This post is part of Blackfive's D-Day 60th Anniversary Blogburst Salute. Citizen Smash also points out that June 3rd is the 62nd Anniversary of the decisive Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theater.
June 6, 1944. The Americans had Utah and Omaha. The British had Gold and Sword. But Juno Beach, an 8 km stretch of coast backed by small seaside villages, was an all-Canadian assignment. They performed brilliantly, driving deeper into France than any of the other landings - and engaging the 21st Panzer Division before it could crush the American beachhead at Omaha.
This is the story of one of the Canadians at Juno: Jim Wilkins, B Company, The Queen's Own Rifles:
"...Oh yes we're going to get some help from a squadron of the 1st Hussars tank regiment. They're going to land before us and take out the pillboxes and machinegun nests – it didn't happen.The 45 boats start in – at about 1500 yards we can see the wall in back of the beach. It looks to be maybe 8 feet high. We are told to stand up.
Beside us was a ship that fires L.C.R. rockets. The forward deck is cleared and pointing up are maybe a dozen tubes or mortars at a 45 degree angle. All of a sudden they fire a salvo – great clouds of smoke and flame engulf the boat. Ten minutes later they fire again. You can follow the rockets by eye as they curve upward. We watched one salvo go high over the beach just as a Spitfire came along. He flew right into it and blew up. That pilot never had a chance and was probably the first casualty on Juno Beach. Overhead we can hear the roar of large shells from battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Beside us is a boat with pom poms (anti-aircraft) guns shooting away at church steeples and other high buildings which had observers who where spotting for the German ground troops.
Soon we are only 500 yards from the beach and are ordered to get down...
Minutes later the boat stops and begins to toss in the waves. the ramp goes down and without hesitation my section leader, Cpl. John Gibson, jumps out well over his waist in water. He only makes a few yards and is killed. We have landed dead on into a pillbox with a machine gun blazing away at us. We didn't hesitate and jumped into the water one after the other – I was last of the first row. Where was everybody? My section are only half there – some were just floating on their Mae West's.
My bren gun team of Tommy Dalrymple and Kenny Scott are just in front of me when something hit my left magazine pouch and stops me up short for a moment. The round had gone right through two magazines, entered my left side and came out my back. Kenny keeps yelling come on, come on – I'm coming, I'm coming I yell to him. We are now up to our knees in water and you can hear a kind of buzzing sound all around as well as the sound of the machine gun itself. All of a sudden something slapped the side of my right leg and then a round caught me dead centre up high on my right leg causing a compound fracture.
By this time I was flat on my face in the water – I've lost my rifle, my helmet is gone and Kenny is still yelling at me to come on. He is also shot in the upper leg but has no broken bones. I yell back, I can't, my leg is broken – get the hell out of here – away he goes and catches up to Tommy. Poor Tom, I've got ten of his bren gun magazines and they're pulling me under. I soon get rid of them and flop over onto my back and start to float to shore where I meet five other riflemen all in very bad shape. The man beside me is dead within minutes. All the while we are looking up at the machine gun firing just over our heads at the rest of our platoon and company and then our platoon Sargent and friend of mine, who had given up a commission to be with us was killed right in front of me.
Finally I decided that this is not a good place to be and managed to slip off my pack and webbing and start to crawl backward on my back at an angle away from the gun towards the wall about 150 ft away. I finally made it and lay my back against it. In front of me I can see bodies washing back and forth in the surf. Soon, one of my friends, Willis Gambrel, a walking wounded, showed up and we each had one of my cigarettes which surprisingly were fairly dry. Then he left to find a first aid centre. A medic came along and put a bandage on my leg. I had forgotten all about the hole in my side. Then two English beach party soldiers came along carrying a 5-gallon pot of tea. "Cup of tea Canada?" yes sir – and they gave me tea in a tin mug. It was hot and mixed 50/50 with rum. It was really good."
There would be hard fighting ahead. In Caen. In France. In the Low Countries of Holland and Belgium. But a foothold had been gained, at last, on the Continent. At last the world could see the beginning of the end.
June 6, 1944. And it was evening, and it was morning. The first day.
Reading these testamonials, I still am amazed that Ike expected a 70% casualty rate, yet only suffered 20%. Amazing.
When I focus my thoughts on this brave, unparalleled event, I am astonished! My combat experience is limited, and NOTHING LIKE Juno Beach, Gold or Omaha...
My sons, both born in Thailand, are now 8 and 10. We've been discussing the war in Iraq, and its echos in southern Thailand, for 2 years now... and we relate most news items to "Private Ryan"
They know it is 'just a movie', but it is a movie of something done BY real people TO real people FOR real people... in the past. They've sat with me, one on my lap, for the 7th or 9th viewing of the beach landing.
We're learning respect and honest admiration for those who tried to 'clear those murder-holes!'
May God ever bless America, with brave intelligent soldiers who volunteer to protect her!
As far as I know, the Canadians were the only ones to attain their D+1 objectives.
Canada finished the war with a 450-ship navy (the US is now at about 380) and was generally rated the fifth most powerful military in the world.
The Canadian-designed and built Athabaska-class destroyers of the late '50s were probably the best ASW ships in the world because their exaggerated fantail (therefore nearly mid-ship screws) gave them an incredibly tight turning radius.
The Avro Arrow interceptor ( ca 1959 ) was scrapped because it was the only plane in the world that could intercept an American U-2 and the Yanks did not want it to fall into the wrong hands. It would /still/ be a good plane.
In 1968 Pierre Trudeau began a nearly unbroken series of Prime Ministers from Quebec. It started with the decommissioning of the Bonaventure aircraft carrier in 1970. By the late '80s the Canadian navy couldn't even keep the Spanish and Portuguese from fishing the Grand Banks dry, but at least the government could keep a light division on the Cold War frontlines of Europe.
Last I checked the Canadians have a total military in the 50,000 troop range and can barely keep a handful of admittedly good troops forward-deployed to Afghanistan.
The militant pacifism that arose from Quebec's 'revolution tranquile' has (sadly) made Canada irrelevant in little more than a generation, and has deeply dishonoured the men of Juno, Dieppe, and the liberation of Holland.
The biggest town that was an objective to be taken by D+12 was Caen. I can just imagine the press reports now of the "quagmire in Normandy" or perhaps "The failure of FDR to know about expected German responses." There would be calls for resignations because of the "failure" of the Airborne drops due to their being scattered all over Normandy. Army Air Corps bombers failed to hit Omaha beach and thus the cover "promised" to the PBIF by bomb craters wasn't there...another reason for FDR to fire Ike, Marshall and other leaders such as Jimmy Doolittle. Of course, Ike would have been fired months earlier because of the deaths of American soldiers killed by German E-boats during training. I wonder if the NYT would call Germans fighting to keep the Vichy/Nazi government in power in France "insurgents"?
I forgot to add that I really admire how the Canadians were willing to turn a blind eye to Americans wanting to join the Canadian Armed Forces to fight Germany prior to Dec. 7, 1941. One of the best accounts I've read was by a fella named Bill Dunn. He tried to enlist in the Canadian Army in 1940 and told the recruiter he was from the US. The recruiter told Dunn he couldn't take Americans but maybe if he took a walk around the block and became an Canadian citizen by the time he finished his walk the Canadian Army would take him....Dunn finished his walk and said he was from Canada and signed up, became a pilot and was the first American ace of WW2.
Canada had the highest casaulty rates of any Allied country fighting in Normandy - 22%; compared with 10% for the US and 8% for the Brits.
The Canadians faced some of the best and most fanatical divisions that Germany had to offer (12th SS Panzer, 1st SS Panzer) and the Canadian Army annihilated them.
Eisenhower later said that winning a foot of ground in the Caen sector was like winning a mile elsewhere.
By war's end they had the world's third largest navy (after Britain and the US) and fourth largest air force (US, USSR, Britain).
In fact, Caen was scheduled to be taken on D-Day proper. The quagmirists would have had a field day with the 'disastrous' news that the Allies had failed to take all of their objectives on D-Day.
Just to add, the Canadians were able to get 10km inland, more than any other allied nation who stormed the beaches.
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