Sask. WWII veteran returns to Holland 70 years after liberation

Seventy years ago, John Sheppard pulled heavy artillery through muddy fields in Holland when the Canadians liberated the Dutch from German occupation.

This week, he is touring some of the same cities and towns on an anniversary tour.
 
Now 91, Sheppard explained that he was in the younger group of Canadian soldiers who were the boots on the ground fighting to liberate the Netherlands between autumn 1944 and the spring of 1945. As he makes the journey back to the Netherlands once again, Sheppard worries there will be a very small group of veterans able to make it this time.

He enlisted in 1943 and shipped over to England in the spring of 1944 to serve as a gunner in the 7th Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery. He remembers his unit was sent to do training exercises at a garrison near the Cliffs of Dover. He later found out they were a decoy to keep Hitler thinking the D-Day attacks would come from the direction of Calais instead of Normandy. When his unit returned to the original camp in England, the impact of D-Day struck him second hand.
 
“There was long lists of hundreds of names on them all posted from the artillery to the infantry. They did this in all camps because our infantry got pretty badly damaged in the invasion and the battles that followed thereafter,” he said.
 
By the middle of July, Sheppard was posted across to Normandy with the 7th Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery. The Canadians started moving troops across France and Belgium into Holland.
 
“I noticed from the history of the 7th medium artillery regiment that there was a list of about 60 battle locations and I think I was there for all of them as gunner,” Sheppard said.
 
He said memory is a funny thing because he doesn’t always remember his last meal, but he remembers details from 70 years ago. For example, he only had one bath that entire winter. Sheppard also clearly recalls the Christmas he spent in Nijmegen.
 
“The gun crews were manned by the other battery allowing half to go to Nijmegen for a turkey dinner with all the trimmings and then we did the reverse at supper time so the other men could go,” he explained.
 
For this anniversary tour, Sheppard chose to stay in Zutphen to be close to friends he has made on past trips. However, he didn’t realize the significance of the community until he reread the history of his artillery unit.
 
“There, low and behold on the sixth of April, 1945, Zutphen. I was there,” he said.
 
Sheppard said he doesn’t remember the town or any other specific battle locations, he just remembers the mud that spring.
 
“I don’t remember landmarks particularly but I do remember the conditions. Mud and wet. It was just early spring, it was still the rainy season and this area is all below sea level so the Germans had opened the dikes and flooded it all which made it almost impossible to move around,” he said.
 
Sheppard said when the Germans retreated they actually did the Canadians one favour; they abandoned a crawler tractor in the fields. His unit used it to pull heavy guns and artillery through the flooded battlefields.
 
“As a survival method when we had the chance we would dig our guns in,” Sheppard explained. “It was a bit of a place to take cover when there was enemy shelling or enemy planes, but we couldn’t do that there because of the flooded situation,” he said.
 
The Canadians used the railroad beds as roads leaving them completely exposed to enemy fire.
 
“We had casualties. There were people killed,” Sheppard said. “You weren’t particularly brave. You were just in a situation where you just put up with it, I guess.”
 
Between March 23 and May 4, the Canadians moved through Holland liberating towns. Historians describe it as a bittersweet spring. The Dutch people had spent the winter on the brink of starvation until the Allies made a deal to drop supplies from airplanes and drive trucks across enemy lines to deliver food and supplies.

As the Canadian troops advanced towards Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the fighting was intense. More than 7,600 Canadian soldiers died during the nine-month campaign in the Netherlands. They are buried in Holten and Groesbeek cemeteries. Those war cemeteries are kept in pristine condition and even young school children take care of the graves of Canadian soldiers who died 70 years ago.
 
When Canadian troops pulled through towns, Dutch people lined the streets to dance and celebrate climbing on trucks and hugging soldiers. People in the Netherlands still refer to Canadians as the liberators of their country.
 
Every time Sheppard and other veterans return to mark the anniversary of the liberation, he said they are treated as honoured guests.