug in 1842 to drain the low-lying ground to the northeast, whereas the Dérivation was constructed a few years later to drain a wide swath of marshy, sandy country to the north of Ghent. About seven miles east of Moerkerke, the canals parted ways to enter their respective drainage grounds.6

  It was going to be necessary to drag the boats over one dyke to gain the Dérivation and then hoist them up and across the intervening dyke in order to cross the Leopold. Most likely, they would be under fire the whole way. If the Germans were thicker on the ground than promised, the regiment would be slaughtered, but there was neither the time nor sufficient ground cover to permit a small patrol to try and determine what opposition was in place. “So, with some misgivings, the party returned to Sysseele [known by the Flemish as Sijsele].”7

  At 1700 hours, Bradburn convened a final Orders Group and presented the full plan of attack to his officers. The operation had been tightly scripted by 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s headquarters staff, with division giving it final approval. Cassidy’s ‘A’ Company would cross on the far left quite close to the blown bridge. Crossing to the right would be first ‘B’ Company, then ‘C’ Company, and lastly ‘D’ Company, with a seventy-five yard separation between each. The boats were to be delivered to the square by Moerkerke’s church and carried from there to the launching points. Bradburn cheered his officers up considerably when he set out the fire support they could expect. The entire divisional artillery would provide covering fire, along with the brigade’s mortars and the medium machine guns of the New Brunswick Rangers. Forty collapsible wood and canvas assault boats, fourteen reconnaissance boats, and a few civilian craft would carry them over. Special ladders to which grappling hooks were attached would aid the men in climbing the steep dykes. So that the Algonquins could concentrate on the attack, eighty men from the Lincoln and Welland Battalion—the Lincs—would act as paddlers and help manhandle the boats over the dykes.8

  Once across the canals, ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies would clear the hamlet of Molentje, which consisted of about fifteen farmhouses straddling the road just north of the blown bridge, while ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies advanced four hundred yards across open fields to secure a road that extended east out of Molentje, parallel to the Leopold Canal. Intelligence reported that ‘A’ Company would not need to guard its left flank, as the ground to the west was flooded. Once the Algonquins established a firm bridgehead, engineering units would throw up a bridge on the site of the destroyed one. When the bridge was serviceable, 10 CIB, amply supported by armour, would push out towards the towns of Sluis and Aardenburg as the first stage of the advance to Breskens. The attack would go in at 2200 hours.

  Thinking the plan over, Cassidy decided it “had obvious advantages. It was simple and control would not be difficult. The crossing place was not a too-obvious one, yet it had suitable off-loading points for boats and bridging, and the route to the crossing points was fairly sheltered… there were few questions.”9

  WORRISOMELY, THOUGH, the reinforcements arrived late. “It was barely possible to take down their names, assign them to companies, give them the briefest of briefings, and show them what an assault boat looked like, and then it was time to move off.” The Algonquins marched quickly to Moerkerke, where the boats were found next to the ruins of the church and the Lincs’ eighty-man ferrying party under command of Lieutenant R.F. Dickie joined them.10 Each company was met by a member of the scout platoon, who would guide it to the designated launch point.

  As the men shouldered the boats and headed in darkness towards the canals, artillery and mortar rounds thundered down on both shores. A stiff breeze caused the smoke from the explosions to drift like a dense fog around the Canadians, so it was hard to find their way. Following his guide, who was having trouble locating the route, Cassidy led his men “between some stone garden walls, through an alleyway so narrow that the erected boats had to be carried sideways on the men’s heads. Arms and paddles kept slipping out and crashing on the pavement, and there were a good many spluttering curses flying about.”11

  It took thirty minutes for the companies to grope by circuitous routes over a distance that, as a crow flew, was barely more than five hundred yards. By the time the men started heaving the boats up the bank of the first dyke, the artillery program had run its course and the guns ceased firing. As the boats were being launched, German infantry on the opposite shore opened fire with machine guns, rifles, and mortars. But the Algonquins and Lincs—eighteen men to a boat—dug their paddles hard into the icy water and drove into the deadly hail.

  ‘A’ Company was lucky, the fire on its front relatively light. In minutes, it gained the middle dyke. The riflemen leading the scramble up its bank overran several Germans stunned by the artillery fire. Dragging the boats over the dyke, the platoons piled back into them and quickly paddled across the Leopold. Only as they landed did Cassidy realize that just two of the Lincs who were to ferry the boats back had actually joined his party. The rest had either been diverted unintentionally to the other companies or had got lost. As the boats were too large and heavy for two men to manhandle back over the centre dyke, Cassidy decided they would have to stay where they were until it was possible to delegate men to return them. A quick reorganization in the lee of the dyke revealed that only one man in the company had been wounded in the crossing. ‘A’ Company’s attack was going pretty well according to script.

  Not so for ‘B’ Company. The boats carrying Lieutenant Thomas Clair Dutcher’s platoon paddled straight into the line of a 20-millimetre gun’s fire that “raised complete havoc.” Many of the men, including the twenty-five-year-old officer from Elmvale, Ontario, were wounded. Those left unscathed were unable to reorganize for the next crossing because of the gun’s persistent fire. Dutcher’s wounds proved fatal; he died on September 17.
r />   The same gun blasted away at ‘B’ Company’s two remaining platoons, but they managed to cross the first canal and launch into the Leopold. Crossfire from MG 42 light machine guns punched holes in the boats and kicked up waterspouts all around them as the men paddled frantically for the other shore. Overhead, flares popped and illuminated the scene for the German gunners. Tracers flashed past. When the boats touched the dyke, Captain A.R. Herbert’s platoon took cover in its lee and crept close to the 20-millimetre gun position. Then Herbert and several other men knocked it out with well-thrown grenades. Gun silenced, Major J.S. McLeod was able to reorganize his company. Grimly, he determined that an entire platoon’s worth of men had already been either killed or wounded in less than thirty minutes.

  Well to the right of ‘B’ Company, Major A.K. Stirling’s ‘C’ Company crossed fairly easily despite encountering some heavy small-arms fire. But the men landed at a point where the canal was densely lined by tall alders that blocked Stirling’s field of view. He was also blinded by the lingering smoke from the artillery bombardment. Gazing about, Stirling saw through the haze a line of trees to his left that extended inland. He mistook these for ones that had been identified earlier as useful markers to guide his company to its assigned position. Cursing the fact that his radio had stopped working, Stirling led his men to the trees and beyond. He would have liked to establish contact with the other company commanders to confirm his position relative to theirs.

  ‘D’ Company, meanwhile, had launched directly in front of a second 20-millimetre gun. To escape the deadly fire, Major W.A. Johnston ordered his men to paddle well to the right of their assigned landing point. After landing, the company marched about five hundred yards inland and then hooked to the left to gain a position astride the road parallelling the canals, near to where the operational plan called for them to dig in. Scouts soon made contact with ‘C’ Company, which was found to be far off its intended course and almost to the immediate rear of Johnston’s men. Stirling and Johnston met for a quick conference and decided that ‘C’ Company, still close to the canal, should anchor itself in the line of trees and secure the battalion’s right flank from the beachhead up to the road. Once they were in position, Johnston would move through the forward elements of ‘C’ Company at the road and take up the position that had been Stirling’s original objective.

  As ‘C’ Company moved towards the tree line, a flare arced out of it and starkly illuminated the infantrymen. In the distance, several mortars thumped and seconds later the rounds exploded in their midst. Some men fell wounded, but the rest charged recklessly into the trees and overran the Germans who had fired the flares. Equipped with a radio, they had been directing the mortar fire.

  It was now about 2300, and a relative calm descended over the battlefield. Everyone was worn out from dragging the heavy boats across the centre dyke. Nerves were on edge. In Molentje, Cassidy’s ‘A’ Company was clearing the buildings on the west side of the main road. In the darkness, ensuring that every stairwell, room, and cellar held no enemy was difficult. Where the road intersected the one parallelling the canal, Cassidy called a halt. He placed one platoon in buildings covering the road, another in a group of buildings to the northwest that provided good observation out to the left flank, and the third platoon extended along the left flank of the hamlet back to the canal. His headquarters was set up in a large grain mill. Cassidy now discovered that the supposedly flooded area to the west was dry, providing a perfect avenue of approach. Cassidy told everyone to keep a sharp eye turned that direction. So far, his company seemed blessed with only one early casualty.

  To ‘A’ Company’s right, McLeod’s men were progressing more slowly in clearing buildings, due to their earlier losses. Hoping to get an assessment of ‘B’ Company’s advance, Cassidy crossed into its sector and joined McLeod in the street. The two men were just beginning to speak when a Schmeisser machine pistol to the left of the road let out a long burst that sent them dodging for cover. By the time the German handling the gun was driven off, the two majors decided it would be unwise for the weakened company to attempt a renewed advance. Instead, it was to tuck in to the right of ‘A’ Company and then extend feelers out to establish a link with ‘C’ Company. The officers didn’t know that ‘C’ Company was not in its assigned position or that ‘D’ Company was on the rightward edge of that area. A serious gap in the Canadian line had opened. As well, the entire position was now only about 250 yards wide instead of 450, as originally planned.

  Around midnight, the calm was shattered as the Germans opened up with heavy artillery and mortar fire that rained down throughout the bridgehead. Clearly, the Germans had recovered from their initial surprise. It was equally obvious that they knew precisely what the Canadians intended, and any attempt to approach the old bridge site was met by accurate shelling. Despite this, the engineers of 9th Canadian Field Squadron, with elements of 8th Canadian Field Squadron in support, were able to mark the building line for the bridge with white tape, and a bulldozer began grading approaches on the southern bank while under fire.12 Cassidy considered that the setbacks suffered so far were relatively minor. With the morning, the operation should enable 4th Canadian Armoured Division to bridge the canals and begin the breakout to Breskens.13

  NEWS THAT THE Canadians had forced a crossing of the canals greatly alarmed the Germans. The Algonquins had barely clambered out of their assault boats when General der Infanterie Werner Freiherr von und zu Gilsa, commander of LXXXIX Corps, was alerted to their presence. Summoning his driver, the officer hurried to Lapscheure to meet Generalleutnant Erwin Sander, who commanded 245th Infantry Division, responsible for defending the canals. On September 4, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) in Berlin had emphasized the importance of preventing any breach of the Leopold Canal when it formally designated the Breskens area as “Scheldt Fortress South” and ordered its defenders to “hold out to the last.”14

  The Belgian village of Lapscheure was less than three miles northeast of Moerkerke, so as the two men conferred, the sounds of fighting could be plainly heard. Fifty-five years of age, von Gilsa had entered the army immediately after his nineteenth birthday, served through the Great War, and risen steadily up the command chain since 1939. He was no alarmist, but it was plain that German control of the approaches to Antwerp and Fifteenth Army’s escape route at Breskens could be lost unless immediate countermeasures were taken. Von Gilsa gave Sander “the strictest instructions that the bridgehead must at all costs be eliminated.” If necessary, the corps reserve would be thrown into the battle.15

  Sander was already aggressively unleashing his infantry and artillery against the Algonquins. Patrols carried out by the 936th Grenadier Regiment soon discovered the gap between the two Algonquin companies to the east and those inside Molentje. Using the cover of darkness, the Germans crept up close to ‘C’ Company’s perimeter and hit it hard all along the line. Soon they succeeded in infiltrating between the two forward platoons and the one holding a base position at the canal. With Stirling’s already weakened company strung out among the trees in a line that stretched about 180 yards from the canal inland, the men were unable to hunt down and eliminate the infiltrators.16 When some closed to within twenty feet of the slit trenches that housed Stirling’s headquarters section near the bank, only rapid fire thrown out by Privates George Arthur Wright and A.G. McGuffin manning a Bren gun prevented the position being overrun.

  All contact with Lieutenant Geoffrey John Hunter’s platoon— holding the middle of the line—was lost. Lieutenant K.E. Butler, whose platoon was farthest inland, was wounded and only with difficulty carried safely back to the canal. As the first predawn light began to touch the horizon, Stirling realized his company had been shredded—with casualties upwards of 75 per cent.17

  The Germans were equally focused on destroying the battalion’s headquarters and the engineers vainly trying to bridge the canals. Shortly after the attack had gone in, Moerkerke became subject to heavy, continuous shelling. Moer
kerke was a typical Flemish village, a scatter of red brick houses—some with adjoining pastures and large gardens—and shops loosely clustered around a square where a large church, whose belfry had soared to a height of more than one hundred feet, stood. The tower no longer existed. At about 1430 hours on September 13, knowing the tower would provide the advancing Canadians with a dominating observation post, the Germans had set up an 88-millimetre gun on the edge of Molentje. Nine shells had been fired, each scoring a direct hit, and the tower had collapsed onto the church itself. Tons of bricks and supporting beams penetrated the roof to cause extensive damage within.18 Now the village itself was being slowly battered to pieces.

  At first, the barrage seemed randomly directed, but by 0100 hours the Algonquins realized that the fire was zeroing in on their headquarters in some buildings deliberately selected for their unassuming size and position. The Regimental Aid Post, which had so far taken in only a few casualties, took a direct hit. Roman Catholic Padre Tom Mooney died instantly. Protestant Padre W. Valentine, Medical Officer Captain W.F. Mackenzie, and several attendants were wounded. Walking wounded and uninjured alike hastily evacuated the seriously injured from the RAP into the shelter of battalion headquarters. But when this building suffered a series of direct hits, Lieutenant Colonel Bradburn ordered a general evacuation to another building. No sooner had everyone started setting up the new headquarters than it “became the centre of a well-aimed barrage,” prompting another move.19 The German artillery’s uncanny and precise targeting of the battalion command centre through successive moves seriously disrupted attempts to support operations in the bridgehead.20