trying to "get blood from a stone", with the under-strength units being pushed relentlessly to keep fighting, without replacements for their losses and no chance to rest. After the battle, the II Canadian Corps moved to the Nijmegen sector to take over from the XXX British Corps. Although Antwerp was opened to Allied shipping on 28 November, the German 15th Army had delayed the use of Antwerp to the Allies from 4 September to 28 November 1944, which was longer than Hitler had hoped for, justifying the German decision to hold the river Scheldt. Even before the Battle of the Scheldt, the Canadian Army was aware that it lacked reinforcements to replace its losses, and the losses endured during the fighting help provoke the Conscription Crisis. The Canadian Defence Minister, Colonel John Ralston, was forced to report to the prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, that the current policy of only sending volunteers overseas was not sustainable as the losses in the Battle of the Scheldt vastly exceeded the number of volunteers, and conscripts would have to be sent overseas. Copp and Vogel strongly praised Simonds's leadership of the 1st Canadian Army, writing how his operations "were brilliantly planned and sometimes brilliantly executed". Copp and Vogel also defended the Canadians from charges of incompetence and cowardice made by American and British historians stating: "The Canadian Army had, through October, the most difficult and important task of all the Allied armies, it had carried through a series of complex operations to a successful conclusion and it had done this with verve and skill despite the growing manpower shortage now apparent on all the Allied fronts." After the first ship reached Antwerp on 28 November, convoys started bringing a steady stream of supplies to the continent, but this actually changed very little. Operation Queen continued to flounder while the Americans then suffered a major reverse in the Hurtgen forest offensive by December. The dismal fall weather hindered not only the Canadians in the Battle of Scheldt, but also the operations of First U.S Army in the Hurtgen forest, the Third U.S Army in Lorraine, and the Ninth U.S. Army, the Seventh U.S Army and 1st French Army further south. On 5 November 1944, Eisenhower calculated that for the offensives into the western borderlands of Germany to be successful, over the following month, it would require 6 million artillery shells, two million mortar