Western Europe · Canada, United Kingdom and Poland vs Germany
Battle of the Scheldt
2 October 1944 – 8 November 1944
Antwerp had been captured intact on 4 September but the Germans held both banks of the Scheldt estuary. The First Canadian Army cleared the Breskens pocket, the Beveland isthmus and finally Walcheren, flooded by RAF bombing of its dykes. The first convoy reached Antwerp on 28 November.
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Day by day
— North from Antwerp
The port has stood idle for a month: the docks are intact but the Germans hold both banks of the eighty kilometres of estuary below them. The 2nd Canadian Division attacks north out of the bridgehead to cut the neck of South Beveland at Woensdrecht, across flat polder where every road runs on a dyke.
— Switchback
At 05:30 the 3rd Canadian Division crosses the Leopold Canal behind twenty-seven Wasp flamethrowers into a bridgehead a few hundred metres deep. Three days later a brigade goes round by water in Buffaloes and lands at Hoofdplaat, behind the German line. Clearing the Breskens pocket takes five weeks.
— Vitality
Woensdrecht fell on 16 October after a fortnight in the mud and the isthmus is sealed. The 2nd Canadian Division now works west along South Beveland while the 52nd Lowland Division crosses the estuary behind it in Buffaloes on the 26th and lands south of the Beveland canal.
— Infatuate
Commandos land at Westkapelle at 09:45, into the mouth of the gap the RAF blew in the sea dyke on 3 October and through which the sea has flooded most of the island. A second force crosses from Breskens into Flushing before dawn. The support squadron of landing craft loses nine of its twenty-seven ships drawing the fire of the coastal batteries.
— Walcheren cleared
Middelburg gave in on the 6th to a company of Scots who arrived across the flood in Buffaloes; the last batteries in the north-west of the island surrender on the 8th. Sweeping the estuary of mines takes three more weeks, and the first convoy berths at Antwerp on 28 November.
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