Battle of the Scheldt, 1944: the Canadians open the port of Antwerp

For five weeks Canadian, British and Polish soldiers fought along the tops of dykes, waded through flooded fields and crossed canals under fire, to open a river that ships could not use until the last German gun on its banks had been silenced.²

Background: a port that could not be used

In early September 1944 the British Second Army took Antwerp: on 3 September by the Canadian Encyclopedia and the Juno Beach Centre, on the 4th by the official history. It was one of the greatest ports of northwest Europe and could have solved the supply crisis of the Allied armies, whose supply lines still stretched back to Normandy. But Antwerp lies some 80 kilometers up the Scheldt from the open sea, and both banks of the estuary were still held by the Germans. Until they were cleared, not a single ship could reach the city.³ › Operation Market Garden

The Germans used the respite well. They held the mouth of the Scheldt on both banks and prepared strong defensive lines, knowing what the river meant to the Allies. Walcheren to the north and the Breskens pocket to the south became the two strongest positions, and Walcheren's beaches were lined with heavy coastal batteries.⁴

The Canadians were busy elsewhere. Montgomery had first sent them along the Channel coast to take the ports there, and the 3rd Division was still mopping up in Calais, the last of them, on 1 October.⁵

For weeks the Allied command gave the Scheldt second place. Field Marshal Montgomery's attention was on Operation Market Garden, the airborne drive for the Rhine at Arnhem, which failed in late September. Only in mid-October did Montgomery make the Scheldt the first priority and send the Canadians reinforcements, among them the British 52nd Division.⁶

Armies and commanders

The First Canadian Army was commanded through the battle by Lieutenant General Guy Simonds, standing in for General Harry Crerar, who had gone back to England for treatment of dysentery. Under him were the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Infantry Divisions, the 1st Polish Armoured Division and British formations, including commandos for the landings on Walcheren.⁷

The plan had four parts. The 2nd Division would drive north from Antwerp to Woensdrecht and close the neck of the South Beveland peninsula. The 3rd Division would cross the Leopold Canal on the southern side and clear the Breskens pocket. South Beveland would then be cleared, and finally the island fortress of Walcheren would be taken by attacks from three directions: along the causeway, across the estuary and from the sea.⁸

The ground favored the defender. The estuary is a region of polders, low fields reclaimed from the sea, crossed by dykes and canals; the roads run on top of dykes four or five meters high, and in that flat, wet country no one could move without being seen. Tanks bogged down in the mud. Valour Canada compares it to Passchendaele: fire, wire and mire.⁹

Simonds's answer was to turn the sea itself against Walcheren. Before the ground assault he had the Royal Air Force bomb the island's sea dykes, and the sea poured in and flooded its low interior, isolating the German positions and opening the way for amphibious vehicles.¹⁰

The battle in phases

Woensdrecht and Black Friday

On 2 October the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division set out north from Antwerp to seal off the isthmus that led to South Beveland. Near Woensdrecht and Hoogerheide it met fierce resistance, and the fighting went on for two weeks. On 13 October, remembered as Black Friday, the Black Watch of Canada lost 145 men in a single attack, and all its company commanders became casualties. On 16 October the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry took the high ground over Woensdrecht and held it against counterattacks.¹¹

The Breskens pocket

South of the estuary the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division attacked the Breskens pocket in Operation Switchback. It came almost straight from Calais, with only days to prepare. On the night of 6 to 7 October its troops crossed the Leopold Canal into bridgeheads barely deeper than the canal bank, in ground so wet that trenches filled with water as soon as they were dug. Two nights later the 9th Brigade came in from the water behind the German line, crossing the mouth of the Braakman inlet in tracked amphibious vehicles to land near Hoofdplaat. The Germans had not expected an attack from the Scheldt side, and the Canadians had a firm bridgehead before they could react.¹²

The pocket fell on 3 November. At 9:50 that morning the division's headquarters logged that Switchback was complete, and someone wrote beside it, “Thank God!”¹³

South Beveland and the causeway

Once Woensdrecht was secure, the 2nd Division pushed west along the isthmus into South Beveland from 24 October, and two days later more troops crossed the Scheldt in amphibious vehicles and landing craft. By 2 November both Bevelands were clear. That left Walcheren, whose only land link was a long, straight causeway with no cover at all and mud flats on both sides, too wet to cross on foot and too shallow for boats.¹⁴

The causeway was as straight as a gun barrel. From 31 October the Black Watch, the Calgary Highlanders and Le Régiment de Maisonneuve attacked along it in turn, at a heavy price. On the morning of 2 November the Maisonneuves won a narrow foothold at the far end and clung to it for hours until British troops of the 52nd Division came forward to relieve them. They were among the last Canadian units to fight in the battle.¹⁵

Turning point: Walcheren

On 1 November the Allies struck Walcheren from three sides. British troops crossed from Breskens to Flushing, while Royal Marine commandos landed from the sea at Westkapelle, under heavy fire from the island's coastal batteries. The assault from the causeway completed the ring.¹⁶

The island capital, Middelburg, fell on 6 November, and by 8 November the last German resistance on Walcheren was broken. The Battle of the Scheldt was over.¹⁷

On the Canadian right, the 1st Polish Armoured Division of General Stanisław Maczek fought its way north through the canal country toward the Maas. On 29 October it freed Breda, and by 9 November it had reached the estuary at Moerdijk.¹⁸ › Stanisław Maczek: the general who liberated Breda

Aftermath

Before any ship could pass, minesweepers had to clear the channel of mines, a task finished in late November. The first convoy reached the city on 28 November. No Canadian army unit was at the ceremony, but the leading ship had been built in Canada and bore the historic name Fort Cataraqui. Antwerp became the main supply port of the Allied armies in northwest Europe. For the first time, the official history notes, the armies had a supply base fully adequate for a major advance into Germany, and the port would feed them through the winter and into the last campaigns of the war.¹⁹

The price was high. From 1 October to 8 November First Canadian Army took 41,043 prisoners and lost 12,873 men killed, wounded and missing; almost exactly half of them, 6,367, were Canadians.²⁰

Legacy and memory

The Scheldt has long been the least known of Canada's great battles in Europe. Valour Canada calls it the seldom told story of one of Canada's greatest and most successful efforts of the war, fought while the world's attention was on Arnhem. The Canadian Encyclopedia judges that it played an important role in the Allied victory, because the port it opened supplied the armies through the winter and into Germany.²¹ › The Battle of the Bulge