Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[Ed Storey]

There is a list available which details the contents of each newsreel.

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Not on the YouTube channel you linked to, as far as I could see, but at least the descriptions of the videos summarise the contents.

[Ed Storey]

This newsreel contents listing should get things started.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1295016...&ref_=m_ft_dsk

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before:

That’s the Crabs from assault group Apple stuck on Red beach, with the bridge from AVRE A2B between them and still resting on LCT 1005’s bow ramp..

Nice find, I don't think I saw this before either!

Joël Stoppels uses a lot of footage of the Canadian Army Newsreels for his battlefield tours. He's one of the people making sure people know about the Canadian and British role in the liberation of the Netherlands

[MicS]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before:

Attachment 134977

That’s the Crabs from assault group Apple stuck on Red beach, with the bridge from AVRE A2B between them and still resting on LCT 1005’s bow ramp.

Great find again Jakko. This particular sequence and a few others in this film are new to me too.

It shows the third and last beaching attempt by LCT 1005, trying to prevent the remaining vehicles from getting bogged in the cobbles. It seems that the SBG bridge has just been dropped and is still attached to the front of AVRE A2B. The submerged SBG bridge from AVRE A2A (ex LCT 737 "Bramble") is also visible on some frames:


The following photo was shot after the first attempt, resulting in the first two Crabs getting stuck:

Source: The Story of 79th Armoured Division, page 171


The War Amps issued a contents list for Canadian Army Newsreels here. I am attaching it as well in case the source disappears...

Michel

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by MicS

Great find again Jakko.

I can’t take the credit, someone else found it on Facebook and downloaded it for me when I asked him to

Originally Posted by MicS

The submerged SBG bridge from AVRE A2A (ex LCT 737 "Bramble") is also visible on some frames:
Attachment 135072

I hadn’t noticed that yet … but it nicely shows the bridge indeed was white too, so I got the colour (mostly) right on my model

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Jakko, here's a photo of a stranded LVT-4 on Walcheren you may or may not have seen before:

http://hdl.handle.net/10648/9d880b0c...f-544e2a463400

Dated 1945, so this was taken after the fighting.

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Thanks, but it’s one I already knew about This is one of the wrecks on Liebertsweg just outside Vrouwenpolder, next to what is now Hoevehotel Hof Christina. If you’ve got my book, Tanks at Westkapelle, it’s the LVT that’s just visible in the background of the third photo on page 49.

Some online photos of this vehicle are mirrored, BTW, making it seem like it’s yet another one.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

Thanks, but it’s one I already knew about This is one of the wrecks on Liebertsweg just outside Vrouwenpolder, next to what is now Hoevehotel Hof Christina. If you’ve got my book, Tanks at Westkapelle, it’s the LVT that’s just visible in the background of the third photo on page 49.

Some online photos of this vehicle are mirrored, BTW, making it seem like it’s yet another one.

Thanks, figured you knew everything about it. Is it the same one as shown in the background of this photo? (I'm too lazy to get your book off the shelf... )


Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10648/ad851fc8...8-003048976d84

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Yep, that’s the photo I put on page 49

[Jakko Westerbeke]

I’ve now found the other photos I have of this LVT:



These are scans of photos from the collection of local amateur historian J.C. van Winkelen; since he had multiple copies of many photos like these, I suspect some enterprising photographer made and sold them in the 1940s — or perhaps he took the photos himself and printed a bunch of them, of course. On the back of one of these, he had written:



That is:—

Vrouwenpolder 1945
(gedeeltelijk door personeel van RAF
gedemonteerd, voor reparatie van
een ander [sic] Buffalo op het dorp)

In English:

Vrouwenpolder 1945
(partially disassembled by RAF personnel,
to repair another Buffalo in the village)

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

I’ve now found the other photos I have of this LVT:

Great, only I now I notice the second LVT had its top deck lifted off and engine taken out.
Used to repair the first LVT "3B" or was there another one in the village?

[Jakko Westerbeke]

I wish I knew, but the caption on the back of the photo is the only time I’ve ever heard of an LVT having had to be repaired in the field on Walcheren … I doubt they tried to repair 3B, though, since it obviously also didn’t go anywhere when the war moved on. There are more photos of LVTs in this part of Walcheren, though (including one of a number in Veere¹), so these two were clearly not the only ones. I wonder what caused them to be abandoned in the first place.


¹ This picture:

[MicS]

Originally Posted by Hanno Spoelstra

Jakko, here's a photo of a stranded LVT-4 on Walcheren you may or may not have seen before:

http://hdl.handle.net/10648/9d880b0c...f-544e2a463400

Dated 1945, so this was taken after the fighting.

Attachment 135165

Great photo! It somehow escaped me so far. Zooming in we can see the callsign 2F (in outline) and the name AUTHIE inside a rectangle:




The style of both markings is the same as on 2A ROUVRES. ROUVRES is given by B.T. White as 77 Aslt Sqn RE, but he has erred before and I do not know what his source was:


Another similarly styled callsign is 2E below, but the name (possibly BERNIERES) is inside a dark rectangle (which may come from using a different filter) instead of a light shaded one on 2F:


Since 2 Tp 80 Aslt Sqn was at BERNIERES on 6 June 1944, AUTHIE on 8 July and ROUVRES on 14 August, I believe there is little doubt left that these three vehicles belonged to it. In the same vein, in 1 Tp the commander's LVT was named ESQUAY, where he had had a close shave on 15 July when his AVRE was set on fire.

LVT 3B might also belong to the same Sqn, because the style of the call sign is quite different from the very distinctive ones of 3 Tp 26 and 79 Aslt Sqns. I have no confirmed photo of 3 Tp 77 Aslt Sqn though.

Michel

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by MicS

the name AUTHIE

I think it says AUTHE, without an I.

Originally Posted by MicS

in 1 Tp the commander's LVT was named ESQUAY

That would be this one, I suppose:



That photo was taken here:



… which is, oh, approximately three minutes’ walk from where I’m sitting now typing this. Though I’m in a part of town that’s still farmer’s fields in the photo above.

[MicS]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

I think it says AUTHE, without an I.

That would be this one, I suppose:

Attachment 135214

That photo was taken here:

Attachment 135215

… which is, oh, approximately three minutes’ walk from where I’m sitting now typing this. Though I’m in a part of town that’s still farmer’s fields in the photo above.

Jakko,

AUTHE without the "I" doesn't make sense.

Yes, this is that (and probably the only) ESQUAY. See here and here

What about a nlce Now photo Jakko? See you in 7 minutes then

Michel

[MicS]

On the mirrored version image number 934-9744 the 'I' in AUTHIE is (slightly) more visible/guessable:

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by MicS

AUTHE without the "I" doesn't make sense.

Well, other than referring to a village of 91 people instead of 1700 … But yes, in the other photo, the I is actually visible. Poor typography, though …

Originally Posted by MicS

What about a nlce Now photo Jakko?

The ice-cream shop (with the striped awnings) is the house that Esquay was in front of; the street to the right of it is where the house was, that’s side-on to the main street in the 1944 photo, and the house to the right of that in that photo, is the one to the right of the street in the “now” picture.

I stood here to take that photo, looking northeast. The building that was behind me when I did, is now a small supermarket (and has been for as long as I can remember), but was the main village shop in 1944 — the man with the flat cap in the photo of Esquay was the shopkeeper.

Originally Posted by MicS

See you in 7 minutes then

You say that as a joke, but I looked at my watch when I left home (15:21) and when I came back from taking that photo (15:28)

[MicS]

Wow! This must be the fastest Now photo ever! Your time/distance estimate was spot on then. Did you have time to get an ice cream?


Thank you for the details too. It is not frequent that individuals, especially civilians, can be identified. And contrary to most people photographed in front of military vehicles, they had the politeness not to obscure any of the markings (the uncommon height of the LVT might have helped though ).

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by MicS

Did you have time to get an ice cream?

I count nine people in the queue there — I don’t think I would have been able to get an ice cream in the approximately one minute I was there

Originally Posted by MicS

Thank you for the details too. It is not frequent that individuals, especially civilians, can be identified.

I seem to remember you have a copy of my book … check page 49, it identifies all of them (With the errata here that Roos de Visser should be Koos de Visser — thank you, old-fashioned handwriting with a swirly K on a slip of paper with the original photo …)

Originally Posted by MicS

And contrary to most people photographed in front of military vehicles, they had the politeness not to obscure any of the markings (the uncommon height of the LVT might have helped though ).

You may already have these two photos, but one of them shows the markings better, the other, the people

[Jakko Westerbeke]

I got sent this the other day, it was apparently posted to Facebook:



It’s obviously T148656, and because it’s on grass and missing the flail drive shaft, it was probably taken in the 1950s when the tank was outside the war museum north of Westkapelle village.

[MicS]

Not sure whether I have already mentioned this before, but No.20 RHODERICK DHU (bogged on the beach at Westkapelle) appears on a Canadian photo, shot on 6 Aug 44 by Ken Bell near Thaon, Normandy (MIKAN No.3224832, negative PA-160834):




When first seeing the photo shot at Westkapelle, I initially thought that the fading of the turret number outline had been caused by seawater erosion, but it looks like it thankfully occurred much earlier, thereby enabling us to identify No.20 as the tank on the Canadian photo.


Michel

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by MicS

When first seeing the photo shot at Westkapelle, I initially thought that the fading of the turret number outline had been caused by seawater erosion, but it looks like it thankfully occurred much earlier, thereby enabling us to identify No.20 as the tank on the Canadian photo.

Nice find Michel!

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Good find Also interesting to see it has the full-bicycle-type flail chains there, while in the Westkapelle photo the type with balls on the ends is in the rack on the side.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Operation Infatuate II hit the shores of Walcheren 79 years ago this month. Lest we forget.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...9669512&type=3

[Jakko Westerbeke]

They were lucky that the ceremonies happened to be on the one day of fairly calm weather between the days of rain last week and storm Ciarán, the first real one this autumn.