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THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

Following confusion and collapse, the German defensive line had hastily regrouped. Despite consternation over a continually dwindling front line, the Germans had demonstrated toughness and a dynamic ability to manage adversity and operate under extreme pressure. They had halted the Allied headlong advance towards Germany. The Allied forces’ inability to maintain a viable logistical pipeline and supply the battle area meant a shortage eventually manifested itself, holding back the Allied attacking momentum. Also, the failure to close the Falaise Gap (‘the German Dunkirk’) and the all-too-slow pursuit of the retreating Pas-de-Calais-based German 15th Army by the Canadians meant substantial numbers of Germans escaped capture.

Massive and menacing; bold, intimidating and ruthless; organised and dangerous, Hitler’s war machine was a formidable force, greatly feared and brutally effective. The fascist Nazi regime sought world domination over all peoples by the one ‘super race’. The Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 made history; it was a day when the courage of men (Irish men and women among them) tackled the Germans’ terrible tyranny. At stake was the future shape of Europe; it was a turning point in history. As it happened, the challenge of opening the Second Front proved successful.

The earlier, and first, defeat of the Germans by the Russians at Stalingrad (August 1942–February 1943) on the Eastern Front was a merciless, gruesome and vicious struggle, a human hell of a battle, with fierce hand-to-hand, man-to-man fighting inside an urban area; there was a lot of brutal close-quarter carnage. It proved hugely destructive to the German army, whose failed invasion of Russia – Operation Barbarossa – saw Hitler’s expansionist ambitions forced into decline. The subsequent Allied landings at Sicily and Salerno in Italy put further pressure on the Axis powers, despite frequent stalemate. The sheer scope of the Normandy landings on D-Day, the gathering of such military might, was unimagined by the Germans; once the Allied ‘breakout’ from Normandy was achieved, it saw the Germans back peddling at pace – they were hastily retreating and fighting on all fronts. Blitzkrieg (‘Lightning War’) offence had given way to a desperate defence, its toll on human life enormous.

And yet the fanaticism of Nazi party chiefs meant that the war went on; the killings kept happening and SS brutality continued. Despite Allied and Russian armies pressing hard on both frontiers, the Germans squeezed relentlessly in the middle, the collapse of the Wehrmacht imminent, the war virtually lost and revenge by the Red Army savage, Hitler still would not yield.

‘Wonder weapons’ were part of Hitler’s planned response. Already the world had seen him deploy these Vergeltungswaffe (‘retaliatory weapons’) with the V-1 flying bombs. Unmanned aircraft loaded with explosives had been directed towards London and other British cities, their flight time calculated – their purpose to destroy civilian targets and to demoralise. These ‘buzz bombs’ or ‘Doodlebugs’, as the British public called them, had first arrived in London on 10 June 1944. Ten were fired that day and six hit London; thereafter, from launch sites along the English Channel, one hundred of them arrived each day. It is estimated that up to 10,000 V-1s fell on England before the launch sites were overrun by Allied ground troops, but not before they had caused some 20,000 casualties (deaths and injuries). On 8 September, the second of the ‘miracle weapons’ from his secret weapons programme was launched, the V-2. It was a larger, more sophisticated and deadly rocket, fired from mobile launch pads. In all, about a thousand landed in British cities, with little or no effective response. They were only stopped when Allied ground troops took and and held ground, pushing them back out of range.

Of crucial importance was the taking and holding of the Scheldt estuary; taking control of it would bring the deep water inland port of Antwerp into use. Its denial as a component in the Allied logistical pipeline was now the main factor holding back future advance. The Allied advance was in danger of grinding to a halt and Monty’s daring but reckless plan, Operation Market Garden, a concentrated, sudden attack on a broad front, had failed. A standstill resulted, so within a fortnight the Allies launched another attack to break the deadlock. The First Canadian Army, with Polish and British units attached, was tasked with clearing the Scheldt estuary of the German 15th Army, which held the mouth of the River Scheldt and deprived the Allies of the crucial Antwerp port. In addition, the Germans had fortified the strategically important Walcheren island with massive coastal artillery guns, which were well protected from aerial bombardment. German General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen, Commander of the 16th Army, reportedly told the defenders:

after overrunning the Scheldt fortifications, the English would finally be in a position to land great masses of material in a large and completely protected [90 per cent intact] harbour. With this material they might deliver a death blow at the North German plain and at Berlin before the onset of winter … The enemy knows that he must assault the European fortress as speedily as possible before its inner lines of resistance are fully built up and occupied by new divisions. For this, he needs the Antwerp Harbour. And for this reason, we must hold the Scheldt fortifications to the end. The German people are watching us. In this hour, the fortifications along the Scheldt occupy a role which is decisive for the future of our people. Each additional day will be vital that you deny the port of Antwerp to the enemy and the resources he has at his disposal.

The Allied push to clear the way along the Scheldt estuary – the Battle of the Scheldt (2 October–8 November 1944) – and remove the German threat proved slow-going. It involved three weeks of tough amphibious assaults, obstacle-crossing and costly fighting over open ground in order to clear the route along the estuary to the river’s mouth. It took a further week to overwhelm the Germans and take the Walcheren island. In all, there were 13,000 Allied casualties. Royal Navy minesweepers then went to work and cleared the numerous sea mines in the river. On 28 November, the first supply ships reached Antwerp; the Allies could now move forward again.

Captain Redmond Cunningham, 1st Troop Leader, 5 Assault Regiment, 79th Assault Squadron of the Royal Engineers, from Waterford, had already won the Military Cross for his beach-clearing actions on Sword Beach on D-Day. His troop of Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) consisted of a Crab tank, with its two mine-clearing flails, a Bridge tank, a fascine, with its bundle of logs designed to fill in anti-armour ditches and, finally, a Bobbin, which used a metal carpet to make the path across soft-going terrain (mud or sand) traversable. The other varieties of modified tanks, custom-designed for obstacle crossing, were the Crocodiles – flame-throwing tanks with a range of 150 yards – the Petard tanks, with their bunker-busting spigot mortar guns, and the Firefly tanks – Sherman tanks fitted with the British 17-pounder anti-tank gun. Later on during D-Day, inland, he had been ordered to take ten AVREs with which to seize and hold the bridge and lock gates at Ouistreham. Using the not-inconsiderable firepower of the ten AVREs, the bridge and lock gates were wrestled from the Germans. These were successfully held overnight – a duration which saw active patrolling under Captain Cunningham’s direction and resulted in the capture of enemy positions, materials and prisoners. During the Battle of the Scheldt four months later, his offensive-mindedness again saw him awarded a decoration – a bar to his Military Cross – when he led an assault on German positions, capturing some 200 prisoners. It was there that Cunningham was to receive the shrapnel wounds that he would carry with him for the rest of his life. He was awarded a Croix de Guerre by the Belgian government for his part in rescuing civilians in Antwerp following a German V-1 attack on the centre of the city. Hitler, furious that it was once again operational, ordered his V-weapons deployed. At war’s end, Redmond Cunningham qualified as an architect and became involved in many successful business ventures in Waterford. He died in 1999. With the estuary and Antwerp port in Allied hands, and again fully operational, dredged deep enough to allow the passage and docking of ocean-going ships, the Allies could again move forward. Only then, the weather changed. Autumn rains poured down, turning the battlefields into quagmires. The Allied advance had to halt once more, waiting for spring to renew the advance. Meanwhile, the Germans, in their weakened state, were thought to be preserving their resources for the impending Russian assault on their Eastern border. Only they weren’t.