‘A day to never forget': Niagara's Lincoln and Welland Regiment played key role in Dutch liberation

Hamilton Spectator

05-05-2025

It has been 80 years since Canadian forces accepted the surrender of the German army in the Netherlands on May 5, 1945, ending five years of Nazi occupation.
Members of the
Lincoln and Welland Regiment
were part of the First Canadian Army, which played a pivotal role in that country's liberation from the Nazis in the Second World War.
The Lincoln and Welland troops were battle hardened by the time they arrived at the Dutch-Belgian border.
Members of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment take cover from German sniper fire in northwest Europe in 1945.
They were part of the fierce fighting at the Falaise Gap, south of Caen in France, in late August 1944 when the Allies encircled retreating German troops and closed the gap they had been moving through.
'When they landed in France in July 1944, they would have been pushing west through Belgium and eventually into the Netherlands which would have been in the fall of 1944,' said Drew Neufeld, a master warrant officer and regimental historian with Lincoln and Welland Regiment.
Unknown members of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment in the Netherlands sometime between 1944 and 1945
In October 1944, the Niagara regiment played a significant role in the Battle of the Scheldt, a crucial campaign to open the Scheldt estuary, a river that borders Belgium and the Netherlands with its mouth at the North Sea.
'It was very important that they opened the Scheldt estuary to be able to supply the soldiers efficiently,' Neufeld said.
During the Battle of the Scheldt, the Lincoln and Welland group helped liberate
Bergen op Zoom
, a town just north of the Scheldt.
A zoom is a canal or waterway.
'Press On' upon its arrival at the Lake Street Armoury in March 1945. The officer standing next to the tank is Major Edward J. Brady DSO. (B Company Officer Commanding).
'A lot of the company commanders will say it was the worst experience,' Neufeld said. 'The whole liberation, too, was kind of an anomaly where the commander of the German army at the time made a deal with the mayor (of the town), saying, 'If you don't give away our position and help the Allies, we won't destroy the (town), we will move to the north which would be the canal and we'll keep the fighting to the outskirts of the (town) and not really destroy the main part.'' Neufeld noted.
In his book '
Because We Are Canadians: A Battlefield Memoir
,' Sgt. Charles Kipp with the Lincoln and Welland Regiment recalls planning of the siege of Bergen op Zoom took place in the basement of a home near the town that was owned by a Mr. Luijten, an English professor who acted as an interpreter for the Canadians.
Their conversation inspired the title of Kipp's book.
Following preparation discussions, Kipp says a toast was raised to the success of the coming battle, and their host asked why they appeared so steady and not nervous about what was to come.
'Because we are Canadians,' Kipp and his colleagues replied.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the freeing of Bergen Op Zoom by the Lincoln and Welland
Kipp writes the Lincoln and Welland soldiers made their way into the town during the night on Oct. 18, swimming across the zoom and making their way to the top of a dyke and along a rail line that ran across it.
Creeping along in the darkness, they came under machine gunfire.
'It was devastating,' Kipp writes. 'I could see and hear men going down all around me, but for some reason I was not hit.'
Drew Neufeld, master warrant officer and regimental historian with Lincoln and Welland Regiment, in front of 'Press On' at the Lake Street Armoury.
The Canadians escaped down the side of the dyke, back into the zoom.
'The sky over our heads was one big sheet of flames from the German guns,' Kipp writes.
The surviving soldiers eventually made their way to an eight-foot-high wall outside a gin factory.
'Out of our entire company of about 30 strong, 13 men got into the factory,' Kipp said.
The Canadians fought room to room and in the hallways, shooting in the darkness.
'We were just running all over and shooting everything we could see,' Kipp writes. 'It was pitch dark. The only light came from the muzzle flashes of the guns.'
Of the 13 Lincoln and Welland soldiers who had made it to the gin factory, Kipp said only eight were left when the fighting was over.
On Oct. 27, 1944, Bergen op Zoom was liberated by the Canadians.
Neufeld said the Lincoln and Welland Regiment fought so fiercely in its push through the Netherlands, it gained a reputation for toughness among the enemy.
'One of my favourite quotes during that time was from a German prisoner who said, 'The Lincoln and Welland Regiment has no sentiment, no discipline and no mercy' because they were so tenacious and determined to meet their objectives,' Neufeld said. 'They effectively pushed their way through the Netherlands, along with the rest of the Canadian Army and Allied forces, into Germany.'
The push through the Netherlands was a slow and bloody slog.
'I can only imagine the hardships and struggles they would have went through,' Neufeld said. '(They saw) the best and worst of humanity.'
By the time the Netherlands was liberated on May 5, 1945, more than 7,600 Canadians had died in the eight months of fighting it took to get there.
Days later, Germany formally surrendered, ending the Second World War in Europe.
'The Dutch people cheered Canadian troops as one town after another was liberated,' states a
Canadian government website
detailing Canada's involvement in the liberation of the Netherlands. 'This was a memorable time for the people of the Netherlands.'
Jack Sinke was a six-year-old boy in the Netherlands when the Germans invaded in May 1940.
Jack Sinke was a six-year-old boy when the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940.
He recalls being in awe of the invaders.
'It was kind of exciting at first,' said the 91-year-old Vineland resident whose family lived on a farm near the Belgian border. 'At first, the Germans were friendly, but later on we heard about concentration camps and stuff like that, then I looked at them like enemies.'
In a 2011 letter to his grandchildren, Sinke recalled the Germans taking most of the locals' food and raiding store shelves and sending all the clothing and other materials back to Germany.
'My father raised pigs, but was only allowed to keep two for his own family,' the letter says. 'All the others he had to sell to the Germans for a cheap price.'
Sinke's letter recalls the time his father was confronted by two German soldiers who came to the house demanding he hand over his two remaining pigs, but his father refused.
'The German shifted a bit, pretended to loosen his gun and said, 'If you don't give us those pigs, we will take your children,'' the letter says. 'Then my dad lost his temper and screamed, 'If you touch my children, I will kill you.''
Sinke says he got scared and hid behind his mother's skirt.
Then it got quiet, and he looked to see the German soldiers leaving without the pigs.
Sinke said he was 10 years old in the fall of 1944 when residents in his area got word the Canadian Army was pushing into the Netherlands from Belgium.
'The Canadians were going to free us,' said Sinke, who recalls hearing the Allied gunfire in the distance and squadrons of Allied bombers flying over their house, en route to targets in Germany.
'The glass in the windows rattled,' he said.
By early November 1944, his village had been liberated.
'We were so happy,' Sinke said.
Engelbert Marinus points to the house he and his family lived in when the Netherlands were liberated by Canadians on May 5, 1945.
Engelbert Marinus was born in Soestdijk, southeast of Amsterdam, in 1938.
He noted the nearby airport was a frequent target of attack because it was wanted by both the Germans and the Allies.
'Most of my early life was dangerous and scary,' Marinus recalled.
The former Grimsby resident who now lives in Stoney Creek said the family later moved to
Ootmarsom
, near the German border, where he started school.
Marinus recalled the Canadians and other Allies appearing in the forests around the city.
Liberation was at hand.
'There were Canadians, English, Polish, American and Australian camps meeting there,' said Marinus, who recalled visiting each of the camps and getting to try their food.
'I was welcomed as a kid,' he said.
Marinus noted May 5 remains a special day for Dutch people.
'For me, it is a day to never forget,' he said.
A reminder of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment's service in the Second World War sits in front of the Lake Street Armoury in St. Catharines.
The M5A1 Stuart VI recce tank came into the regiment's possession in late February 1945.
A St. Catharines Standard article from March 7, 1946, (the day after its arrival at the armoury after being transported to St. Catharines on the back of a flat rail car) noted the tank had been with one of the armoured units of the British Columbia Tank Regiment, but was disabled after it ran over a mine on the edge of the Hochwald Forest near the Dutch-German border.
''Gosh, I'd like to have that,' said Lt. Col. Rowan C Coleman, DSO, then commander of the Lincs,' the article says. ''OK, it's yours,' came the prompt reply.'
The article says members of the regiment's pioneer platoon started swarming over the tank.
'In no time at all, they had ripped off the turret and gun, lightening the tank by four tons. It was rewired and repaired, and the limbering battlewagon came out of its death throes as a trim, speedy reconnaissance carrier,' the article states.
On the front of the tank was 'Press On' — one of the favourite expressions of Lt-Gen Guy Simond, acting commander of the 1st Canadian Army, to encourage his troops in battle — painted in large white letters.
The article noted when Press On arrived in St. Catharines, it was covered in flags and signatures.
'There are the flags of the countries touched by the tank: Canada, France, Belgium, Holland and, finally, Germany. Then there are autographs, dozens of them. Many boys from St. Catharines and other points in the Niagara district painted their names on the tank for posterity,' the article says.
may 5 remains a special day on the calendar in the Netherlands, where the liberations is celebrated as a national holiday and the sacrifices of Allied soldiers, particularly Canadians, are remembered.