FERGUS – One of Michael Chong’s earliest childhood memories is his late mother stressing the importance of remembering the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers who liberated the Netherlands.
“She drilled it into out heads at a very young age,” said Chong, recalling one specific pre-kindergarten trip to the Guelph cenotaph.
The Wellington-Halton Hills MP has two close connections to the Liberation, the 75th anniversary of which is officially celebrated on May 5.
“It’s a particularly important moment because it was a very difficult time under Nazi occupation,” said Chong, whose late birth mother was born about a month after the May 1945 liberation in the town of Drachten, in the province of Friesland.
MICHAEL CHONG
His “second mother” (to whom his father was remarried) was a young girl during the war, living in the town of Katwijk aan Zee, in the province of South Holland.
Both were liberated by Canadian soldiers.
“This is something for which they – we as a family – are eternally grateful,” Chong told the Advertiser.
A ‘horrific’ five years
The Liberation of the Netherlands, while officially celebrated in North America on May 5, took place in stages between September 1944 and May 1945.
The Liberation is often celebrated simultaneously with Victory in Europe (VE) Day, officially recognized on May 8, and regarded as the culmination of the Second World War.
It ended five years of Nazi occupation, which had begun in May 1940.
“It was a horrific time … so when the Canadians came … it was a joyous and momentous occasion,” said Chong.
The liberation was particularly timely as it followed the “hunger winter” of 1944–45, which was characterized by a severe shortage of food and fuel.
The road to the Netherlands
Following the Battle of Normandy (June 6 to Aug. 25, 1944), Canadian soldiers pushed east rapidly through France and Belgium. The First Canadian Army played a leading role in opening Belgium and the Netherlands’ Scheldt estuary (tidal river), gateway to the port of Antwerp, in the fall of 1944.
Meanwhile, Dutch and Allied officials had hoped that the northern part of the country would be liberated after the British/American-led Operation Market Garden in September 1944.
But the operation failed and for months the country was divided into an occupied northern half and a largely liberated southern half, split by the Rhine River.
Following the conclusion of the Battle of the Scheldt in November 1944, winter brought a period of reduced fighting in anticipation of the push over the Rhine in the new year.
After German forces took control of the railway network and cut off food and fuel transports to the north, Allied troops air-dropped food to the Dutch people, but the hunger winter lasted until the spring Liberation, resulting in the death of about 20,000 civilians.
Throughout WWII, over 230,000 Dutch civilians died, representing about 3% of the overall population, Chong noted.
When the Allied offensives began in 1945, the First Canadian Army helped liberate the northern Netherlands until the German Army surrendered on May 5. Germany officially signed the surrender on May 7 and it came into effect the following day.
The First Canadian Army ranged in size from approximately 105,000 to 175,000 Canadian soldiers, of which more than 7,600 died in the nine-month campaign to liberate the Netherlands.
They are buried in various cemeteries in Belgium, Netherlands and Germany, with some buried in the Netherlands countryside.
“To this day, the Dutch have never forgotten that sacrifice,” said Chong.
After the war
Many eternally grateful residents of the Netherlands immigrated to Canada following the war and there remains large pockets of their descendents throughout Wellington County.
Chong noted a lot of soldiers from the Wellington County area were involved in the WWII liberation. Sadly, few of those men are still alive.
“It’s an amazing thing how our two countries are connected in a very personal and intimate way,” he said.
– With files from Veterans Affairs Canada
Personnel of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry riding in a universal carrier on Oct. 27, 1944 in Krabbendijke, Netherlands. <br>(Credit: Ken Bell/Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-138420)
