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The training taught a thinking man how to tell the killing officers from the murdering ones. A killing officer got men killed by accident, a murdering officer got men killed for his glory or by his incompetence. Commandos trained as men going into action; rank was set aside; the trainees were all considered the same rank of enlisted men. Officers trained alongside enlisted men and rank was not talked about. This meant officers and NCOs were privates, everybody learned to work together for the common cause. Howard’s training taught him a lot of things about getting out of a scrape: but most of all to be careful of what one got themselves into. The men all knew they were going to be on the front line very soon and the guys that did not take the extra training were some of the ones that suffered the most. He was a tougher, harder, faster, and smarter soldier after training. He was going up against a mean, tough and experienced enemy fighting for his homeland. Howard would be replacing experienced men in a tough setting, so he thought it would be a good idea to get as much training as possible. It was this training that saved Howard’s life. When he knew the order was to be given Howard had aimed his Lee-Enfield at the spot he thought the enemy machinegun might be, he was ready to set up cover fire and waited for the order to shoot. He was an Ontario farm boy from the Bend Road on the Thames River. He could shoot fast and accurately. The officer ordered the first team of two to storm the bridge by attacking straight down the road. The order for cover fire did not come –- those two men were sent into the mouth of the dragon, unprotected, only to be were gunned down in front of everybody. Howard and his partner were next, and he was not going to be meat for a machinegun. It really angered Howard that the men were compelled to obey; they did not get very far before they were in easy range with no place to go but straight forward across the open bridge. The machine gun at the other end snipped their lives away with impunity. Howard said, “That guy didn’t even try to get them off the bridge once they had been hit, no cover no nothing, just left out in the open.” The whole platoon saw the men get shot down on the bridge; then riddled by the machine gun several more times to kill them and terrorize their cohorts. Howard still had a very bitter taste in his mouth when he spoke about that officer. The officer was an extremely dangerous man, somebody that would get men killed by his incompetence for his own glory, if his orders were followed exactly. One of the problems seemed to be the mixing of officers & men with different training; subordinates with a higher level of skill that the immediate leadership did not understand or were threatened by. Their under-trained officer egos may have considered a different way of going about things as insubordination. Howard had a different way of thinking than the men that did not have the Commando training. He knew how to look for cover and how to use it. A roadway and sidewalk ran next to the riverbank before the street buildings. There was no cover between the buildings and the bank of the river, an open space of about 60 feet. The steep slope of the riverbank was armoured with stone, there was no vegetation. Nobody knew what the river shoreline was like. Howard had entered Holland in time for operation VERITABLE in February 1945. He had been shelled by his own artillery. His group was holding their lines against overwhelming German attacks during the battle of Goch-Calcar. They were about to be over run and their officer called the artillery in on top of themselves. When something as suicidal as this happens, everybody is given emergency escape instructions from their superiors. The units held their positions until the last minute then ran in the general direction from where their shells were coming from. The action with the artillery stopped the German forces because they were attacking an active fire fight and did not expect the Canadians to bombard their own positions. The chaos scattered the Canadians across the line and it took over a week to gather everybody up. Back home Missing In Action letters were unhappily received by wives, mothers and loved ones. My aunt Jean, Howard’s wife, said it was an anxious period until the letter saying the men were alive came. Howard was battle hardened by fire and terror, he had full combat experience. The Canadians attacked the city of Groningen on April 13/1945. There was resistance in the outer city that gave way the first day with hundreds of surrendering German forces. By the photos I have seen, there appear to be a variety of uniforms as there were SS troops from outside Germany fighting with them. The last of the German commanding officers had taken a defensive position inside the old part of the city and had not been able to destroy the last defensive retreat bridge. There were orders against damaging historic buildings unless it was proven to be enemy held. So, the Canadians could not fire tanks or cannons into the buildings on the German held side of the bridge. The attempt was to be made by infantry. Howard’s platoon was sent to penetrate the inner city and take the bridge intact on April 14/1945. The bridge itself was open and narrow, an old design wooden drawbridge type, a first-class shooting gallery. It was upgraded to a swing bridge, pivoting on its centre as opposed to lifting; it could take light tanks and armoured vehicles. The picture of the Canadians marching across it on April 16/45 shows how open it was. The banks were high, steep, and armoured in stone. The canal/river is the mediaeval moat for the inner town. It is wide enough for two canal boats to pass with the central support for the swing bridge between them. |