Donald Cleveland

[The Italian Campaign] On February the 5^th [1945], it was decided by the Canadian authorities that Hitler was going to be defeated and [Prime Minister] Mackenzie King’s promise that the Canadian forces would fight as an army. It was decided politically that this would be done and orders were given to take the Canadian First Corps from Italy and all Canadian soldiers, their army units and corps units were to go to Europe immediately. And I was called in and I was told that I was being appointed ‘Commander Baker Headquarters’ which was in effect his command, Gilbride’s command [Brigadier W. P. Gilbride, then Deputy Adjudant and Quartermaster General, 1^st Canadian Corps] because he was being sent to Europe to take over [in a staff position] of the British division and most of Canadian units commanders were sent to take over British units, so that they could announce that the Canadian army was fighting as an army. And of course, I was left in command of all the troops left in Italy, as a young captain/acting major but you didn’t wear rank badges or unit badges or anything, it was all a top secret move this Operation Gold Flake [the codename given to the administrative move of I Canadian Corps from Italy to Northwest Europe in February and March 1945]. I don’t think it was very secret from the Germans but we went through all the motions of being top secret. And I had been in that short time what’s known as the staff duties section of the corps headquarters responsible for all logistics and personnel and supplies to units and movement orders and that kind of thing. So I guess I was a logical choice along with a young man who was my boss who’s name I’ve forgotten. But he wasn’t made the commander, I was made the commander and he went off with Gilbride to whatever the duties they took over in France. So here I was left with this appalling job which I had no training for, I had some knowledge, I knew all the units and I had a chart of all the current orders regarding supplies and what units should have and how they would get them and how to create movement orders and things of that nature. And I was in touch with [British Field Marshal Bernard] Montgomery’s Headquarters [8^th British Army] and was known as the ‘Commander Baker headquarters’, so everything I asked for, I got. And I had an office in a building somewhere close to Avellino and one day, I had ordered a certain unit surrender all its tanks and ship them to Genoa and Montgomery came to see this ‘Commander Baker Headquarters’ and told me to cease and desist, he didn’t know what my rank was. All he knew was I had a white band on my arm which said ‘Commander Baker Headquarters’. And he told me to cancel the order, that he needed the tanks in, in Italy for Alexander’s army [Field Marshal Harold Alexander, commander of 15^th Army Group] and I refused to obey his order. I said, I took my orders from another headquarters and that I was the only military representative of the Canadian government in Italy and that I didn’t think he had any authority over me. I told that to Montgomery. What could I do? I’m commander of the corps, duly appointed by a general officer. And what else could I do, I mean, I didn’t know any better. I was a Canadian officer, I was not a member of the British Army and I had ordered in accordance with orders sent to me, I had a high powered telephone that actually connected with the European front. There’s not very much known today that we had such equipment but we did. And I could talk to Gilbride and I told Montgomery and he said I would be backed up and the tanks were duly transferred to our units in France. And that was my sole experience with General Montgomery. [The surrendering of the German Army in the Netherlands] One day, we were in Hilversum at a headquarters of the Canadian [1^st] Corps, Hilversum in Holland. And I was called in and given a message to give to General Blaskowitz [Generaloberst Johannes Albrecht Blaskowitz, commander of the German forces in the Netherlands], this was about May the 9th or 10^th, something like that. Very early after the surrender because I was the first officer to cross the lines, I was saluted by the German sentries who presented arms as I went by in a jeep with a Canadian flag flying and I had a machine gun mounted on the back of it with a gunner. And I remember on my way to Blaskowitz’s headquarters, we passed a line of tanks and I couldn’t help wondering, you know, why the hell the Germans had surrendered. And on the other side of the road, there were German soldiers sleeping with Dutch girls and as we traveled down this route, went to a village where they had Dutch girls and men and they were painting them with orange paint because they were traitors. It was a very mixed up situation. Anyway, I went to Blaskowitz’s headquarters and they were fully armed SS guards everywhere and officers inside and it was sort of a disturbing atmosphere to be in with a fully armed headquarters, going to see a general officer that had commanded all the German forces in Holland and starved these people. They were in terrible condition when we got there. Believe me, they were starving to death, the whole Dutch nation and had to be eventually fed by air. Anyway, I got to see General Blaskowitz and I saluted him and handed him the orders and he asked me some questions that I couldn’t answer and said something nasty about sending officers to see him that were not of an appropriate rank and couldn’t answer his questions. And I told him that in my opinion, he had no right to express any thoughts whatsoever, they ought to be in a prisoner of war camp in a proper outfit and not sitting there in front of me in a general officer’s uniform and trying to tell me what was right or wrong about things. I was pretty goddarned annoyed at him I can tell you, but at the same time, I could see that the officers surrounding me, who were all armed were in a very threatening mood and so it was not a very pleasant experience frankly. I got out of there and happy to be out of it. And I went back and told General Foulkes [Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes, Commanding Officer of I Canadian Corps in 1945] what it was all about and he just shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘Well, I’ll look after it, don’t worry, they’re not going to be in uniform very long.’ So that was just another, I’ve had some pretty odd experiences for a young officer.