156,000 Allied soldiers landed on the beaches of France in the largest seaborne invasion in history.
The operation began the year-long process of liberating Western Europe from the clutches of Nazi Germany.
Planned under the code name Operation Overlord, today we call it D-Day.
Many movies have been made about June 6, 1944.
Saving Private Ryan.
Patton.
The Longest Day.
Where Eagles Dare.
Just to name a few.
Anyone watching those movies could logically assume that it was an All-American operation.
While they were a huge part of the operation other nations were involved too.
But they are often omitted from the silver screen.
The truth is that 14,000 Canadian soldiers took part in D-Day, while the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force all had major roles.
1,096 Canadians were casualties, including 381 killed in action.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we are traveling back 85 years to share stories of those who invaded Juno Beach…
This is Canada’s D-Day!
I’m going to start this story in May 1940, when Germany advanced through Belgium and cornered 338,000 Allied soldiers in the harbour of Dunkirk, France.
Those soldiers were rescued by 800 vessels over 8 days across the dangerous waters of the English Channel to the safety of the United Kingdom.
Among those vessels were four Royal Canadian Navy destroyers.
For the next four years, German-controlled Europe was a fortress that seemed impenetrable, but as the war dragged on things changed.
The Battle of the Atlantic in 1943 is considered by many as the turning point.
Thanks to the Allies being able to crack the German Enigma code which was considered so secure that it was used to encipher top-secret messages and new long-range aircraft that could provide better coverage for ships.
In Italy, the Allies pushed into Southern Europe forcing the Germans to divide forces.
They had to fight on the eastern front against the Soviets, who were pushing the Germans back and on the southern front against the Allies. Farley Mowat was a Canadian soldier fighting in Italy and after serving in World War II he became a legendary author.
Meanwhile the war tide turned in the Allies favour, it was time to make landfall in Northern Europe.
There had been attempts to reach northern Europe through France prior to 1944, most notably the Dieppe Raid on Aug. 19, 1942, when6,000 infantry troops, mostly Canadian, landed at Dieppe, France and were pushed back within ten hours leaving 3,623 dead, wounded or taken prisoner.
One year later in the summer of 1943, the Allies plotted to invade France once again this time under the codename Operation Overlord.
This time the Allies chose to land at Normandy against what was called the Atlantic Wall.
In the years since war had broken out much of France had been taken over, and the Germans had built up an extensive system of coastal defences and fortifications along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia.
Kilometres of bunkers and machine guns posed an imposing barrier for any force crossing the English Channel.
The Germans knew an invasion was coming, they just didn’t know where or when.
Surprise would be the Allies’ best weapon at their disposal.
The Germans believed the most likely landing spot was Pas de Calais, which was the shortest distance across the Channel and offered a quicker route towards Germany.
Instead, the Allies selected Normandy.
To keep the Germans in the dark, they sent out false reports and intelligence leading them to think that Pas de Calais would be the landing spot.
Under the classified plan, the attack was planned for June 5, 1944.
On that day, 156,000 soldiers from the United States, Canada and Britain were supposed to land on five beaches along a 100-kilometre stretch of coastline in France.
14,000 Canadian soldiers from across the country were given orders to land on an eight-kilometre-long stretch known as Juno Beach, on the eastern end of the invasion front.
Canadian Lt. Colonel Ernest Adolphe Cote was among the men who organized the Allies landings and was responsible for figuring out logistics for supplies for the 14,000 Canadians landing on Juno Beach.
He was one of a select few to know the details of D-Day including knowing the exact day and locations for the invasion.
He said in his memoirs about his role,
“We had to plan our routes in advance, even where no paths existed; we had to bring road signs with us to indicate which way soldiers should go and to identify reinforcement gathering places and the supply stations for water, gasoline, diesel and ammunition, and we had to locate the premises of the first small field hospitals and finally predetermine the location of a cemetery.”[3]
For the mission to be successful, everything was planned down to the smallest detail.
At Juno Beach, the Canadian troops were to establish a beachhead and capture three towns along the coast, then move inland 16 kilometres to occupy the land west of the City of Caen.
They had to accomplish this by the end of the first day.
The Third Canadian Infantry Division and the Second Canadian Armoured Brigade, under the command of Major General R.F.L. Keller took part in the assault on Juno Beach.
Many of the men had little to no combat experience, but they had a lot of training.
Fred Moar, who was part of the North Shore Regiment from New Brunswick. He said that they had been training in England for a year but had no idea what they were getting into.
quote
“We were ready for anything. We considered ourselves the best.”
Plans included sending tanks to Juno Beach ahead of time from the First Hussars Cavalry Regiment based out of Ontario and The Fort Garry Horse, an armoured reconnaissance unit from Manitoba.
The[4] tanks were to provide cover fire for the landing forces and destroy coastal targets.
The Royal Canadian Artillery Guns were also going to set up artillery on the beach for additional fire coverage.
On the beach that day would also be the Royal Canadian Medical Corps, who would care for the wounded, of which there would be many.
And…The Royal Canadian Engineers would be on hand to blast a path through obstacles, while the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals would keep communication lines intact.
The Germans were expected to initiate a significant counterattack, the Highland Light Infantry of Canada, The North Nova Scotia Highlanders and other companies would reinforce troops west of the City of Caen once it was taken.
In a perfect world, it would have gone to plan.
But, as the poem To A Mouse by Robert Burns states,
“the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”
Allied forces were ready to go as June 5 dawned, but Mother Nature had other intentions.
Conditions were unsuitable: high winds and heavy seas would make it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft from finding their targets, so the decision was made to delay the attack by one day.
Delaying it any further would require tidal conditions to align as well and troops wouldn’t have the benefit of a full moon).
Postponing could increase the chance that the invasion would be detected so with that in mind on the night of June 5, Canadian soldiers boarded their ships, ready for a rough voyage across the English Channel.
As troops prepared, many had no idea what was in store for them.
They thought they were going on another exercise for the eventual invasion of France.
Secrecy had been imperative, so it wasn’t until their ships were being battered by two-meter-high waves in the middle of the English Channel, that soldiers broke open their sealed orders.
That’s when they discovered they were going to invade France.
They would be going into a head-to-head battle with the Germans.
Farther out in the English Channel, headed towards France, were 80 Royal Canadian Navy vessels providing support to the invading fleet.
Among them were two destroyers, HMCS Algonquin and HMCS Sioux that would bring destruction to German coastal defences.
Traveling ahead of the main force were also ten Bangor-class minesweepers from the Royal Canadian Navy, whose job was to clear the hundreds of mines that protected the French coast.
Canadian soldier Marcel Massey wrote later,
“When dawn came, there were ships and floating docks as far as the eye could see. The noise was terrific, and I began to wonder why I had left the farm.”
In the skies, 80 squadrons from the Royal Canadian Air Force patrolled over the ships which included a landing craft carrying 14,000 Canadian troops battling seasickness and steeling themselves to step foot in France.
They were to push back against Germany.
Meanwhile, behind German lines, the First Canadian Parachute Battalion which was part of the Sixth British Airborne Division, released thousands of paratroopers into the night skies above France.
Some Canadian paratroopers landed in fields flooded by the Germans,
While others drowned without ever meeting their objectives.
One soldier, Jan de Vries with the First Canadian Parachute Battalion, did make it to France but was kilometres away from his drop zone.
Carrying heavy equipment and parachute, he spent all night trying to find his way to the rendezvous point, while dodging German patrols at the same time.
As ships crossed the Channel, troops heard explosions in the distance.
Through the early hours of June 6, 5,268 tonnes of bombs were dropped on the coastal defences of Normandy by the Allies.
Behind enemy lines, French resistance fighters who had received coded BBC messages began over 1,000 acts of sabotage to create confusion among German ranks.
Unfortunately, the bombardment by ships and planes didn’t do as much as hoped to destroy the German fortifications on the beaches.
Soldiers in the landing crafts were about to face intense resistance from Germans entrenched in concrete bunkers.
As landing craft gates swung open, soldiers were met with a hail of bullets forcing them to jump into chest-high water and make their way to shore and behind defensive positions.
Royal Canadian Navy sailor Richard Norris said,
“They had smokescreens, and it was pandemonium, you really couldn’t say what we were doing because you had to cope with the situations as they arose.”
The Regina Rifles reached the beach at 8 am.
They were able to push their way off the beach with the help of tanks from the First Hussars.
The force reached a nearby town where they moved from house to house and engaged in close quarters combat with German troops.
By the late afternoon, they were headed inland towards their objective.
The Regina Rifles were one the lucky ones.
Some never made it to Juno Beach.
A Canadian company was wiped out when their landing craft hit a mine hidden by high tide, killing several on board.
Those who survived jumped into deep water with heavy packs and swam ashore.
The Royal Winnipeg Rifles were one of those that made it to the beach without much difficulty thanks to naval gunfire that destroyed a German battery.
But nearby, another Winnipeg company walked into heavy gunfire because the battery in their landing area was still intact.
It was chaos.
Several soldiers died as soon as they hit the water, but the rest pushed on and advanced past defences, cleared minefields and reached the coastal villages to reach their objective.
But it came at a great cost.
Three-quarters of the company were casualties by the time they left the beach.
The North Shore Regiment and the Queen’s Own Rifles were next to land.
They were hit with heavy gunfire, particularly from one German gun encampment that escaped the bombardment.
It took six hours for the North Shore Regiment to reach a nearby village.
But the Queen’s Own Rifles suffered more than any other Canadian unit that day.
Their support tanks were not in place and the naval bombardments in their area had done little. Their landing craft reached the beach half an hour late.
Once the gates opened, the men aboard were forced to run to a seawall 183 metres away where they would have no cover from gunfire.
The men in the Queen’s Own Rifles had trained for this moment Doug Hester was on the beach that day and said,
“We saw the five pillboxes mounted on top of the seawall. These were our first objective. About five hundred yards out, they had us in the sights of their small arms and began shooting. We had never been under real fire and realized it when bullets were hitting our assault craft. I said to Doug (Reed), as if we should be surprised, “they’re shooting at us” and we ducked down below the armour.”
One company in the Rifles lost two-thirds of their men.
Despite heavy losses, they were able to make it off the beach as well.
Making it was no easy task, even the Canadian reserve units had trouble reaching their objectives.
The Canadian Scottish and Le Regiment de la Chaudière’s landing crafts struck concealed mines and the men had to throw off their equipment and swim ashore as the Germans shot at them.
Away from the beach and behind enemy lines paratroopers landed far from their intended targets.
Although they were lightly armed, they were able to capture German headquarters, a bridge and a crossroads.
The Canadian troops had managed to push farther inland than any other force on D-Day, but only one Canadian unit made their objectives.
Regardless, the first line of German defences were completely smashed.
One Canadian journalist said,
“The German dead were littered over the dunes, by the gun positions. By them, lay Canadians in bloodstained battledress, in the sand and in the grass, on the wire and by the concrete forts. They had lived a few minutes of the victory they had made. That was all.”
In the mayhem of Normandy, progress was made.
Across the pond Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King lay awake
Upon hearing the news of the invasion he wrote in his diary,
“It may be that our whole attack was much more terrific than anything we have been able to imagine, and we have lost more heavily than we know at the moment but that all should have gone so well is beyond belief. It makes one feel on top of the taking of Rome that the war will certainly be brought to a conclusion before many months. The German people will become panic-stricken. They will begin to see how completely they have been deceived. I went to bed very grateful in my heart to God for what had been accomplished this day.”
Simultaneously in France, troops were exhausted by their efforts and many souls were lost.
By the end of the day on June 6, 1,089 Canadians were casualties,
To put that into perspective, which equaled one in 14 soldiers who took part in the invasion.
Of those, 381 were killed. 340, on the beach along 19 paratroopers and 22 airmen.
One of them was Reg Hanbury, who had recently gotten married in Canada and was on his second-to-last mission before heading back home to his wife Norma.
He was declared missing in action on D-Day and Norma would never see him again.
It took a month of hard fighting to break through the Normandy bridgehead.
The assault on Northern Europe began by early August, when the Allied army circled through Normandy and pushed the Germans back.
Among the 209,000 casualties in the Normandy Campaign were 18,700 Canadians who were killed, wounded, or captured.
Jan de Vries, the paratrooper who landed far from his drop zone survived D Day but was wounded by a German sniper in July 1944.
The Normandy campaign officially ended on Aug. 21.
Four days later, Paris was liberated after four years under Nazi control.
Meanwhile Jan de Vries was still recovering and returned to combat in September.
After the war, he went on to serve as the President of the First Canadian Parachute Battalion Association for 12 years.
He was also instrumental in the opening of the Juno Beach Centre in France, which honours the men who landed in Normandy on that fateful day.
In 2010, he was a torchbearer for the Vancouver Olympics and two years later, passed away in Ajax, Ontario.
As you’ve heard, D Day was the beginning of the end for the Germans.
In September, Belgium was liberated, followed by parts of the Netherlands in the winter of 1944.
The Allied forces continued to push as the Nazis retreated to Germany.
On May 7, 1945, 335 days after D-Day, the Germans surrendered, and the War in Europe came to an end.
The battle for the Pacific is a story for another day, but before I go…there is one more thing you should know.
In 1939, a young man from Vancouver named James Doohan enlisted to fight in the Second World War.
A year later, he was a lieutenant in the army training in Britain for what would become D-Day.
James landed at Juno Beach in the Second Wave.
After shooting two snipers, he led his men to higher ground through a field of anti-tank mines where they took defensive positions for the night.
At 11:30 p.m., James was crossing between command posts.
Suddenly, six shots rang out.
Four bullets hit his leg, one blew off his right middle finger and the sixth bullet hit him in the chest.
James would have been killed if not for the fact that a silver cigarette case, given to him by his brother, stopped the bullet from entering his chest.
As it turned out, the bullets didn’t come from a German, but a nervous Canadian soldier.
James survived the war and went on to attend the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto.
He eventually made his way into television where his talent for accents proved very useful.
In the mid-1960s, he walked into an audition for a new TV show.
His character happened to be an engineer, and he felt the character would work best with a Scottish accent.
He said later that all the best engineers were Scottish.
He got that role.
James Doohan became the Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise,
But you and millions of fans probably know him best as Commander Montgomery Scott, or Scotty.
(STAR TREK TUNES?)
If you watch Star Trek episodes from the 1960s, every so often, you can see that missing middle finger James lost storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
