BILL McANDREW • BILL RAWLING • MICHAEL WHITBY LIBERATION TheLIBERATION Canadians in Europe ART GLOBAL LIVERPOOL FIRST CANADIAN ARMY MANCHESTER IRE NORTH-WEST EUROPE 1944-1945 ENGLAND NORTH SEA BIRMINGHAM Cuxhaven Northampton WILHELMSHAVEN BARRY EMDEN BRISTOL OXFORD THAMES S OLDENBURG UXBRIDGE WESER Iisselmeer D BREMEN LONDON Frinton SALISBURY ALDERSHOT Amsterdam N LYME REGIS D OW Bridport GUILDFORD NS THE HAGUE FALMOUTH PLYMOUTH AMERSFOORT A ALLER SOUTHAMPTON D O REIGATE SEVENOAKS W Rotterdam N MARGATE RIJN L PORTSMOUTH S Crawley NEDER WORTHING CANTERBURY R ISLE Portslade FOLKESTONE E OF Shoreham DOVER H ARNHEM RYE FLUSHING T MINDEN WIGHT Peacehaven N E EMS MAAS NIJMEGEN NEWHAVEN Hastings HERTOGENBOSCH HANOVER OSTEND WESE Erle Lembeck E N G L I S H C CALAIS DUNKIRK BRUGES H A N Wesel R N E L STRAITS OF DOVERBoulogne ANTWERP EINDHOVEN RHINE Hardelot HAMM YPRES GHENT VENLO THE HAZEBROUCK RUHR Lippstadt ARMENTIERES BRUSSELS B München-Gladbach DÜSSELDORF Cherbourg ROER E LE TREPORT St. Valery-en-Caux ABBEVILLE Jülich SOMME L Aachen COLOGNE DIEPPE Düren G MEUSE Le Havre BREST AMIENS I Rouen GERMANY CAEN U N O LISIEUX St. Quentin Remagen B ST. MALO R M M R A SEINE N L I AVRANCHES ORNE D JUNE 1940 Y U T FALAISE X AISNE E T OISE SEDAN M NANTES- B A GASSICOURT O F R A N C E U R N G TRIER Mainz RENNES RHEIMS Y ALENCON PARIS LAVAL MOSELLE RHINE CHARTRES CHATEAUBRIANT LE MANS Sablé-sur-Sarthe ST. NAZAIRE Parcé LO BILL MCANDREW BILL RAWLING MICHAEL WHITBY Commemorative Edition Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands and the End of the Second World War in Europe Original Edition ART GLOBAL Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data for first edition: McAndrew, Bill, 1934- Liberation: The Canadians in Europe Issued also in French under title: La Libération. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 2-920718-59-2 1. World War, 1939-1945 - Canada 2. Canada. Canadian Armed Forces - History - World War, 1939-1945. I. Rawling, Bill, 1959-. II. Whitby, Michael J. (Michael Jeffrey), 1954-. III. Title. D768.15.M32 1995 940.53’71 Project coordinator: Serge Bernier Reproduced by: Canadian Forces Directory of History and Heritage, 2005 Photographs of war art for Canadian War Museum by William Kent Jacket illustration by Stéphane Goeffrion inspired by Alex Colville’s painting Infantry near Nijmegen Holland Printed and bound in Canada by Lowe-Martin Printing Cet ouvrage est publié simultanément en français sous le titre de: La Libération. Les Canadiens en Europe Originally published by Éditions Art Global Inc. 384 Laurier Avenue West Montréal, Québec Canada H2V 2K7 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission of the Minister of Supply and Services Canada. © Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada (1995) Catalogue number: D61-4-1995E TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE FROM THE GOVERNOR GENERAL 9 WORDS BY THE MINISTERS OF NATIONAL DEFENCE AND VETERAN AFFAIRS 11 CHAPTER I PURSUIT 13 CHAPTER II SCHELDT 35 CHAPTER III WINTER 59 CHAPTER IV SEAWARD 95 CHAPTER V RHINELAND 125 CHAPTER VI FINALE 145 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Dr. Bill McAndrew, an infantryman turned historian and leader of numerous battlefield tours to Europe, was author of Canadians and the Italian Campaign, 1943-1945 and co-author of Normandy 1944: The Canadian Summer (with Donald Graves and Michael Whitby) and Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Canadian Army, 1939-1945 (with Terry Copp). Dr. Bill Rawling, an historian at the Directorate of History and Heritage, is a co-author of the official histories of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force, and author of several studies of military engineer and medical history. His Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914-1918 is a standard reference on the Canadian Corps in the First World War. Michael Whitby, a naval historian, is co-author of Normandy 1944: The Canadian Summer. He has published widely in naval journals on twentieth-century sea warfare. He is currently the senior naval historian at the Directorate of History and Heritage responsible for overseeing the three-volume official history of the Royal Canadian Navy. (PA 173416) (PA CHAPTER I PURSUIT It’s really quite the thing to go through these houses. I then remembered the old Canadian towns; we are always the first troops in the town, hockey team’s song, so I roared as loud as I could and the French people go mad with joy when “Les Canadiens sont là.” Well, it worked swell; they see us. No sooner do we enter a town, than in five minutes the streets were jammed tight with every house has flags of the Allies and France, French people. All I did for the next hour was and they just plaster the tanks with flowers. I had kiss beautiful girls and drink wine.1 quite an experience of my own a few days ago. Once the cork popped from the bitter bottle We had been travelling all day and about 8 o’clock that was the Falaise Gap, in late August 1944, the we stopped just outside of a town by the name campaign in northwest Europe changed irrevocably. of Béthoncourt-sur-Mer. We were to stop for the Throughout the summer, following the massive night, but we had to find out if there were any assault landing on 6 June, Canadians, Britons, enemy there or not. So our platoon officer, sergeant, and Americans fought grimly to break out of their and myself were told to take a jeep and to recce the confined bridgehead against an enemy determined town; we put a machine gun on the front of to drive them back into the English Channel. Early the jeep and I got the radio set. The idea was to in August the Germans mounted a fatal offensive go like the devil right to the centre of town and to split the Allied lodgement, but the Americans strung if nobody fired on us, OK, but if we were fired on a noose around them by sending tanks and infantry to come back. We set off across the open field on to in a wide sweep towards the Loire and the Seine. the road and right in to town without no trouble. The Canadians and British then attacked south from We stopped at the town centre, got out and did not Caen to meet the Americans and trap the Germans see a soul; we did not know what to do; we could not go back with a report like that, and yet there 1 D Hist, Private R.E.C. Bradley to his mother, was not enough of us to look through all the 6 September 1944. 13 in the Falaise Gap. While fighter-bombers attacked block the withdrawal of the enemy survivors across relentlessly from the air, the Allied breakout was the Seine, and second, ... to drive quickly across the transformed into a spectacular pursuit. Even before Pas de Calais to capture ports to facilitate the trap was sealed, General Omar Bradley’s tanks our maintenance requirements, and the flying and infantry had reached Orléans, Chartres, and bomb sites in order to diminish the effect that the Dreux, and on 25 August General Leclerc’s 2nd French “V” weapons were having on the United Kingdom.2 Armoured Division entered Paris. Others swept up Canadians were on the left flank of the charge the Seine towards Rouen to meet the lead units of through France. Next to them was General General H.D.G. Crerar’s First Canadian Army. M.C. Dempsey’s Second British Army, and on Athough decisively beaten in Normandy, the its right were General Courtney Hodges’ First Germans had exacted a severe price. The three and General George Patton’s Third United States Allied Armies together suffered more than armies, both in General Bradley’s 12th Army 200,000 casualties, and the vicious holding attacks Group. On the far right flank was General Alexander that Canadians conducted around Caen ensured that Patch’s Seventh US Army, which had landed on their costs were cruelly high. Normandy repeatedly the Mediterranean coast of France in mid-August demonstrated how a well trained and finely tuned and was moving up the Rhône River Valley. unit could be shattered within minutes by a few The Canadians’ immediate task was to clear any shrewdly placed enemy machine guns or mortars. Germans remaining south of the Seine; its next Infantry battalions lost more than half their original was to cross that river, isolate the Le Havre peninsula, riflemen, and at least that many non-commissioned and push across northern France into Belgium. officers and platoon and company commanders. General Crerar directed I British Corps, on the Army’s In the first week after the invasion alone, the assault left flank, to clear the coastal sector. On its right, units of 3rd Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade Lieutenant General G.G. Simonds drove the three had taken almost 3000 casualties, one third of them divisions of his II Corps to the Seine on separate killed, and 2nd Infantry and 4th Armoured divisions axes: Major General Charles Foulkes’ 2nd Infantry had comparable losses in July and August. By early on the left towards Bourgtheroulde and Rouen, autumn, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had the Major General Daniel Spry’s 3rd Infantry in the centre highest casualty rate of any in General Bernard towards Elbeuf, and Major General Harry Foster’s Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, and 2nd Division 4th Armoured on the right towards Pont de l’Arche.