Attack on the Scheldt

During the Allied advance across northwest Europe in 1944, the opening up of the key port of Antwerp was a pivotal event, yet it has been neglected in histories of the conflict. The battles in Normandy and on the German frontier have been studied often and in detail, while the fight for the Scheldt estuary, Walcheren and Antwerp itself has been treated as a sideshow. Graham Thomas’s timely and graphic account underlines the importance of this aspect of the Allied campaign and offers a fascinating insight into a complex combined-arms operation late in the Second World War.

Using operational reports and vivid first-hand eyewitness testimony, he takes the reader alongside 21 Army Group as it cleared the Channel ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk, then moved on to attack the Scheldt and the island stronghold of Walcheren. Overcoming entrenched German resistance there was essential to the whole operation, and it is the climax of his absorbing narrative. AUTHOR: Graham A. Thomas is a historian specialising in the history of the British army and air force in the Second World War and Korea. He is currently the editor of the British Army Review, a quarterly journal on the doctrine and history of the British army. His publications include Furies and Fireflies Over Korea, Terror From the Sky: The Battle Against the Flying Bombs and Firestorm: Typhoons Over Caen. He has also written several books on naval and maritime history, including Pirate Hunter: The Life of Captain Woodes Rogers and Blackbeard: The Hunt For The World’s Most Notorious Pirate.