EvanL
05-27-2004, 11:46 AM
Enormous invasion of French coast 60 years ago eventually shut down Nazi plans
By John Ward
On a chilly, grey morning 60 years ago, a few boatloads of scared, cold, often seasick young Canadians charged ashore on a windswept French beach and helped make history.
They rode to shore crammed into bucking landing craft, most unable to see anything more than the back of their buddy in front. They could smell the stench of gunpowder and hear a cacophony of artillery and small arms fire crashing back and forth overhead.
They were part of the D-Day invasion, the greatest seaborne assault in history and with their American and British comrades, they carried the fate of today's world with them.
Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of the continent that had been overrun by Nazi Germany, was an enormous undertaking and even more enormous risk.
It depended largely on the courage, strength and faith of those men bobbing in the choppy English Channel. It hung, too, on the other men - the German soldiers who watched from the shelter of pillboxes, trenches and gun emplacements as the landing craft came in from the grey horizon.
The assault, launched from an armada of 7,000 ships, struck at the continent like a five-tined fork on beaches strung along the Normandy coast of France.
The Americans took two beaches, code-named Utah and Omaha. The British had Gold and Sword. But Juno Beach, an eight-kilometre stretch of coast backed by small seaside villages, was an all-Canadian assignment.
The young men of the Canadian 3rd Division, all volunteers and mostly in their early 20s, were a cross-section of their country. There were fishermen and lumberjacks from New Brunswick, mill and factory workers from Quebec, eastern Ontario farmers and shopkeepers. The West sent young Winnipeggers and Saskatchewan farmboys.
The men of the 1st Canadian Parachute battalion had dropped from the night skies hours before the landings as part of a British airborne assault on the eastern edge of the invasion area.
From above them, Canadian bomber and fighter pilots attacked enemy positions and swept the German air force from the skies. At sea, the Royal Canadian Navy sent 100 warships, from destroyers and corvettes to minesweepers and landing craft.
The infantry, supporting units of engineers, artillery, doctors, medics and supply people, were pitted against Nazi Germany's vaunted Atlantic Wall. It was a meandering perimeter of concrete fortifications, minefields, underwater obstacles and barbed wire that snaked from Norway to the Pyrenees. It was designed to tangle up an invading army in a killing ground in the surf or right on the beaches.
It was a daunting prospect.
"If you weren't scared, you were a damn fool," remembers Phil Neis of Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., who was 22-year-old artilleryman. "I was damn scared."
The invasion, years in the planning, was a gamble. Success would mean the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. A reverse would have raised German morale immensely and likely would have prolonged the war for months or even years.
The Canadian assault on Juno Beach was tough, although not as bad as the American attack on Omaha Beach, relentlessly chronicled in the film Saving Private Ryan.
Naval gunfire and air attacks destroyed some of the obstacles and bunkers, but others were intact and waiting as the Canadians waded into the water and into a storm of steel.
Machine-guns, mortars and artillery hammered the landing craft as they came in. Men died in the boats. They died waist deep in water. They fell on the sand and in the barbed wire.
One man remembers seeing a string of corpses leading across the sand and over a barbed wire obstacle. The final body was sprawled over a knocked-out bunker.
There were mistakes. Marshall DeJaegher of Chatham, Ont., a 20-year-old tanker with the 1st Hussars that morning, recalls the crew of the landing craft carrying him and his Sherman tank dropped the tanks in eight metres of water. A canvas flotation system was supposed to keep them afloat.
"It didn't," says DeJaegher. "I was a non-swimmer."
His fellow crew members pulled him ashore, leaving him a lasting memory. "The water was deep and cold."
By mid-morning, the Canadians were moving gingerly inland, leaving behind them a beach choked with wrecked vehicles, smouldering tanks, abandoned equipment and the dead and wounded.
By nightfall, they had helped repulse one off-balance German counterattack and were digging in to repel the next. Cold, hungry, exhausted, dirty, shaking with the realization that they had survived, they scooped out trenches in the earth for shelter.
The Canadians lost 340 killed and 574 wounded on D-Day, but that was less than half what the planners expected.
There would be 10 more weeks of fighting in Normandy and eight more months of struggle across northwest Europe before the war's end.
JUST THE FACTS
The Second World War began in 1939 after Nazi Germany invaded Poland. It spread throughout Europe, north Africa, Asia and the western Pacific. The Axis powers - Germany, Italy and Japan - were finally defeated by an alliance that eventually included Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Soviet Union and the United States. In total, an estimated 55 million people died, including at least six million Jews and other minorities murdered in the Holocaust.
THE WAR TO JUNE 6, 1944:
Germany made massive conquests early in the war, but Allied fortunes had rebounded by 1944. British and American armies had driven the Germans from North Africa and Sicily, forced Italy into surrender and were moving up the Italian boot. Allied bombers pounded German cities and towns night and day. In the East, the Germans were still fighting on Russian soil, but the Soviets were preparing a mighty offensive that would destroy an entire German army group in the summer of 1944. In the Pacific, the American island-hopping campaign was moving inexorably north.
WHY INVADE?:
Defeat of Nazi Germany could not be accomplished by strategic bombing or naval blockade. Military planners recognized they would have to defeat Nazi military in Europe to free France and other countries occupied by Germany, as well as ensure Europe didn't fall into hands of Soviet Union, pressing Germany from east.
WHY NORMANDY?:
The Allies needed beaches within range of British-based fighter planes. Also had to be within easy striking distance of a port so they could unload supplies. Normandy fit the bill.
WHO HAD THE ADVANTAGE?:
In many ways, Allies and Germans were well-matched. Allies had far superior air and sea power; Germans had troops and tanks available for quick reinforcement. Germans had better tanks and anti-tank guns; Allies had more of both. German troops, in many cases, were better trained and superbly led by hardened veterans. But they were hampered by shortages of supplies, especially fuel; Allies had plenty of everything. German generals faced ham-handed interference from Adolf Hitler; Allied generals were able to unfold their plans without harassment from political leaders.
WHY D-DAY?:
Military planners habitually designated the day an operation was to begin with a letter - for example, D-Day. Because the Normandy invasion was largest of its kind ever attempted, D-Day became forever associated with the operation.
WE REMEMBER:
This June marks the 60th anniversary of D-Day. A series of remembrance services has been planned in Normandy. It will by attended by veterans as well as the leaders of Britain, the United States, France and Canada and, for the first time, Germany and Russia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never Forget
By John Ward
On a chilly, grey morning 60 years ago, a few boatloads of scared, cold, often seasick young Canadians charged ashore on a windswept French beach and helped make history.
They rode to shore crammed into bucking landing craft, most unable to see anything more than the back of their buddy in front. They could smell the stench of gunpowder and hear a cacophony of artillery and small arms fire crashing back and forth overhead.
They were part of the D-Day invasion, the greatest seaborne assault in history and with their American and British comrades, they carried the fate of today's world with them.
Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of the continent that had been overrun by Nazi Germany, was an enormous undertaking and even more enormous risk.
It depended largely on the courage, strength and faith of those men bobbing in the choppy English Channel. It hung, too, on the other men - the German soldiers who watched from the shelter of pillboxes, trenches and gun emplacements as the landing craft came in from the grey horizon.
The assault, launched from an armada of 7,000 ships, struck at the continent like a five-tined fork on beaches strung along the Normandy coast of France.
The Americans took two beaches, code-named Utah and Omaha. The British had Gold and Sword. But Juno Beach, an eight-kilometre stretch of coast backed by small seaside villages, was an all-Canadian assignment.
The young men of the Canadian 3rd Division, all volunteers and mostly in their early 20s, were a cross-section of their country. There were fishermen and lumberjacks from New Brunswick, mill and factory workers from Quebec, eastern Ontario farmers and shopkeepers. The West sent young Winnipeggers and Saskatchewan farmboys.
The men of the 1st Canadian Parachute battalion had dropped from the night skies hours before the landings as part of a British airborne assault on the eastern edge of the invasion area.
From above them, Canadian bomber and fighter pilots attacked enemy positions and swept the German air force from the skies. At sea, the Royal Canadian Navy sent 100 warships, from destroyers and corvettes to minesweepers and landing craft.
The infantry, supporting units of engineers, artillery, doctors, medics and supply people, were pitted against Nazi Germany's vaunted Atlantic Wall. It was a meandering perimeter of concrete fortifications, minefields, underwater obstacles and barbed wire that snaked from Norway to the Pyrenees. It was designed to tangle up an invading army in a killing ground in the surf or right on the beaches.
It was a daunting prospect.
"If you weren't scared, you were a damn fool," remembers Phil Neis of Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., who was 22-year-old artilleryman. "I was damn scared."
The invasion, years in the planning, was a gamble. Success would mean the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. A reverse would have raised German morale immensely and likely would have prolonged the war for months or even years.
The Canadian assault on Juno Beach was tough, although not as bad as the American attack on Omaha Beach, relentlessly chronicled in the film Saving Private Ryan.
Naval gunfire and air attacks destroyed some of the obstacles and bunkers, but others were intact and waiting as the Canadians waded into the water and into a storm of steel.
Machine-guns, mortars and artillery hammered the landing craft as they came in. Men died in the boats. They died waist deep in water. They fell on the sand and in the barbed wire.
One man remembers seeing a string of corpses leading across the sand and over a barbed wire obstacle. The final body was sprawled over a knocked-out bunker.
There were mistakes. Marshall DeJaegher of Chatham, Ont., a 20-year-old tanker with the 1st Hussars that morning, recalls the crew of the landing craft carrying him and his Sherman tank dropped the tanks in eight metres of water. A canvas flotation system was supposed to keep them afloat.
"It didn't," says DeJaegher. "I was a non-swimmer."
His fellow crew members pulled him ashore, leaving him a lasting memory. "The water was deep and cold."
By mid-morning, the Canadians were moving gingerly inland, leaving behind them a beach choked with wrecked vehicles, smouldering tanks, abandoned equipment and the dead and wounded.
By nightfall, they had helped repulse one off-balance German counterattack and were digging in to repel the next. Cold, hungry, exhausted, dirty, shaking with the realization that they had survived, they scooped out trenches in the earth for shelter.
The Canadians lost 340 killed and 574 wounded on D-Day, but that was less than half what the planners expected.
There would be 10 more weeks of fighting in Normandy and eight more months of struggle across northwest Europe before the war's end.
JUST THE FACTS
The Second World War began in 1939 after Nazi Germany invaded Poland. It spread throughout Europe, north Africa, Asia and the western Pacific. The Axis powers - Germany, Italy and Japan - were finally defeated by an alliance that eventually included Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Soviet Union and the United States. In total, an estimated 55 million people died, including at least six million Jews and other minorities murdered in the Holocaust.
THE WAR TO JUNE 6, 1944:
Germany made massive conquests early in the war, but Allied fortunes had rebounded by 1944. British and American armies had driven the Germans from North Africa and Sicily, forced Italy into surrender and were moving up the Italian boot. Allied bombers pounded German cities and towns night and day. In the East, the Germans were still fighting on Russian soil, but the Soviets were preparing a mighty offensive that would destroy an entire German army group in the summer of 1944. In the Pacific, the American island-hopping campaign was moving inexorably north.
WHY INVADE?:
Defeat of Nazi Germany could not be accomplished by strategic bombing or naval blockade. Military planners recognized they would have to defeat Nazi military in Europe to free France and other countries occupied by Germany, as well as ensure Europe didn't fall into hands of Soviet Union, pressing Germany from east.
WHY NORMANDY?:
The Allies needed beaches within range of British-based fighter planes. Also had to be within easy striking distance of a port so they could unload supplies. Normandy fit the bill.
WHO HAD THE ADVANTAGE?:
In many ways, Allies and Germans were well-matched. Allies had far superior air and sea power; Germans had troops and tanks available for quick reinforcement. Germans had better tanks and anti-tank guns; Allies had more of both. German troops, in many cases, were better trained and superbly led by hardened veterans. But they were hampered by shortages of supplies, especially fuel; Allies had plenty of everything. German generals faced ham-handed interference from Adolf Hitler; Allied generals were able to unfold their plans without harassment from political leaders.
WHY D-DAY?:
Military planners habitually designated the day an operation was to begin with a letter - for example, D-Day. Because the Normandy invasion was largest of its kind ever attempted, D-Day became forever associated with the operation.
WE REMEMBER:
This June marks the 60th anniversary of D-Day. A series of remembrance services has been planned in Normandy. It will by attended by veterans as well as the leaders of Britain, the United States, France and Canada and, for the first time, Germany and Russia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never Forget