-The Journey through World War 2-
The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (Wentforth Regiment)
Operation Vertiable: The attack on Calcar,
February 8-18, 1945.
At this point, the RHLI have witnessed the Battle of Britain in England, the tragedy at Dieppe, the invasion on Normandy, the march into Belgium, and the march into the Netherlands. Now the RHLI were going to make history by striking into German territory. In February 8, 1945 the RHLI were assigned to attack the city of Calcar in the Rhine in February 18 1945. Operation Veritable was arguably one of the bloodiest battles the Canadians encountered during World War 2.. Below are personal excerpts from the historical battle from the RHLI soldiers that lived it.
War Diary: Destruction of the allied artillery
The enemy’s fire was negligible. From the area as viewed about 0900 hours, one ot the impression that every haystack and house on the front was ablaze. Description is difficult, for even along the front that was visible form our OP, the whole picture of destruction was too vast for conception
Major Joe Pigott
The fighting was fierece (Joe Piggott recalled). The previous day the Winnipeg rifles were given the assignment to take a section of the road. They were pretty badly smashed up. We walked to the start line over the bodies of the Rifles, which did nothing to improve the morale of my men.
We were following our barrage, but the Germans had a counter barrage just 100 yards behind ours, and we were taking on hell of a licking. The 88s made it so hot for the kangaroos that some of the companies were dropped short of their objective. We finally got there, but we had about 50 percent causalities
Major Pigott, Securing Sgt Stewart Mofatt after a sniper wound.
I picked him up and half-carried him to a house where I planned to leave him for the bearers to pick up. When I opened the door, there was a German standing there with a stick grenade in each hand. We stared at eachoother. He was pretty scared, I guess, and I think that if I had yelled at him he would have surrendered. Anyway, he flipped the grenade. It hit me on the chest and exploded. I was wearing the body armour which was issued experimentally in Normandy and, while most of the boys had discarded theirs because it was heavy, I kepy mine. The force of the blast went under my throat
Note: The wound forced Major Pigott out of the war.
Private Leo Sloat made three separate trips to rescue wounded men and his absolute disregard for his own safety saved the lives of these soldiers. Later in the night, during another counter-attack, private Slaot had his vehicle knocked out but commandeered another and carried on his relief work many hours
Heroic story: Private Leo Sloat
The Germans began to Counter-attack on the Calcar road
D-Company February 23 1945
We seized a little farmhouse area. It was an ideal defensive position on the reverse slope of a hill. We had hardly dug in when a patrol came over. We captured it. Then we really had time to get our feet down. An hour later, a platoon in strength came creeping in on us, and we knocked it out, to. Before we knew it, there were about 35 German dead and wounded around our positions
Herb Prince, reflects on a German Truce.
He had an iron Cross ribbon, and looked like a mighty capable fellow. The sergeant spoke English and said that he wanted a two-hour truce to pick up the wounded and dead. I thought this would be a pretty good chance to ask them to surrender, but the sergeant only smiled when I did and he replied “No, I didn’t join the army for that.”
As the last casualties were cleared, the Germans sergeant approached Prince and with unexpected sincerity told him that he hadn’t expected such courtesy from Canadians. “We understood that all of you are barbarians and are to be treated as such” he said, “thank you very much.”
Lieutenant Froggett: German tank counter offensive
Herb Prince being shot by a sniper.
We were completely overrun. There were tanks all around us, and my men were fighting hand-to-hand with the paratroops. It was the grizzliest sight of the war for me, I guess. Men were shouting, punching, heaving grenades, firing pistols and swinging everything they could put their hands to. Lieutenant Edwards, my Forward Observation Officer, was with me in the little frame cottage when all of a sudden a tank was pushing the wall down. The forty or so German civilians in the cellar were screaming. Edwards had sighted all his guns the day after we got in position, so he called the artillery down on all of our targets. Then, it looked like the first wave we were fighting was just softening us up. We weren’t making much headway, and tanks were soon all around company headquarters. One of the boys crawled along a hedge and got one with a PIAT. Then Edwards called down everything artillery could send on our positions. All the Germans were above ground, and they got it. We were pretty well dug-in. Boutlet fell fatally wounded, and Lieutenant Ken Dugal came up and took command of the platoon in the right forward position. Boulets batman was badly covered with phosphor and the whole pitch black night sort of turned into a nightmare and we felt that even daylight would be a blessing.
They got Herb Prince, I heard someone say as I hit the ground. Then one of our tanks took apart the only farmhouse where the sniper could have been hiding, while machine-guns ripped through the bush around it to make sure he couldn’t crawl away
The guy on the stretcher across from me was the young German officer I met under the white flag only two days before. He smiled at me, and I was so woozy that I couldn’t smile back. But- just imagine!- he reached over and squeezed my hand. Here we’d just been through a scrap as bloody as Dieppe! Of course, we were both out of the war
Note: The RHLI suffered 125 causalities
The Brigade diary wrote concerning the RHLI
All units done an exceptionally fine job of fighting, and the RHLI ‘fortress’ is an outstanding example of a well planned and executed operation and of the ability of our troops under good leadership and by sheer guts and determination to take and hold difficult ground against the enemy’s best
