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With the Jocks
By Peter White The History Press
Copyright © 2009 H.R. Prince
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6707-5
CHAPTER 1
The Attack on Walcheren Island
A route march or two of intense interest in our new surroundings and various other training filled in our time for a few unexpected days' respite. On October 27 1944 the whole village turned out to wave a tearful departure, displaying a depth of emotion which touched us deeply. Our convoy bumped and splashed over roads breaking up under excessive war traffic until we pulled up in the village of Kleit, 10 miles due east of Bruges. The Germans had pulled out about three weeks before. It was a poor village and conditions were rough, though happily we still had civilian billets, of a rather squalid type in most cases. As an officer billeting men one made a note of each address, owner's name, how many men they could take and whether they would have beds of straw. The householder was then eventually compensated by the Burgomeister. Not all householders would take payment however. Some explained that they were making a small return for their liberation.
My billet was a garage run by a rough walrus-whiskered peasant. His small son delighted in playing football about the cobbled street, kicking a clanking German helmet. His usual opponent was a scraggy 13-year-old youth who sported an imposing pair of German officer's jack-boots. He boasted: 'I haf shot de schwein ven he leef dis fillage!' So saying he attempted to borrow my rifle to demonstrate his claimed feat: 'Here, I will make you see how vos done, yes.'
The Jocks were intrigued with the churchyard. 'Each tombstone has a *** photey of the poor devil inside Surr!' The sanitation and hygiene in these small Flemish villages was really primitive and still probably as it was centuries before. Perhaps a need to provide fertiliser for the overpopulated land dictated this in part. The village public convenience was initially rather a shock. Its position was blatantly indicated merely by villagers using a particular spot in the village which was entirely devoid of any surrounding structure. The adaptable Jock accepted this and other aspects of Flemish village life with little comment and without batting an eyelid. The church was the most popular building in the village and people shuffled to and from it from dawn till dusk.
That we were much closer to the enemy now we gathered from several indications. Two of these puzzled us a lot until we heard that V2 rockets were falling on London. In the daytime, to our north, the sky sometimes displayed a thin vertical vapour trail which rose from a slow start with unbelievable acceleration until within seconds it had passed straight up out of sight. At night, a star-like light replaced the vapour trail to indicate the rocket's course.
Tangible evidence of the fact that our first action was soon to come and that it was going to be an unusual one was provided by the arrival of a convoy of fourteen tank transporters in our village carrying strange cargo. These Weasels which they unloaded were small brothers of the amphibious Buffaloes.
Swiftly following this, word went about that we were to attack the port of Flushing on Walcheren Island. The assault was to be carried out from the wrecked shell of a small port called Breskens opposite Flushing and on our side of the Scheldt estuary. It was to be a combined land, sea and air operation. A miniature 'D' Day. On this attack rested the clearing of the approaches to the vital supply port of Antwerp, the key to any further effort to break through into the north German plain. For this operation, we were to be under command of the Canadian 1st Army, to the delight of our own attached Canadian officers. Opposing us on the island were 15,000 German troops, a mixture of Wehrmacht, marines, SS and AA men, backed by masses of guns, interconnecting massive fortifications, mines and torpedoes. The island dominated the estuary and even the loading up of our assault craft would be under enemy observation and fire. That the Germans were grimly determined to hold on, we soon realised. If confirmation were needed, a captured proclamation read: 'The defence of the approaches to Antwerp represents a task which is decisive for the future conduct of the war. After overrunning the Scheldt fortifications the British would finally be in a position to land great masses of material in a large and completely protected harbour. With the material they might deliver a death blow at the north German Plateau and Berlin. For this reason we must hold the Scheldt fortifications to the end. The German people are watching us. In this hour the fortifications along the Scheldt occupy a role which is decisive for the future of our people.'
The Sunday before the attack the Padre held a Battalion church service on the Kleit village green. Because of the circumstances it proved a solemn and moving occasion. I think we were all much more thoughtful than usual and sincere in prayer. Though we were all trained nearly to the pitch of overtraining in all that human ingenuity could devise to condition us to what we were likely to meet in battle, including training with live ammunition to 'Battle inoculate' us, and endless schemes to physically and perhaps mentally exhaust us; we all realised thus far that we had met only molehills as compared with a possible Everest. The biggest unknown factor was the mental reaction of the individual, especially of those in responsibility. What part would fear play? How well could it be overcome, or hidden? The tense realisation dawned ever larger that the lives of one's friends and one's own life would depend on split-second decisions in an unknown world of utter chaos.
Before in life one had been accustomed to planning and looking ahead in terms of days, weeks or even years of fair certainty. Now, we realised squarely, for the first time perhaps, that one's future appeared to take a dip out of sight into the unknown only a matter of hours ahead. At this point in thought it became very clear that for any faith in continuity at all, one had to search for something outside of human structure and organisation on which to rely; something which would not change; where the future was not a human responsibility.
The service over, the CO gave a short talk to 'put us all in the picture'; to give an idea of what was expected of the Battalion, the Brigade and the Division in this formidable task. As he spoke, I glanced round at all the rugged friendly faces and felt reassured. We were all in the same boat, but it was difficult not to wonder a bit, to think of the families of each at home. Where would each be in a couple of days, a week hence?
In view of the difficulties of getting vehicles over to Flushing it was decided to leave the carriers and anti-tank platoon out of the initial attack. This at first seemed to mean that Jimmy and I and our men would not take part, but we found within a few hours that we were assigned to a job on the beach. There we would have to cope with every scrap of food, ammunition and stores needed for the battle. We were pleased to find that Capt Tammy Youngson and Frank Clark were also assigned to this. 'Uncle Beach', at which the landings would take place, and the only spot available, was only 85 yards wide! If Jerry was accurate with any guns and mortars, to survive the initial assault it seemed we would be in for a thin time. In case casualties were steep, it was decided to institute a system called LOB – Left out of Battle. One or two officers, a few NCOs and a handful of men would take a turn out of battle from each company, to form a nucleus round which a unit could be more easily rebuilt with replacements. However, after this, our first attack, we were to find ourselves so continually short of men that the idea never could operate properly. A pocket of Germans holding out near Blankenberghe on the coast had to be eliminated before the attack. To this end a large artillery programme was laid on to fire all night at these Boche, before swinging on to Flushing. This barrage was to lift off the beaches and into the town as No. 4 Commando, the first wave, went in to secure a bridgehead before dawn. 4th KOSB were to pass through if possible before first light to secure the northern part of the town, followed by 7th/9th Royal Scots and the 5th KOSB. Some of 4th Commando were free Dutch.
At the same time another force would be landing farther up the coast at Westkapelle. The Canadians with 156 and 157 Brigades were already on the go attacking along the Walcheren causeway to the back door and on 28 October had secured the north by an attack on South Beveland. Once Flushing had fallen we were to work up the banks of the Middleburg canal and the railway track to link with the other two Brigades. Just before the assault the RAF were to breach the Walcheren Dykes, letting the sea through to isolate the blockhouses with which the island was peppered and to isolate the fortifications round the rim of the island. As this took place HMS Warspite would be pumping in 16-inch shells onto the German coastal batteries and other strong points on Walcheren.
The RAF promised a 'Stonk' on the town just before the attack. Flares were dropped, but the weather must have been unsuitable for bombing for the raid never came off. The Typhoons, though, gave wonderful close support with their rockets and cannon on obstinate strong points. The operation was to be an intensive small-scale repeat of the Normandy landings.
Detailed preparation and planning was rushed ahead. The final Battalion briefing conference took place in a little estaminet in Kleit just as the 284-gun barrage opened up at 10 pm on 31 October, like a thunderstorm to the west, lighting the sky with a fitful pale light and sharply silhouetting the roofs of the village houses from which the Flemish villagers spilled to watch and wonder.
Inside, in the warmth of the estaminet, briefing dragged on until about one in the morning. At the end one or two of the officers slipped sealed envelopes to the 2i/c, who would be 'left out of battle', in case they should not survive.
It was a pretty miserable wait for the Battalion up in Breskens. The orchestra of battle noises, still evilly new to our ears, crashed and shrieked in preparation for the performers to appear, the first-night effect on nerves and stomach being felt in proportion to the scale and importance of the performance. All were new actors.
Breskens turned out to be a smashed heap of bricks and matchwood, reeking with a sickly smell of burning and of bodies trapped under the rubble, with which we were to become so familiar. Our objective over the water, Flushing, stood out clearly in the daytime as a row of buildings, crane gantries and chimneys about 2 miles over the estuary. That night the buildings showed only as burning husks shimmering amid a sequin-twinkle of explosions. So far, very few shells had been reported coming in return. At 4.30 am the time to load the assault craft had come. Down at the wrecked Breskens jetty, the first of the five waves of troops to go boarded the twenty-six bobbing camouflaged assault craft which slid rumbling softly to dissolve in the inky waters of the estuary. Inside each frail craft silent tense men crouched, gripping their weapons with pounding hearts; for each the first battle had already started mentally. The moorings with the known were slipped; ahead, in a few minutes they would be tipped from the flimsy eggshell protection of their vessels into the fear-fringed unknown ... if they got that far.
The Commandos had crossed in darkness to jump on the beach at high tide while to a large extent the Germans' heads were pinned down with the gunfire. C Company, led by Capt David Colville sounding his hunting horn, as also did Charles Marrow with D Company later, were able to get ashore without too much opposition. However, as time went on and the tide out, the following companies fell into water and deep mud under heavy sniping, mortaring and bursts of 20mm cannon and 37 and 88mm airburst shells which plumed the sky and the water about the assault craft and the Jocks. In spite of this, the Battalion was far more fortunate than those landing up the coast at Westkappelle who lost two out of every three landing and assault craft before getting as far as the beaches.
Capt Jim Bennet, our Company commander, was the first casualty among the officers. When on a reconnaisance to Commando HQ in the first wave, he was hit in the spine by a sniper. His batman-runner dragged him out of fire into a shop. Later, Malcolm Nisbet was hit (on the 2nd) and died trying to bring in one of his men under fire.
Communication was very difficult initially as sniping and mortaring had smashed several radios. Next night, Jimmy Wannop, Tammy Youngson, Frank Clark and I rumbled over the inky waters with a group of S Company men in Navy-manned assault craft. As we got close in towards Flushing we began to hear above the noise of shells shrieking in and the throb of engines and lap of water on the hull, the pounding of mortars and shell exploding amid the buildings, the desolate crashing of tiles as the fires spread and rattling bursts of small-arms fire. Spilling out onto the cold and wet of the beach we set straight to work like madmen, all night in unloading ammunition from the assault craft. Despite the Battalion being well established, the occasional crack and sing of a sniper's bullet twanged the darkness. Towards dawn the whole of 'Uncle Beach' and for 50 yards inland was a solid stack of ammunition. We had been worried at about midnight by some of our own artillery screaming in to erupt in flame very 'short' and dangerously close to the many tons of explosive with which we were surrounded. One shell among this and we realised our hours of frantic labour, all the reserve ammunition on which the attack depended, and ourselves, would all go up in one gigantic explosion. As each landing craft was emptied, the steady trickle of casualties brought through the town wreckage to the beach by Weasels were loaded and sent back over the water to Breskens. Serious cases were flown back to the UK within a few hours. Meanwhile, the Weasels had loaded up with supplies and ammunition and had lurched back to wherever the fighting had by then reached.
Our HQ was established in a large coal cellar beneath a tall building near the beach. We retired there for a short rest and to eat in shifts before returning to supervise operations on the beach towards daylight. Several times more there had been the rip of a machine-gun quite close, but it was not until it grew light that we began to realise that we were visible to stray German snipers and that the Commandos had not been able to winkle out all opposition near the beach. A shower of bullets crackled and whined off the pebbles, spattering the woodwork of a breakwater behind us as a chap I was working with carrying a crate of mortar bombs rolled over grovelling erratically in the sand doubled up beside a second Jock who had been hit. We dropped flat, trying to locate the source of fire while noting with apprehension that the spray of bullets had nicked chips off some of the ammunition crates. Neither Jock turned out to be badly wounded. Meanwhile, to continue unloading seemed out of the question, so we fired back heavily at all points from which we suspected the fire might have come: the control cab in a tall crane and a big warehouse with gaping windows in the dock area. Jimmy and I later painfully stalked this building when fresh fire swept the beach, but after several hundred yards of effort we found nothing. A figure appeared for a few seconds at a window to the centre of a row of houses looking on the beach. At the same instant a crackle of fire from the Jocks passed overhead and twanged brickdust around the window frame and the figure, which I was shocked to realise was that of a woman civilian, fell, striking the frame, hit by one or more shots. Some mountain artillery had now joined us on the beach and set out to eliminate one source of the fire while we continued unloading. This particular sniper, with an MG34 machine-gun, had been located, as we suspected, in a crane control cabin amid the gantries. The cabin had been armoured and our small-arms fire could do nothing with it. However, the mountain gunners scored a direct hit over open sights and knocked this pest out of existence. It was ironical that we should, as a Division trained in mountain warfare, be chosen to attack on land actually situated below sea level! No doubt the Germans thought it was some devilish-cunning British scheme. The Jocks summed it up otherwise as the flood waters started to rise.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from With the Jocks by Peter White. Copyright © 2009 H.R. Prince. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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