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By the fall of 1944, the Allies had broken out of Normandy and were driving across Western Europe. Paris had been liberated, Belgium had fallen, and the German war machine was being pushed back toward its homeland. Victory seemed within reach. But there was a problem—a logistical nightmare that threatened to grind the entire Allied advance to a halt. The armies, stretched thin and desperately needing supplies, were still dependent on supply lines running from the beaches of Normandy. The solution? The port of Antwerp, one of the finest deep-water harbors in Europe, which had fallen into Allied hands intact. There was just one catch: the Germans still controlled the Scheldt Estuary, the winding waterway that provided access to the port.
Without clearing the Scheldt, Antwerp was useless. And so, in October 1944, the task of opening the waterway fell to the First Canadian Army, supported by British, Polish, and other Allied units. It would become one of the most grueling, mud-choked, and brutal battles of the entire war.
The terrain was a nightmare. The Scheldt Estuary was a low-lying maze of flooded fields, winding rivers, and heavily fortified islands. The Germans, under General Wilhelm Daser, had turned the region into a fortress, with well-dug defenses, artillery emplacements, and fanatical troops determined to hold their ground. The Canadian soldiers faced an enemy that would fight to the last man. Worse, they had to fight through swamp, mud, and waist-high water, where every step was a battle against the terrain itself.
The offensive began in early October 1944. The First Canadian Army, under General Harry Crerar, launched a series of grueling assaults across four main sectors:
First, the Canadians had to clear the Breskens Pocket, a heavily defended German stronghold on the southern bank of the Scheldt. Here, troops had to wade through flooded fields under relentless German fire, often forced to fight at close quarters, clearing bunkers one by one. It was slow, grinding work—street-to-street, trench-to-trench combat that left little room for mercy.
Then came the assault on South Beveland, a narrow peninsula leading to the critical island of Walcheren. The fighting was ferocious. The Canadians and British had to push forward through an exposed bottleneck under constant artillery and machine gun fire. The Germans had flooded the fields, leaving the Allies to fight in knee-deep mud and waterlogged trenches.
The final and most difficult battle was for Walcheren Island itself. The island was the key to the Scheldt, heavily defended with German bunkers, artillery, and crack troops. The British Royal Marines and Canadian infantry launched amphibious assaults, storming the island under withering fire. The fighting was hellish—street-by-street battles in the ruined towns, with soldiers slogging through flooded streets and engaging the enemy at point-blank range.
By early November, the battle was finally won. The Scheldt was cleared, and Antwerp could now be used to supply the Allied armies. But the cost had been staggering. The Canadians had suffered over 12,000 casualties, and the battle had been fought under some of the worst conditions of the war. It was dirty, brutal, and often overlooked in the grand scale of World War II’s epic battles. But without it, the road to victory in Western Europe would have stalled.
The Battle of the Scheldt was not glamorous. It was not the kind of battle that made headlines. But it was absolutely essential. The men who fought there endured some of the worst conditions imaginable—drenching rain, endless mud, and relentless enemy fire—all to secure a crucial supply route. It was, without a doubt, one of the dirtiest jobs of World War II.