The First Army went on to fight in Operation Totalize and Operation Tractable and the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, followed by the clearing the Channel Coast. Crerar was recovering from a bout of dysentery during the Battle of the Scheldt in October 1944 and his role as GOC was assumed by Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, the commander of II Canadian Corps. Crerar's First Army, reinforced with the British XXX Corps, under Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, played a major role in the Battle of the Reichswald Forest, codenamed Operation Veritable. The First Army, now consisting of I Canadian Corps (see Operation Goldflake) then went on to participate in the Western Allied invasion of Germany and in the liberation of the Netherlands. The end of World War II in Europe came soon after.