EvanL
06-08-2004, 05:06 PM
Nine Nova Scotians were among 20 soldiers slaughtered by Nazis
By LOIS LEGGE / Features Writer D-DAY: 60 Years Later
AUTHIE, France - It's like a garden in a dream. Lush green vines snake up century old trees. White, pink and fuchsia flowers sprout under their shade as birds twitter among the leaves.
A medieval abbey towers nearby, its turret touching the sky as nearby grain fields, once soaked with blood, wave in the wind.
It's a quiet, serene setting most of the time these days.
But something horrible happened here. And the stain won't wash away.
Sixty years ago - on June 7, 8 and 17, 1944 - a fanatical, murderous group of Nazis known as the Hitler Youth massacred 20 young Canadian soldiers, nine from Nova Scotia, within this garden.
It happened at Abbaye d'Ardenne just outside of Authie, France. And the garden's flowers helped tell the story.
In March 1945, a mother and son, Francine and Michel Vico, noticed that the flowers that always sprouted here after winter weren't popping up in the centre of the garden as usual, they were scattered everywhere.
The family, which owned the courtyard inside the abbey grounds, heard rumours that SS soldiers - the 12th SS Panzer Division, part of the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment commanded by Cpl. Kurt Meyer - may have killed prisoners of war here. But there was no proof.
The flowers showed the way.
"Michel started digging," recalls his older brother Jacques, a former French resistance fighter who was born in one of Abbey Ardenne's buildings and now lives across the street.
Within seconds, the then-15-year-old made a gruesome discovery. The remains of a soldier lay in a shallow grave. Soon after the family called Canadian authorities, 17 more were discovered. In late 1945, another two were unearthed, bringing to 20 the number of soldiers known to have been massacred here.
A dozen of the men served with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, although only nine were actually from Nova Scotia. Others were members of the tank regiment Sherbrooke Fusiliers, or the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment. Most were just a day or two into the war; most were young men who worked as farmers, miners or labourers before meeting their tragic end.
They were interrogated, and when they gave no more than their name, rank and identification number, they were marched into this garden one by one and shot in the head or beaten to death.
From eyewitness testimony, those killed on June 8 knew what was coming.
They shook hands and walked stoically into this garden and met their fate.
Commander Meyer had watched from the abbey's turret as the Canadian soldiers advanced, sending his troops after them and sealing that fate.
In 1945, Cpl. Meyer was convicted of complicity in the June 7 deaths and murder in the June 8 killings. He was sentenced to death but spent only nine years at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick before he was released.
People who knew the soldiers or their story gathered inside the garden Monday - so many that officials had to ask some to listen to the commemoration outside.
But veterans and family members stood shoulder to shoulder along with Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson, Gen. Ray Henault - the chief of defence staff - Vico and others.
People laid wreaths and paid tribute at a stone monument. They put poppies and flags next to the names of those men who never got to come home.
And later, as Maple Leafs were placed on the memorial, they read the names of 156 Canadians - the total that the SS killed in the days after the Normandy landing.
Three generations of Charles Doucette's family came to honour his memory - 11 people in all, including his daughters, Elizabeth Paul of the Membertou reserve and Rachel Shewshuk of British Columbia.
Paul remembers men on bicycles coming to deliver the news that her father was missing. And then hearing several years later that he'd been killed.
"So all this time when you're growing up, you're waiting for your father to come," she said, choking back tears. "That's what I used to do."
She was too young to remember much of her father, but older sister Rachel thinks about holding his hand.
A bricklayer, Doucette always had his children in tow, taking them to their grandfather's house in Membertou.
"He was always carrying us around," Paul said.
Her son, John Paul, is back here for the third time. He wants his children and Canadians to know about his grandfather's sacrifice.
He's standing right next to the flowers where he believes his grandfather died. It makes him wonder what his grandfather and the other soldiers must have been thinking.
Pte. Doucette, a Mi'kmaq who wasn't required to fight, joined up and served Canada, Paul said. He fought shoulder to shoulder, equal to the rest of his countrymen.
"The people back home really need to understand that Mi'kmaq people in Atlantic Canada, like my grandfather, contributed a lot to Canada ... in real terms," she said.
People like Earl Gouchie did, too. As he stood in the garden Monday, the fellow North Nova Scotia Highlander thought of his friend Hollis McKeil, who kept him and his buddies laughing during all those long marches during training.
McKeil loved to argue just for the fun of it.
Others, like the Dudka family of Dartmouth, were here to honour their father, Sgt. Stan Dudka, who was once a prisoner of war in this very place. He saw those men come in on June 7 but never saw them again. He also saw his captors murder two of his friends near Authie.
Dudka, now living in Dartmouth, found it difficult to come back, said his daughter Sonya.
"The abbey is the defining moment that changed my father," she said. "That is the one he spoke of all the time when we were children - the abbey - I think it tortured him most of his life. I'm sure some of it was, 'Why them and not me?'"
Her sister Helen Jonson starts to cry. This is her first time here and it's overwhelming.
"We came really to understand the compassion of our father, to understand sometimes the anger of our father and the things we can't understand," Sonya said.
From generation to generation, the Doucette family is ensuring understanding of Pte. Doucette's past.
Great-granddaughter Kendall Paul, 8, said, "I don't exactly know a lot about it, but I know that my great-grandfather was shot in the back of the head by the Germans. He sacrificed his life for us."
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By LOIS LEGGE / Features Writer D-DAY: 60 Years Later
AUTHIE, France - It's like a garden in a dream. Lush green vines snake up century old trees. White, pink and fuchsia flowers sprout under their shade as birds twitter among the leaves.
A medieval abbey towers nearby, its turret touching the sky as nearby grain fields, once soaked with blood, wave in the wind.
It's a quiet, serene setting most of the time these days.
But something horrible happened here. And the stain won't wash away.
Sixty years ago - on June 7, 8 and 17, 1944 - a fanatical, murderous group of Nazis known as the Hitler Youth massacred 20 young Canadian soldiers, nine from Nova Scotia, within this garden.
It happened at Abbaye d'Ardenne just outside of Authie, France. And the garden's flowers helped tell the story.
In March 1945, a mother and son, Francine and Michel Vico, noticed that the flowers that always sprouted here after winter weren't popping up in the centre of the garden as usual, they were scattered everywhere.
The family, which owned the courtyard inside the abbey grounds, heard rumours that SS soldiers - the 12th SS Panzer Division, part of the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment commanded by Cpl. Kurt Meyer - may have killed prisoners of war here. But there was no proof.
The flowers showed the way.
"Michel started digging," recalls his older brother Jacques, a former French resistance fighter who was born in one of Abbey Ardenne's buildings and now lives across the street.
Within seconds, the then-15-year-old made a gruesome discovery. The remains of a soldier lay in a shallow grave. Soon after the family called Canadian authorities, 17 more were discovered. In late 1945, another two were unearthed, bringing to 20 the number of soldiers known to have been massacred here.
A dozen of the men served with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, although only nine were actually from Nova Scotia. Others were members of the tank regiment Sherbrooke Fusiliers, or the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment. Most were just a day or two into the war; most were young men who worked as farmers, miners or labourers before meeting their tragic end.
They were interrogated, and when they gave no more than their name, rank and identification number, they were marched into this garden one by one and shot in the head or beaten to death.
From eyewitness testimony, those killed on June 8 knew what was coming.
They shook hands and walked stoically into this garden and met their fate.
Commander Meyer had watched from the abbey's turret as the Canadian soldiers advanced, sending his troops after them and sealing that fate.
In 1945, Cpl. Meyer was convicted of complicity in the June 7 deaths and murder in the June 8 killings. He was sentenced to death but spent only nine years at Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick before he was released.
People who knew the soldiers or their story gathered inside the garden Monday - so many that officials had to ask some to listen to the commemoration outside.
But veterans and family members stood shoulder to shoulder along with Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson, Gen. Ray Henault - the chief of defence staff - Vico and others.
People laid wreaths and paid tribute at a stone monument. They put poppies and flags next to the names of those men who never got to come home.
And later, as Maple Leafs were placed on the memorial, they read the names of 156 Canadians - the total that the SS killed in the days after the Normandy landing.
Three generations of Charles Doucette's family came to honour his memory - 11 people in all, including his daughters, Elizabeth Paul of the Membertou reserve and Rachel Shewshuk of British Columbia.
Paul remembers men on bicycles coming to deliver the news that her father was missing. And then hearing several years later that he'd been killed.
"So all this time when you're growing up, you're waiting for your father to come," she said, choking back tears. "That's what I used to do."
She was too young to remember much of her father, but older sister Rachel thinks about holding his hand.
A bricklayer, Doucette always had his children in tow, taking them to their grandfather's house in Membertou.
"He was always carrying us around," Paul said.
Her son, John Paul, is back here for the third time. He wants his children and Canadians to know about his grandfather's sacrifice.
He's standing right next to the flowers where he believes his grandfather died. It makes him wonder what his grandfather and the other soldiers must have been thinking.
Pte. Doucette, a Mi'kmaq who wasn't required to fight, joined up and served Canada, Paul said. He fought shoulder to shoulder, equal to the rest of his countrymen.
"The people back home really need to understand that Mi'kmaq people in Atlantic Canada, like my grandfather, contributed a lot to Canada ... in real terms," she said.
People like Earl Gouchie did, too. As he stood in the garden Monday, the fellow North Nova Scotia Highlander thought of his friend Hollis McKeil, who kept him and his buddies laughing during all those long marches during training.
McKeil loved to argue just for the fun of it.
Others, like the Dudka family of Dartmouth, were here to honour their father, Sgt. Stan Dudka, who was once a prisoner of war in this very place. He saw those men come in on June 7 but never saw them again. He also saw his captors murder two of his friends near Authie.
Dudka, now living in Dartmouth, found it difficult to come back, said his daughter Sonya.
"The abbey is the defining moment that changed my father," she said. "That is the one he spoke of all the time when we were children - the abbey - I think it tortured him most of his life. I'm sure some of it was, 'Why them and not me?'"
Her sister Helen Jonson starts to cry. This is her first time here and it's overwhelming.
"We came really to understand the compassion of our father, to understand sometimes the anger of our father and the things we can't understand," Sonya said.
From generation to generation, the Doucette family is ensuring understanding of Pte. Doucette's past.
Great-granddaughter Kendall Paul, 8, said, "I don't exactly know a lot about it, but I know that my great-grandfather was shot in the back of the head by the Germans. He sacrificed his life for us."
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