Clearing the Channel Ports

One of this spring’s tours was to follow the Canadians as they fought their way north from Normandy to clear the channel ports to reduce the logistic trail. Specifically, I looked at Thomas Easton of the Queens Own Rifles and their fight for the Channel Ports. Some time ago, I posted about Lance Sergeant Thomas Easton who landed on Juno Beach on D-Day and fought his way north to Boulogne. Thomas’ family is from Hornepayne, ON, where my eldest sister Diane lived for most of her life.

The Battle of Boulogne kicked off on the same day as Operation Market Garden, Montgomery’s attempt to cross the Rhine River and push into Germany. He was convinced that this would end the war by Christmas, so the lion’s share of the resources was funneled into Market Garden. The Canadians were forced to do the heavy work of clearing the heavily fortified ports with limited resources. As a result, the Canadian battles were dubbed the Cinderella campaign. This is another underappreciated phase of heavy fighting involving the Canadians.

The Queens Own Rifles of 8th Brigade, 3rd Division suffered very heavy casualties during the early fighting after D-Day. Thomas, who was 29 when they landed at D-Day, was promoted several times. He was promoted to Lance Corporal on 27 July, Corporal on 02 August and Lance Sergeant on 13 September, 4 days before his death. In 4 months fighting, the QOR had suffered almost an entire battalion’s strength of casualties. In a copy of the QOR War Diaries, the Part I Orders list the promotions, demotions, transfers and replacements received on a daily basis. The churn of soldiers was constant as evidenced by the number of promotions. The regiment that had trained together in the UK for almost 3 years was decimated by the time they completed the capture of Boulogne.

Month	Killed	Wounded	Missing	Totals	Notes
Jun-44	143	200	20	355	Heaviest losses on D-Day at Juno Beach (Nan sector – Bernières-sur-Mer)
Jul-44	65	120	10	195	Battles for Carpiquet and advance toward Caen
Aug-44	50	90	5	145	Fighting through Falaise and closing the gap
Sep-44	25	50	2	77	Clearing the Channel Ports, advancing through Belgium toward the Netherlands
Totals	283	460	37	780

Breakout from Normandy

After the Falaise Pocket was closed on 21 August, it is estimated that the Germans suffered 450,000 casualties, 240,000 killed or wounded and 210,000 taken prisoner. The Allies had 209,672 casualties among their ground forces, including 36,976 killed and 19,221 missing. The Canadians suffered 18,000 casualties over this period, with 5,000 killed and 13,000 wounded.

Logistics was becoming a major issue since all supplies were still being delivered through Normandy. It was costing 3 gallons of gas to deliver 1 gallon to the front line. The Canadians were on the western edge of the advance so were given the task to clear the Channel Ports so supplies could be delivered closer to the current troop locations.

The French ports of Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne and Calais were all assigned as priorities for the Canadians. The Germans also recognized the importance of the ports, so on 04 September, Hitler declared the ports to be fortresses that were to be defended to the last man.

Dieppe had been abandoned on 01 September, before the Hitler decree, so the Second Canadian Division took Dieppe unopposed. It was fitting that 2nd Division would take Dieppe, as they were the Division decimated during the disastrous raid on Dieppe in August 1942. The ports at Dieppe had only been partially destroyed, so the first ships arrived on 06 September. Dieppe was able to provide 25% of the British 21st Army Group requirements.

The I British Corps, assigned to the Canadian Army took Le Havre on 12 September after 48 hours of heavy fighting. Le Havre was heavily bombed prior to the ground assault, causing the death of 2,000 civilians and a handful of Germans. Le Havre was the largest of the Channel ports, second only to Marseilles in shipping capacity. After 2 days fighting, the garrison of 11,000 German soldiers was captured at the cost of less than 500 casualties. Unfortunately, the port facilities were heavily damaged, and the port was not operational until 13 October. Le Havre became an important port for the Americans but did not help the British supply effort.

Boulogne

The 8th and 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division arrived in the Boulogne Area on 05 September but had to wait until the specialist tanks were made available after the capture of Le Havre.

The specialist tanks included the Flail, Crocodile, Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) tanks and the Kangaroos, Self-Propelled Artillery vehicles converted to Armoured Personnel Carriers.

The Flail Mine-Clearing tank was used to clear paths through a mine field, using a series of spinning chains to detonate mines.

The Crocodile Flame throwing tank was used to clear trenches, bunkers and buildings.

The AVRE tank was used in various engineering support roles. Charlie 1, located near Juno Beach, has a 40cm mortar that fires “flying dustbin” shells to take on fortified bunkers.

The Kangaroos were converted Self-Propelled Artillery vehicles with additional armour added for protection. The Kangaroos were a British/Canadian invention in the field to allow the Infantry to keep up with the advances of the Armoured Regiments.

The German commander General Heim knew the invasion was coming so he arranged for 9,000 residents of Boulogne to evacuate prior to the attacks. The Allies dropped leaflets from bombers and fired safe passage slips in artillery shells to encourage the civilians to leave and to point out the futility of defending to the Germans.

The port of Boulogne is in a bowl and is surrounded by high ground on all sides. The hills were heavily fortified so clearing the town was going to be a major challenge.

The official map shows the contour lines of the hills that surround the port.

The assault on Boulogne was kicked off at 0825 on 17 September by a massive bombardment. In this attack, 540 Lancasters, 212 Halifaxes, and 40 Mosquitoes unleashed 3,232 tons of bombs on Boulogne. From Rockingham’s post, the RAF group captain observing the bombing confirmed that Mosquitoes dropped their pathfinding markers “precisely on the right points . . . close cooperation at its best.” There had been a great deal of planning of the bombing attack, so much so that many people wanted to witness the event. Viewing stands were set up on high ground for military personnel and press to view the attack. The areas that were bombed are shown in the following map.

The 3rd Division troops were very concerned about the bombing attack as 65 members had been killed and 250 wounded when bombers supporting Operation Totalize in Normandy on 08 August dropped their bombs into the assembled troops. The battalions in Boulogne were allowed to stay 2 thousand yards from the forward bomb line to avoid a reoccurrence. The downside was it would take 10 minutes after the bombing to reach the front lines, giving the Germans time to get out of their bunkers and get into action. Artillery masqueraded as bombers after the attack and the bombers made additional passes with their bomb bay doors open to simulate additional bombing runs.

The bombing was more dramatic than effective and had minimal impact on the myriad of hardened bunkers. The shell holes made good hiding places for the advancing infantry, but cratered roads impeded the progress of the armoured vehicles.

The map shows the progress of the QOR from 17-22 September in the taking of Boulogne. An interactive map is also available.

At 1000, the infantry assault began. The QOR came out of the woods and moved to the start line.

They advanced down this road towards St Martin. The high ground surrounding Boulogne is seen in the distance.

The excellent website Project 44 has a very good display of the progress of the Battle of Boulogne. The red Xs represent barbed wire, red circles mine fields, red dot with arrow machine guns, white square represent bunkers and red t shapes, anti-tank guns.

The Queens Own Rifles had the objective of St Martin Boulogne. They had to pass through an extensive mine field and were slowed down by the clearing efforts, machine gun posts and bunkers. The bomb craters also slowed down the tanks, so the infantry was often advancing on their own. A particularly vicious firefight erupted just north of the Church at St Martin, with some of the soldiers using the tombstones in the small cemetery as cover. “Move over, Pierre, I think I’m going to join you,” one man said as he squeezed hard against a tombstone.

St Martin’s Church and Cemetery.

After that skirmish, the QOR captured St Martin, either capturing or driving off the Germans. The wounded were collected in the church and the local nuns appeared and helped care for the wounded. At dusk it was necessary to go back two miles to the start line to get food and ammunition. An English-speaking nun gave the soldiers the church’s tablecloths and napkins to mark the cleared path through the extensive mine fields. “Our priest is giving a special prayer for you and your men,” she said. By 2100, the resupply made it back to the church, safely traversing the mine fields in the dark due to the church linens.

Sketch of the QOR advance.

Thirteen members of the QOR were killed on the first day of the attack, including Lance Sgt Thomas Easton.

The next morning the attack continued, and the defences stiffened despite having taken more than 3,600 Prisoners of War. The QOR pushed through St Pierre and progressed towards the ports. The ancient Boulogne citadel was heavily manned, and a direct assault would be costly. Fortunately, a local showed the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders a tunnel entrance and so they invaded underground while the ramparts were blasted, and the Germans soon gave up. Two hundred prisoners, mostly drunk and happy to be out of the war, were rounded up.

On 19 September, the QOR and la Regiment de la Chaudière’s advanced to a strong point near the 174-foot-tall Column de la Grand Armee. The statue started in 1804 commemorated Napoleon’s forthcoming and expected to be successful invasion of England. The column features a giant statue of Napolean with his back to the sea, so maybe not as successful as hoped.

By the evening of 21 September, the only remaining resistance points were Le Portel in the south, and Fort De La Crèche in the north. Both fortifications were longstanding French Forts that guarded the entrance to Boulogne harbour. The Germans had built substantial additional bunker complexes on top of the existing forts.

Le Portel

The defensive position was south of the harbour, built on top of a fort created by Napolean in 1804 and substantially updated in the 1870s. Due to the prime position guarding the harbour, the Germans built a bunker complex at the site of the original fort. Many of the bunker structures remain.

The view from the Fire Control Bunker shows the domination of the port.

At Le Portel on the 22 September the Canadians hailed the Germans telling them they had lost the Battle of Boulogne and were surrounded. After several false starts, the commanding officer General Heim came out and the fort surrendered.

Fort de la Crèche

Fort de la Crèche was first built by Napoleon in 1806 to defend the Northern access to the port of Boulogne. It was extended in 1879 with a barracks, magazine and cannon emplacements. The Fort was updated between 1935 and 1940 to provide improved protection for the port. Since the fort was already in an ideal location, the Germans built additional bunkers on top of the existing fortifications.

The black lines show the 1879 fortress, the blue areas the additions made by the French in the 1930’s and the Green blocks show the structures added by the Germans.

An aerial view of the fortifications.

As well as guns on the high ground, a large structure had been built in 1879 on the point, allowing supplies to be delivered from the sea. The concrete structure at the very top is an observation bunker added by the Germans.

View down the point to the breakwater. You can see the tidal range that has to be dealt with.

The German observation bunker.

View of Boulogne from the Observation Bunker.

A close up view of Boulogne from the point with a fallen bunker on the beach.

Gun casemates behind the observation bunker.

A destroyed companion casemate.

Some of the original structure of the fort.

Original 360-degree cannon mount.

View of the harbour from the top of the fort showing its dominant location.

On the site of the original fort, there is a plaque commemorating the Regiment de la Chaudière and the Queens Own Rifles who took Fort de la Crèche on 22 September 1944.

Fort de la Crèche was hit by multiple bombing runs in the evening of 21 September and the next day, the QOR heavily shelled the old fort’s wall. Just before putting in the assault, white flags rose, and more than 500 Germans surrendered. The capture of the fort signified the end of the Battle of Boulogne.

The fort has a number of reenactors that dress up and tell the story of the fort. Here they are reenacting the long wait for the Allied assault.

Terlincthun British Cemetery

Adjacent to Fort de la Crèche is Terlincthun British Cemetery. The cemetery was begun in June 1918 when the space available for service burials in the civil cemeteries of Boulogne and Wimereux was exhausted. It was used chiefly for burials from the base hospitals, but Plot IV Row C contains the graves of 46 RAF personnel killed at Marquise in September 1918 in a bombing raid by German aircraft.

In July 1920, the cemetery contained more than 3,300 burials, but for many years Terlincthun remained an 'open' cemetery and graves continued to be brought into it from isolated sites and other burials grounds throughout France where maintenance could not be assured.

During the Second World War, there was heavy fighting in the area in 1940. Wimille was devastated when, from 22 - 25 May, the garrison at Boulogne fought a spirited delaying action covering the withdrawal to Dunkirk. There was some fighting in Wimille again in 1944. The cemetery suffered considerable damage both from the shelling in 1940 and during the German occupation.

The cemetery now contains 4,378 Commonwealth burials of the First World War and more than 200 war graves of other nationalities, most of them German. Second World War burials number 149.

There are 298 known Canadian First World War burials and only 27 unknowns. While I was looking around, I saw a number of dates of death well beyond 11 November 1918. This is because there were a number of hospitals in the area, including Number 2 Canadian Stationary Hospital (Le Touquet) and Number 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) in Boulogne, where my Grandfather William Johnston briefly stayed after being wounded at the Battle of Courcelette on 16 September 1916. The hospital stayed open until May 1919, and 59 Canadians who died after the Armistice are buried here. The last Canadian buried here died on 11 April 1919.

I wasn’t aware of the reason for the late burials, so took a picture of a random Canadian headstone.

No Canadians from the Second World War are Buried here. The soldiers killed during the liberation of Boulogne, including 32 of the Queens Own Rifles, are buried in the Calais Canadian Cemetery.

 

Calais Canadian War Cemetery

When I visit a cemetery, I always have a few specific people to visit but usually wander around and take photos of interesting or unusual headstones. I look up their stories afterwards and always find them fascinating. I came to pay my respects to Thomas Easton but found a few other stories in the rows.

The Calais Canadian War Cemetery has 704 burials with 30 of them unidentified. 581 identified Canadians are buried here beside 13 unknowns. The cemetery is down a long, treed path, so although it is close to a major highway is very peaceful and beautiful.

The Cross of Sacrifice is at the back of the cemetery which is lined by trees.

Lance Sergeant Thomas Easton

Thomas Easton is buried with 31 of his Queens Own Rifles comrades in this cemetery. 152 Canadians who died during the Battle of Boulogne are buried here. His inscription reads:

                Ever remembered by Mother, Father, Sisters and Brothers.

Thomas is buried in a row with a total of 9 QOR who died on 17 September. The picture shows their order. They were all originally buried in Boulogne and reinterred in the Calais Cemetery.

Thomas and most of his comrades were buried in Boulogne by the wall Southeast of a school at map reference vg683546 as reported in the Graves Concentration Report Form. That translates to Latitude 50.73285 ° Longitude : 1.6122 , as shown by the pin. This never quite made sense to me, as the pin is Northeast of the School. I started looking at other folks who had been buried in the same location and their Graves Concentration Report Form lists the location as Northeast of the School. This matches the map reference more closely.

This is the school that Thomas was buried beside. I was hoping to sneak in to take a look around the school, but it was a holiday and everything was locked down.

John Wilbur Cremeen

John attracted my attention as his age was listed as 17.

It was quite frequent in WWI for soldiers to lie about their age, as did my Grandfather William Johnston, but not as common in WW2. I looked at his service record, and his birth date was reported as 11 October 1924, which would have made him 19 when he was killed on 09 September 1944. Nothing in the record indicates he had a different birth date, but in several other locations, his birth date was reported as 11 October 1927, which would have meant he was only 15 when he joined up on 18 December 1942. He trained for the Armoured Corps and landed in England in December 1943. In April 1944 he remustered to Infantry, no indication whether it was voluntary or not. He joined the Queens Own Rifles on 14 August and was killed on 09 September 1944. If he had really been born in 1927, he would have only been 16 years old. Photo of John.

Leading Aircraft Woman (LACW) Margaret Campbell

Margaret Campbell was a 27-year-old nursing orderly, (Flying Nightingale) who was flying aboard a 437 Squadron RCAF Dakota III transport plane when it was shot down near Dunkirk on 24 October 1944 during a transport flight from Antwerp to Blakehill UK. The transports were used to deliver supplies and evacuate the wounded.

A parachute and harness were issued to each woman before the flight. These were locked away upon departure. As the only medical orderly on the flight, should the aircraft crash, their orders were to remain with the aircraft.  Should they survive, they were instructed to tend the injured until help arrived. They were strictly forbidden to bail out. Here the Nightingale is not wearing a parachute while the men are.

Starting on 18 June 1944 approximately 200 women served as Flying Nightingales, evacuating wounded soldiers from the front lines. The Nightingales evacuated over 100,000 wounded soldiers from France alone, but their story has been almost completely overlooked.

Margaret Campbell’s headstone.

A photograph of Margaret Campbell.

Group Captain Philip Reginald Barwell

Group Captain (Gp/Cpt) Barwell was born 1907 at Peterborough and gained a commission in the RAF in 1925. In January 1937 he was given command of 46 Squadron flying the Gloster Gauntlet.

In February 1939, the squadron re-equipped with the Hawker Hurricane. On the 21st of October 1939 he led a flight of six aircraft out over the North Sea to intercept enemy bombers heading for a convoy, shooting one down and sharing destruction of another, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).

A few months before his demise, Gp/Capt Barwell crash landed on take off and broke his back but still took part in operations whilst encased in plaster and in spite of finding it difficult to move his neck, a situation that was to play a part on the 1st of July.

On this day he and Sqn Ldr RW Oxpringe had taken off from Biggin Hill for an evening patrol between Beachy Head and Dungeness. When in the vicinity of Beachy Head, the controllers warned of two unidentified aircraft nearby. These turned out to be two Spitfires from Tangmere flown by inexperienced pilots.

It seems that Barwell had not responded to the warning, and unable to move his neck was probably unaware of the danger as one of the Spitfires dived down to attack his Spitfire which then crashed in flames into the sea.

Sqn Ldr Oxpringe saw Gp/Capt Barwell trying to open the cockpit canopy to escape but perhaps hampered by his plaster cast was unable to do so and thereby was killed. In spite of an extensive search, his body was not found until he was washed ashore on the French coast and buried in Calais Canadian War cemetery. 

Flight Sergeant George Coe

George Coe was an RAF Wireless Operator/Air Gunner who was killed when his Halifax bomber crashed on 12 May 1944. I think I was drawn by the fact that he had a new headstone. George was part of RCAF 432 squadron, flying in Halifax III Serial Number NA500 on a raid of 135 aircraft to bomb the Boulogne Rail Yards. It was thought that his aircraft collided with a 427 Squadron Halifax LW114 as they both crashed just south of Boulogne. On his aircraft there were 8 airmen, 5 Canadians and 3 Brits. The normal crew was 7 and it appears that Sgt James Thomson, Air Gunner was flying on a familiarization flight as this was his first trip.

On the 427 Aircraft, all crew members were Canadian, except for the Navigator Lt Raymond Stevens who was a member of the US Army Air Force (USAAF). 14 members were buried at the Municipal Cemetery Marquise, France. Three of the airmen were initially reported as unknown, but all were identified, including George Coe, when reinterred in Calais Cemetery. Only George’s Pilot, Squadron Leader Clayton Barrett was not recovered and has no known grave. He is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey, England that is dedicated to the 20,456 men and women from the Air Forces of the British Empire who have no known grave. A photo of Clayton Barrett.

Every headstone tells a story, and I find it useful to dig into a few to better appreciate their sacrifices.  

Other Nationalities

There are 19 Polish graves, one unknown and 6 Czech Graves in the cemetery.

I think this is the first Czech headstone I have come across.

The Calais Canadian War Cemetery is immaculately groomed as are all of the Commonwealth War Grave sites. I am always taken by the serenity of the cemeteries. I was alone, surrounded by the souls of the fallen, absorbing their energy on a perfect spring morning.

Battle of Boulogne Summary

In all more than 9,517 prisoners were captured, at the cost of 634 Canadians, killed, wounded or missing. The port had been severely damaged, both by the Germans and Allied bombing. A fuel line was established on 10 October, but the port didn’t open until 14 October and did little to relieve the Allied supply problems.

There was no rest for the Canadians, they continued north and were responsible for opening Antwerp by clearing the Scheldt Estuary. There are previous posts on clearing both the North and South banks of the Scheldt.