[Curtman]

The Western Netherlands

Quote:

In the western Netherlands, the 1st Canadian Corps, comprising the 1st Canadian Infantry Division and the 5th Canadian Armoured Division under the command of Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes, was responsible for the liberation of the area north of the Maas River. This region includes the major cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, where the people were at the end of their endurance from the misery and starvation that had accompanied the "Hunger Winter." Food supplies in the cities were exhausted, fuel had run out almost entirely, and transportation was virtually non-existent. Thousands of men, women, and children had perished.

An assault on Arnhem began on April 12, and, after two days of intense house-to-house fighting, the town was liberated. The 5th Canadian Armoured Division then dashed northward to the Ljsselmeer River, some 50 kilometres away, to cut off the enemy forces in Apeldoorn facing the 1st Canadian Division. The Canadians liberated Apeldoorn on April 17.

By April 28, the Germans in western Holland had been driven back to a line running roughly between Wageningen through Amersfoort to the North Sea, known as the Grebbe Line. On that day a truce was arranged, fighting ceased in western Holland, and several days later food supplies began to move through for the starving people. No part of Western Europe was liberated at a more vital moment than the west of the Netherlands, and the Canadian soldiers who contributed so immensely to that liberation were cheered and greeted with great joy.

On April 25, the American and Russian troops met on the Elbe River. A few days later Hitler committed suicide in Berlin, where he had been encircled by the Russians. The war ended a week later. On May 5, in the village of Wageningen, General Foulkes accepted the surrender of the German troops in the Netherlands. General Simonds of the 2nd Canadian Corps, in Bad Zwischenahn, did the same on his front. The formal German surrender was signed on May 7, 1945, at Reims in France.

May 5, 1945 - Surrender of the Twenty-fifth German Army, Wageningen, May 5, 1945.



Dutch civilians and Canadian Army troops celebrating the Liberation. 7 May 1945 / Utrecht, Netherlands.

[Hyack]

From CanuckTube....

[GreenTiger]

I said before and I will say it again because it isn't said often enough, The men and women who fought in that war saved the world from a cloud of evil which if it won would have smothered any decent in the world. To all of them Thank You.