Tag Archives: First Canadian Army

Crerar’s Chariot

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80 years ago today. Original Kodachrome color Image of Lt-General Henry Duncan Graham Crerar, commander of the First Canadian Army, seen on the open bridge aboard the Canadian V-class destroyer HMCS Algonquin (R17), while part of the Normandy Operation Neptune fleet, 18 June 1944.

Via Library and Archives Canada

Built 1942-43 as HMS Valentine (R17) and transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy on completion, Algonquin opened up with her 4.7-inch QF guns on German targets off Juno Beach at 0645 on D-Day and spent the next 48 hours providing very active NGFS for the British and Canadian troops until their advance inland had outstripped her range.

A 4.7-inch (12 cm) gun crew of the destroyer HMCS Algonquin piling shell cases and sponging out the gun after bombarding German shore defenses in the Normandy beachhead. LAC 4950888

Bofors and gunner and white ensign on HMCS Algonquin. LAC 4950797

Putting back in at Portsmouth on 9 June, she carried VADM Percy W. Nelles, RCN, and his staff to Normandy the next day and would return to carry Gen. Crerar to France as shown above.

Graduating from the Royal Military College in 1909, Crear served with distinction in the artillery during the Great War, witnessing the hell of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, and Vimy Ridge, and was ready to finish up a 30-year career as colonel commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada when Hitler marched into Poland. He had led the 2nd Canadian Division and I Canadian Corps in Italy before Normandy.

Going on to see much Arctic service in the rest of the war, including sinking a trio of German subchasers off Norway, Algonquin would be modernized to a Type 15 frigate (pennant DDE 224) in 1953 and continue to serve into the 1970s when she was scrapped, her name passed on to the lead ship of a new class of destroyers for the RCN.

Gen. HDG Crerar, CH, CB, DSO, CD, PC, would retire from the Army in 1946 and go on to the diplomatic service. He passed in 1965, age 79.

The Little Black Devils in the Woods, 75 years ago today

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Rifleman F.C.S. Lloyd of The Royal Winnipeg Rifles standing beside the regiment’s sign, “The Little Black Devils in the Woods,” in the dark forest of the Klever Reichswald, 19 March 1945.

Library and Archives Canada 3203104

One of the Kaiser’s old Imperial forests in North Rhine-Westphalia between the Rhine and Meuse at the intersection of the German and Dutch border, Klever Reichswald was four miles wide and seven deep, all of it infested in early 1945 by German anti-tank ditches, barbwire, mortar pits, and trenches.

The lines were held by the dug-in 47th Panzer Corps, bolstered by the tough paratroopers of the 6th and 7th Fallschirmjäger Divisions. As a reserve, General der Fallschirmtruppe Alfred Schlemm, Kurt Student’s successor, also had two divisions of so-called “stomach and ear” troops at his disposal, men who had been given earlier military deferments for a variety of ailments ranging from colitis to partial deafness.

In a fierce four-week campaign across February and March 1945, the wood was systematically cleared in Operation Veritable by some 400,000 Allied troops, spearheaded by the First Canadian Army with the U.S. Ninth Army in support. In the end, the Germans lost 45,000 killed, wounded and captured, about half of their force, against 15,000 Allied casualties.

As for the “Little Black Devils”, they were formed in 1883 and picked up their nickname fighting against the Metis two years later, as the latter thought their dark green uniforms were, in fact, black. Among the first Allied troops to land on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, they fought their way across the Rhine and remained in Germany until 1946. Today they are based at Minto Armoury in Winnipeg, Manitoba.