Originally Posted by
thieuster
Today, April 17, is the day that my hometown was liberated by the Allies. In this case the Canadians of the 48th Regiment Highlanders. The Allied came from the east, first they had taken Deventer, Wilp and then headed for Apeldoorn.
Why so late? A lot of other towns were already liberated! The reason for that was the fact that coming in from the east, a lot of Canadians had died, simply because the Wehrmacht HQ was in Apeldoorn! Lots of Germans were defending the roads to the town. Back in 1940, the Germans set up their HQ in Apeldoorn because it was half-way between The Hague (the administrative municipal of The Netherlands) and the German border. Second reason was that the HQ was located right across the street, facing the Royal Palace where the Dutch Queen had lived before she sailed to England after being invited by Churchill. Situating the the Wehrmacht's HQ facing the Palace had a psychological effect.
The Canadians had already suffered a lot of casualties and they had to cross a canal with only two bridges. Fair chance that the Germans had mined of booby-trapped the bridges. So the Canadians (recon squadrons and light infantry supported by a few tanks) decided to wait for the artillery to arrive. With the intention to shell the town on the 17th. Just to make sure that the Germans would surrender/retreat or die. Civilian casualties were considered a calculated risk.
What the Canadians didn't know was that most of the Germans had left the city, with no the option to go to the west, heading for Amsterdam and The Hague. The civilians in the town had noticed that the Germans had fled but were unable to contact the Canadians.
That night, two boys crossed the canal and contacted the Canadian forward posts. That nearly went wrong for obvious reasons: the Canadians were pretty 'trigger happy' after all those days fighting the Germans. But the boys managed to tell their story. At the same time, local resistance groups convinced the remaining Germans that it would be wiser to surrender which they did. So the two bridges were saved, so were many lives.
The Canadians occupied the Wehrmacht HQ when they found out that the complete infrastructure (phones) was still working and it was from that moment on the Canadian HQ. Technically, the Canadian HQ was much larger than one single house. Most of the administrative forces were housed in large barracks, now a park with expensive houses.
