- 2 days ago
Fifty yards from his door, a German gun opened fire, and a Canadian officer had to answer with his own map reference. At Woensdrecht, the only high ground for miles, one thin company of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry dug in while the Germans tried to break the ridge and keep Antwerp out of reach.
This military history story follows Major Joe Pigott and the Black Watch of Canada’s costly fight in south-west Holland, where the Scheldt campaign turned on a single position. The account centres on a volunteer army, slit trenches, paratroopers, and the brutal choice of how to hold a line when the war closes in.
For listeners who search for WW2 stories, Canadian war stories, and narrated military history, this is a sharp, grounded look at the Battle of Woensdrecht and the fight for Antwerp. It suits history fans, battlefield storytelling, and anyone interested in World War 2 narration, Canadian Army history, and real combat decisions under pressure.
This military history story follows Major Joe Pigott and the Black Watch of Canada’s costly fight in south-west Holland, where the Scheldt campaign turned on a single position. The account centres on a volunteer army, slit trenches, paratroopers, and the brutal choice of how to hold a line when the war closes in.
For listeners who search for WW2 stories, Canadian war stories, and narrated military history, this is a sharp, grounded look at the Battle of Woensdrecht and the fight for Antwerp. It suits history fans, battlefield storytelling, and anyone interested in World War 2 narration, Canadian Army history, and real combat decisions under pressure.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00On the morning of October 16th, 1944, in a cottage on the ridge at Wunsdrecht, in the southwest corner of
00:08Holland,
00:09a Canadian major named Joe Piggott watched a German self-propelled gun roll to a stop 50 yards from his
00:16front door.
00:17Fifty yards. A rifle shot you could make with your eyes half shut.
00:23Outside, his driver, Private Harry Graham, sat in the company jeep, squarely in that gun's sights, pumping the starter and
00:31wiggling the gearshift, trying to make the engine catch.
00:35Piggott watched, and waited for the jeep to vanish.
00:38For a few long seconds the gun stayed quiet.
00:41Then, it opened up on the cottage, armor-piercing, then high-explosive, and the room filled with dust and flying
00:49stone.
00:50Shrapnel and stone chips flayed Graham's chest and face.
00:54A fragment split Piggott's scalp.
00:57That was the smaller problem.
00:59The larger one was coming over the crest of the hill behind the gun.
01:03German paratroopers, on their feet, in the open, coming fast.
01:08One of the Hamilton men said later,
01:10You could tell they were crack troops just by looking at them, by the way they moved and used the
01:16ground.
01:16They had already overrun the Canadian company in front of Piggott's.
01:21What was left of it, about twenty men, had fallen back into his lines.
01:26Between those paratroopers and the rest of the battalion, there was now one thin company of the Royal Hamilton Light
01:33Infantry,
01:34lying in slit trenches dug that morning, and one bleeding major in a cottage that was coming apart around him.
01:43Piggott got through to the gunners.
01:45He did not ask for shells on the crest.
01:48He did not ask for a curtain in front of his trenches.
01:52He asked for every gun within range, not a battery, not a regiment, everything that could reach.
01:59And he gave the gunners a map reference.
02:17If what Canadian soldiers did on that ridge matters to you,
02:21A subscribe helps stories like this one reach more people.
02:26Now.
02:28You think you know this scene.
02:30The officer about to be overrun who calls the shells down on his own head.
02:35You have watched it in a dozen war films.
02:39It is always a last gesture.
02:41A man deciding how to die.
02:44Set that picture aside.
02:46Because it is wrong here.
02:48And the next hour is about why.
02:52Piggott was not making a gesture.
02:55He was doing arithmetic.
02:57He had a figure in his head.
02:59A percentage.
03:00And he said it out loud afterwards.
03:03I am going to give you that figure.
03:06But not yet.
03:07It means nothing until you know what he did in the dark,
03:11hours before that gun reached his door.
03:14And remember that somebody had to say yes.
03:18A major can ask for every gun in range.
03:21He cannot order it.
03:24First, the man.
03:26Joseph Michael Piggott, Jr.
03:28Born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1919.
03:32A builder's son.
03:34His father's company had put up the Piggott Building,
03:37the first skyscraper in the city.
03:39He commanded C Company of his hometown regiment,
03:43which the army called the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry,
03:47and which everyone else called the Rileys.
03:50And the ground.
03:52And the ground.
03:53Wundstrecht is a village on a ridge,
03:55the only high ground for miles,
03:57and it sits at the neck of the South Beveland Isthmus.
04:01Hold that neck,
04:03and you have cut off the Germans on South Beveland and Walcheren,
04:07the men whose guns closed the river Scheldt.
04:10Fail, and the great port of Antwerp,
04:13captured intact six weeks earlier,
04:16stays exactly what it was that morning.
04:19Empty.
04:20No ship could reach it.
04:22The men holding that ridge were the 6th Parachute Regiment
04:26under Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich von der Heide,
04:29a commander who believed the best defense was an attack.
04:33Three days before, on Friday the 13th,
04:37they had shown what that meant.
04:39The Black Watch of Canada went at them
04:42across open, sodden fields in daylight.
04:45From the roof of a barn,
04:47the battalion's intelligence officer,
04:49Lieutenant W.J. Shea,
04:51watched and reported that the companies were being annihilated.
04:5656 men died.
04:58The regiment still calls it Black Friday.
05:02So now it was the Rileys' turn at the same ridge
05:05against the same paratroopers.
05:08Their colonel was Dennis Whitaker, 29,
05:11a former quarterback for the Hamilton Tigers,
05:14who had come off the beach at Dieppe two years earlier.
05:18He would not send his men up in daylight.
05:21He flew over the ground first.
05:23He built the village in a sandbox
05:25and walked every company through it.
05:28He named the four objectives after football teams,
05:32Balmy Beach, Argos, Rough Riders, Tigers,
05:36and he sent the battalion in at half-past three in the morning,
05:41tight behind the shells of more than a hundred guns.
05:44It worked.
05:46Before six,
05:47Pigott's company was sitting on Rough Riders.
05:50The paratroopers who had stopped the Black Watch cold
05:53had been pushed off their ridge in the dark
05:56by a battalion from a steel town.
05:58And here is the first thing that does not fit.
06:02Pigott did not tell his men they had won.
06:04He told them they were going to catch hell
06:07first thing in the morning.
06:08He knew how these paratroopers fought.
06:11Give up the ground when the heat was on,
06:14then come back for it.
06:15He could not stop that.
06:18So in the pitch dark,
06:19placing his men by feel,
06:21he started getting ready for it.
06:24What he got ready
06:26is the reason those coordinates were never a suicide note.
06:30Go back to the dark.
06:33A little after five in the morning on that ridge,
06:36and Joe Pigott cannot see his own company.
06:40He has three platoons somewhere around him.
06:43On ground, none of them has ever walked in daylight.
06:48He sets each one in place by feel and guesswork.
06:53A company is out in front of him.
06:55He knows that much.
06:56But there is a rise in the ground between them,
07:00and he cannot see over it.
07:01He will not know what his position really looks like
07:05until first light at a quarter past six.
07:09So he does the one thing that does not need light.
07:13He has them dig.
07:15Slit trenches.
07:17Narrow and deep enough to put a man's whole body
07:20below the level of the ground.
07:23Every infantryman digs.
07:25You know that.
07:26But remember what Pigott had just told these men,
07:30that they would catch hell first thing in the morning.
07:33He was not digging out of habit.
07:36He was digging for one particular hour.
07:40By seven, C company had mopped up the Germans
07:44the barrage had rolled past,
07:46and was dug in behind A company.
07:49By eight, about fifty prisoners had gone back down the hill,
07:53an artillery officer among them.
07:55A squadron of Fort Gary horse tanks had come up.
07:59It was starting to look like a position.
08:01Now I have to tell you something about that morning's barrage,
08:05something the battalion war diary records in a single flat sentence,
08:10because it changes how you hear what Pigott asked for.
08:14The Riley's had already been hit by their own guns that day,
08:18before one German counter-attacked.
08:21The carrier platoon took seven casualties from the Canadian barrage.
08:26Every rifle company lost a few men to Canadian shells.
08:30And the diarist's comment on this was that it was expected,
08:34as the troops hugged the barrage closely.
08:37Expected.
08:38Turn that word over.
08:40Whitaker's battalion had walked up that ridge so tight behind its own shellfire
08:45that some of it fell on them,
08:48and they had accepted that on purpose.
08:50The alternative was the Black Watch on Friday,
08:54arriving a minute late,
08:55with the defenders' heads back up and their machine guns manned.
08:59A few yards of safety from your own guns
09:02traded away for the lives it saved at the other end.
09:06The Riley's made that trade at half-past three in the morning.
09:10Pigott, seven hours later,
09:12would take the same trade down to zero yards.
09:16And he had made it before.
09:18October 3rd, 13 days earlier,
09:21a railway marshalling yard on the edge of Antwerp.
09:24Pigott takes C Company in at night,
09:27down between the rows of boxcars,
09:29behind a fire plan built for him by a gunner.
09:32The gunner is Major Jack Drouery
09:35of the 4th Field Regiment Royal Canadian Artillery,
09:39and he watches the attack from a red brick steeple.
09:42By seven that morning,
09:44Pigott signals Whitaker that the yards are taken.
09:47About 30 Germans killed or wounded,
09:4980 prisoners.
09:51The cost to his company?
09:53Four dead, 21 wounded.
09:55Keep Drouery's name.
09:57He is the man Pigott is going to ask.
10:00So look at what is in place on that ridge by 8 o'clock.
10:04A company commander who trusts the guns.
10:07A gunner who knows that company commander.
10:10And a hundred odd men
10:12whose bodies are below the surface of the ground.
10:15That is most of what the arithmetic needs.
10:18The last thing it needs
10:20is an enemy who is above the ground,
10:22upright, in the open.
10:25Von der Heidt was about to supply that.
10:27At 9 o'clock,
10:29the German mortars and guns
10:30came down on the forward company.
10:33With A company that morning
10:35was a forward observation officer
10:37from 4th Field,
10:39Captain William Donald Stevenson.
10:41His whole job was to be the eyes of the guns.
10:45And from where he sat,
10:46he could not see enough.
10:48So he left his observation post
10:50and went forward on foot,
10:52into the shelling,
10:53to find out what was coming.
10:55Remember him as well.
10:57I am going to come back
10:59to what Stevenson saw out there
11:01and what he did about it.
11:02When I do,
11:04it will change what you think
11:05Piggott's call was.
11:07At 10,
11:08A company reported
11:09a self-propelled gun attacking
11:11and 9 platoon being shelled hard.
11:14A sergeant named Southern
11:16had the company's
11:17six-pounder anti-tank gun.
11:19He fired it at point-blank range
11:21until it was knocked out.
11:23After that,
11:24the war diary uses three words
11:26you do not often find
11:27in a battalion log from 1944.
11:30Hand to hand.
11:33At a quarter past 10,
11:34Stevenson reported
11:35his carrier hit and burning.
11:38At a quarter to 11,
11:40two self-propelled guns
11:41drove over 9 platoon.
11:43What was left of A company
11:45came back across the rise
11:47Piggott had not been able
11:48to see over in the dark.
11:50About 20 men.
11:52By 10 to 11,
11:53they were under his command,
11:55in his holes.
11:56Their own commander,
11:57Major Halliday,
11:58would be carried out wounded
12:00soon after.
12:01And now the paratroopers
12:03came over the crest
12:04on their feet,
12:04in the open,
12:06exactly as Piggott
12:07had told his men they would.
12:09Everything the sums required
12:11was in front of him.
12:12The enemy upright.
12:14His own men below ground.
12:16A gunner on the other end
12:17who knew his voice.
12:19There was also one thing
12:21in front of him
12:22that was not in the sums at all.
12:24It weighed more than 20 tons.
12:27It was 50 yards from his door.
12:29And shell fire that tears
12:31infantry apart
12:32does not necessarily stop steel.
12:35Piggott knew that
12:36when he made the call.
12:38He made it anyway.
12:39And what he asked
12:41druary for
12:41had a name on the gunner's net,
12:43two words long,
12:45that a major
12:45had no right to expect.
12:47Victor, target.
12:50Those were the two words.
12:53To understand what they meant that morning,
12:55you need about 30 seconds
12:57of how the gunners talked.
12:59And I will be straight with you
13:01about where it came from.
13:02The system was British.
13:05The royal artillery built it,
13:08and every commonwealth army used it.
13:10An observer could ask for fire by size.
13:14A Mike target brought down a regiment,
13:1724 guns.
13:19An uncle target
13:20brought down the artillery
13:22of a whole division.
13:24A Victor target
13:26was the next step up.
13:28Every gun in the Corps
13:29that could reach the map reference,
13:31whatever regiment it belonged to,
13:34whatever it had been doing
13:36a minute before.
13:37That is not a thing
13:39a company commander normally gets.
13:42A Victor target
13:43is what a Corps asks for
13:45when a division is in trouble.
13:47Joe Piggott asked for one
13:49for a cottage.
13:50And he added two more words.
13:54Scale 10.
13:5610 rounds from every gun.
13:59Now here is the part
14:00I went looking for
14:01and did not find.
14:03I looked for the argument.
14:05The pause on the net.
14:07The senior voice
14:08asking him to say again.
14:11Asking whether he understood
14:12that the reference he had given
14:14was his own headquarters.
14:16It is not in the record.
14:19Mark Zulke,
14:21who worked through
14:21the accounts of that morning,
14:23gives the gunner's reaction
14:25in three words.
14:27Druary responded instantly.
14:31Some popular tellings
14:33hand the order to Whitaker
14:34at battalion headquarters,
14:35and it may well have passed
14:37through him.
14:38Either way,
14:40the fact stands.
14:41Nobody on that ridge
14:43asked Piggott
14:44if he was sure.
14:46Think about why.
14:49Thirteen days earlier,
14:51Jack Druary
14:52had stood in a steeple
14:53and watched this same major
14:56walk a company down
14:57between boxcars,
14:59behind a fire plan
15:00the two of them had built.
15:02He knew how Piggott used guns.
15:05He knew Piggott did not ask
15:08for things he had not thought through.
15:11So when the voice he knew
15:13asked for the impossible thing,
15:15he did not weigh it.
15:17He passed it.
15:19That is the first answer
15:20to the question I left you with.
15:22Somebody had to say yes,
15:24and the yes took no time at all,
15:26because it had been earned
15:28in a railway yard
15:29two weeks before.
15:31Now ask the two questions
15:33a careful listener asks.
15:35Why so much?
15:36Why not a single regiment,
15:39something you could aim?
15:41Because of the clock.
15:43The whole idea only works
15:45while the paratroopers
15:46are still upright
15:47and still outside the trenches.
15:50The moment they are down
15:51in the holes among his men,
15:53the guns are useless,
15:55and it is bayonets and grenades
15:57against the best infantry
15:59Germany has left.
16:00Piggott had a minute,
16:02perhaps two.
16:04One regiment firing
16:05for five minutes
16:06would not do it.
16:08It had to be everything,
16:09all at once,
16:10and it had to be over
16:12before the Germans
16:13could lie down.
16:14And why on himself?
16:16Why not just in front?
16:18Because by then
16:19there was no difference.
16:21His metal citation
16:23says the counterattack
16:24had pressed to within
16:25a hundred yards
16:26of his company headquarters.
16:28A hundred yards.
16:29Three hundred guns
16:31firing from different fields
16:33miles apart
16:34do not put their shells
16:36into one neat line.
16:38They put them
16:39into a patch of ground,
16:40and a patch that size
16:42centered a hundred yards out
16:44would have covered
16:45his trenches anyway.
16:47The honest reference,
16:48the one that would put
16:49the heart of it
16:50where the enemy would be
16:51by the time the shells arrived,
16:53was the one
16:54he was standing on.
16:55So he gave
16:56the honest reference.
16:57South of the ridge,
16:59on gun positions
17:00spread across miles
17:01of flat farmland,
17:03the order went out.
17:04The field regiments
17:06of 2nd Canadian Division,
17:08the medium regiments
17:09behind them,
17:10and three regiments
17:11of heavy anti-aircraft guns,
17:13weapons built
17:14to shoot bombers
17:15out of the sky,
17:16their barrels cranked down
17:18to fire at a hillside.
17:20Three hundred and twelve guns,
17:22by Zulke's count.
17:23Not one of those crews
17:25had any way of knowing
17:26that the reference
17:27they were laying on
17:28was a Canadian company headquarters.
17:31They were given a number.
17:33They fired at the number.
17:34And at the number,
17:36a major,
17:36with blood running out
17:38of his hair,
17:39went from trench to trench
17:40in the open,
17:41with a self-propelled gun
17:43fifty yards away,
17:44and paratroopers
17:46coming down the slope,
17:47shouting at his men
17:48to get low in their slits.
17:51Lower.
17:51All the way down.
17:55Here, at last,
17:56is the figure I promised you.
17:59Piggott explained his reasoning afterwards,
18:02and his words survive.
18:04The Germans, he said,
18:06were on their feet and attacking,
18:08and our men were dug in.
18:10So he figured they would probably lose
18:12ninety percent to our ten.
18:15Ninety to ten.
18:17Hear it properly.
18:18He is not saying his men would be safe.
18:21He is not saying the holes
18:23would protect everyone.
18:25He is saying,
18:26in advance,
18:27as a planning figure,
18:29that he expects to lose
18:30one in ten of the men
18:32in those trenches
18:32to Canadian shells,
18:34his own company,
18:36the survivors of a company,
18:37his wounded driver.
18:39He expects it,
18:41and he considers it
18:42the good outcome.
18:43Because the other outcome
18:45is all of them,
18:46and then the battalion behind them,
18:48and then the ridge
18:49that fifty-six black watchmen
18:52had died below
18:53three days earlier.
18:55That is not a man
18:57choosing how to die.
18:59That is a builder's son
19:01pricing a job.
19:03The shells were already in the air.
19:05In a little over a minute,
19:07Piggott would find out
19:08whether his price was right.
19:11And he would find out
19:12something else,
19:13something his figure
19:15had never covered,
19:16about the twenty tons of steel
19:18sitting outside his front door.
19:21Piggott described the sound himself,
19:23and he reached for something
19:24from home to do it.
19:26The first salvo, he said,
19:28was right on.
19:29It came over like
19:30seventy or eighty express trains
19:32pulling into Union Station
19:34at the same time.
19:35Any man from southern Ontario
19:37knew what one train sounded like
19:39coming into that hall in Toronto.
19:42Piggott took that sound,
19:44multiplied it by eighty,
19:46and put it a few feet
19:47above the backs
19:48of his own soldiers.
19:50Where he was himself
19:51at that instant,
19:52the record does not say.
19:54The last we see of him,
19:56he is above ground,
19:57shouting.
19:58Then the hill disappears.
20:00It lasted a little over a minute.
20:02I want to give you
20:04the size of it once,
20:05carefully,
20:06and then leave the numbers alone.
20:08In that minute,
20:09something like four thousand shells
20:11came down on one small patch of Holland,
20:15about fifty tons of high explosive.
20:18And in the middle of that patch,
20:20in holes a few feet deep
20:22and barely wider than their shoulders,
20:24lay C Company
20:25of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry,
20:28and the twenty men left
20:30of A Company,
20:31with their faces in the dirt.
20:35Everything Piggott had done
20:36since five that morning
20:38was now being tested at once.
20:41The digging in the dark,
20:42the warning to his men,
20:44the reference he had refused to shade
20:47by a single yard.
20:49Above the ground,
20:51the paratroopers had nothing.
20:53They were where he had needed them to be,
20:56upright,
20:57on an open slope,
20:58committed to the last hundred yards
21:00of an attack.
21:02Zülki's sentence for what happened to them
21:04is as plain as any in his book.
21:07The paratroopers were literally torn asunder.
21:10The attack shattered.
21:12The ones who could still walk
21:14went back over the crest they had come down.
21:17Then it stopped.
21:19And a hundred Canadians
21:20who had just been shelled by their own corps
21:23lifted their heads.
21:25Here is the count.
21:27Piggott had priced the job
21:28at one in ten of his own.
21:31The accounts that survive
21:32do not agree to the man,
21:34and I will not pretend they do.
21:36One says the Rileys in that position
21:38took a single minor injury
21:40from the Canadian fire.
21:42A Dutch study of the battle
21:44says four wounded.
21:46Not one account says a Canadian
21:48was killed by it.
21:49He had budgeted for ten percent.
21:52He paid almost nothing.
21:54And this is the moment where the story,
21:56if it were the story you have seen in films,
21:59would end.
22:00The mad request.
22:01The storm.
22:03The enemy gone.
22:04The men climbing out alive.
22:06I could stop here,
22:08and you would go away
22:08thinking you had the answer.
22:10A Canadian major asked his own guns
22:13to fire on him,
22:14and it worked.
22:15It did not work.
22:16Not all of it.
22:18And what Piggott did in the next half hour
22:20is the part I most want you to see,
22:22because it is the difference
22:24between a man who had a clever idea
22:26and a man who held a ridge.
22:29Go back to the thing I told you
22:31was never in his sums.
22:32Two self-propelled guns
22:34had come over that crest
22:36with the infantry.
22:37According to Piggott's own citation,
22:39the artillery knocked out one of them.
22:41The other was not knocked out.
22:43It backed off about 300 yards
22:46to where the storm had not reached,
22:48and it went on firing.
22:50It was the gun
22:51that had already opened his scalp.
22:54Now it had a wrecked cottage
22:55and a line of slit trenches to shoot at,
22:58at a range where it could not miss
23:01and nothing the infantry carried
23:03could touch it.
23:04Shellfire that destroys men in the open
23:06does not reliably destroy armor.
23:09Piggott had known that
23:10when he made the call.
23:11He had asked for every gun in a corps.
23:14He had got it.
23:15And the one thing
23:17still trying to kill his company
23:19was the one thing
23:20300 guns could not be trusted to stop.
23:24So the guns had bought him a minute.
23:26The rest,
23:27he would have to do on foot.
23:29The nearest weapon
23:30that could kill that vehicle
23:32was a six-pounder anti-tank gun
23:34and its crew,
23:35a hundred yards away from the cottage.
23:38A hundred yards of open ground.
23:40The same ground
23:41that had just been plowed
23:42by his own artillery.
23:44And it was now
23:45under German machine gun fire
23:47and shell fire.
23:48And from where that six-pounder sat,
23:51it could not do the job.
23:53Somebody had to go and move it.
23:55Piggott went.
23:57Head wound and all.
23:58The citation says it
24:00without decoration.
24:02He proceeded across
24:03a hundred yards of open ground
24:05under heavy machine gun
24:07and shell fire
24:08and personally directed
24:10an anti-tank gun forward
24:12into a position
24:13from which it was able
24:14to destroy the self-propelled gun.
24:16The battalion war diary
24:18gives it two entries.
24:20Half past 11.
24:22Major Piggott,
24:23slightly wounded,
24:24refused evacuation.
24:26Noon.
24:27One six-pounder
24:28knocked out a self-propelled gun.
24:31Slightly wounded,
24:32refused evacuation.
24:34That is how his own battalion
24:37wrote it down.
24:38So hold the two halves
24:39of that half-hour side by side,
24:42because together
24:43they are the first real layer
24:45of the answer.
24:46He asked 312 guns
24:48to fire on his own headquarters,
24:51and that broke the infantry.
24:54Then he walked
24:55a hundred yards in the open
24:57to one small gun,
24:59and that broke the armor.
25:02The big thing
25:03and the small thing.
25:05He needed both.
25:07And the second one
25:08he could not delegate.
25:10By noon,
25:12the ridge at Wunsrecht
25:13was still Canadian.
25:15But the man on the other side
25:17believed the best defense
25:18was an attack.
25:20And he had just watched
25:22what happens to paratroopers
25:23who come at Canadians.
25:25Upright,
25:26in daylight,
25:28across open ground.
25:30He was not going
25:31to do that twice.
25:33What he did instead
25:34was aimed at the one weakness
25:37in Piggott's arithmetic.
25:39And by 7 that evening,
25:41it had swallowed
25:42a Canadian platoon whole.
25:44Noon on the 16th,
25:46and Joe Piggott
25:46has stopped being wounded,
25:48at least as far
25:49as the paperwork
25:50is concerned.
25:51Refused evacuation.
25:53He is back among the slits
25:55with a field dressing
25:56on his scalp
25:57and two companies under him
25:59that, added together,
26:01no longer make one.
26:02The citation says
26:04what he did
26:05with the afternoon.
26:06He moved from one platoon
26:08to another
26:08under constant fire,
26:10encouraging his men
26:11and directing their fire.
26:13That is the official language.
26:16Put it in plain terms.
26:18For the next 10 hours,
26:19the major commanding
26:21the hinge of that ridge
26:22was a man with a head wound
26:24walking between holes.
26:26And for the first half hour,
26:28it looked as if the Germans
26:29had learned nothing.
26:31At half past 12,
26:33paratroopers were seen
26:34forming up east of Sea Company
26:36for another try.
26:37This time,
26:38the guns of 4th Field
26:40caught them
26:40before they had even started,
26:42at a proper distance,
26:44the way the textbook wants it.
26:45The attack
26:47never left its start line.
26:48That was the last time
26:50von der Heidt
26:51offered Piggott
26:52a target standing up.
26:54Now watch what he did instead,
26:56because it was clever
26:57and it went straight
26:58at the two soft places
27:00in the arithmetic.
27:01The first soft place
27:03was the men.
27:04Piggott's figure,
27:0690 to 10,
27:07depended on having soldiers
27:08in those holes.
27:10So the Germans
27:11stopped trying to take the holes
27:13and started emptying them.
27:15All afternoon,
27:16they mortared
27:17and shelled the ridge.
27:18Not a storm,
27:20not one minute,
27:21just steady,
27:22patient fire,
27:24hour after hour.
27:25On ground,
27:26they knew to the yard
27:27because it had been theirs
27:29the day before.
27:30Here is the second thing
27:32the film version leaves out,
27:34the tanks.
27:35At 2 o'clock,
27:36the Fort Gary horse squadron
27:38on the ridge
27:38reported it was out of ammunition.
27:41And 10 minutes later,
27:42somebody at battalion headquarters
27:44did a sum.
27:45It is in the war diary,
27:47timed at 10 past 2,
27:49and I want you to hear it
27:50as Whitaker heard it.
27:52A company,
27:53one officer,
27:5418 men.
27:55B company,
27:57two officers,
27:5839.
27:59C company,
28:00Piggott's,
28:01two officers and 40.
28:03D company,
28:05one officer and 60.
28:07That is a battalion.
28:10Four rifle companies
28:11that had climbed the hill
28:1311 hours earlier
28:14now held it with fewer men
28:16than a single company
28:18is supposed to have.
28:20At 10 past 3,
28:21the mortar officer,
28:23Lieutenant D.R. Brown,
28:25had his leg broken
28:26by a shell fragment
28:27and went on organizing
28:29his platoon
28:29with the leg broken.
28:31By 5 o'clock,
28:33the medical officer's aid post
28:35had sent more than 90 wounded
28:37back down the hill.
28:39I said I would be honest
28:41about the cost,
28:42so here is a harder thing.
28:44Not every man stayed.
28:47Dutch historians of this battle
28:49and the Canadians
28:50who guide visitors
28:51over the ground today
28:52both record
28:54that when A company
28:55broke that morning,
28:57Dennis Whitaker
28:58met soldiers
28:59coming back off the ridge
29:00and turned them around
29:02at the point of his pistol.
29:04The quarterback from Hamilton
29:06with a pistol
29:07on his own men.
29:09He does not seem
29:10to have held it against them,
29:12but understand
29:13what it tells you.
29:15Piggott's sums
29:16needed men
29:17to lie still in a hole
29:19while the world
29:20ended above them.
29:21That is a great deal
29:23to ask of anyone.
29:25On that ridge,
29:26most of them did it
29:27and some could not.
29:29And yet they held.
29:31Through the afternoon
29:33the Spitfires came
29:34and then the Typhoons
29:36and at four o'clock
29:37the tanks,
29:39rearmed,
29:39went forward
29:40with D Company
29:41against a machine gun post
29:43that had been hurting them
29:44all day.
29:46A lieutenant
29:47named De Grosseye
29:48took 16 Platoon in,
29:51cleared the post
29:52and occupied it.
29:53At six,
29:55a company of the Essex Scottish
29:57under Major Reiki
29:58came up
29:59and dug in
30:00behind Piggott.
30:01The line was thin,
30:03but there was a line.
30:05Then it got dark
30:06and the Germans
30:07went for the second
30:08soft place.
30:10Think about
30:11what the victor target needed.
30:13An enemy,
30:14upright,
30:15in the open,
30:17in a body,
30:18and outside
30:18the Canadian trenches.
30:20Take away any one of those
30:22and the guns
30:23cannot help you.
30:25So at seven that evening
30:27the paratroopers
30:28took away all of them.
30:30They did not come
30:31over the crest
30:32in a wave.
30:33They came in the dark,
30:34in small parties,
30:35in several places at once,
30:37and they did not
30:38stop at the wire.
30:40Major Froggatt
30:41of D Company
30:41reported enemy
30:43getting into his area
30:44in several sectors,
30:45and Lieutenant
30:46Des Grosseye's
30:48platoon,
30:48out in the post
30:49it had taken
30:50three hours earlier,
30:51was hit
30:52by thirty
30:53or forty of them.
30:54The war diary
30:56entry is short.
30:57The platoon
30:58was overrun
30:59and believed
30:59killed,
31:00wounded,
31:01or missing.
31:02No one
31:02called a victor target
31:03on that.
31:04There was nothing
31:05to call it on.
31:06You cannot ask
31:07three hundred guns
31:08to fire on a reference
31:10when the enemy
31:11is already down
31:12in the holes
31:12beside your men,
31:14in the dark,
31:14where nobody can tell
31:16one helmet
31:17from another.
31:18Piggott had seen
31:19that edge
31:20from the start.
31:20It was the whole
31:22reason for the clock,
31:23the minute or two
31:24he had that morning.
31:25Now the Germans
31:26had found the edge
31:27as well,
31:28and were working
31:29along it.
31:30It was ten o'clock
31:31that night
31:32before every company
31:33reported its situation
31:34under control.
31:36So that is where
31:37the first day ends.
31:38The request
31:39worked once.
31:41The enemy
31:41has adapted.
31:43The battalion
31:43is a quarter of itself,
31:45the armor ran dry,
31:47a platoon
31:47is gone,
31:48and the thing
31:49Piggott did
31:50at eleven
31:50in the morning
31:51cannot be done
31:52at eleven
31:53at night.
31:54If that were all,
31:55you would call it
31:56one brave improvisation
31:58by one desperate major.
32:00It was not
32:01an improvisation,
32:03and he was not
32:04the only one.
32:05Two hours
32:06before Piggott
32:07gave his coordinates,
32:08another Canadian
32:09on that ridge
32:10had already asked
32:11the guns
32:12the same question.
32:13I told you
32:14to remember
32:15a captain
32:16who walked forward
32:17into the shelling,
32:18nine o'clock
32:18in the morning
32:19on the 16th
32:20of October,
32:22two hours
32:22more or less
32:23before Joe Piggott
32:24gave anybody
32:25his coordinates.
32:27Captain William
32:28Donald Stevenson
32:29of the 4th Field Regiment
32:30is out in front
32:32of the Riley's
32:32leading company,
32:34on foot.
32:35You remember why.
32:36German mortars
32:37and shells
32:38had come down
32:39on his observation post.
32:40He could not see
32:42what was behind them,
32:43and a forward observer
32:44who cannot see
32:45is no use
32:46to anyone.
32:47So he walked forward
32:49into it.
32:50What he saw
32:51is in his citation,
32:53a counterattack developing.
32:55And then,
32:56very quickly,
32:57he was no longer
32:58looking at it
32:59from the edge.
33:00The citation's words
33:01are that he was
33:02soon surrounded
33:03by enemy tanks
33:04and infantry,
33:05a gunner captain
33:06on foot
33:07ahead of the infantry
33:08with German armor
33:10on more than
33:11one side of him.
33:12Here is the next line
33:14of that citation,
33:15exactly as it was
33:16written in 1944.
33:18In spite of the fact
33:19that he was soon
33:20surrounded by enemy
33:21tanks and infantry,
33:23Captain Stevenson
33:24brought down artillery fire
33:26on his own position,
33:27inflicting heavy casualties
33:29on the enemy,
33:30who withdrew.
33:31On his own position,
33:33the same request,
33:35the same morning.
33:36A different man,
33:38in a different regiment,
33:39in a different part
33:40of the same hill,
33:41and on the surviving evidence,
33:43neither one knew
33:44what the other had done.
33:46At a quarter past ten,
33:48Stevenson reported
33:49that his carrier
33:50was hit and burning.
33:52He did not go back.
33:53He climbed to the top
33:55of a nearby house,
33:57set up again,
33:57and kept directing
33:59the guns from there
34:00until the house
34:01had taken four direct hits
34:03and came down.
34:04The army gave him
34:05the military cross.
34:07So now go back
34:08to that cottage
34:09and look at
34:09Pigott's call again,
34:11because it has changed.
34:12In the first minutes
34:14of this story,
34:15it looked like a man
34:16deciding how to die.
34:18Then it turned out
34:19to be arithmetic.
34:20Now it turns out
34:21not even to be his alone.
34:23Two Canadians
34:24on one ridge,
34:26an infantry major
34:27and a gunner captain
34:28reached for the identical answer
34:31inside two hours.
34:32That is not coincidence,
34:34and it is not desperation.
34:37That is what a habit looks like.
34:39Somewhere between Normandy
34:41and the Schelt,
34:42the men of this division
34:43had come to trust their guns
34:45so completely
34:46that asking them to fire
34:48on your own map square
34:49had become a thing
34:50you could simply do
34:52and expect to be obeyed
34:54instantly
34:54by a man like Jack Drury.
34:57Which leaves the real question.
35:00Why?
35:00The system was British.
35:02The guns were British designs.
35:04British battalions
35:06had the same nets
35:06and the same code words.
35:08Why were Canadians
35:10on this ridge
35:11leaning on their artillery
35:13harder than the book
35:14ever intended?
35:15The answer walked up the hill
35:17the next morning.
35:18October 17th,
35:2011 o'clock.
35:21The Rileys have been
35:22a quarter of a battalion
35:24for a day
35:25and now their reinforcements arrive.
35:2839 men.
35:29The war diary notes
35:30who they were.
35:31Mostly men remastered
35:33from the Armored Corps,
35:34the Artillery,
35:35the Service Corps,
35:36and other corps.
35:38Do you hear what that means?
35:40They were not infantrymen.
35:42They were tank crewmen
35:44without tanks,
35:45gunners,
35:46truck drivers,
35:47handed a rifle
35:48and a few weeks
35:49of conversion training
35:51and sent to a ridge
35:52that was being fought for
35:53by the 6th Parachute Regiment.
35:5639 of them
35:57to replace the better part
35:59of 300
35:59because there was nobody else.
36:03Canada's army overseas
36:04was made of volunteers,
36:06every man of it,
36:07and by October of 1944,
36:10the trained infantry volunteers
36:11had run out.
36:13Within three weeks,
36:14that shortage would cost
36:15the Minister of National Defense
36:17his post.
36:19On the ridge at Wundsdrecht,
36:21it had a simpler meaning.
36:22Pigott and Whitaker
36:24could not hold ground with men
36:25because they did not have the men.
36:28A German colonel
36:29could spend paratroopers
36:30to take a hill back.
36:31A Canadian colonel
36:33could not spend riflemen
36:34to keep it.
36:35So they spent shells.
36:37That is the layer
36:38underneath the arithmetic.
36:4190 to 10
36:42was never just a clever estimate
36:44on one bad morning.
36:46It was the only rate of exchange
36:48a Canadian company commander
36:50could afford.
36:51Steel instead of suns.
36:54And if the price
36:56of using the guns that way
36:57was standing underneath them yourself,
37:00then you dug your holes deep
37:02and you gave the honest reference.
37:04It still had to survive the night
37:07and you saw what the night did to them.
37:11So watch what the Rileys did
37:13on the 17th
37:14about the thing
37:15that had swallowed
37:16De Grossee's platoon.
37:18They could not make
37:19the Germans stand up.
37:21But they could make them visible.
37:25At 20 to 6 that evening,
37:27Lieutenant R. W. White's
37:29pioneer platoon
37:30crawled out in front of D Company
37:32and laid trip flares
37:34across the ground
37:35the paratroopers
37:36had come through in the dark.
37:38Step on the wire
37:40and you are lit.
37:42And anything lit
37:43on that slope
37:44belonged to 4th Field.
37:46Lieutenant Williamson
37:48sent the battalion's
37:49own snipers forward
37:50to C and D Companies
37:52to answer the German ones.
37:54The cost did not stop.
37:57That afternoon,
37:59a sniper's bullet
38:00grazed Piggott's
38:01company sergeant major,
38:02R. Morgan,
38:03and the diarist remarked
38:05that it was his 7th
38:06or 8th narrow escape.
38:09At 4 o'clock,
38:11D Company's
38:12sergeant major,
38:13K.C. Lingen,
38:14was killed
38:15outside his company headquarters.
38:17The diary admits flatly
38:19that there were not enough men
38:21to hold the feature properly
38:22and that the enemy
38:24kept reinforcing
38:25in spite of heavy losses
38:27to the artillery.
38:28Four companies,
38:30about 45 men each,
38:32three officers left in Piggott's.
38:35And they stayed.
38:36They stayed five days.
38:39Now you have nearly all of it.
38:41What they asked the guns to do,
38:44why they could ask,
38:45and why they had to.
38:47What you do not have yet
38:49is the verdict.
38:50And it starts with a piece of paper
38:52signed on the same day
38:54Piggott made his call
38:55by the man who had sent
38:57the Canadians to that ridge
38:59without enough of anything.
39:01October 16th, 1944.
39:04The same day.
39:06While Joe Piggott
39:07is walking between slit trenches
39:09with a dressing on his head,
39:11a field marshal
39:12at 21st Army Group Headquarters
39:14is putting his name
39:15to a directive.
39:16You need one paragraph
39:18of background,
39:19and I will keep it to that.
39:21Antwerp had been in allied hands
39:23since early September.
39:25It was the one port
39:27big enough
39:27to feed the armies
39:28going into Germany,
39:29and it could not take
39:31a single ship
39:32while the Germans
39:33held both banks
39:34of the Scheldt.
39:35Bernard Montgomery
39:36had left the job
39:37of clearing those banks
39:39to 1st Canadian Army,
39:40and then kept his weight,
39:43his supplies,
39:44and his attention
39:45pointed east,
39:46at Arnhem,
39:47and the Ruhr.
39:48For five weeks,
39:50the Canadians
39:50had been fighting
39:51for the most important port
39:53in Europe
39:54as somebody's
39:55second priority.
39:56That is why
39:58the Black Watch
39:59went in alone
40:00on Friday the 13th.
40:02That is why
40:03one battalion
40:04from Hamilton
40:04was sent at a ridge
40:06held by a parachute regiment.
40:08Eisenhower had finally
40:10lost patience,
40:11and on the 16th,
40:13Montgomery gave way.
40:15His directive said
40:16that operations
40:17to open Antwerp
40:18would be given
40:19complete priority
40:20over all other
40:22offensive operations
40:23in 21st Army Group,
40:25without any qualification
40:27whatsoever.
40:28Without any qualification
40:30whatsoever.
40:33Signed on the very day
40:34a Canadian major
40:35was asking his own
40:37corps artillery
40:38to fire on him
40:39because there was
40:40nothing else to ask for.
40:42The paper did not
40:43reach the ridge.
40:45Not that day,
40:46and not the next.
40:48Armies turned slowly.
40:50For five days,
40:51the Reillies held
40:52Vonstrecht
40:53with what they had.
40:55Forty-five men
40:55to accompany,
40:57remastered drivers,
40:58trip flares,
40:59and fourth field.
41:01On the 21st of October,
41:03the Queen's own
41:04Cameron Highlanders
41:05of Canada
41:06came up
41:06and took over
41:07their holes,
41:08and the Royal Hamilton
41:10Light Infantry
41:11walked down
41:11off that hill.
41:13Terry Kopp
41:14gives the bill.
41:15Twenty-one killed,
41:17one hundred and forty-six
41:18wounded,
41:19from a battalion
41:20that had gone up
41:21with four thin companies.
41:22Now the other side
41:24of the ledger.
41:26Von der Heidt
41:26believed the best defense
41:28was an attack,
41:29and for five days
41:31he lived by it.
41:32Kopp's estimate
41:33for what those
41:34counterattacks
41:35around Wunstrecht
41:36cost the 6th Parachute Regiment
41:38is about
41:39four hundred and eighty
41:41casualties,
41:42and more than
41:42fifty prisoners
41:44on top of that.
41:45And Kopp,
41:46who is not a man
41:47given to flattering
41:48anyone,
41:49passes judgment
41:51on the German colonel.
41:53To keep throwing
41:54frontal attacks
41:55at a Canadian force
41:56that had gone over
41:57to the defense,
41:58he writes,
41:59reflected
42:00overconfidence.
42:02Think about
42:03what that judgment
42:04rests on.
42:05A veteran commander
42:07of elite troops
42:08looked at a
42:09worn-down battalion
42:10on a hill
42:10and concluded,
42:12reasonably,
42:13that a hard push
42:14would take it back.
42:15That is how
42:17it had always worked.
42:19What he had not
42:20reckoned with
42:21was an enemy
42:22who had turned
42:23being attacked
42:24into a weapon,
42:25who dug first
42:27and let you come,
42:28and waited until
42:29you were upright
42:30in the open,
42:31and then gave
42:32the gunners
42:33a reference
42:34with himself
42:34in the middle of it.
42:36Every lesson
42:36in his career
42:37told van der Heidt
42:39to attack.
42:39On that ridge,
42:41attacking
42:42was the mistake.
42:43By the 24th
42:45of October,
42:46his paratroopers
42:46had pulled back
42:47north,
42:48toward Bergen-Opzum.
42:50The neck
42:51of the isthmus
42:52was open.
42:532nd Canadian Division
42:54turned west
42:55into South Baveland.
42:57That is the German
42:58verdict,
42:59and it was delivered
43:00the only way
43:01that regiment
43:02ever delivered one.
43:03They left.
43:05Now the army's
43:06verdict on
43:07Piggott himself.
43:08He was awarded
43:09the Distinguished
43:10Service Order,
43:11a decoration
43:12that rarely goes
43:13to a major
43:14commanding a company.
43:15And the last sentence
43:17of the recommendation
43:18is the one
43:19I want you to hear,
43:20because it finally
43:21tells you
43:22what that half hour
43:23in the cottage
43:24was worth.
43:25His gallant action,
43:26it says,
43:28not only successfully
43:29held this important
43:30position,
43:31but so weakened
43:32the enemy line
43:33that an immediate
43:34further advance
43:35of the division
43:36was made possible.
43:37A division,
43:39moved forward
43:40by what one
43:41company commander
43:41did between
43:42a quarter to eleven
43:43and noon.
43:44But there is
43:45something odd
43:46in that document,
43:47and you are now
43:48in a position
43:49to catch it.
43:51Stevenson's citation,
43:52the Gunners,
43:53says in so many words
43:55that he brought down
43:57artillery fire
43:58on his own position.
44:00Piggott's does not.
44:02Piggott's says
44:03he directed
44:04and brought down
44:06medium artillery fire
44:07on the enemy
44:09to his immediate front.
44:12To his immediate front.
44:15A hundred yards out.
44:17At a moment
44:18when a core concentration
44:19covers far more
44:21than a hundred yards.
44:23I cannot tell you
44:25why the staff officer
44:26who drafted it
44:27chose those words.
44:29Perhaps a major
44:31who asks for a
44:32victor target
44:33on his own headquarters
44:34is a harder thing
44:36to put in front
44:37of a general
44:37than a captain
44:39who does it alone.
44:40What I can tell you
44:42is that the men
44:43who were in the holes
44:44never described it
44:45that way,
44:46and neither did Piggott.
44:48He said
44:49the first salvo
44:51was right on.
44:52He was describing
44:54his own roof.
44:56There is one more
44:57verdict,
44:58and it took
44:59fourteen years.
45:00In 1958,
45:03Montgomery published
45:04his memoirs.
45:05He was not a man
45:06who admitted error easily,
45:08and there are very few
45:09places in that book
45:10where he does.
45:12This is one of them.
45:14I must admit
45:15a bad mistake
45:16on my part,
45:17he wrote.
45:18I underestimated
45:20the difficulties
45:20of opening up
45:21the approaches
45:22to Antwerp.
45:23I reckoned
45:24that the Canadian army
45:25could do it
45:26while we were going
45:26for the Ruhr.
45:27I was wrong.
45:29I was wrong.
45:31Three words
45:33from a field marshal.
45:34They were paid for
45:35on Black Friday,
45:36on that ridge,
45:38and in the flooded fields
45:39beyond it,
45:40by an army of volunteers
45:42that had been given
45:43the job without the means
45:45and did it anyway.
45:47That is what was said
45:48about them
45:48from outside.
45:50What remains
45:51is what became
45:52of the men
45:52who were inside it,
45:54and one last look
45:55at a cottage on a hill
45:56at the minute
45:57before the shells arrived.
45:59On the 28th of November,
46:011944,
46:03six weeks after
46:04that morning
46:05on the ridge,
46:06the first cargo ship
46:08came up the river Scheldt
46:09and tied up in Antwerp.
46:11She was called
46:12the Fort Cataraqui.
46:14She had been built
46:15in Canada.
46:16By then,
46:18the estuary
46:18had cost
46:19First Canadian Army
46:20nearly 13,000 casualties.
46:23More than 6,000 of them
46:26were Canadians.
46:26The people of Wundstrecht,
46:29who had been moved
46:30out of what was left
46:31of their village
46:31because of the dead
46:32still lying in it
46:34and the shells
46:35still lying unexploded
46:36in the fields,
46:37would not all come home
46:39for months.
46:40Some never did.
46:42And the men.
46:44Dennis Whitaker
46:45took the Reillys on
46:47into Germany.
46:48In February,
46:49he earned
46:49a second distinguished
46:51service order
46:52on the Goch-Kalkar Road,
46:54finished the war
46:55a brigadier,
46:56went home,
46:57played one more season
46:58at quarterback,
46:59and ended up
47:00running a brewery.
47:02For 20 years,
47:03he was Honorary Colonel
47:05of the regiment.
47:06And in 1984,
47:08with his wife Sheila,
47:09he wrote the book
47:11that put the Scheldt
47:12back in front of Canadians,
47:13who had been allowed
47:15to forget it.
47:16One of its chapters
47:17is called
47:18The Guns of Wundstrecht.
47:20He died in 2001
47:22at 86.
47:25William Donald Stevenson,
47:27the gunner captain
47:28who walked forward,
47:30received his military cross
47:31at the end of December.
47:33The record I could find
47:34tells me nothing more
47:36about him
47:36than his citation does,
47:38and I am not going
47:39to invent a life for him.
47:41What is on paper
47:42is enough.
47:43Surrounded,
47:44he asked for the guns,
47:45and then he climbed a house
47:47and stayed in it
47:49until it fell down.
47:50Private Harry Graham,
47:52the driver,
47:53with his chest and face
47:55cut open by stone,
47:56I cannot follow past
47:58that morning either.
47:59He is in this story
48:00for less than a minute,
48:02sitting in a jeep
48:03in front of a German gun,
48:05working the starter.
48:06I wanted you to have his name.
48:08And Joe Piggott
48:10went home to Hamilton.
48:11He went back
48:12into the family firm,
48:14the one whose name
48:14was on the first skyscraper
48:16in the city.
48:17In the years after the war,
48:19it was described
48:20as the largest
48:21privately owned
48:22construction company
48:23in Canada.
48:25A builder's son
48:26who became a builder.
48:29If you were looking
48:30for the man
48:30who had once asked a corps
48:32to shell him,
48:33you would have found him
48:34pricing jobs.
48:36I think that
48:37is the right place
48:38to leave him,
48:39because it is the truest thing
48:41about what he did.
48:42So come back with me
48:44one last time
48:45to the cottage.
48:48It is late
48:48in the morning
48:49of October 16th.
48:50The roof is open.
48:52His driver
48:53is bleeding outside.
48:55There is blood
48:56in his own eyes.
48:58A German gun
48:59is sitting 50 yards
49:01from the door,
49:02and over the crest
49:03behind it
49:04come the best soldiers
49:05the enemy has,
49:07on their feet,
49:08moving the way
49:09good troops move.
49:11You have now watched
49:12the next hour
49:13of that man's life
49:15and the five days
49:16after it,
49:17and you know
49:18what I could not tell you
49:20at the start.
49:21You know the holes
49:22were dug in the dark,
49:23on purpose,
49:25for exactly this.
49:26You know the gunner
49:28on the other end
49:29had watched him work
49:30from a steeple
49:31and did not need to ask
49:32if he was sure.
49:34You know
49:35that another Canadian
49:36on another part
49:38of that hill
49:38had already asked
49:40for the same thing.
49:42You know
49:42the number
49:43he had in his head,
49:4590 to 10,
49:47and that he was ready
49:48to pay the 10.
49:50You know
49:50the guns
49:51did not finish it,
49:52and that he walked
49:53a hundred yards
49:54in the open
49:55to finish it himself.
49:57And you know
49:58why any of it
49:59was necessary,
50:00because the replacements
50:02who came up that hill
50:03the next day
50:04were truck drivers,
50:05and there was
50:06no one else to send.
50:08So when he gets
50:09through to the gunners
50:10and gives them
50:11a map reference,
50:12you are no longer
50:13watching a man
50:15choose how to die.
50:16You are watching
50:17a man from a country
50:18of 11 million people,
50:20in an army
50:21made entirely
50:22of volunteers,
50:24on ground
50:25nobody else
50:26had been willing
50:26to pay for,
50:27using a system
50:28somebody else designed,
50:30with not enough men,
50:32and never enough time.
50:34And he is working out
50:35quite coldly,
50:37the one way
50:38his company
50:38can still be on
50:40that hill
50:40at noon.
50:41The coordinates
50:42were his own.
50:43He gave them
50:44the honest reference.
50:46And then he went out
50:47among his men
50:48and told them
50:49to get low.
50:51What did Canadians
50:52ask their own guns
50:53to do
50:54as the Germans
50:55closed in?
50:56They asked them
50:57to do the work
50:58of the soldiers
50:59Canada did not have.
51:01and they were
51:02willing to stand
51:03underneath
51:03while it was done.
51:05A German colonel
51:06learned it
51:07by losing
51:08a regiment's worth
51:09of paratroopers.
51:10A British field marshal
51:12took 14 years
51:13to write three words
51:15about it.
51:16The Rileys knew it
51:17by a quarter past
51:18eleven that morning,
51:19when they lifted
51:20their heads
51:21out of the dirt
51:22on a ridge
51:23in Holland
51:23and found
51:24that they were
51:25all still there.
51:27Thank you for spending
51:28this hour with me.
51:29I know how much
51:30of your time that is
51:31and I do not
51:32take it lightly.
51:33If you think
51:34what the Canadians
51:35did at Wunstrecht
51:37deserves to be remembered,
51:39a like genuinely
51:40helps it find
51:41more people.
51:42And if you would
51:43like to hear more,
51:44we are here
51:45every week.
51:46And if your father,
51:48your grandfather,
51:49or your uncle
51:50served in the
51:51Second World War
51:52in any uniform,
51:54I would be honored
51:55to hear about him
51:56in the comments.