This week marks the 68th anniversary of the liberation of Belgium.

After liberating much of the northern French coast in the summer of 1944, the First Canadian Army, along with British and Polish troops, swept into Belgium.

Large parts of western Belgium were liberated quickly, but it was a tougher slog crossing the Ghent Canal and pushing towards Antwerp and the Scheldt.

The Germans had opened the floodgates, flooding the Scheldt and the flat open land offered little in the way of cover. Veterans Affairs Canada and the Canadian Battlefields Foundation offer descriptions of the liberators’ sweep through Belgium, made at a cost of more than 6,000 Canadian casualties.

A Legion Magazine story about the liberation mentions the Canada Museum in Adagem, Belgium. It’s a private museum that uses its collection of uniforms and artifacts of the era in life-size dioramas replicating the experience of Canadian troops during the campaign.