0peration ELEPHANT got under way at 7.15 A.M. on Friday, 26 January 1945. Ninety minutes before, "in the half-light of the setting moon and the rising sun," the first smoke rounds came down as the artillery started to build up a diversionary screen across the Maas to confuse the defenders. The main screen on the island was laid just before the attack began and it was thickened by smoke pots and artificial smoke generators dispersed around the island in locations thought most likely to blanket the defences. Within a few minutes, one onlooker reported, the entire area "was clouded out and there was nothing we could see." The engineers held their breath as the first vehicle, a half track loaded with smoke containers, crossed the "Mad Whore's Dream." It "hit the steep ramp at about 30 MPH and came down with a tremendous crash," but as "nothing gave way," the relieved sappers exhaled and declared their rickety span to be structurally sound. Under the cover of billowing thick, oily grey chemical smoke, the men of the three Lincoln and Welland assault companies clambered into white-painted Buffalo LVTs (Landing Vehicles, Tracked) and crossed to the island. To a watching war correspondent, "it was a ghost-like sight as the soldiers set out in these amphibious tank-like vehicles."

PzKpfw IV Ausf. J, copyright © Christopher Johnson

The right hand attack went in first. At 7.25 A.M. Major James Dandy's C Company of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, debussing from their Buffalos, prepared to move along the dyke to link up with Major Owen Lambert's A Company, which crossed about a mile and a half to the west. Dandy quickly discovered that he had a major problem - his Wasp carriers, intended to neutralize the German defensive positions, were unable to climb the slippery sides of the south dyke because of the weight of their flamethrowing equipment. This problem would have been discovered earlier and a solution likely found if the Lincoln and Welland Regiment had been given enough time to make a proper reconnaissance of the area over which they had to advance but, as their historian notes, the unit had only taken over positions on the island from the Poles the day before the attack began. As Dandy recalled, the Wasps would

take a run at the thing and the tracks would just spin. I figured if I could get one up, I could tow the others up. I thought maybe I can blow that damn tank off [the back of the carrier] with hand grenades. I backed the carrier up by this canal, pulled the pin out of the hand grenade, and put it near the brackets and walked away. And it just dented the metal. So I couldn't get the carriers up.

Leaving the useless vehicles behind, Dandy's men advanced west along the dyke top towards Lambert's A Company.

Lambert's men, transported with two Wasps to the Veer by amphibious vehicles, had lost one carrier crossing the Oude Maasje. The second vehicle made it safely but coulddt climb onto the dyke. At that moment A Company came under accurate and heavy enemy mortar fire from the north bank but Lambert decided to press on and his men, choking in the harsh acrid fumes of the chemical smoke, moved west along the dyke top toward the two houses code-named GRAPES and RASPBERRY.

The sixty-man canoe party reached the island by way of the "Mad Whore's Dream." When they attempted to launch their craft into the main river channel, however, they discovered that there was an inch of ice on the surface - a fact that had been reported at 5 A.M. by the Algonquin Regiment, who were monitoring river conditions. The party was forced to haul their canoes over this crust of ice to reach open water and by the time they embarked and moved downstream both the men and their weapons were soaked.

Unfortunately, the canoeists' troubles were just beginning. The ice along the north bank of the island forced them to move farther out into the main channel of the Maas where the smoke was less thick, and as they paddled their fragile craft furiously toward the harbour they came under accurate fire from the north bank of the river. Matters were not helped when the wind began to shift, thinning out their smoke cover even more. Lieutenant Lloyd Grose of the Argylls, whose platoon was on the eastern spit of the Veer to hold a "firm base" for the sappers at the bridge, watched horrified through windows in the smoke screen as the men in the canoes were "picked off by the machine guns from the far side of the river." Several of the craft were sunk and the party was forced to land on the north side of the Veer near where Lambert's A Company had reached the island. They were now about halfway to their objective but only about fifteen were still on their feet. As soon as they moved on top of the dyke, they came under heavy fire from German machine guns firing along fixed lines through the smoke. When they tried to return this fire, the canoeists discovered that their weapons, thoroughly soaked during their short but perilous voyage, were frozen solid and would not work. The survivors withdrew to the mainland.

Lambert meanwhile had advanced toward the centre of the German position. His company was within thirty yards of GRAPES when the Germans opened up with every weapon they could bring to bear. The volume of fire brought his advance to a standstilll five of the six officers in his company being killed or wounded. Lambert was last seen walking up the dyke by himself, swearing and cursing "a blue streak," until he disappeared in the smoke." He did not return.

Attempts to flush out the defenders with the portable flamethrowers proved useless as most of the men carrying them were cut down as soon as they started their flames. One Lincs officer commented on the difficulties of these weapons:

I had lifebuoy flamethrowers. I think I had ten. Lost every goddamn man; every one of them was killed. You can imagine what it was like. I think they weighed about 60 pounds. He's got army boots on with metal cleats on the heels filled with snow. He's walking on an angle and carrying the goddamned thing; trying to manoeuvre is almost impossible. And the minute they shot any flames they were a target and every one of them got it. I always felt really badly about that [because] we asked for volunteers. I diddt want to take them in the first place, but they felt that's what we had to have so we took them. And I never used them again.

By 9.45 A.M. the survivors of Lambert's A Company had fallen back and were beginning to dig in along the dyke, a few hundred yards short of the objective. At that moment the Germans brought down a heavy and accurate mortar barrage from the north bank of the river and then counterattacked, driving the remnants of the company back on Dandy's C Company coming behind them. Dandy tried to rally A Company and resume the advance but this movement became confused when he and all his C Company officers became casualties.

The attack on the right was over and the remnants of Dandy and Lambert's men were withdrawn through Grose's Argyll platoon at the bridging site, a movement that caused Grose some problems:

They had lost their weapons and so on, and they started to congregate around our platoon, where we were on the dikes. And I said "Move on or you'll draw fire." So the next thing I knew, we were getting mortar fire ourselves 'cause they were observed from the far shore when they had stopped.

In contrast, progress on the left, or western, side of the island was initially good. Major Ed Brady's B Company of the Lincs crossed to the island in Buffalos and then moved steadily east along the dyke toward RASPBERRY, the westernmost of the two houses. Then they ran into trouble - as Corporal Howard Loughlin remembered: "You couldn't see in front of you and the phosphorus [smoke] got into your lungs," the German slit trenches " were all covered with snow" and "you couldn't tell where their fire was coming from" and "talk about cold." "All of a sudden," Loughlin continued,

this guy yelled and here these grenades coming over the dyke. Where are you going to go in seven seconds? That was the third grenade that I had thrown at me, and the other two didn't go off... but this one sure as hell did. I just covered my head up ... I waited for the damn thing to go off, it seemed like an eternity. It just felt like somebody had punched me ... And then I went to stand up and I couldn't.

Brady's company tried to push forward but, as he remembered it, "they opened up on us both with mortars and machine guns" and he "started losing men hand over fist."" With his soldiers "going down like ten pins," and realizing that he "would just lose more and more men," Brady decided to pull back and dig in at the junction of the main dyke and a smaller dyke that ran north from his crossing spot. The Germans immediately began to infiltrate around his position using the dykes as cover, snipers became active, and his situation was very shaky."

By noon it was obvious that the assault on the Kapelsche Veer was a total failure. So much for the element of surprise. ......

 

 

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