The Battle of the Scheldt in World War II was a series of military operations to open up the Scheldt river between Antwerp and the North Sea for shipping, so that Antwerp's port could be used to supply the Allies in north-west Europe. The operations were carried out by the First Canadian Army, with assistance from Polish and British units which had been attached. The action was under the acting command of the First Canadian's Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds. The battle took place in the vicinity of the Scheldt river in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from 2 October to 8 November 1944.[1]
The Canadians had been delayed, and the need to clear the Scheldt had not yet been addressed, due to Allied decisions up to that point to focus instead on Arnhem (Operation Market Garden), Boulogne (Operation Wellhit), Calais (Operation Undergo) and Dunkirk. By the time the Canadians were sent into the Battle of the Scheldt, the Wehrmacht defenders had been reinforced. The Germans staged an effective delaying action during which they flooded land areas in the Scheldt estuary and slowed the Allied advance. After five weeks of difficult fighting, the Canadian First Army, at a cost of 20,873 Allied casualties (6,367 of them Canadian), was successful in clearing the Scheldt after numerous amphibious assaults, obstacle crossings and costly assaults over open ground.
Once the German defenders were no longer a threat, it took another three weeks to de-mine the harbours; the first convoy carrying Allied supplies could not unload in Antwerp until 29 November 1944. Once Antwerp was opened, it allowed 2.5 million tons of supplies to arrive at that port between November 1944 and April 1945, which were critical to the successful Allied advance into Germany in 1945.
^The Battle of the Scheldt, Veterans Affairs Canada, 14 April 2014, retrieved 10 August 2014
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