Vincent J. Curtis
10 Feb 2019
April 1945, in the words of one regimental war diary, “which commenced with our push northward from our concentration area at the Rhine, was undoubtedly the most turbulent and widely travelled month the battalion had spent since leaving England.”
After the closure of the Falaise Gap on 21 Aug, 1944, the 2nd Canadian Corps advanced to the River Seine and crossed it at Elbeuf and Rouen. September saw the liberation of Dieppe, the investment of Dunkirk, and the liberation of Belgium’s Ostend and Bruges.
Stiffening German resistance required the 2nd Canadian Corps to mount formal operations: Wellhit to capture Boulogne and Undergo to capture Calais and Cap Gris Nez.
October, 1944, saw the mounting of Operation Switchback to clear Belgium north of the Albert Canal and Operations Vitality and Infatuate to clear the South Beveland peninsula and Walcheren Island.
A phase of static operations commenced in November and compassed the period of the German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge.
The advance resumed in February, 1945, with Operation Veritable, the attack on the Reichwald Forest, and then Blockbuster, which comprehended the battle of the Hochwald Gap and the capture of Xanthan on the Rhine River, the traditional western border of Germany.
The 2nd Canadian Corps pushed eastward into Germany near the border with the Netherlands, in the area known as Lower Saxony. With the coming of April, the end of the war was in sight. The Soviets were pushing westward from the Vistula River in Poland into pre-1939 German territory. The Americans, spearheaded by General George Patton’s Third Army, was knifing eastward through the belly of the beast towards Prague, Czechoslovakia.
German resistance became sporadic: dangerous, unpredictable, and frustrating. Some infantry units were experiencing four or five KIA/DW’s every day, along with half a dozen to a dozen wounded. Most of these casualties were caused by sniper fire, artillery and mortars, and rockets known a “Moanin’ Minies”. The occasional machine gun caught the unwary out in the open. Although these daily losses seem small, after ten days to two weeks they add up. A fully manned infantry battalion mustered only five hundred in those days, and infantry companies often fielded only fifty men.
Men began experiencing the “getting short” syndrome, first acknowledged in the Vietnam War. (As a tour was coming to an end, men got very cautious and took no risks hoping not to get killed just before they came home.) Patience with German resistance was wearing thin. The war was clearly lost, PW’s were coming in every day, yet pockets of needlessly fierce resistance were encountered.
At Friesoythe, this impatience exploded. The 4th Canadian Armored Division, under the command Maj-Gen Chris Vokes, had to take this German town which was believed defended by about 200 paratroops. The civilians had evacuated. The Lake Superior Regiment assaulted the town on 13 April and were repulsed with two dead and nineteen wounded. Next up were the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, under the command of Lt-Col Fred Wigle. Since the LSRs had attacked from the west, Wigle decided to march at night around the town and attack at dawn from the east.
The plan worked beautifully, except that advancing companies missed a group of about fifty paratroops. These Germans attacked the battalion tactical HQ, which was behind the advancing companies. Wigle was killed, shot in the back by a sniper. Lt Alan Earp (later OC, CD and HCol) was shot through the head, but survived. The town was secured by mid-morning, but when the troops heard of the death of their CO, all hell broke loose. An enraged Vokes, who commanded 1st Div at Ortona against the German 1st Parachute Division, ordered Friesoythe razed in reprisal of Wigel’s death. The Argylls needed no encouragement. Crocodiles (flame-throwing tanks) were brought in and burned down the town, the stone buildings were demolished, and the rubble used to rebuild roads that had been heavily cratered.
The end of April still didn’t herald the end of resistance.
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