D-Day

Hi, I'm Anthony Wilson Smith, President and CEO of Historica Canada. The way we see the world today is informed a lot by our past, both the good and the bad. This is where our podcasts come in. Podcasts like Residential Schools, a three-part series created to honor the stories of survivors, their families and communities, and to commemorate the history and legacy of residential schools in Canada.

I didn't want to be an Indian. I didn't know who the hell I wanted to be. I wasn't accepted by the white man. I wasn't accepted by my own people in my reserve. Subscribe to Historica Canada Podcasts for deep dives into our past. You can listen to Residential Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Never stop learning. In 1971, Canada became the first country in the world to adopt an official multiculturalism policy.

It was meant to preserve cultural freedoms and recognize the contributions of diverse groups to Canadian society. Today, multiculturalism is a defining feature of the Canadian society. But for much of our history, that wasn't the case. Listen to a place to be a little bit more than a little bit. A History of Multiculturalism in Canada, a five-part series from Historica Canada. Join us as we explore the history of multiculturalism in Canada.

Subscribe to A Place to Belong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Record of Service. I'm your host, Maya Foster. Today's episode is a bonus episode. Earlier this year, we marked the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, dubbed Operation Overlord and commonly known as D-Day. Just a warning to those that may be listening with young ones around, today's story contains graphic descriptions.

D-Day was supposed to be on happen on June the 5th, but because of the bad weather and the channel was very rough, they decided to put it off till June the 6th. This is Lloyd Bentley, a Canadian airman from Northern Ontario who served with Britain's Royal Air Force. He flew with Transport Command, delivering troops and supplies to Allied forces. At midnight june the fifth, we had a job of dropping paratroops about five or six miles inland from the city.

Juno Beach. 400,000 people took part in D-Day and about 156,000 landed that day. Navy and Air Force and Air Crew. By this time, Canada and its allies had been at war with the Axis powers since 1939. The Allies had lost control of continental Western Europe four years prior.

But by nineteen forty three, the tides were beginning to turn due to the successes of the Battle of the Atlantic and the Italian campaign. The Allies initiated plans for an invasion set for the following summer. It would be the largest amphibious invasion in history. Just a quick note on the term D-Day. The term had been used to plan operations in the past, and all it really did was act as a placeholder for the specific and top secret date of an attack.

Since the invasion of Normandy, it has been forever linked with june sixth, nineteen forty four. Martin Maxwell was one of the paragliders to go in on D-Day. He was born in Vienna and was sent to Britain on the kind transport, which took approximately 10,000 Jewish children out of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to the United Kingdom after Kristallnacht and before the outbreak of the Second World War.

After his adoptive brother joined the Royal Air Force, he decided to join the Royal Pioneer Corps, a corps open to German and Austrian nationals. Now when I finished my training, I went to one of the officers that I knew because he was the sports officer and I played soccer and I said, Look, I didn't join the army to or to build bridges, I want to go to a fighting unit. So he transferred me to the tank corps. And there one day they got a request.

from the glider pilot regiment to send two of their best or maybe two of their worst. to volunteer for a glider pilot regiment. And a great friend of mine was not Jewish and I volunteered and we passed. And we both took part in the D-Day operation. In fact, not he but I went the night before on the first six gliders and the whole idea was to capture the bridges behind the enemy line. so that the Germans couldn't send reinforcements.

I just carried those wonderful commandos and they were out there and within twenty minutes it was And the German garrisons were all dead. And we held the bridges until our paratroopers came in the night.

Here's Lloyd again explaining the ally strategy. They went from England in three different groups, three different lines. The westernmost line were the Americans and And the ships were down below, and then they had probably fighter planes, and then transport and medium bombers, etcetera. Landed at Utah Beach State, near St. Mary de Glee.

And then the middle lane landed at Omaha Beach and they were battling. They had the really the toughest fighting of anybody. And then the western the easternmost lane was the British and everybody else. And when they got nearer the shore they split into three different lanes. And the westernmost lane was was Gold Beach, were British. The middle lane was the Canadians, at Juno Beach. And then the easternmost lane was the British, French, Free French.

Norwegians, etc., etc., Dutch, and they landed at s at Swordbeach. As you got near England, you could s all the three lanes are still coming out, about thirty f about forty miles wide probably. I swear you could see about two or three thousand aircraft, or thirteen thousand aircraft took part, And there's between five and seven thousand ships.

And uh I swear if I could have long legs and stepped out on those ships, I could have walked back to England or so thick. It was the most amazing sight I've ever seen in my life. Pavelin Chiaison, a member of the North Shore Regiment, remembers the experience of approaching the French coast by boat. When we boarded the ships they uh they pulled out the maps and put them out on the tables in the big mess all aboard ship and said, you know, this is D Day. We're go we're gonna landing in France.

And uh so it was a six hour trip across to the coast of France. So uh we got uh we got uh got there in the morning about About five o'clock in the morning and the big guns opened up, the navy guns, the artillery opened up. uh that that were there aboard ships and and the planes come in, bomb the beaches and and then we we come down out of our big ships into our landing craft.

And then uh then the orders were of course the orders were then to hit the beach as soon as you could. And these were uh these boats were all operated by Navy men, experienced Navy men. So when when you when you hit the beach uh when when you got to the place where you hit the beach the big ramp went down and the thirty six men piled up. But sometimes they hit a reef. and the ramp would go down, several would be drowned with all their equipment.

uh others was s swim the shore, some would be killed from the artillery and the Germans of course had to open up with everything they had. But uh we we hit our beats at uh at uh St. Albans St Albansur Mayor, that's where the North Shore landed. They captured a mile of beach on the first day and spent the night there. We were together for like five years or five and a half years. We were just like brothers. And then all of a sudden

Here's all these people you know, dead. You know, dead or wounded. Most of them dead. We lost I I think we lost a hundred people killed that morning on the beach. and besides the wounded. So so it takes quite a jolt out of you the first day. But then after the first day Uh, you know, y y the battle is over and you say, What about Jim? Oh, he was killed. You d you don't think anything about it, see.

And of course you couldn't you couldn't do anything because, you know, here would be a a a brother as I would call him would be wounded real bad right there. And you'd want to stop and banage him up or do something before the till the before the orderlies. You weren't allowed to. You had to go on. That wasn't your job. I banaged up a lot of fellas and a lot of my friends did too, when you were stopped.

But when you were on the advance you couldn't you couldn't do anything like that, you couldn't stop and help anybody.

Just a heads up, this next section contains descriptions of D Day casualties. Here's Lloyd again. I used to be very squeamy so I saw a little bit of blood before this day. But when we got in the plane here there was twenty five or thirty wounded, some had belly wounds, some had jaws shot off, l arms and legs missing, and the shock was so great, from then on blood never bothered me at all. Ontario nurse Ruth Mugridge arrived in England in May nineteen forty four.

She was stationed in a British military hospital. We quit our status to a casualty clearing station, uh, and we received the the uh wounded personnel from hospital trains one after midnight and one at around three o'clock in the morning and there were about oh three hundred or so uh wounded personnel on each train. So we were all kept very, very busy. I was in the uh in the burn ward and we got mostly the armored corps boys.

And our patients I must say were wonderful young men and they they were so grateful for anything we were able to do for them. One of our big pluses was the fact that we had penicillin and it made a big difference in the uh uh d amount of infections that would turn up in the in the different types of wounds. But we were very fortunate to have it available to the to our military service as there was none uh available to the civilian hospitals in Canada in Canada until after the war.

Record of Service is a production of the Memory Project Speakersbury and Archive, connecting veterans and Canadian Forces members with school and community groups from coast to coast. The Memory Project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada. We're a program of Historica Canada, a nonprofit offering programs that you can use to explore, learn, and reflect on Canadian history and what it means to be Canadian.

Go to the Memory Project dot com to browse our archive of interviews or to book a speaker for your classroom If you're a veteran or an active member of the Canadian Forces, contact us to find out how you can become a speaker. Additional text for this episode comes from our sister program, the Canadian Encyclopedia. If you like this episode and want to learn more about the Battle of Normandy, check out their article at the Canadian Encyclopedia.ca.

You can follow us on social media at memory underscore project and at historica Canada. Bye.