generalspeaking

Friday, June 07, 2019

In Remembrance of the Normandy Invasion

Three soldiers with the 23rd Field Ambulance of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division place flowers on graves in Basly, France, in June 1944. Getty Images

"In the beginning, it wasn't patriotism that drove us. We knew our job was to stay in close proximity with the infantry ... get them ashore and stay with them as they cleared the town."
"Soon, I was coming around [after a mortar shell] and I realized both my legs were mobile. Glory be, I'm alive."
Bruce Evans, First Hussars tank regiment

"I saw another landing craft with a man's torso wrapped around the propeller."
"There were other body parts on the beach ... I vomited and cried and tried to figure out what was going on."
Charles Cline, 17, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders

"They hadn't been able to clear all the guys off that part of the beach. When I saw half a dozen bodies it struck me that things are going to happen here."
"Pushing and carrying those damn bikes, we knew we were never going to use them. They were just slowing us down. So we dumped them in an orchard."
Corporal John McDonald, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders

"In those last tense moments, as we loaded and fired and loaded and fired like automatons, the shore of France was fully visible, rent and torn with violent explosions and with a dense pall of smoke."
"And then the beach itself became visible with a few figures scattered across it, some running, some standing and some lying motionless on the sand."
"There was no difficulty in carrying out this operation. With our guns fixed facing forward as they were on the craft ... we were aimed directly toward the shore. As the beach got closer, the crews adjusted the guns raining round after round down on the German defences."
Sgt.Wes Alkenbrack, 14 Field Regiment

Canadian soldiers land on Courseulles beach in Normandy as Allied forces storm the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944.Imperial War Museum via AFP/Getty Images

In Saskatchewan in January 1942, 24-year-old Randal Hanson entered the local recruitment centre in Hinchliffe to join the military. A farmer, physically fit, he knew how to drive, and knew how to accurately aim a rifle. By July of 1943 he was posted to Britain to begin training. Part of the 3rd Canadian Division, a formation that British General Bernard Montgomery thought highly of, and selected to be in the first wave of landings on D-Day, Randal Hanson was there.

The 3rd Canadian Division was well equipped and had the advantage of excellent training for the Juno Beach, Normandy landing. The men were under no illusions about their chances for survival. Five men in Randal's company had gathered for a few drinks several days prior to the projected landing. Three in their mid-20s felt they could last a few days, alternately never return. The remaining two men, 18 years old, thought they would survive to enter Berlin. They died by week's end.

A landing craft from the Canadian ship Prince Henry batters down the waves as it carries infantry to Juno Beach. National Archives

Jono Beach was located astride the Caen Bayeux road where Allied military planners located the primary thrust of Germany's counter-attack. Three Panzer divisions, representing the most effective units in Hitler's army, hurled toward Juno Beach by the evening of June 6. The Canadian military men meant to be beached there, to confront the Nazis occupying the small towns in the region were slated to engage head-on in a series of battles.

Randal Hanson's company of 250 men managed to hold off a regiment of a thousand German soldiers, thanks to their courage, determination, training, equipment and professionalism. The 3rd Canadian Division helped to break the back of the German assault, to grant time and space for the immense Allied buildup that would enable France to be retaken from Germany.

Hard battles across Europe and the Pacific ensued and in the process the farmer from Saskatchewan was three times wounded over a period of five days. Only when his wounds had become severely infected would he leave his post, to be sent to England for recovery. When, at war's end, he returned to Canada, he refused to discuss anything related to his experiences in Europe during the conflict, until he had aged into the winter of his life, and approached death.