I know this sounds like a cliché, but I remember the day as if it were yesterday. It was 16 years ago, in the summer of 2003. I was standing in line at a bank in town waiting to pay my credit card bill. Ahead of me were an older man and, at the head of the line a friend of mine. My friend asked what I was doing these days.
“I’m writing a book about Canadians on D-Day,” I said.
“Big anniversary coming up,” my friend commented.
“Yes,” I said.
Then it was my friend’s turn for service at the teller’s wicket and he turned to the counter to do his banking. That left only the older man and me in the queue. That’s when the older fellow slowly turned to me and spoke.
“I was there,” he said quietly.
“A veteran, are you?”
“I was there,” he repeated and then continued, “on D-Day.”
At first, I couldn’t find the right words. Finally, I blurted out, “Could you wait here in the bank until I’ve finished paying my VISA bill?”
We introduced ourselves to each other, exchanged phone numbers, and Fred Barnard invited me to an interview that changed me, and it changed the book I was writing. Fred Barnard related to me his D-Day experience of coming ashore in Normandy that June day in 1944 – 75 years ago today – with his younger brother Don in the same landing craft at Bernieres-sur-Mer, France.
But Fred’s younger brother never made it off the beach; a single bullet through the chest felled Don even before he reached dry land. Until that day in 2003, when we met in the bank, Fred Barnard had rarely talked about it. I felt privileged to hear the Barnard brothers’ story.
Fred and I have carried on a friendship ever since. Phone calls, periodic visits to the house and the occasional meetings downtown have allowed me to learn more about my coincidental friend. As often as we’ve chatted, however, Fred remains a quiet and modest man. His Second World War service in France after D-Day proved equally remarkable. His Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada unit continued to spearhead the liberation of France; then Fred was wounded by shrapnel in mid-August 1944.
All of that might seem just another veteran’s tale from a war so long ago, fading and nearly forgotten. However, several years after our first encounter, in 2007, I accompanied Fred Barnard to a ceremony at the Moss Park Armoury in Toronto. At that event he received the French Legion of Honour.
“I was no patriot or hero,” Fred told me then. “I was just doing my job as a volunteer soldier.”
For the record, the Legion of Honour was created by French general Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. It was and still is the highest award given by the French Republic for outstanding service to France, regardless of social status or nationality. It is the French equivalent of the British Victoria Cross and George Cross combined. Critics of Napoleon’s award once suggested that such “baubles on men’s chests were mere children’s toys.”
Baubles or not, I for one have the greatest respect for what young volunteers Fred and Donald Barnard accomplished that precarious June morning 75 years ago. In simple terms, were it not for them, I wouldn’t have the freedom to write these words today. You wouldn’t have the freedom to read them. Nor would any of us have the freedom to talk about it. Without Fred’s and Don’s sacrifice, today’s world would look vastly different.
Fred remains a modest veteran. His daughter Donna allowed that Fred doesn’t get out much. The frailties of age and diminished hearing, particularly in larger gatherings, such as he used to attend at the Legion and veterans’ events, make meeting people awkward for him.
Nevertheless, the victory of successfully landing 15,000 Canadian troops on Juno Beach 75 years ago this day remains very much on his mind and the minds of citizens of this town. In fact, today, people from across the township arrived at Fred’s home with flags, bunting, poppies, music and tributes to a man many feel is a hero.
Of course, he would never see his role in liberating France at all that way. Nor can the goodwill expressed to Fred at his home today ever assuage the pain and loss that he and his family endured on D-Day. But unlike the noise, confusion and death Fred Barnard dashed through on Juno Beach in France 75 years ago, today’s homage was designed to pay respectful tribute for a veteran’s job well done.
I contributed a card to this morning tribute: “I will remember forever that day we met in the bank,” I wrote, “and be forever grateful for the sacrifice you made to give the world a second chance.”
