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Estevan learned about another page of the Second World War

About 40 people interested in war history, including local cadets, gathered at the Estevan Royal Canadian Legion Hall Saturday morning to learn about the Battle of the Scheldt that took place during the Second World War.
Battle of the Scheldt
Estevan’s Eugene Phaneuf lost his life on Oct. 12, 1944, participating in the Battle of the Scheldt. Photo by Anastasiia Bykhovskaia

About 40 people interested in war history, including local cadets, gathered at the Estevan Royal Canadian Legion Hall Saturday morning to learn about the Battle of the Scheldt that took place during the Second World War.

Jerry Roenspiess and Stacey Bouck from the Regina Riffles Association also came over to attend the presentation.

Craig Bird, the commanding officer of the No 2901 Estevan Army Cadets, guided the public through the major events of the Second World War leading to the less-known, but very important Battle of the Scheldt, which was a series of operations in the fall of 1944.

“It’s a cadet presentation, but I opened it up for the public,” said Bird. “We are basically passing on a little bit of history on World War Two… It’s specifically geared towards the cadets. It’s the educational portion of the cadet program.”

He noted that the schools don’t go into military history too much anymore, so he was trying to fill in the gap uncovering some pages of not just the Canadian military history, but also of the military history of the region as a part of the presentation was dedicated to memories and documents from the South Saskatchewan Regiment, the Regina Rifles and Royal Winnipeg Rifles, who partook in the Battle of the Scheldt.

“The South Saskatchewan Regiment was here in this area. And the headquarters were here up until 1968 when they were put on a supplementary reserve (i.e. virtually disbanded),” said Bird. “There is a lot of history down here that seems to be getting forgotten."

The Battle of the Scheldt was a fight for the strategically important 50 kilometres of land in northern Belgium and the southwestern Netherlands that was fully controlled by Germans at that time. It took about six weeks and over 6,300 Canadian casualties (almost 13,000 total death toll) to clear that land. The documentary Against All Odds: Canadian Infantry Battle for the Scheldt by Hugh Clifford Chadderton filmed at the battlefields, was shown during the presentation. In an hour film Chadderton, who was a Canadian Second World War veteran and chief executive officer of The War Amps, covered the battles that were taking place during those fall weeks.

This year marks 75 years since the Battle of the Scheldt that started on Oct. 2, 1944, when the First Canadian Army, with Canadian, Polish and British units attached in tough battles opened up the route to Antwerp, so the port could be used to supply Allies in northwest Europe. In the documentary, Chadderton also pointed out some tragic and sometimes pointless circumstances, that according to him turned what could have been a three-day operation into a costly and long campaign.

Following the movie Bird also focused on the local input. He read the war diaries of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, the Regina Rifles and Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

These diaries are chronicles that were reflecting what men were doing on each particular day in the fall of 1944. These memoirs describe the days that started as early as 3 a.m. and had the men marching, fighting, losing their comrades, dealing with nasty weather, but slowly progressing towards the goal. The extracts from the diaries helped those present to get some idea of what it was like for the Canadian soldiers there, in semi-flooded lands of Belgium and the Netherlands in 1944.

During this time period, the South Saskatchewan Regiment had 48 men killed. The Regina Rifles lost 71 men. And the Royal Winnipeg Rifles had 69 men killed. Bird noted that Estevan also lost one of their own Eugene Phaneuf. He was enlisted with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles at that time and lost his life on Oct. 12, 1944. He was killed during one of the crossings of the Leopold Canal.

“Strangely enough, I was doing a little bit of research, his older brother Ernest was killed in World War One … on the 30th of July 1918 about 170 kilometres apart where they died,” said Bird.

Both brothers are listed in Royal Canadian Legion Saskatchewan Command's Military Service Recognition Book.