Clearing the Channel Coast

Clearing the Channel Coast
Part of Siegfried Line Campaign
The Channel
Date September–November 1944 Location France and Belgium Result Allied victory
Belligerents
Canada  United Kingdom  Poland  Czechoslovakia  Belgium  Netherlands  France	Germany
Commanders and leaders
Harry Crerar	Gustav-Adolf von Zangen

Clearing the Channel Coast was a World War II task undertaken by the First Canadian Army in August 1944, following the Allied Operation Overlord and the break-out and pursuit from Normandy.

The Canadian advance took them from Normandy to the Scheldt river in Belgium. En route, they were to capture the Channel ports needed to supply the Allied armies and clear the Germans from the Channel littoral and launch sites for the V-1 missiles. Most of the advance met with little more than sporadic resistance as the German 15th Army, wary of being outflanked and isolated by the rapidly advancing British Second Army, executed an orderly retreat north-eastwards towards the Scheldt.

Resistance did occur in most of the Channel ports, designated on 4 September as "fortresses" by Adolf Hitler. Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais were subjected to full-scale assaults, as a result. A further assault was called off at Dunkirk, freeing resources for the Battle of the Scheldt when the First Canadian Army cleared the mouth of the Scheldt and the opening of the port of Antwerp. Dieppe and Ostend were taken without opposition.

The German armies had strongly resisted the allied break-out from Normandy but, when it did occur, they had insufficient reserves of manpower and equipment to resist and no defence lines had been prepared in France. The Germans were chased out of much of northern France. Fighting in the Falaise pocket ended by 22 August 1944 and the First Canadian Army was freed to move north-eastwards up the coast. The I British Corps had started to advance eastwards from the River Dives along the coast on 16 September, as soon as German resistance faltered. Reconnaissance had been ordered on 19 August and the authorization for a full advance and pursuit by the Canadians was issued on 23 August. It is a measure of the German disintegration that the 1st Polish Armoured Division was in Ypres on 6 September and Canadian units were at Dunkirk on 7 September, just fifteen days after Falaise, despite their losses in the Normandy battles.

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