Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Another one that may be of interest here:

D6A S55 in 1944 (John Fernhout).jpg

This is a still from the 1945 British Ministry of Information film Broken Dykes by John Fernhout (credited as John Ferno in the film itself). The first half of it is available at the Beeld en Geluid archive (so is the second half but it contains nothing of interest to this thread). In the black bar across the middle of the page, click the “play” symbol (the square with the triangle in it); the bulldozer can be seen at about 00:43:47:00, but only for a few seconds, and the film doesn’t show anything the still above doesn't.

Anyway, this is the dozer I labelled S55, most likely in late 1944, and it shows markings and other details I had never seen of it, because I’m not aware of any pictures of it taken as close-up as this one.

I’m informed elsewhere that the 344 with a diagonal bar behind it is the AoS marking of 1st Canadian Army engineers, which is slightly confusing to me, unless the bulldozers shipped to Westkapelle were on loan from that? Or perhaps it’s just that I don’t understand how all these units fit together (my interest is much more the vehicles than the units).