Friday, October 13, 1944

"Black Friday"

by John Dubetz, Oct. 13, 1994. Used with permission.

I had joined the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment of Canada in France at the latter part of July, 1944. After about one month in the front line I was wounded by shrapnel and was convalescing in a hospital in France for about five weeks. On October 8, I was released from the  hospital and was on my way to rejoin my regiment. I was very anxious to be with my comrades again. I was interested to know what kind of fighting they went through while I was in the hospital.

When I caught up to my Regiment on October 10, I was very disappointed when I found out there were only four or five men left in the platoon that I was with. The rest had fallen along the way and were replaced by re-enforcements. They told me about all they went through during my absence. They told me how they had the enemy on the run, how they had to wade across the canal, how they had run out of ammunition during a fierce battle and how they had some house-to-house fighting in one of the towns that they had captured. They told me about many other battles. This was all very exciting to me.

A few days prior to my arrival, the Black Watch had suffered some very heavy losses. We were camped in a small village in the Sheldt. Re-enforcements were coming in during the next two days. Most of the new re-enforcements were very young men. Having had experience as an advanced infantry instructor in Canada, I could tell that these men had very little, if any, infantry training. They did not seem to be ready for front line combat but they were all in fine spirit. The villages  that we were camped in was very small; it had only a few rows of houses. Most of the houses had a lean-to shed attached to them. The residents of a town or village always vacate the place when the fighting draws near. There were many chickens in the shed but before we left the village there weren't many chickens left, but we did have a good chicken dinner. 

On the evening of October 12, our company commander had us gather around a large hay shed at the edge of the village. There he gave us a brief pep talk and told us that we would be advancing very early the next morning. He told us where we might encounter the enemy, and that we would advance with bayonets fixed on our rifles and hand grenades strapped to our web belt. He presumed that the enemy might be on the opposite side of a Dyke along which we would proceed. We were to lob the grenades over the Dykes, if such were the case.

That night we all retired early and were prepared to move early in the morning. In the house that I stayed, I noticed a nice knitted scarf and a par of knitted gloves to match. The mornings were cold; all we wore was battle dress. I had decided to take the gloves and scarf with me to keep me warm.

The next morning, Friday, October 13, we were up bright and early, at about 4:00 a. m. I felt guilty taking the scarf and gloves from. - the house. I thought that if I wore the scarf around my neck, I would, probably get my head blown off as a penalty. I left the scarf behind, ,and took the gloves only. I reasoned that I would rather have my hands blown off than my head.

We lined up to advance about 5:00 a. m. I had been a section leader in our platoon. Before we advanced our company commander came to me and asked if I would mind .. changing positions with one of the new recruits who was supposed to carry a Bren gun. He told me that I had experience with the Bren gun, whereas the new recruit had not. He wanted me to change positions just for that one day. I told him that it was all right with me. I picked up the Bren gun and fell in behind the section leader. We started off in the dark in single file. We were advancing North, what I thought would be in the direction of Bergen op Zoom. We marched in the darkness for about two hours and then we came to a crest of a hill.

At the crest of the hill I noticed a few Canadian soldiers standing, as we walked by. Dawn was breaking but it was still too dark for me to read the insignia on their shoulders. I could not make out to what battalion these soldiers belonged. Some of their faces were visible and I could detect the fear and concern they had for us. They seemed to sense what we were getting into. They stood motionless, watching us as we proceeded silently past them in single file down the hill.

We came to a flat open-field; to the right of us were the dykes. We kept advancing through the field and came upon a big plot of beets. These beets were about two feet tall. We walked in single file between the rows of this beet field. When we advanced almost half a mile through this, field I saw a bright flare fired at us from our 10 o'clock position. This flare was fired at us by the enemy to pin point our location to the rest of the German defense line. Immediately following that, all hell-broke loose. We had walked into a well fortified German defense line. All we had to fight them with, was our rifles, bayonets and hand grenades. If we would have had artillery support, we might have had some chance. The enemy was well armed and well fortified. They waited until we had penetrated deep into their defense line and then they opened up on us with a heavy barrage of rifle fire. We were trapped in a wide open flat field, with no shelter whatsoever. We were doomed for destruction. The Germans had used tracer ammunition in night fighting. We could see the bullets coming at us like a shower of rain; we were being massacred. Immediately, I hit the ground between two rows of beets. The beets gave me some protection from sight but this was no protection from bullets and no refuge in sight in this wide open flat field. As the bullets came at ,us heavily, most of the new recruits panicked. They ran in all directions firing their rifles. Looking back, I could see them being toppled over like rabbits, by the German rifle fire. I heard one of them hollering, "Corporal Help". I lay there for a few moments with my Bren gun in front of me. In a little while I noticed that there. was a clearing in the beet field. I looked along this path to my left~, -where the firing was coming from. About four or five hundred yards away I could see three German officers standing beside a trench. They were pointing in our direction and giving orders to their soldiers in the trenches. These officers were heavily dressed in long winter, coats and they wore high brown boots. I studied the situation and was about to turn my Bren gun on them, when suddenly, I felt a hot," sharp pain through my arm. A rifle bullet pierced my arm and knocked the Bren gun out of my hands. At the time my head was resting on my arm. I thought about the scarf that I had left behind in the house that morning. With my arm shattered I could not do anything; my fighting was over.

I pushed myself back from the opening into the shade of the beets. The bullets were hitting heavily all around me. The beets along side of me and in front of me were being diced by bullets but I was not being hit again. I lay there with my arm bleeding very badly. In a few minutes I was lying in a pool of blood. I thought that if I did not get killed by bullets, I would bleed to death. I wanted to make a tourniquet to stop the bleeding but was unable to do it by myself. I called to my comrade ahead of me; he did not reply and I presumed that he was dead. I called to my comrade behind me. When he did not respond, I presumed that he too, was dead. I grabbed the upper part of my battered arm with my-good hand and squeezed it as hard as I could. In a few minutes my bleeding subsided. The bullets were still coming heavily from the enemy. I had very little hope of getting out of there alive. I was not afraid of death, nor afraid of pain. The only fear I had was that I was not ready to meet my Creator. We were trapped and I could see no way out. I wondered how many of-us were still alive. Suddenly I heard a thumping of shells around me. ' I was expecting the shells to explode, thinking that they were fired by the enemy. I soon realized that these were not enemy shells; they were smoke bombs fired at our position by our own artillery.

We were given a smoke screen to get out of there. Besides myself, I don't think that there were many left alive. The smoke screen was very heavy and I felt tome relief as I lay there. Then it struck me that this smoke screen was there for a purpose and I said to myself, "Get out of here, John". The enemy fire was still coming down heavily. I was not going to wait there to get finished off. With some difficulty I pushed myself around. For a moment I thought that I did not want to leave my Bren gun behind for the enemy. I soon realized that I could not pull the gun with me, and besides, I was sure that it was dismantled when it got knocked out of my hands by the bullet. I was very weak from loss of blood but I was-determined to make my way out of there. Pulling myself forward with one arm, I crawled back alongside and sometimes over dead bodies. As I crawled along one body, I noticed that it was riddled with bullets. Crawling over the legs of another body, the bayonet at the end of his rifle stuck into my pant leg. It gave me an eerie feeling. I had to push myself back to get the bayonet out of my pant leg.

I lay there for a while to regain my strength and a thought came to me, "Why am I crawling?" There was still a heavy smoke screen and I would be a lesser target standing up than sprawled on the ground. I got up on my feet but my shattered arm felt like it weighed a ton. I could not walk with my arm dangling at my side. I cradled my wounded arm in my good arm and was able to proceed in that way. I walked back slowly avoiding the dead bodies along the way. I had no fear of the enemy fire and I did not panic. I just could not believe that I was walking through there and not getting hit.

Soon I had walked out of the smoke screen and ahead-of me I could see the soldiers whom we had passed on the hill when coming into the field that morning. At the same time they saw me and were shouting encouragement to keep me coming. The Germans to my right and back of me also saw me emerge from the smoke screen and opened fire at me. I was not being hit. I thought that I could hear the bullets hitting some kind of a protection around me and falling to the ground. I kept on walking slowly, not expecting to make it back over the hill.

I felt very weak and slumped to the ground. our soldiers on the hill and the enemy thought that I had fallen dead. Both the shouting and the gun fire ceased. I lay there to rest for a few minutes. After a short while I got up and started walking towards the hill. The shouting from the soldiers on the hill and the enemy gun fire resumed. I thought that every step would be my last step. I could not understand how I was not being hit. I kept walking and soon came to the edge of the hill. I walked up over the top of the hill and was met by a first-aide soldier. He took me to a carrier where he tended to my wound and made a sling for my arm. He started the carrier and we headed away from the area. Looking at his face, I could tell that he was anxious to get out of there.

I must have passed out while in the carrier because I did not remember a thing until I was being carried on a stretcher into a hospital in Antwerp. I did not know how long a ride ' it was from the battle field to Antwerp. As I was being carried into the hospital there were a few nurses waiting inside by the door way. One of the nurses exclaimed: "Look, Curly is back." During the time that I left the hospital in France to rejoin my regiment, the Canadian hospital staff was moved from France to Antwerp to be closer to the front line. The nurses had called me Curly because my hair was just starting to grow. When leaving England for France, several of us had our hair shaved. We figured it would be easier to keep clean and someone suggested that the bullets would not get tangled in the hair but would graze off our smooth scalps. 

I was carried into an empty ward and placed on a cot. A short time later a male attendant came to my cot and told me that he would undress me and make me comfortable. He bent over me to unbutton my tunic and he noticed the four hand grenades strapped to my web belt around my waist. He asked me if these were live grenades. I told him that they were. His face dropped and turned all white. He slowly turned around and hurriedly left the room. A short time later a nurse came in and undressed me. My battle dress was caked with mud and blood. My arm had swollen in my sleeve and she had to use a pair of scissors to cut my jacket off my body. Some time later a doctor came to check me. I told him that I hoped that it was only a flesh wound with no broken bones because I wanted to get back to my buddies in the front line as soon as possible.

I did not meet any of my buddies from the front line, while in the hospital. I always wondered if any one else besides me, got out of there. Many years later I learned that there were five prisoners taken out of there. One of the men who was taken prisoner and is now residing in Alberta, told me that the Germans came into the field after there seemed to be no sign of life. They prodded the soldiers lying on the ground to see if they were alive. The Germans took five of them as prisoners. One of the five prisoners was the veteran who related the facts to me. He told me that when he was picked up he looked around and saw that the field was strewn with dead Black Watch.

To this date I feel sorry for the soldiers of the Black Watch "C" Company who had made the attack that morning. Their effort was in vain. With the situation the way that it was we did not have a snow balls chance to accomplish anything. We advanced through an open field with fixed bayonets to face a well fortified German defense front. The Germans saw us coming. They waited until we came well within their range and then they opened up and massacred us. We had no artillery support and no knowledge as to where the Germans were. We were instructed to march into a firing squad. Someone had blundered. 

Return to the World War Two section
Return to the Smoky Lake History Archive