Inundation of Walcheren

Though the inundation was justified by military necessity, it is controversial whether it was proportional in view of the predictable devastating effects for the civilian population, and the ecology of the island.

The rapid advance of the Allied armies in early September 1944 had created a logistics problem: the supply lines from the improvised ports in Normandy to the front had become too long.

Especially the former island of Walcheren, at the mouth of the Western Scheldt had become a bastion, bristling with long-range coastal batteries that controlled the sea approaches.

Initially, an infantry attack across the island of Zuid-Beveland and the Sloedam, that connected it with Walcheren, supported by airborne landings on both sides of this causeway was foreseen.

The Planning Section had initially ruled out an amphibious operation, but general Simonds put that option in play again, though he recognized its drawbacks.

Initially he preferred a strategic air offensive, in which the RAF Bomber Command was to "completely flood all parts of the island below high water level" and "systematically attack, day and night, to destroy defenses and wear out the garrison by attrition.

[vi]Despite this obvious downside, the Supreme Allied Commander, general Dwight D. Eisenhower, gave his consent to (the concept behind) the operation on 1 October 1944.

In his memoirs he opined: These breaches, permitting the sea to flood critical sections of the defences, were of great usefulness in an operation that throughout presented unusual difficulties.

Therefore, on 7 October, 100 RAF bombers attacked the Nolle dijk[vii] West of Vlissingen, and the dike near Ritthem, to the east of the canal through Walcheren.

The landing was supported by a large Allied flotilla, consisting of 28 ships, including the battleship HMS Warspite and two monitors.

The fire HMS Warspite laid down on the coastal batteries was very effective but[ix] resulted in several 15-inch shells landing in the middle of the town of Domburg, killing 50 civilians.

This inadvertently fired upon the village of Arnemuiden, an official Red-Cross-protected place under the Geneva Convention, for 36 hours, causing 46 civilian dead.

[12] To exploit the bridgehead the 156th and 157th brigades performed small amphibious operations to successfully circumvent the German blocking forces at the end of the causeway.

[12] On 5 November 1944 general Wilhelm Daser,[13] the commander of the German 70th Infantry division, surrendered Middelburg, after a column of amphibious 'Buffalo' tracked vehicles approached the city.

The salty seawater caused salinization that made the erstwhile very fertile Zeeland clay completely infertile for years to come.

An example is the municipality of Koudekerke (with the village of that name as its administrative center) which is located halfway between Vlissingen and Westkapelle on the Southern coast of Walcheren.

Its website has a very detailed history of the events during the period from the preparatory aerial bombardments in September, through the breaching of the dikes, and the fighting to clear the Atlantic Wall installations, to finally what the locals call the watertijd ("Water Time"), that lasted until the island was reclaimed from the sea.

The deserted, but well-stocked German bunkers were also a rich hunting ground for food and other supplies that were made "prize of war" ("the Allied troops were solely interested in the liquor stores") and were integrated in the official Distribution Service by the local government, enabling the population to use its ration books.

Walcheren thus escaped the Dutch famine that later would devastate Occupied Holland, especially after the sea approaches to Antwerp had been cleared of naval mines, and shipping supplies to the port came online.

But despite this successful improvisation, the situation would have become untenable if a large part of the "nonessential" population had not been evacuated to other places in liberated Zuid-Beveland and North Brabant after the hostilities in those areas ended.

[xii] The lack of electricity and the impossibility of normal heating must have made life hard to bear in the winter months in this inundated village.

Due to a lack of dike-building materials,[xiii] heavy construction equipment, and skilled dike workers, and the damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and the impediment of extensive minefields in the access areas, those attempts were doomed to fail.

Difficulties in commencing the rehabilitation works included the fact that many dredgers were still located in areas of the occupied Netherlands, and around 25% of the Dutch dredging fleet had been confiscated and transported to Germany.

[23] A particular problem was that by that time the breaches had become so wide and deep, that normal earth-moving operations were unable to overcome the strength of the tidal flows.

To block the deepest parts of the breaches surplus caissons, originally built for the Phoenix breakwaters of the Mulberry harbours, were given a new application.

By simply opening the locks at either end of the canal in Veere and Vlissingen at ebb tide, the bulk of the water mass was drained by mid-December 1945.

One "advantage" of the fact that the landscape had been "erased" by the flood was that the usual resistance against mandatory re-allocation of agricultural parcels, known as land consolidation, was more easily overcome.

An account of the work done to repair the breaches and reclaim the island from the sea is given in the historical novel Het verjaagde water by A. den Doolaard.