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Concept
Black Friday (1944)
Résumé
Black Friday was the nickname given by the 1st Battalion The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada to the date 13 October 1944. On that day, during World War II's Battle of the Scheldt in The Netherlands, the regiment attacked German positions on a raised railway embankment near the village of Hoogerheide after advancing across 1,200 yards of open beet fields. When final casualty totals were tabulated, it was determined the battalion had lost 145 men killed or captured; fifty-six men were killed, including all four of the commanders of the lettered companies, and twenty-seven men were taken prisoner. One company of ninety men had only four men present and fit for duty the next day.
By September, 1944, it had become urgent for the Allies to clear both banks of the Scheldt estuary in order to open the port of Antwerp to Allied shipping, thus easing logistical burdens in their supply lines stretching hundreds of miles from Normandy eastward to the Siegfried Line on the border with Germany. Since the Allied forces had landed in Normandy, France on 6 June 1944 *D-Day), the British Second Army had pushed into the Low Countries and captured Brussels, Belgium, and Antwerp, the latter city with its port still intact. The advance halted with the British in possession of Antwerp, while the Germans still controlled the Scheldt Estuary. Nothing was done about the blocked Antwerp ports during September because most of the strained Allied resources were allocated to Operation Market Garden, a bold plan for a single thrust into Germany which began on September 17. In the meantime, German forces in the Scheldt were able to plan a defense.
In early October, after Market Garden had failed with heavy losses, Allied forces led by the First Canadian Army set out to bring the port of Antwerp under control. The well-established German defenders staged an effective delaying action. Complicated by the waterlogged terrain, the Battle of the Scheldt proved to be an especially grueling and costly campaign.
Source officielle
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