will hear no more from me on the subject of command...Antwerp top priority in all operations of 21 Army Group". On 16 October, Montgomery issued a directive along that line. To the east, the British Second Army attacked westward to clear the Netherlands south of the Meuse (Maas) during Operation Pheasant, securing the Scheldt region from counter-attacks. As part of his newly focused efforts to assist Simonds, Montgomery assigned the British 52nd Lowland Division to the First Canadian Army. The 52nd division, recruited in the Lowlands of Scotland, was a mountain division, requiring men with unusual strength and stamina in order to fight in the mountains, making it into something of an elite division within the British Army. Simonds greatly appreciated having the Lowlanders under his command and told Major-General Edmund Hakewill-Smith that the 52nd was to play the decisive role in taking Walcheren island. As such, Simonds ordered Hakewill-Smith to start preparing an amphibious operation as Simonds planned to land the 52nd Division on Walcheren at the same time the Canadians attacked the island. Meanwhile, Simonds concentrated forces at the neck of the South Beveland peninsula. On 17 October, Major-General Harry Forster announced 4th Division would attack on 20 October to take the area known as the Wouwsche Plantage. The offensive began in the early morning of 20 October and was led by the Argyll and Lake Superior regiments. On 22 October, the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, known as the "Lincs" in the Canadian Army, and The Algonquin Regiment took Esschen in a surprise attack. On 23 October, the German 85th Division launched a counterattack led by some self-propelled (SP) guns. The Sherman tanks of the Governor General's Foot Guards and the Lake Superior Regiments were decimated by the German SP guns. For the next days, there occurred what the 85th Division's war diary called "extremely violent fighting". The war diary of the Canadian Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders spoke of "nightmarish fighting" at Wouwsche Plantage. The fighting at Wouwsche Plantage was considered so important that Montgomery arrived at the headquarters of the 4th Canadian Division to press Forster for speed, but Forster protested that the flat polder country made speed impossible. One company of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment lost 50% of its men in a single day's fighting, while an advance company of the Algonquin Regiment was cut off and surrounded by the Wehrmacht, requiring desperate fighting to