Mark Zuehlke - Forgotten Victory: First Canadian Army and the Cruel Winter of 1944-45

First Canadian Army
and the Cruel Winter of 194445

Douglas & McIntyre

Copyright 2014 Mark Zuehlke

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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, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd .
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC , v0n 2h0
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Editing by Kathy Vanderlinden
Cover design by Shed Simas
Typesetting by Diane Robertson
Jacket photographs: top: Colin Campbell McDougall, LAC PA 159561
bottom: Michael M. Dean photo, LAC PA 168908
Maps by C. Stuart Daniel/Starshell Maps
Photos used by permission of Library and Archives Canada
Printed on 100% PCW
Printed and bound in Canada

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd. acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cataloguing information available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 978-1-77162-041-3 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-77162-042-0 (ebook)

The Canadian Battle Series*

Tragedy at Dieppe: Operation Jubilee, August 19, 1942

Breakout from Juno: First Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign, July 4August 21, 1944

On to Victory: The Canadian Liberation of the Netherlands, March 23May 5, 1945

Operation Husky: The Canadian Invasion of Sicily, July 10August 7, 1943

Terrible Victory: First Canadian Army and the Scheldt Estuary Campaign, September 13November 6, 1944

Holding Juno: Canadas Heroic Defence of the D-Day Beaches, June 712, 1944

Juno Beach: Canadas D-Day Victory, June 6, 1944

The Gothic Line: Canadas Month of Hell in World War ii Italy

The Liri Valley: Canadas World War II Breakthrough to Rome

Ortona: Canadas Epic World War II Battle

Other Military History Books by Mark Zuehlke

The Canadian Military Atlas: Four Centuries of Conflict from New France to Kosovo (with C. Stuart Daniel)*

Brave Battalion: The Remarkable Saga of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) in the First World War

The Gallant Cause: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War, 19361939

For Honours Sake: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace

Ortona Street Fight

Assault on Juno

*Available from Douglas & McIntyre

Keep going, Alf. All theyve got is rifles and machine guns.

Major Fred Tilston, Essex Scottish Regiment

The Hochwald left no good memories. It was a horror.

Private Charles Chic Goodman, South Saskatchewan Regiment

You really hunker down and pray to God that you come out of it all right, because you cant do anything for anyone.

Major C.K. Crummer, Lincoln and Welland Regiment

When will it all end? The idiocy and the tension, the dying of young men?

Lieutenant Donald Albert Pearce, Highland Light Infantry Regiment

Preface

T he winter of 194445 was the worst northwest Europe had experienced in fifty years. For the Allied and German troops facing each other along the European fronts from the North Sea to Switzerland, conducting combat operations was gruelling. Many soldiers who endured that long, cruel winter remembered it as the worst of their lives. Despite the dreadful conditions, the war raged on. In First Canadian Armys sector extending across the breadth of Holland, rivers separated it from the opposing Germans. Later to be known as the Winter on the Maas, this was a time of intense patrolling, of fighting small, nameless skirmishes and the occasional larger action to achieve limited objectives. While soldiers endured, their generals planned. No plan called for First Canadian Army to break through the Germans facing them and liberate Holland by direct assault. Instead, eyes fixed eastward toward Germanys Rhineland on the west bank of that great river. It was here that the final destruction of what remained of Germanys elite divisions would occur. And First Canadian Army would be the destroyer.

On February 8, 1945, Operation Veritable opened the last great Canadian offensive of the war. The battle raged for thirty-one days. Horrendous weather conditions rendered the bloody fighting all the more bitter. When the last shots were fired on March 10, the way was open for the final advances that would carry the Allies to victory. First Canadian Army had won one of the wars most decisive victories.

So it is surprising that the Rhineland Campaign figures little in the national memory of World War II . It has, in fact, been largely forgottengenerally consigned to a couple of short chapters in books surveying the course of Canadas full participation in the war. Forgotten Victory is intended to redress this historical oversight.

When I find that little has been written about a battle or campaign, my first thought is that there must be little historical record to draw upon. Inevitably, this proves not to be the case. In various archives, I found thousands of pages of relevant documentsoperational plans, reports, personal accountsan almost overwhelming bounty of riches about the Rhineland Campaign. I was also fortunate to find numerous interviews of veterans involved and to be able to interview several personally. Not as many as in past books. The veterans are passing away at a frightful rate, and for many their memories are not so clear these days.

At the end of the Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theatre of World War II , Chicago Daily News reporter Robert Casey wrote: This was a cataclysm observed by tens of thousands of eyes and yet a spectacle no man saw. Hundreds of men brought back their little bits of itbits that sometimes fitted together and sometimes didntto make the mosaic in which we may one day see the picture of what happened.

The Rhineland Campaign was a similar mosaicone that involved well over 100,000 Canadian and British soldiers. All retained their individual memories of it. Most of the time, it was possible to take those little bits of memory and fit them together, weaving them in with the official documents and other records to accurately render the mosaic. Where conflicts remained, I sought to examine and compare every relevant piece of information to get as close to the truth as possible. Like the other volumes of the Canadian Battle Series, Forgotten Victory honours those thousands who left their native land to fight a war that was far away and not of their making.

Acknowledgements

W ork on each Canadian Battle Series title brings me into contact with acquaintances new and old who contribute in one form or another. On the veteran front, I was privileged to again interview Charles Goodman about his experiences as a very young soldier in the Rhineland. By phone, I got to know Stuart Johns over the course of several interviews. Although he was not present, Regina Rifles veteran J. Walter Keith gathered material from other veterans and from regimental records that helped greatly with creating a clear account of this regiments experience in Moyland Wood and other parts of the Rhineland fighting.