Word: scheldt
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last Stand. The last pin to the Antwerp gate was Walcheren Island, north of the Scheldt estuary that leads to Antwerp. There some 7,000 bitter-ending Germans held fast: they had to be eliminated before the Allies could send ships in to the port. By land Walcheren could be reached only by a causeway from the pipe-shaped peninsula of South Beveland, but the Germans were holding that bottleneck with murderous fire. The Allied solution: a seaborne attack...
Rundstedt Retreat. Tilburg, 's Hertogenbosch, Breda, Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom were the bolt positions in the German line from the Maas to the Scheldt estuary. All five had fallen this week without much of a fight. Allied airmen reported columns of German transports scuttling north to the rivers...
...Germans evidently feared being pinned against the Maas as they had been nailed against the Seine in France. They had an estimated 60,000 troops below the Maas, including the doomed and dwindling pockets on the Scheldt estuary. They were definitely in retreat. In contrast to the bitter stalemate fighting elsewhere on the western front, the British-Canadian forces made good time. Nevertheless the Germans retreated in good order. They needed time to get set between the Maas. the Waal and the Led. They had to hold the Arnhem hinge...
Sudden Speed. Not even Rundstedt could do anything for the wretched remains of German garrisons in the Scheldt estuary. Their job was to hold out to the last, block the approaches to the vital port of Antwerp as long as they could...
Pocket Amphibians. But progress this way was slowed by bitter resistance. Another Canadian force knifed through the German pocket at its weakest point, and bisected it, reaching the Scheldt at Terneuzen. The design was to jump off from Terneuzen and land among the Germans downstream, creating a bridgehead within a bridgehead. Amphibious equipment could not be brought up the river, under the guns of German batteries at Breskens and Flushing, and had to be improvised on the spot...