Forum member, Stolpi, directed me to the four bunkers located at Termunten. The bunkers contained four heavy 128mm flak guns along with two lighter AA guns. These guns were directed at 5th Canadian Armoured Division during the battle of the Delfzijl pocket. The 5th CAD suffered 115 killed during the battle which started around April 24 until May 2, 1945.
Philip, The bunkers are located right near the top of the dyke. I would assume that an industrious Dutch farmer has commandeered one of the bunkers for his own use! That staircase leading to the top of the bunker is not ww2 era material.
silly Canadian did not take the photo of the fourth bunker. Why? It looked like a farmhouse. Stolpi, very good 'before' photo.
The final attack began in the mid-morning of the next day, 30 April, against positions including four large concrete bunkers and machine gun posts ensconced behind barbed wire and mines. The town itself did not fall until the next day when the 5th Canadian Armoured Regiment (8th Princess Louise's (New Brunswick) Hussars) came up in support and assisted them forward. Bunkers the size of bungalows, constructed of four-foot thick reinforced concrete, barred the path of one company, but another, supported by tanks of the New Brunswick Hussars, broke through to seize the railway station on the northern outskirts of the town. In all, close to 4150 prisoners were collected in the final action of the 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division during the Second World War, at a cost of 236 casualties. One historian noted: In the light of operations elsewhere and the rapid approach of final German capitulation there is doubt as to why it was necessary to have the Delfzijl battle at all. Nevertheless, once this very difficult and controversial operation was entrusted to Hoffmeister's 5th Armoured that superb division completed an extremely difficult action in fine fashion - as it had in each of its battles since the Melfa in far-off Italy almost two years before. www.canadiansoldiers.com
