Bagpipes skirled as Canadian soldiers paraded "somewhere in Belgium" last week. While silk-hatted Belgian functionaries looked on, Britain's Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery pinned decorations on 60 Canadian officers and men. Over a loudspeaker, "Monty" said that the victory in the Battle of the Scheldt Estuary, fought largely by Canadian infantrymen, was "magnificent." He doubted that any other troops could have accomplished it.
Like muddy, bloody Passchendaele 27 years before, the Scheldt battle was fought under soul-sickening conditions.*
The First Canadian Army fought for four weeks across the oozy Dutch polders, plodded relentlessly through knee-deep mud. Floods, pouring through demolished...
