D-Day+1
The Battle of Normandy is something that every Canadian should know about. Compared to the Soviet effort on the Eastern Front, the Western Allies’ contribution on the Western Front was quite small, Canada’s even smaller. But for our tiny nation it was one of the greatest battles we’d ever been in. It was one of the most, if not the most, glorious days in our military history.
One of my customers was there on D-Day. A number of years back, he told me a bit about it after I recognised some pictures in his basement. He was mild mannered and nice, not the kind fellow you would think of as a front-line soldier. But he had the medals and the pictures to back it up though. Shrapnel scars too, apparently.
The lads in the Royal Canadian Air Force had already seen big-time glory helping the British face the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. The lads in the Navy had already distinguished themselves in the Atlantic fighting the seemingly endless fleets of submarines. But the Infantry wanted some too.
Really nobody could have beat Dieppe in 1942, but it was mostly Canadian troops that received a serious wupping during the failed raid there. Following it, the various Canadian regiments needed to prove themselves. Idle for years, they hungered to take a piece out of Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Invasion of Western Europe would begin on the beaches of Normandy. Canada was assigned Juno Beach. On June 6th, 1944, on a 10 kilometre strip along the French coast, the Canadian infantry got their chance to take that piece.
It was cloudy that day, confounding the efforts of the Air Force to soften fortifications along the beach. Juno was heavily fortified and well defended, second only to Omaha. The naval barrage took care of less than a quarter of the defences. Taking this little nugget of real estate would be up to the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division.
Like the Americans at Omaha, the assault wave endured a withering fifty percent casualty rate, with hundreds being cut down on the beaches before they even got to the seawall. But the Canadians would not be stopped. With great determination they began a ferocious attack on the German positions, overpowering their enemy trench by trench, bunker by bunker, house by house. By mid-morning, they had crushed much of the resistance on the coast. And they didn’t stop there. With momentum behind them, they pushed some 15km into France.
But the real test of a fighting force is their ability to hold on to the spoils. By nightfall, the 21st Panzer began a strong counterattack, but our infantry would not yield. By the morning of the 7th, D-Day+1, it became clear to everyone, Allied and German alike, that the Canadians had taken their piece and they weren’t giving it up. As it turns out, Canada was the only group to even get close to its targets, with the 1st Hussars actually reaching theirs, the Caen–Bayeux highway.
D-Day itself was a bit of a blur, he said, but come D-Day+1 it really started to sink in. That was the day, he told me, when he realized that they were playing for all the marbles. “I became a soldier that day. Something inside you changes.” I think this is what he said. I still don’t know if this ‘change’ is a good or bad thing. I never want to find out firsthand, to be honest.
The following weeks were unrelenting and brutal, he told me. “After we took the beaches some figured that the Germans would just give up, but they didn’t. But after what they did to our boys on the beaches we weren’t having any more of it. We killed a lot of Germans. A lot of people were killed in horrible ways.” I asked if he had killed any of them and he said yes, he was personally responsible for at least four enemy deaths, probably more. Later on, he would be involved in taking apart the fanatical 12th SS Panzer Division. A lot of his buddies were killed in those vicious battles. He didn’t talk about it much.
He recalls with great pride when some senior British officer commented on his squad’s successes over the week: “Good God. I’m glad you’re on our side.”
He told me all of this while I waited for his Windows 98 Upgrade to install on his Pentium 166. When he was done telling me about the Invasion, there was a fire in his eyes. Even though I knew it was cheese the moment it left my mouth, I told him I was damned grateful to be living in the peace that you and your pals fought for. He said, “Yeah, but I’m damned grateful that you got my Solitaire game working again.”
I only found out just recently that he died a year ago. But he picked a whopper of a day: it was apparently on June the 7th. D-Day+1.
