The Battle for the Causeway (P4/ 10)
In 1944, the Causeway, that linked the peninsula of South Beveland with the island of South Walcheren, spanned a muddy tidal creek. The part of the creek that ran southward to the Scheldt estuary was known as the Sloe Channel. The causeway was about 1.200 yards long, with a width of 40 yards at the top of the embankment. On this platform were a railway track, a foot and cycle path and a road and telegraph poles.
By the time the Canadians and Lowlanders had completely linked up in South Beveland , all German troops save those who had been killed or taken prisoner had withdrawn into Walcheren, and all the attention of the German commander in Middelburg was naturally concentrated on denying the Allies the use of the causeway.
The railway track was torn up. The roads and paths and the embankment were heavily mined. All the guns, machine-guns and mortars at his disposal were trained to bear on the Causeway. At the Walcheren end (still visible today) were concrete fortifications.
When the attack over the Causeway was at its height – first launched by the gallant Canadians, and then by the Lowlanders – observers on the higher ground at the western end of South Beveland were appalled to think that infantrymen must, and could, fight in such circumstances: so heavy thick and continuous was the barrage the Germans could lay down on that narrow strip of artificially-raised ground.
Highland Divisions of the Canadian Army did contrive to get some two-thirds of the way across the dam in these murderous conditions but with heavy casualties. The Germans launched vicious counter-attacks and the fresh units that were put in to relieve the Canadian Highlanders and secure a bridge head for the 157th Brigade were forced to give ground.
When the 1st Battalion Glasgow Highlanders made to cross the Causeway on November 1st they could do nothing but relieve the Canadians and hang on like grim death to that part of the Causeway that had been captured.
This grim situation was relieved by two events. Firstly, rocket attacks by Typhoon aircraft on the concrete emplacements at the end of the Causeway shook the enemy and vastly encouraged the Highlanders. Secondly, a successful crossing of the Sloe channel some two miles south of the Causeway – on top of the proceedings elsewhere – distracted the defenders of Walcheren.