War Diary of 1st Battalion Canadian Scottish Regiment, Vol. 64, December 1, 1944 to December 31, 1944

Public

The war diaries are official records kept by the Battalions during a one month period. They contain the daily orders, correspondence, newsletters, and an intelligence log detailing troop activities, locations, and weather conditions. The war diaries detail the activities and movement of the 1st Battalion from training in Canada and England to active duty on the Western Front and their return to Victoria in January 1946. This diary was kept while at Goresbeek and Nikmegen, Holland. It has entries about an inspection, visiting the town of Nijmegen which has been under fire for 10 weeks straight, attending a variety of entertainments, training on mines and booby traps being used on the front by the enemy, prepping to move to an advanced area again, representatives from the Battalion attending various NCO and Specialist Schools to maintain a high level of efficiency, doing route marches in constricted areas, donating all the sweets and candies they had to the local children for their stockings beacuse according to legend St. Nicholas comes to all good Dutch children on the nights of December 5-6, reaching the German-Dutch border and "expeditions of pilgrims" crossed into Germany to spit on the ground, dealing with snow, a note in the Battalion Log requests that strict care be taken that no looting is done in the houses the Battalion is occupying, working with the Dutch Frontier Guards, exchanging fire with the enemy in various ways including targeting a church where it is assumed they have set up their headquarters, noting that the low-hanging mist over the flats making it easy for the enemy to infiltrate into the lines if active patrolling is not maintained, interrogating civilans who claimed they escaped from the Germans, the Germans controlling flooding, finding a trap door in the building in which they set up the Command Post that led to a secret room with equipment left by the enemy including large albums picturing the activities of "Der Fuhrer" and on the Wehrmacht, sharing Christmas food parcels from Canada with the civilians, enjoying a Christmas lunch before moving out, the troops not being happy to have to live in drafty barns, warning about enemy troops in Allied uniforms dropping behind American and British lines, using grenades to break the hard crust of the frozen ground to make dugouts and trenches, and making careful movements as it is difficult to camoflage khaki in the snow, among other activities and information. Includes appendices covering a handwritten intelligence log and a list of the appendices associated with this diary including battle log, intelligence summaries, administration memos, civilian interrogation, correspondence, West Wall Climber, orders, Maple Leaf, field messages, casualties, traces, defence plans, and field sketches,

In Collection:
Creator Subject Language Identifier
  • Vol. 64
Date created Resource type Rights statement Extent
  • 188 pages
Geographic coverage Coordinates
  • 51.77667, 5.93611
  • 51.8425, 5.85278
Physical repository Collection
  • Canadian Scottish Regiment (Princess Mary's) Collection
Provenance
  • Transferred to UVic Special Collections from BC Archives, March 2006.
Provider Genre Archival item identifier
  • Series 11. 5.14
Fonds title Fonds identifier Is referenced by Date digitized
  • March 4, 2019 to March 7, 2019
Technical note
  • Scanned on Plustek Opticbook at 600 dpi TIFF.
DOI

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