EvanL
05-31-2004, 06:57 PM
http://www.herald.ns.ca/2004/05/31/photos/1023.jpg
Troops and landing craft occupy a Normandy beach operated by the Royal Canadian Navy Beach Commando shortly after the D-Day landing. 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.
http://www.herald.ns.ca/2004/05/31/photos/1022.jpg
Canadian Press war correspondent Ross Munro is shown in this 1942 file photo. The first beach-head eyewitness news story on the D-Day landings was filed by Munro, who died in Toronto in 1990 at age 76.
Anyone who wasn't scared was a fool or a liar, vets say
By JOHN WARD / The Canadian Press
For the men of D-Day, memories can be both good and bad.
For some, it is the small thing that sticks in mind; the chill of the water, the wreckage on the beach. For others, it's the wave of relief that broke over them at day's end, when they realized they were alive.
Some buried those memories deep for decades, keeping them from family, sharing them only with comrades with ghosts of their own.
Phil Neis of Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., was a 22-year-old artilleryman when he landed on Juno Beach that morning. He kept his memories to himself for more than 50 years.
"There was something in my head that kept me from talking, but I couldn't get the memory out of my head."
For years, he refused to return to the French coast. "I just didn't want to go back."
That changed in 2002, when he went to find three landmarks he saw that morning: two German bunkers and a church spire behind them.
"I told people if I could find those three markers, if they were still there, I would find the spot. They told me I was crazy."
He found them and peace, too.
"I regret that I didn't go back earlier, because it made it a lot easier to talk to the young people."
Today, he is part of the Memory Project of the Dominion Institute, which sends veterans to talk to schoolchildren.
Marshall DeJaeghre of Chatham, Ont., a 20-year-old tanker with the 1st Hussars, remembers being most afraid of drowning. The landing craft carrying his tank wouldn't move in close enough so when he drove it off he sank in eight metres of water.
"The water was deep and cold," he says. "We all got out and of course I'm a non-swimmer and the rest of the crew helped me get into shore."
The water haunts him still.
"The one thing that really worried me and scared me was being in the water. With your boots on and your battle dress, they soak up water like a sponge."
Bill Ross, a 19-year-old rifleman with the Queen's Own Rifles, remembers getting a bracing shot of overproof rum after a 4 a.m. breakfast. Late in the day, he was with a trio of tanks moving inland.
"We were looking through a wheat field and all hell broke loose," he remembers.
A hidden German 88-mm gun, a much-feared tank killer, opened up from about 1,500 metres away. Two tanks were hit. The third scooted backwards to safety.
The allies' Sherman tanks were under-gunned and thin-skinned compared with their German opponents. They also had a tendency to catch fire - the crews nicknamed them Ronsons after a popular cigarette lighter of the day.
"The one memory is those two tanks that got hit," Ross says. "To hear our fellows caught in the tank as they burned to death . . . it lingered with me all my life."
Each man concentrates on some facet of the morning that caught in his mind and stuck.
Philip Le Breton of Toronto, a 22-year-old corporal in the Queen's Own Rifles, remembers the bouncing of the landing craft and the shock as one boat hit a mine.
Neis said his landing craft was bouncing "like a pea on a drum."
Le Breton recalls the crashing, thudding artillery duel waged between German heavy guns and the naval escorts offshore.
"I'll always remember the sea was pretty rough," says Donald Thompson of Charlottetown, a captain in the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, attached as a support unit to the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.
Le Breton recalls that the air force was supposed to have bombed the forts and minefields on the beach. It didn't happen and the infantry had to clear the beach themselves.
"The Canadian army worked on Murphy's Law," he chuckles. "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."
He survived the day and a German counterattack at dusk.
"The memory that stands out for me is that when it was all over, I was still alive."
Anyone who wasn't scared was a fool or a liar, the vets say.
"As far as I'm concerned, everyone was scared," said DeJaegher. "You have training that tries to tell you what it's going to be like but it's never like that."
Thompson said he was lucky that he could concentrate on his officer duties instead of being frightened.
"When you're an officer you've got so many things on your mind that you're responsible for," he said. "My job was to get off the beach."
Le Breton agrees. "You're not just sitting there pondering the fear. Of course you're scared but you get busy and you forget it."
Some remember the carnage on the beach, the dead bobbing in the surf, the wounded writhing, or sitting, stoically, waiting for help. They remember the wreckage, smashed vehicles, knocked-out tanks, abandoned and broken equipment, rifles, kit bags, ammunition.
There are those who never made it off the beach.
Ian Mair of Montreal was a 23-year-old British Royal Marine when he landed with the Canadians on Juno Beach. It was a short invasion for him.
He and his comrades found their progress blocked by mines and barbed wire and detoured to find a way off the beach.
"We were just going through there when I got hit, wounded in the leg by shrapnel," he says ruefully. "I didn't get beyond the exit of the beach.
"I lay there all day. A medic came and bandaged up my leg and propped me up. I lay there until nine o'clock at night because everyone was too busy."
Others had close calls on the beach.
Ross remembers how he might have died but for an alert comrade.
"When we were going up the beach, the corporal stopped me. Another foot and I would have been on a mine."
DeJaegher doesn't remember much about the beach at all: "Everything was confusing."
Thompson remembers facing a German counterattack inland.
"I can still see them when they came down over the railway tracks," he said. "It was a fairly hectic time."
In the end, these survivors came home. They left more than 300 of their comrades dead on that single day.
They went back to their lives. One became a bricklayer, another returned to the insurance business, another became an advocate for veterans.
They kept their memories and their fears and their relief as a token of their rendezvous with history.
In many ways, they remain matter-of-fact about the experience. They aren't boastful of their courage. The men who survived know what they did. They appreciate it when people show some gratitude, although they neither expect nor demand it.
In the end, they just went and did a job in a bad place.
As Neis said: "It's something I'm not sorry I done, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it again."
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Troops and landing craft occupy a Normandy beach operated by the Royal Canadian Navy Beach Commando shortly after the D-Day landing. 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.
http://www.herald.ns.ca/2004/05/31/photos/1022.jpg
Canadian Press war correspondent Ross Munro is shown in this 1942 file photo. The first beach-head eyewitness news story on the D-Day landings was filed by Munro, who died in Toronto in 1990 at age 76.
Anyone who wasn't scared was a fool or a liar, vets say
By JOHN WARD / The Canadian Press
For the men of D-Day, memories can be both good and bad.
For some, it is the small thing that sticks in mind; the chill of the water, the wreckage on the beach. For others, it's the wave of relief that broke over them at day's end, when they realized they were alive.
Some buried those memories deep for decades, keeping them from family, sharing them only with comrades with ghosts of their own.
Phil Neis of Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., was a 22-year-old artilleryman when he landed on Juno Beach that morning. He kept his memories to himself for more than 50 years.
"There was something in my head that kept me from talking, but I couldn't get the memory out of my head."
For years, he refused to return to the French coast. "I just didn't want to go back."
That changed in 2002, when he went to find three landmarks he saw that morning: two German bunkers and a church spire behind them.
"I told people if I could find those three markers, if they were still there, I would find the spot. They told me I was crazy."
He found them and peace, too.
"I regret that I didn't go back earlier, because it made it a lot easier to talk to the young people."
Today, he is part of the Memory Project of the Dominion Institute, which sends veterans to talk to schoolchildren.
Marshall DeJaeghre of Chatham, Ont., a 20-year-old tanker with the 1st Hussars, remembers being most afraid of drowning. The landing craft carrying his tank wouldn't move in close enough so when he drove it off he sank in eight metres of water.
"The water was deep and cold," he says. "We all got out and of course I'm a non-swimmer and the rest of the crew helped me get into shore."
The water haunts him still.
"The one thing that really worried me and scared me was being in the water. With your boots on and your battle dress, they soak up water like a sponge."
Bill Ross, a 19-year-old rifleman with the Queen's Own Rifles, remembers getting a bracing shot of overproof rum after a 4 a.m. breakfast. Late in the day, he was with a trio of tanks moving inland.
"We were looking through a wheat field and all hell broke loose," he remembers.
A hidden German 88-mm gun, a much-feared tank killer, opened up from about 1,500 metres away. Two tanks were hit. The third scooted backwards to safety.
The allies' Sherman tanks were under-gunned and thin-skinned compared with their German opponents. They also had a tendency to catch fire - the crews nicknamed them Ronsons after a popular cigarette lighter of the day.
"The one memory is those two tanks that got hit," Ross says. "To hear our fellows caught in the tank as they burned to death . . . it lingered with me all my life."
Each man concentrates on some facet of the morning that caught in his mind and stuck.
Philip Le Breton of Toronto, a 22-year-old corporal in the Queen's Own Rifles, remembers the bouncing of the landing craft and the shock as one boat hit a mine.
Neis said his landing craft was bouncing "like a pea on a drum."
Le Breton recalls the crashing, thudding artillery duel waged between German heavy guns and the naval escorts offshore.
"I'll always remember the sea was pretty rough," says Donald Thompson of Charlottetown, a captain in the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, attached as a support unit to the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.
Le Breton recalls that the air force was supposed to have bombed the forts and minefields on the beach. It didn't happen and the infantry had to clear the beach themselves.
"The Canadian army worked on Murphy's Law," he chuckles. "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."
He survived the day and a German counterattack at dusk.
"The memory that stands out for me is that when it was all over, I was still alive."
Anyone who wasn't scared was a fool or a liar, the vets say.
"As far as I'm concerned, everyone was scared," said DeJaegher. "You have training that tries to tell you what it's going to be like but it's never like that."
Thompson said he was lucky that he could concentrate on his officer duties instead of being frightened.
"When you're an officer you've got so many things on your mind that you're responsible for," he said. "My job was to get off the beach."
Le Breton agrees. "You're not just sitting there pondering the fear. Of course you're scared but you get busy and you forget it."
Some remember the carnage on the beach, the dead bobbing in the surf, the wounded writhing, or sitting, stoically, waiting for help. They remember the wreckage, smashed vehicles, knocked-out tanks, abandoned and broken equipment, rifles, kit bags, ammunition.
There are those who never made it off the beach.
Ian Mair of Montreal was a 23-year-old British Royal Marine when he landed with the Canadians on Juno Beach. It was a short invasion for him.
He and his comrades found their progress blocked by mines and barbed wire and detoured to find a way off the beach.
"We were just going through there when I got hit, wounded in the leg by shrapnel," he says ruefully. "I didn't get beyond the exit of the beach.
"I lay there all day. A medic came and bandaged up my leg and propped me up. I lay there until nine o'clock at night because everyone was too busy."
Others had close calls on the beach.
Ross remembers how he might have died but for an alert comrade.
"When we were going up the beach, the corporal stopped me. Another foot and I would have been on a mine."
DeJaegher doesn't remember much about the beach at all: "Everything was confusing."
Thompson remembers facing a German counterattack inland.
"I can still see them when they came down over the railway tracks," he said. "It was a fairly hectic time."
In the end, these survivors came home. They left more than 300 of their comrades dead on that single day.
They went back to their lives. One became a bricklayer, another returned to the insurance business, another became an advocate for veterans.
They kept their memories and their fears and their relief as a token of their rendezvous with history.
In many ways, they remain matter-of-fact about the experience. They aren't boastful of their courage. The men who survived know what they did. They appreciate it when people show some gratitude, although they neither expect nor demand it.
In the end, they just went and did a job in a bad place.
As Neis said: "It's something I'm not sorry I done, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it again."
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