By David H. Lippman
On February 19, 1945, nine British and Canadian divisions stood on the brink of victory after fighting their way through rain, mud, cold, and determined Germans to break through the Reichswald Forest between the Rhine and Maas Rivers—opening the way for the British assault into Germany’s heartland.
“Operation Veritable” was one of British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery’s set-piece designs, which called for Gen. Sir Harry Crerar’s 1st Canadian Army to attack through the Reichswald as the northern pincer of a two-pronged attack that would break through to the edge of the Rhine on the Ruhr, trapping 150,000 German soldiers in its course. The southern prong, “Operation Grenade,” came under Lt. Gen. William Simpson’s 9th Army. Both attacks were to go in together for maximum force. But the Germans struck first, releasing the sluice gates on the Schwammenauel Dam, flooding the Roer River, preventing the Americans from attacking across it.
Monty ordered “Veritable” forward, anyway, under Lt. Gen. Sir Brian Horrocks’ 30 Corps, with three British and two Canadian infantry divisions leading the attack. Two more British infantry and two armored divisions would follow-up. To back “Veritable,” Horrocks had the support of two powerful weapons: the “funnies” of the 79th Armored Division, a separate outfit equipped with specialized vehicles. These included “Flails,” tanks equipped as minesweepers; “Petards,” tanks equipped with massive mortars to blast open blockhouses; “Crocodiles,” Churchill tanks armed with flamethrowers; “Wasps,” Bren carriers similarly armed; “Fascines,” tanks that could drop a bundle of wood into an anti-tank ditch to enable infantry to cross it safely; “Kangaroo” armored personnel carriers, and “Buffalo” amphibious vehicles, which could swim over flooded terrain.
The battle had begun on February 9, on a nine-mile wide front, with a gigantic artillery barrage of British and Canadian guns that destroyed most of the formidable German defenses facing 30 Corps. On the first day, the British and Canadians gained most of their objectives in drenching rain and increasing mud, taking hundreds of prisoners, destroying German divisions, while taking few casualties.
After that, the drive into the Reichswald turned into an ugly slog, with British troops fighting for yards, but advancing slowly and steadily, taking POWs as they went. The two major objectives were towns that were instrumental parts of the German Siegfried Line. By themselves, the towns were formidable defensive zones. German engineering and slave labor added barbed wire, strongpoints, pillboxes, anti-tank ditches, and machine-gun nests. Cleve fell first, and after that, the front expanded, which enabled Crerar to relieve the command strain on Horrocks, who was fighting the battle while suffering from a 105F fever brought on by combat wounds suffered in North Africa.
Now the 2nd Canadian Corps re-entered the battle, commanded by an emotional opposite to the cheery Horrocks: the dour, cold, and calculating Lt. Gen. Guy Simonds. His corps, consisting of the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Divisions, moved into their positions south of Moyland on February 15. The Canadians had already participated in the earlier part of Reichswald, using their Buffaloes and Weasel amphibious vehicles to take flooded ground. The 2nd Division had fought at Dieppe, the 3rd Division had landed at D-Day.
The two Canadian divisions moved up along graveled roads called “Maple Leaf Up” that had turned to mud, the 3,347 vehicles in each division crawling along. Fourth Field Artillery Gunner George Blackland would visit the battlefield 28 years later, and find the indentations from his gun pits and dug-out pits still there, albeit overgrown with weeds and gorse. The main cause of the traffic jam was Royal Canadian Engineers trying to bulldoze a second track for “Maple Leaf Down” to withdraw casualties and empty supply trucks.
On the 19th, Simonds went into action with his fresh 2nd Canadian Division’s 4th Infantry Brigade, which passed through 3rd Canadian Division to break the hinges of the German line.
But before the Canadians could attack, the Germans did–hurling paratroopers in gray greatcoats and distinctive helmets in the dawn rain and mist against the thin line of the Regina Rifle Regiment. Lt. Buzz Keating told his men to wait a few seconds until they came into range, and then yelled “Up!”
The Canadians did so, guns blazing, hurling grenades. The Germans fled back into the fog, leaving behind dead and wounded. One para overran a Regina position and tried to take POWs. Sgt. Hunt Taylor braced his rifle on Keating’s shoulder and took the German down. Then Taylor thanked Keating for standing still.
The Reginas were “suffering from exhaustion” according to their war diarist from the shelling and the woods, but the Can Scots could still fight, moving on the Bedburg-Cleve road “in a magnificent show of steadiness.” Maj. R.H, Tye, commanding the Can Scots, was wounded by machine-gun fire, and could only crawl, but did so into a shell crater, and did his best to command his troops. The Germans held the high ground with machine-guns and Pvt. Dan Elder, a stretcher-bearer, moved around the wounded men, tending them while ignoring bullets and shrapnel that whizzed about him. He carried a Red Cross flag on a stick and put it in the ground to show he was doing noncombatant work, but the Germans shot at him anyway.
Fifty Germans counterattacked, which forced the Can Scots to dig in, unable to advance or retreat. Men could only suffer and die in place. The Reginas official history noted: “By now Brigade HQ were screaming that the Wood ‘should have been cleared by now and what were we going to do about it?’ The huge casualties list was a mute answer.”
The RHLI consolidated on their objectives 400 yards east of the Goch-Calcar road at 2 p.m. As usual, the Germans counterattacked, and Lt. John Williamson of C Platoon asked Whitaker for mortar support, using the term “Big Brothers,” which actually meant heavy artillery. “We got the artillery on our position alright and it did the job, but it certainly surprised the hell out of me!” Williamson recalled.
Later that evening, the Germans fired a Panzerfaust through the pigpen next to Williamson’s farmhouse, which created a hole through which more paras charged. Williamson had a Thompson submachine-gun he’d acquired from American airborne troops at Nijmegen and fired back, killing the first German who came through. The platoon took care of the rest.
But the 4th Brigade’s relief effort would change all that: instead of attacking piecemeal, Brig. Fred Cabeldu committed 14 field regiments of artillery, seven regiments—a total of 470 guns—a rocket battery, and the Toronto Scottish Machine-Gun Regiment’s medium Vickers machine-guns and mortars in fire support in a timed rolling barrage ahead of the Essex Scottish on the right and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (the “Rileys”) on the left, under future military historian and general, Lt. Col. Denis Whitaker, a veteran of Dieppe. On the flanks were Bren carriers and Wasps, ahead of them 16 Sherman tanks of the Fort Garry Horse, the first Canadian tanks to enter the Reich.
It rained all night and it was still bitterly cold at noon on the 14th. The Rileys’ war diarist wrote, “Such weather was not very promising for an attack…road conditions were bad making vehicle movement slow.”
But the Rileys and the Essex Scots attacked on the 19th, their objective the road that connected Goch in the west with Calcar to its northeast.
Simonds’ plan was to send the fresh 4th Infantry Brigade through the tired 3rd to take the objectives past the Goch-Calcar road, while the Canadian Scots would clear the eastern extension of Moyland Woods and gain more high ground overlooking Calcar.
The two Canadian battalions advanced, riding Kangaroos. The rolling barrage was timed to advance 100 yards every minute-and-a-half to match the standard pace of armored vehicles. Flame-throwing Wasps added to the destruction from the flanks. Ahead lay the objectives: fortified farmhouses on the far side of the objective road.
They were defended by panzer grenadiers of the 116th Panzer Division, paratroopers from Maj. Gen. Hermann Plocher’s 6th Parachute Division, and deadly 88mm anti-tank guns. The 116th Panzer Division’s Chief of Staff was Lt. Col. Heinz-Gunther Guderian, son of the famed German tank genius. Unfortunately, while the Canadians knew the paras and 88s were there, they did not know about the 116th “Windhund” Division and its vehicles.
Whitaker saw a “narrow country road, hard-surface, dead straight, with barely space for two tractors to pass, connecting the market towns of Goch and Calcar. I could plainly see the stubbled brown field sloping gently upwards to the road 2,000 yards away. Dotted here and there were farmhouses and sheds. To reach our objective my men had to cross that short open stretch. But ‘upwards.’ I recall a disquieting thought. What lay over the top?”
Whitaker believed that if he could keep the enemy heads down in the initial assault, “our task would not be too difficult. I had tremendous confidence in our artillery. I reckoned without the rain. It continued through the night, making the ground boggy and treacherous.”
Whitaker worried about his exposed left flank—fighting was still going on in Moyland Wood, and German paras could pop out and attack him. He put Bren carriers and Wasps on the left as well as his anti-tank platoon to address that threat. Then he hopped onto Maj. Harvey Theobald’s Sherman and climbed inside. Whitaker hated riding in tanks—they were obvious targets—but he needed to advance quickly. Perched in the co-driver’s seat, he believed that if the tank was hit and started to burn, he would never escape.
Everything depended on the speed with which the tanks could advance, but as usual, several got caught in the mud. But the infantry and other tanks pressed on. When a Kangaroo towing a six-pounder (57mm) anti-tank gun got mired, Essex Scot Sgt. Don Elvy, commanding the gun’s crew, flagged down a passing Bren carrier and hitched the 2,640-pound gun to the carrier. The whole party kept on to the objective.
On the German side, Guderian’s men drew last-minute reinforcements: a panzergrenadier regiment from Panzer Lehr, under Maj. Helmut Hudel, their tank destroyer battalion, and their panzer regiment. They were a veteran team, but the tank battalion had only 14 Panther tanks. Hudel was impressed by the Canadian gunnery. “Since early morning very strong artillery fire could be heard at the front. The expenditure of ammunition was extraordinary; no one had heard anything like it before,” he said.
The Canadian advance began at noon, and German guns and mines began ripping open Canadian troops and vehicles—Lt. Gordie Holder guided support company carriers to a position to engage the enemy—and was killed in “the first slashing burst of fire from the German 88s.”
Watching the advance, Cabeldu grew concerned as he lost 11 vehicles quickly, mostly to mines. “While for the most part the Kangaroos were able to drop the troops near the objectives, these vehicles were unable to get right onto the objectives because of severe anti-tank fire.”
Riley C Company CO Maj. Joe Pigott also saw many of his men fall. “We were taking one hell of a licking. The 88s made it so hot for the Kangaroos that some of the companies were dropped short of their objective. We finally got there, but we had about 50 percent casualties,” Pigott said later.
Theobald’s tanks reached a milk plant on the Goch-Calcar road, and headed onto open ground. Then two of the troop’s tanks exploded in flame from 88mm guns. Two more were disabled. Theobald saw the German guns, but his radio net was jammed: “It seemed like 75 people were trying for the same airtime! I was screaming, trying to get on the air to the fellows and warn them. It was quite eerie to watch the enemy shells silently hitting the ground and exploding just a few yards away. You could hear nothing except the noise of the motor of the tank and the explosion of our own gun firing. I felt as though I were in a tin box that was going to be hit and brewed up at any moment. I had so much gear on me, I didn’t think I could have ever gotten out if the tank were hit.”
As Theobald stopped his tank alongside an abandoned 88mm gun, Whitaker shouted: “Let me out of this tin can.” Whitaker ran into the creamery and was joined by his Tac HQ team. Theobald continued to struggle to make his voice heard on the radio. Two German shells barely missed Theobald’s tank before it reached the protection of the milk plant. But two of Theobald’s tanks burst into flames.
On the Rileys’ left, Maj. Duncan “Dunc” Kennedy’s B Company was in Kangaroos under heavy German fire. Ordered to bail out, Williamson’s No. 10 Platoon gave fire support while Kennedy led the rest of the company on the Schwanenhof farmstead. Williamson’s 2-inch mortar banged away with all of its 13 smoke bombs to cover the assault. Kennedy’s men disappeared into the smoke’s protective cover. Williamson and his men ran after to catch up, and a machine-gun bullet hit Williamson in the leg, knocking him into a shell crater. A stretcher-bearer put sulfa powder on the wound and bandaged it, while the men gained cover of the farm buildings. Undeterred, Williamson hobbled through the fire to join them.
By now, B Company was dug in, battling German infiltrators who were coming up a ditch 150 yards to the front of the buildings. Williamson limped over to Kennedy to report. As Williamson came up beside the major, who was standing near some machinery, a bullet ricocheted off a piece of it, piercing Kennedy’s stomach just below his belt. Kennedy was carried to the basement for shelter, but refused to be evacuated–he would lead his men from the basement.
Heavy machine-gun and anti-tank fire hit C Company from a hedgerow and small farm on its left flank. Pigott kept his young men moving, despite the heavy fire, warning them, “falter and you die.” Pigott had served for five years in a British battalion in North Africa under a plan that gave Canadian officers combat experience, and was a veteran of D-Day. His eccentricity: he wore an experimental type of body armor issued in Normandy, made of manganese steel plate. It had saved his life on many occasions. In comparison, most of Pigott’s men were in their first engagement, and some had been transferred from supply, ordnance, and artillery units to make up shortages in infantry units. They had little time to practice tactics. Pigott told his men to watch him, follow him, and do what he did. It didn’t work—150 yards short of the objective, German machine-guns opened up, and Pigott’s men hit the dirt.
At that moment, three Wasps burst out of the smoke, under Sgt. Pete Bolus. Pigott pointed at the German positions, and yelled, “There are Germans in the house! Go and burn the bastards out!” Boles turned his vehicles on the farm and attacked.
“The fuel was a black jelly that stayed in a mass like a tube of toothpaste,” Bolus said later. “You’d fire it on the ground—that damned stuff, it would crawl along the ditch and over the top…It would stick and burn and keep on burning. If you ever got it on your clothes you were a goner. It was devastating.” Bolus burned the house and barn to the ground, and incinerated the hedgerow. C Company advanced while the Wasps headed back, out of flame, to rearm.
Now C Company consolidated its gains, with the young men still suffering. Things were made worse when Company Sgt. Maj. Stewart Moffatt was knocked to the ground by a sniper bullet that tore through his jaw—his second serious wound. Pigott picked Moffatt up and took him to a farmhouse. When Pigott opened the door, “there was a German standing there with a stick-grenade in each hand. We stared at each other. He was pretty scared, I guess, and I think that if I had yelled at him he would have surrendered. Anyway, he flipped the grenade. It hit me on the chest and exploded,” Pigott recalled.
The grenade blasted a dent in Pigott’s armor and left him black and blue for six weeks, but it saved his life. A metal shard hit his windpipe and threw him into the farmyard. For both Pigott and Moffatt, the war was over. Lt. R.W. Wight of the pioneer platoon took over C Company. Incredibly, the frightened men held their new position against counter attacks with determination. Then Wight rallied the men and continued the advance, facing a manned German 88 mm gun. “Suddenly a single Canadian tank appeared,” Wight said later. “I had no radio or other means of communication, but somehow by running in front of and alongside the tank, I was able to direct cannon and machine-gun fire directly at the farm and the 88 gun, and at the same time indicate that we would rush the farm.
“The tanker apparently understood. It was now my difficult task to rally the men for an all-out assault on the farmhouse and the 88 gun. It occurred to me that with fixed bayonets, everyone might gain the courage needed for this sort of head-on attack. The presence of some of my own (Pioneer) platoon, whom I had known and respected for months, helped me greatly. I started to sing the Demolition Platoon theme song, ‘L’Amour, L’Amour, L’Amour.’ The men took up the song. Getting close to the building, we charged and threw our grenades. Finally we took the farm and some prisoners.” C Company reached its objective, and then started digging in under German fire.
At nightfall, the Fort Garry tanks waddled off to replenish fuel and ammunition. They were most vulnerable to enemy attack at night. Whitaker and his Rileys awaited a German counterattack.
They were right. At 4:30 p.m., Luttwitz visited the CP of 116th Panzer Division, whose commander, Maj. Gen. Waldenburg was Luttwitz’s cousin. Over dinner, they discussed that very subject by using 6th Parachute Division and more reinforcements: Kampfgruppe (Battle Group) Hausser, of the Panzer Lehr Division. Drawn from German Army demonstration units across the Reich, Lehr had fought fiercely in Normandy and the Bulge, under Maj. Gen. Fritz Bayerlein. However, its well-trained veterans all lay dead in both battlefields and the division as a whole was down to 22 tanks.
The Essex Scottish attacked promptly on February 19 against the various German defenses, and took their objectives by 3 p.m. The Germans counterattacked with infantry and tanks, taking advantage of the Essex’s open right flank. Canadian troops fought back, using up ammunition at a high rate of speed. Maj. Bruce MacDonald’s headquarters tank troop ripped the Germans with machine-gun fire. The Germans called in artillery and mortar fire. McDonald’s loader, tracking the ammo, yelled that his Sherman had only four rounds of AP shot and 150 machine-gun bullets left. A second later, a German shell hit MacDonald’s tank and damaged its radio aerial.
MacDonald saw that the Germans were using a depression on his left to close in on the farm buildings. MacDonald ordered the Sherman of No. 3 Troop, a “Firefly,” into action. It mounted a 17-pounder gun, more powerful than MacDonald’s 75 mm gun, and was designed as a tank killer. The Firefly rumbled past MacDonald…and its track was shot off. But its gun was not. The tank opened fire, and made “many ‘good Germans’ out of the counter attacking force,” MacDonald said later.
Then the Essex Scottish was pinned down and started taking casualties. German fire blasted the Firefly and its crew bailed out. A shell smashed into MacDonald’s Sherman, and “with more alacrity than dignity,” MacDonald ordered his men to bail out, under sniper fire.
Now MacDonald used another wireless set to contact the artillery Forward Observation Officer (FOO) supporting the Essex. All B Company officers were dead or wounded, the FOO said, so he was commanding that company, despite also being wounded.
The Essex’s signals officer, Lt. Kenneth Jennerette, joined MacDonald in a slit trench, where they watched MacDonald’s now useless tank crew head for the rear. The two officers stayed, trying to dig towards a nearby trench to reach fellow Canadians there. But a bullet hit Jennerette’s wrist. “He tried to jump from one slit into another so that he could get bandaged, and with the second shot, the sniper hit him in the abdomen. He was…in considerable pain and I passed him my morphine Syrette…there was then little we could do but watch and keep our ears cocked, hoping momentarily to hear the rumble of missing tanks, plus C and D Companies. They didn’t come, but the Boche did, throwing hand grenades into our slits from one foot away and after most (of the nearby Essex) were wounded, one stood up with his hands in the air and the rest of us followed suit.”
MacDonald alertly tore off his rank badges and any documents that indicated he was an officer. The Germans marched him back into their lines to start a 10-mile trek. MacDonald faked shell shock, staggering listlessly along and fell behind the main column. With only three German guards present, MacDonald was able to slip into a slit trench. When the Germans did notice he had escaped, they could not find him in the dark. MacDonald found Canadian lines, where he brought back intelligence on the location of German artillery positions. For these various feats, he received the Distinguished Service Order.
Joining the Essex Scottish in a Bren carrier was Capt. George Blackburn of the 4th Canadian Field Artillery Regiment, serving as a Field Observation Officer. The future newsman saw the Scots pinned down by German fire from a nearby house, complete with sniper. The infantry summoned a Wasp to deal with it.
“With a terrible roar, a huge ball of flame rolls across the road, instantly setting the house on fire. In a matter of seconds, a white sheet appears at a side door, and a German soldier comes out with his hands on top of his head—and another and another—until there are 26 strapping paratroopers, including an officer lined up in the barnyard, grinning as though it’s funny that a monstrous flamethrower should have been used to burn them out,” Blackburn later wrote.
“But the sight of those sneering faces is good for you: it arouses hate and anger—those foul twins that can sustain a man in battle when all else fails, and which, you now realize, have been missing all day. You feel the thickness disappear from your head and the jerky wobble leave your knees.”
One of the Canadians taking these men POW had just lost his pal by a shot from the farmhouse minutes before the Wasp trundled up, and asked his company commander, Maj. Bob Suckling, “Aren’t we going to shoot them?”
Suckling turned away, but a veteran sergeant put his arm around the Canadian and said, “We don’t do that sort of thing, kid.” Blackburn and his crew drove off to assist the Essex Scottish and the Rileys.
While the Essex Scottish gained a tenuous grip on the farmsteads of Göttern and Brunshof, the RHLI on their left faced an attack by a Panzer Lehr battle group at 8 p.m. In the dark, the German panzergrenadiers and reconnaissance vehicles stormed into action. The Rileys lacked the support of the Fort Garry Horse tanks, which had clanked back to base to replenish ammunition and fuel and carry out maintenance. On their own, the Rileys and Essex Scottish took heavy casualties from German fire.
At 11 p.m., Lt. Col. John Pangman, commanding the Essex Scottish, reported “that the situation about him was becoming critical; his forward area had been overrun, and enemy tanks were firing on his headquarters.” The Rileys reported “fighting fiercely to beat off two counterattacks against (their) left flank, which had penetrated the forward defenses and were slowly overrunning C Company.”
Pangman rode forward in a Kangaroo to see what was going on and the vehicle was disabled just behind the forward companies. Pangman set up his HQ in a farmhouse. By 3 a.m. on the 20th, Pangman and his men were surrounded in the building’s cellar, which had a strongly-built ceiling. Lt. Horace Tucker, the intelligence officer, and some of his men, stayed above to engage the Germans. Tucker cut down enemy troops until he was seriously wounded. The defenders were forced into a basement, where they used a Bren gun to kill Germans descending the stairs. The Germans got the point, pulled back, and unleashed Panzerfausts on the Canadians, setting the farmhouse on fire. A German tank thundered through the building’s wall to collapse the cellar ceiling. Cpl. Armand Kain ran up the stairs and fired two rounds into the tank with no effect.
Pangman ordered his men to destroy the papers and maps, and told his two Bren gunners to get ready to surrender. They told Pangman they didn’t believe in surrendering and refused.
The desperate situation was relieved by Maj. Joe Brown of 4th Canadian Field Regiment (artillery), who was Pangman’s FOO. He reached his regimental HQ and asked Lt. Col. MacGregor Young for artillery fire directly on the building. When Young asked if Brown was certain, the FOO replied: “It’s our last resort…position overrun by tanks and infantry.”
Seconds later, all 24 of 4th Field’s guns opened fire, drenching the area with HE fire, catching many Germans in the open, halting the attack.
The rest of the Essex Scottish weren’t doing too well, either. A Company was down to 35 men capable of fighting. “The early hours of the morning were grim ones,” the Essex Scottish war diarist wrote. “Isolated company groups fought on, short of ammunition, burdened with casualties which could not be easily evacuated and lacking support of the anti-tank weapons with which to deal with the (Mark IV) tanks the enemy had marshaled for his counterattack.”
To the left of the Essex Scottish, Lt. Col. Whitaker was swamped by reports from his Rileys of relentless counterattacks, starting at 8 p.m. German tanks and infantry rolled forward and into a fierce Canadian artillery barrage, separating the infantry from their tanks.
B Company was getting hit head on by tanks. Lt. D.W. Ashbury knocked one out with his PIAT, but at 1:35 a.m., the situation was “desperate.”
Whitaker’s answer was a counterattack of his own. He ordered the battalion’s scout platoon, 25 men under Lt. Johnny Lawless, to do so. The scouts crept silently through the German troops and surrounded the Schwanenhof house, where Maj. Duncan Kennedy’s B Company was trapped. On signal, the scouts started “making a terrific noise, throwing many grenades through the windows before rushing in. The operation was a complete success. 25 Germans were killed or wounded and another 50 taken prisoner; our only casualty was Lawless, who was slightly wounded by shrapnel from one of his own grenades. B Company position was finally stabilized,” Whitaker wrote later.
“Jack Drewry and his gunner crew of two—the latter operating the 19-set from a halftrack right behind my HQ—swung into non-stop action that was to continue through the night,” Whitaker wrote. Drewry called down artillery fire that dispersed the enemy from in front of C Company’s HQ. In 12 hours, 4th Field Regiment hurled 5,400 shells into the small area to help halt eight German counterattacks. The Germans couldn’t see where the Canadian guns were firing from because they used flashless powder.
The impact of this Canadian bloodletting was not lost at higher levels. As the clock ticked down on February 19, Cabeldu let the division’s boss, Maj. Gen. Bruce Matthews, know of the situation. Matthews reacted with alacrity, assigning the 6th Brigade’s Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to Cabeldu, to act as reinforcements or relief.
Cabeldu decided to put them in a defensive line to replace the Royal Regiment of Canada, so that one of his own battalions could be the relief force, opting for brigade cohesion as the vital factor.
Relief was urgently needed. On the 20th, with only 13 combat-effective men remaining, the Essex Scottish D Company withdrew at 3:15 a.m. CSM Les Dixon and Lance Sgt. Bill Moriarty prevented the company from being annihilated by greeting a German attack on their building with heavy Bren gun fire and driving tanks off with their PIAT. The tanks withdrew and shelled the building instead. The Germans could not break through, so they withdrew. But D Company lacked enough men to hold the building, so they had to pull back. Dixon, a decorated veteran of Dieppe, received a second bar to his Military Medal, making him the only man to win the decoration three times. Moriarty also received the same medal.
Cabeldu went to the Royal Regiment’s headquarters and told Lt. Col. Richard Lendrum that if the Royals could “get in quickly they might recover a good many Essex Scottish who would be pinned down in slit trenches.” Lendrum worked out an attack with Young for 9 a.m. The latter was exhausted, but promised the necessary barrage.
Meanwhile, Whitaker’s RHLI held their ground on a damp and cold morning with 400-yard visibility. At 8 a.m., the Germans counterattacked yet again. The Rileys could hear the Germans warming up their tanks in the bitter cold 800 yards away, giving D Company commander Maj. Louis Froggett a good idea where they would attack. He had a 17-pounder anti-tank gun sited against them, and told his men not to fire until the AT gun had done so. Froggett’s plan worked. The gun blasted open four panzers in quick succession, sending German tankers flying out of their blazing wrecks. The Rileys chopped up the infantry.
At 9:30 a.m., still battling mud, Royal Regiment’s A and C Companies attacked, joined by Fort Garry Horse’s C Squadron. “The advancing Royals found that shell and mortar fire constituted the principal hazard in this attack,” wrote the Royals’ official historian. Incredibly, none of the tanks bogged down, and they provided such close support that initial casualties were light and no tanks were knocked out. As A Company reached Goch-Calcar road, the tanks wrecked a 75-mm anti-tank gun and a halftrack mounting a smaller weapon.
By 10:30 a.m., Maj. Jack Stother, commanding C Company, was in radio contact with Pangman, and learned of their plight. Stother told Pangman that “relief was on the way…and to keep his head down.” Soon C Company reached the battered house, finding 18 men holed up in the cellar, some, including Tucker, badly wounded.
Before Stother could arrange to evacuate the wounded, the Germans counterattacked. Stother told Pangman he had to withdraw to reorganize his men to face the Germans. Pangman and his pals refused to leave. When a German officer appeared at the top of Pangman’s cellar, brandishing a grenade, an Essex corporal shot him dead. After that, the Germans left Pangman alone—they were too busy coping with Stother’s men, who arrived en masse at 2 p.m., with Bren carriers to haul off the wounded.
Stother studied the situation in daylight, and declared it “a poor one tactically as enemy tanks could come up very close to it unobserved and fire on it from hull-down positions.” It was clear that one Canadian battalion could not defeat the Germans in the area. The Rileys and Royals went on the defensive against Panzer Lehr, gripping the Goch-Calcar road with determination. The 4th Brigade’s war diary called them the “proud holders of the ground won, ground strewn with the enemy’s dead and equipment.”
On the 21st, the RHLI could report they had knocked out nine Panthers, three SP guns, and two halftracks, but needed 150 other ranks and six officers in replacements. No Riley had been captured. Whitaker “found the men tired but still determined to hold. They were proud of their achievements, despite the cost.”
During the epic stand, Crerar messaged Whitaker: “My congratulations on and admiration of the gallant and most successful fighting carried out by all ranks of the regiment he commands during the last 48 hours.”
Panzer Lehr’s tanks and men made their last counterattack at 6 p.m. Cabeldu responded by sending C Squadron of Fort Garry Horse to bolster the Riley defense, joined by the Queen’s Own Camerons. The measure worked. After two hours of intense fighting, the German attack collapsed. Lt. Lawless and his scout platoon headed off to raid a position that the Germans had used to form up attacks and took them by surprise. Lawless’ men killed 25 Germans and captured 50. The whole bag was all that was left of No 5 Company of the 902nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment.
The situation was hopeless for Panzer Lehr as night fell on February 21. Its survivors pulled out, leaving behind 200 dead men, 11 wrecked tanks and six 88 mm guns, and headed south where it would run into the U.S. 1st Army, which was also driving on the Rhine.
At dawn on the 22nd, the Essex Scottish emerged from its foxholes to find the Germans gone. The Essex Scottish had gone into action with 25 officers and 540 other ranks: it was now down to 17 officers and 395 other ranks. The Rileys took 125 casualties and earned six awards, including Whitaker himself, who added a bar to his Distinguished Service Order from Dieppe. The Rileys were singled out in the brigade war diary for their “outstanding example of a well-planned and executed operation and of the ability of our troops under good leadership and by sheer guts and determination to take and hold difficult ground against the enemy’s best.” The 4th Canadian Brigade’s casualty total for February 19-20 was exactly 400 men.
In Moyland Wood, 7th Canadian Brigade’s Regina Rifles faced heavy German artillery, mortar and Nebelwerfer—on top of regular counterattacks. Rifleman Dwight Small said later, “It was a miracle we held off the Germans! We were firing on the Germans almost constantly and throwing more grenades than I ever had in my life.”
By February 21, Small saw no end to his ordeal. Neither did the Can Scots, who fended off a strong counterattack on the 20th. The battle even wore out the brigade commander, Brig. Jock Spragge, who planned an assault to send the Royal Winnipeg Rifles into the woods to relieve the other two battalions, backed by tanks and Wasps. But after Spragge held his O Croup, Simonds relieved the exhausted Spragge, putting Lt. Col. Al Gregory in as temporary commander. Simonds blamed Spragge for 7th Brigade’s failures, and wanted new blood.
The Canadians approached this battle with the usual methodical nature—five sectors, each 300 yards wide, saturated by artillery 30 minutes before the attack. The heavy guns would be joined by mortars, anti-tank guns, and the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa with their heavy machine-guns. As the Winnipegs attacked the sectors from A to E in turn, the artillery barrage would move down to concentrate on “known, and likely, enemy positions, north and east of the wood.”
The Winnipegs, known as the “Little Black Devils,” drew support from the Sherbrooke Fusiliers’ tanks and Wasps, which would operate in relays. That would ensure the infantry had continuous support. Incredibly, the day was clear and sunny, after weeks of rain. The 84 Royal Canadian Air Force Group could intervene with fighter-bombers.
By 8 a.m., the Little Black Devils formed up behind the Regina Rifles. Kick-off was set for 10 a.m., but German machine-guns had been pestering the Regina Rifles for days, so the Reginas went in early to silence them before the attack. They did so with great efficiency, returned to their trenches, and found the Winnipegs occupying them for the attack. It was postponed 12 minutes, and then both battalions rushed forwards. The tanks took positions on high ground, blazing away with main and machine-guns. RCAF Typhoon pilots saw Germans fleeing into a building and hammered it with rockets.
When the Black Devils attacked, the Germans shot back with the usual rain of artillery and mortars. B Company’s Maj. Harry Badger and his command team were all hit and wounded. Lt. Bob Gammon in D Company was killed. But the advance did not falter. In 40 minutes, the two lead companies had taken all their objectives. A and C Companies of the Winnipegs move in Sector B with Wasps hurling flame at any possible German hiding place. They didn’t kill many—the Germans had fled. When the Wasps used up their fuel, they headed back and were replaced by new ones from the relays. A Canadian report said, “It proved of double value to bolster the morale of our troops while undermining that of the enemy. The fire plan was still carrying on, and the attack was running to schedule.”
But here the Germans had more artillery, and entrenched defenders, as well as snipers. They struck down all of A Company’s officers, putting Sgt. Alf Richardson in charge of the company. “The advance was painful and step-by-step, with close-quarter fighting controlled by the remaining NCOs,” a Winnipeg report noted. “The enemy positions were revealed only when they opened fire at close range. The German paratroopers were well dug-in and camouflaged, and the advancing troops had to crawl forward determinedly to reach cover and fire back.”
When they finally achieved their objectives, C Company had just two officers and 40 men; A Company had no officers and only 25 men.
The survivors of C Company found a well-prepared position ahead of them held by 200 German paras. “The Germans were dug in and supported by mortar fire and airburst artillery, its position ringed with mines and trip wire. But with flame, heavy machine-gun fire and assaulting infantry, the position was stormed and overrun. Some were killed, a number escaped, and only five were taken out alive,” the official report said.
Major Charlie Platt led his men forward with Wasps rolling alongside, using flame power to overwhelm German tenacity. The Germans made three successive counterattacks “but were caught in the open by artillery fire directed by a forward observation officer in the A Company position. A heavy toll was inflicted,” according to the Black Devil report.
By the time the Canadians reached Sector E, the German defenses were down to two machine-guns on the eastern edge of the woods and riflemen in pits. Despite the tough terrain, the tanks advanced. One hit a mine, killing Trooper James Elliott and wounding the other three. The minefield caused many casualties.
Even so, Maj. Hugh Denison’s D Company finally reached the end of Moyland Wood and a narrow row of houses, bristling with paratroopers and freshly-laid anti-tank mines. The Sherbrookes had to withdraw. The Germans counterattacked, hurling grenades and firing submachine-guns from the hip, yelling in English, “Get your hands up!” The forward section’s Bren gun jammed at that moment, and the Germans overran and killed them. The rest of the Canadians shot down many Germans before they withdrew. Lt. George Adams, leading the forward platoon, was briefly blinded by grenade fragments. He was taken to a field dressing station, had his eyes cleaned, regained his vision, went back to the fight, and gained a Military Cross.
The Germans counterattacked twice more, losing six men each time. “Thus,” concluded the Canadian official history, “the obstacle of Moyland Wood had been overcome at last.” The price has been immense: The Little Black Devils had entered the battle with just 207 men, and suffered 105 casualties, 26 killed: a 40 percent rate. The last two were truly tragic: D Company’s executive officer, Capt. Bill Ormiston and his driver, Cpl. George Quovadis, driving to the front with fresh rations in a Bren carrier. It hit a mine and exploded, killing both.
It had been a rough time for the 7th Brigade: the Canadian Scottish lost 168 casualties and the Reginas suffered 134. One-third of the brigade was lost. The Germans had suffered vast numbers of casualties, too, virtually all of them dead…fewer than 200 paras had surrendered, befitting their ferocity. A wounded Canadian soldier, awaiting medical attention, muttered, “Moyland, bloody Moyland.”
But the Reichswald battle wasn’t done yet. British troops were still battling to take Goch. Realizing that defeat loomed there, the Germans began firing off their ammunition dumps before they lost them, and continued to shell the British as they withdrew. To make matters worse, the RAF bombed the 7th Argylls in a navigational blunder, killing four and wounding 19.
The 227th Brigade’s objective was the village of Bucholt and Schloss Calbeck on the east side of the River Niers. They attacked on the 20th with Wasps to add punch, established a bridgehead over the river, and attacked again on the 21st, into violent shelling. The 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers consolidated their positions and faced a night assault by German paratroopers. It was a touch-and-go situation in the dense woods, darkness, heavy German fire, and minefields. The 2nd Gordons struggled to clear the woods down to the Goch-Wesel railway line, amid furious counterattacks. The situation was so serious, that two battalions of 46th Brigade, 9th Cameronians and 7th Seaforths, came in to relieve the pressure, finally clearing Schloss Calbeck. Despite heavy opposition, 46th Brigade took 150 POWs and eight self-propelled guns from Battlegroup Graefing and 901st Panzergrenadier Regiment.
There was nothing left for the Germans to do but concede what should have been obvious from the start: 1st Parachute Army could not hold against the British offensive. General Schlemm gave the order to withdraw from Goch on the morning of the 22nd, and both the 15th Scottish and 51st Highland Divisions claimed to be first British troops into the wrecked town.
In the ruined town, Scottish troops consolidated amid the mud and rubble while the Royal Army Service Corps brought forward three vital morale-builders: hot food, dry socks, and letters from home. Capt. Robert Woollcombe, a platoon commander in 6th KOSBs, wrote, “At last it was Germany; the thought never left you. Germany; it did not matter what we did.” The advancing troops thought about Dunkirk, and one wrote home: “Here in the enemy homeland, a grim satisfaction was the main emotion expressed. Serves the bastards right.”
On the 23rd, the U.S. 9th Army finally began the southern pincer of Monty’s plan, launching Operation Grenade, hurling two corps across the Roer River, despite continued flooding. Backed by airpower and artillery, the Americans crossed the river with only 92 casualties, and were poised to both drive on the Rhine and join with 1st Canadian Army in cutting off 150,000 German troops from retreating to safety.
Montgomery took time to report to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, on the 19th: “We captured Goch today, and the 15 and 51 Divs are engaged in mopping up the town in which we have so far taken 400 prisoners. We have also now got the use of the road Goch-Calcar except at the Calcar end. Having captured Goch we have now got to fight for that ground which will enable us to use the road. I spent all day up in the Reichswald Forest area and visited most of the British divs and found the troops all in tremendous form and very well pleased with themselves. The total prisoners captured in the Veritable Operation are now nearly 10,000 and we estimate that a total of 20,000 Germans have been put out of action. A very great many Germans have been buried by our troops. The recent dry weather has helped us in the road problem and the rivers are now going down. Our total casualties in Veritable Operation are now 3,800 and all these are British except for 400 Canadians.”
The Canadian Official History of the battle, written by C.P. Stacey, had the definitive assessment of the horrific tale: “Let no one misconceive the severity of the fighting during these final months. In this, the twilight of the gods, the defenders of the Reich displayed the recklessness of fanaticism and the courage of despair. In the contests west of the Rhine, in particular, they fought with special ferocity and resolution, rendering the battles in the Reichswald and Hochwald forests grimly memorable in the annals of this war.”
Veritable was over. Thirty Corps now readied the advance south to link up with Simpson, while Simonds prepared the next stage of the campaign, Operation Blockbuster, the drive to Xanten.
Despite this intense activity, the British and Canadians took time to properly mourn their losses. The Royal Regiment of Canada relieved the shattered Canadian Scots on the evening of February 21, and the Scots were met by the skirl of the Essex pipes.
“The shrill, triumphant sound of the pipes gave something to the men that nothing else could,” wrote the Can Scots official history. “Almost automatically, the bone-weary soldiers began to march in step.”
The Can Scots came out with only two officers and 165 men in the four rifle companies. The Essex piper called, “What will you have, boys?” The Can Scots replied, “Cock of the North!”
The Can Scots entered the lines of the 15th Scottish Division, under their second-in-command, Maj. William Matthews, who found himself next to the 15th Scottish pipe major. Both were struck by the tragedy of the situation—the horrific battle…the dreadful weather conditions…the loss of so many young lives.
Amateur soldier Matthews said later of the pipe major’s reaction: “He was a big, tough ex-Scottish guardsman; I’ll never forget him. He was standing there in the moonlight watching our companies come in, some of them with only 10 or 20 men left. There were tears rolling down his cheek, and he turned to me, ‘Makes you think, don’t it, kid.’”
Author David Lippman resides in New Jersey and writes frequently on a variety of topics for WWII History.
One of the things that drew me to write this article was that I had relatives who fought in it with the British Army, including the 11th Armoured Division.
They went on to liberate Belsen, unknowingly freeing other relatives who had stayed behind in Poland and been bagged by the SS. When my grandmother was an official in the postwar British occupation of Germany, she found that they were in a Displaced Persons camp near Belsen, and dashed over there in a jeep with a briefcase full of forms.
After hugs and shared memories — and stress relief — my grandmother broke out her forms and had them sign here, here, here, and here — and they were on their way, legally, to the British Palestine Mandate, and help found the State of Israel.
However, years later, when my family learned about Anne Frank, and how she had died two weeks before the 11th Armoured — the Black Bulls — reached Belsen, they were quite upset. The hard fighting in the Rhineland had delayed them reaching that ghastly camp. They blamed the Germans for fighting on when all was hopeless and their own failures to break through the defenses for Anne Frank’s death.