The Canadians — The Unsung Heroes of the Allied Invasion

The Dominion of Canada, along with other members of what was then known as the British Empire, declared war in 1939 at the start of World War II. Canada, like Australia and New Zealand, was independent and autonomous—the decisions of these countries were entirely their own.

Over the next six years, Canadian soldiers, airmen, and sailors, served with great distinction in every theater of the global conflict. Canada committed itself to the war: with a population of only 11 million it supported an army of over 1 million men.

Dieppe

The story of Canada’s contribution to D Day starts two years before, on August 19^th, 1942, when the Allies launched a seaborne assault on the French port city of Dieppe, in the catastrophic operation codenamed Jubilee. The purpose of Jubilee was to take the city as a trial run for what eventually became Operation Overlord. Allied troops would land, seize the city, and then withdraw in an orderly manner. The operation would assess German defensive capabilities, the quality of their communications and radar, and their aerial and naval response. The bulk of the landing force—5,000 men out of a total of 6,500— was made up by men of the 2^nd Canadian Division.

In the event, almost everything went wrong.

• The naval and aerial bombardment failed to knock out many enemy strong points and machine gun nests. The Royal Navy lost 33 landing craft and suffered over 500 casualties.
• Many armored vehicles could not cross the shingle beaches and those that did could not penetrate the city. Every single tank was lost.
• Infantry disembarked from landing craft straight into the teeth of withering machinegun fire and were mowed down by enfilading fire. Almost no soldiers reached the city and were soon forced to retreat or surrender.
• The Luftwaffe flew its new Fw 190 fighters in large numbers and Fighter Command’s Spitfire Mark Vs were overmatched. The Allies lost over 100 aircraft and the Luftwaffe less than 50.
• Only one of the special commando targets was taken, led by the extraordinary Lord Lovatt and the equally extraordinary French commando Philippe Keiffer. Overall, 1,000 British commandos suffered a 25% casualty rate.

The Canadians, who made up most of the ground forces landing on the beaches, suffered a 68% casualty rate, with almost 4,000 men killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

Lord Louis Mountbatten, the future Prince Phillip’s uncle, was the commander with overall responsibility for planning the raid and its execution but escaped any censure.

D Day

Unlike Dieppe, the Canadian landings on Juno beach were a successful—so much so that the Canadians advanced the furthest of any of the five beachheads. They were the only Allied forces to reach their target line, codenamed the Oak line, before falling back to the intermediate Elm line by nightfall, when the enemy 21^st Panzer Division reached the sea between Juno and Sword beaches and threatened their flank.

Juno was well defended with several heavily armed strongpoints (Wilderstandnests). Approximately 21,000 troops landed and suffered approximately 1,000 casualties, giving Juno the highest casualty rate after Omaha.

I have written about D Day in other blogs, but the nearby maps provide an overview of Canadian forces’ successes against stiff opposition.

Massacres

On the following days the Canadians resumed their advance but had the extreme misfortune to be facing the 12^th SS Panzer Division, which was known for its brutality, having already killed dozens of French civilians on its way to Normandy. Many of the members of the 12^th were graduates of the fanatical Hitler Youth ‘Hitlerjugend’ organization.

During several days of savage fighting beginning on June 7^th, the SS, under the command of Kurt Meyer, unsuccessfully attempted to force the Canadians back to the beaches. Both sides took prisoners as the battle ebbed and flowed, but, against all rules of war, the SS executed almost 160 Canadians in several separate incidents, simply shooting most in the back or head. Many of the victims were from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, the Sherbrook Fusiliers, and the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

After the war Meyer was tried and condemned to death but was released in 1954. He published his memoirs in 1957 with the title ‘Grenadiere,’ a version of history which glorified the SS as apolitical gladiators. He became a leader in far-right politics and died in 1961, seventeen years after Private Doucette.

Caen and the Pocket

The Battle of Normandy raged for eleven long weeks. The Germans concentrated their defenses south of the British Sword and Canadian Juno beaches, in and to the south of Caen, in order to prevent an Allied breakout that would trap the German 7^th Army and its supporting Panzer divisions south of the Seine. Eventually this allowed the US armies, which were further west, to break out into Britanny and sweep around eastward to envelop the German army south of Caen in the Falaise Pocket. I have detailed these operations in previous blogs.

All this put the Canadian army at the heart of the most intensive fighting in the Normandy campaign, first to take Caen and then southward to take Falaise and Chambois, the northern jaw of the Pocket.

In the spirit of recognizing unsung heroes, a crucial component of the Canadian order of battle was the Polish 1^st Armored Division, which faced the full fury of the retreating, wounded, SS Panzers at Hill 262 at Mont Ormel.

This, one can argue, was the anvil upon which Hitler’s Army Group B was beaten into defeat and headlong flight.

The Channel Ports

As soon as the Falaise Pocket had been closed the barriers on the road northward into Belgium and therefore into Germany swung open. In general, the Allies planned to push northward in three columns. Bradley’s US armies would be on the eastern flank, to the right, closest to southern Germany. Montgomery’s British would be in the center, pushing through Belgium into Holland and then swinging east into northern Germany. Oh, by the way, someone had to open the Channel ports, so the Canadians got the job of driving up the left, western flank.

The following table records the Canadians’ remarkable September. It should be remembered that the Falaise Pocket did not close until August 21^st, so the Canadian army captured or controlled the entire French and Belgian Channel coastline within five weeks. In the meantime, the Allies were substantially dependent on the artificial ‘Mulberry’ harbor towed across the Channel to Normandy.

This remarkable accomplishment was not good enough for Britain’s Montgomery who, always eager to find fault in others, as thin-skinned people often are, complained that the Canadians (who had been substantially weakened by losses sustained in Normandy,) were too slow.

Battle of the Scheldt

The Battle of the Scheldt was the Canadians’ last major battle of their tumultuous 1944. The Allies had taken the port of Antwerp very easily, but it could not be used until both banks of the River Scheldt were under Allied control and anti-shipping mines and obstructions had been removed.

The terrain surrounding the Scheldt consisted of flat ‘polders’—flat fields reclaimed from the sea and protected by dikes, which were easily re-flooded—requiring the Allies to make numerous amphibious crossings and assaults and limiting the usefulness of armor. It took five weeks to clear the two banks and to capture the island of Walcheren at the mouth of the river. Even after the entire area was secure it took three more weeks to clear the channel into Antwerp.

The battle commenced on October 2^nd and Walcheren finally fell on November 8^th. The Canadian army, with its Allied components, amounted to more than 400,000 men, opposing the 230,000 men of the German 15^th Army. However, the 15^th Army, which had been stationed in the Pas de Calais waiting for the ‘main’ Allied attack that never came, was fresh, whereas many of the units in the Canadian army had been fighting since June and were depleted and exhausted.

In addition, Montgomery had given priority for supplies and equipment to the ill-fated Operation Market Garden, the failed attempt to capture the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem in September.

The Canadians suffered approximately 20,000 casualties during the month, while the smaller German 15^th Army sustained some 10,000 casualties but lost over 40,000 prisoners of war.

The Other Army

The year 1944 was over but the war was not. The Canadians would continue to play a crucial role in the final push through the Rhineland into the heart of Germany, leading to the surrender of the Hitler’s forces in May, 1945.

It should also be noted that the Canadian 1^st Army had included many other formations at various stages of the campaign. I have mentioned the Polish Armored Division, but there were also American, British, Belgian, Dutch and Czech forces, swelling the 250,000 strong Canadian forces to over 400,000 men.

So yes, there were indeed three Allied armies in Normandy in 1944, to whom we are deeply in debt.