War Diary of 1st Battalion Canadian Scottish Regiment, Vol. 62, October 1, 1944 to October 31, 1944

The war diaries are official records kept by the Battalions during a one month period. They contain the daily orders, correspondence, newsletters, and an intelligence log detailing troop activities, locations, and weather conditions. The war diaries detail the activities and movement of the 1st Battalion from training in Canada and England to active duty on the Western Front and their return to Victoria in January 1946. This diary was kept while at Calais, Ardres, Poperinge, Zeebrugge, Bruges, Neuzen Ghent, Ljzendijke, and Cadzand, Holland. It has entries about continuing with the meeting about the German's surrendering Calais, the German in command insisting that they surrender to the Canadians and wanting to be assured that his men would not be turned over to the civilian population for harsh treatment and ridicule, taking over billets and hospitals and getting some good food and drink after their victory, remarking again that every billet was permeated with the pungent odour left by all Jerries, remarking that Calais had the same treatment as Caen and will need a lot of repairs, getting a movement order and packing up quickly with every man having a little something extra in their packs like a can of peaches or a pistol liberated from a prisoner including the diarist getting a new typewriter, moving towards Belgium on the hunt for more Germans and agreeing with WWI vets when they complained about the mud in Flanders, removing all division and battalion patches from uniforms and equipment to achieve a greater degree of security, encountering friendly locals everywhere they stop, engaging in one of the bloodiest and dirtiest battles in the history of the Canadian Scottish where they used flame-throwers on the enemy across a canal leaving the enemy that was left alive terror-stricken then spending all day engaging the enemy in various ways, some of "C" Coy being taken as prisoners of war, many causalities in this battle estimating that they have killed at least one battalion's worth of infantry since the assault began on October 6th, the difficulty of dealing with mud that gets everywhere and makes slit trenches wet and uncomfortable, having a grenade fight across a dyke, a German medic asking for a 20 minute truce to evacuate wounded after the grenade fight, engaging with the enemy in various ways over many days, being very happy that they were to be relieved from their position, finally getting some rest and having real eggs for breakfast along with mushroom and bacon that they liberated from the enemy, viewing a film made especially for who had been continuously under fire, finding that the villages in Holland harder hit than any that they encountered in France and Belgium and that some of the villagers were not friendly to them and then changing the way they did things for extra security to protect against potential civilian attacks, and a German medical officer asking to speak to a senior Allied officer about evacuating the town but the battalion did not want what happened in Calais to happen again here so they declared it an "open town" where it would not be attacked unless the battalion's advance was resisted, among other activities and information. At the end of the diary there is a list of what is contained in the 5 appendices for this month.

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