Bill Stewart, Paul Moffatt and Al Thomas, firefighters from Toronto, prepare to pay tribute to veterans at Menin Gate on May 23, 2024.
The three of them seemed buried in preparations – arranging the wreath, adjusting their berets, straightening their blazers and ties – and they didn’t notice me approaching with my cellphone camera. Then, suddenly as they stepped to the curb beneath the Menin Gate, a shaft of sunlight caught them.
“Look here guys,” I called out.
Almost in perfect symmetry, the three men – Bill Stewart, Al Thomas and Paul Moffatt – all snapped to attention the way they’ve done thousands of times before. And I clicked the photograph of the three retired firefighters in their parade uniforms, ready to join one of the most poignant Great War commemorations in Europe. (more…)
D-Day veteran’s son, Don Henderson (r), presents RCAF base map to Jean-Pierre Banamou. June 2024.
Last week, inside a modest-looking but sizable Quonset building, known as the D-Day Academy, in Normandy, France, Don Henderson, a visitor from Calgary, made a small presentation. From his backpack, he pulled an official RCAF map of Normandy showing where his father, Leading Aircraftman Wilbert Henderson helped construct one of the first Tactical Air Force (TAF) bases in Normandy immediately after D-Day.
“My dad landed on D-Day-plus-11,” Don Henderson began. “He was the second driver in the air force vehicle. But when the first driver was shot, my dad carried on using this map to reach B4,” site of the TAF base.
Standing next to Don Henderson in the D-Day Academy museum, its director Jean-Pierre Benamou watched as the Canadian unfolded the fragile map revealing all the Juno Beach coastline that Canadians seized from the Germans beginning on June 6, 1944.
“I’ve kept this map all my life, but I want to donate it to your museum” said Henderson, and he handed the map to the clearly moved Benamou.
“Canadian veterans and their families are always bringing important artifacts back to Normandy, so that we don’t forget,” Benamou said. “D-Day is not dead for us. We relive it every day we welcome visitors here.” (more…)
Commander Ericson (Jack Hawkins) makes life and death decision in “The Cruel Sea.”
Commander George Ericson is crouched on the bridge of his corvette warship. He’s peering through a sighting device, lining up his counterattack against an enemy he can’t see, a submerged U-boat in the Atlantic waters directly ahead of him.
“What’s it look like now, Number One?” Ericson calls to his first officer, who is on a sonar device.
“It’s the firmest contact we’ve ever had,” the sonar operator shouts back from below deck.
There’s sudden consternation on Cmdr Ericson’s face. Merchant sailors whose ship has just been torpedoed are thrashing about in the water. They’re shouting for help. “There’s men in the water just about there,” Ericson says.
Charley Fox and I enjoying each other’s company at a regimental dinner in 2006.
The man told me my future. It happened back in the 1980s. But back then, Charley Fox, my oldest and dearest veteran friend, looked me straight in the eye and told me what I ought to be doing with the rest of my life.
“It’s your job to tell our stories,” he said. And each time we’d meet – usually every month or so at the Husky truck stop on Hwy 401 just east of London, Ont. – Charley would remind me with a “to-do list,” exactly how I was to research famous battles, conduct first-hand interviews and then write and publish the eye-witness stories of Canadian veterans’ experiences. Forty years and a dozen published books later, I realize Charley was right. History storytelling has become the centre of my life. (more…)
RCAF wireless radio operator Cobby Engelberg, during training in Canada in WWII. Photo courtesy Harvey Engelberg.
His original itinerary involved a flight from Canada to Israel, but when Harvey Engelberg received a letter of inquiry from France, a few weeks ago, his plans changed. Thérèse Férey and her husband, current owners of a farm in Normandy, wondered if Harvey was related to one Cobby Engelberg, a Canadian airman shot down in the early hours of June 6, 1944.
When Harvey explained that Cobby was his father, he changed his flight plans to include a side trip to Normandy.
“I own a farm in Bassenville,” Mme Férey wrote in her letter, “and we’ve found pieces of (your father’s) plane that crashed on our property. Would you like them?” (more…)
This year’s Remembrance Day presentation recorded at St. Thomas’ Princes Avenue Playhouse.
Normally, I’d be feeling a bit nervous. But not this time. Last Tuesday morning, I just walked up a short set of stairs and onto a theatre stage, in St. Thomas, Ont. Unlike many times before, however, there was no audience, just the empty Princess Avenue Playhouse. Then, from the darkness in front of me, I heard the only other person in the theatre call to me.
“Camera’s rolling, Ted,” he said. “You can start anytime.”
And I began my annual Remembrance Day presentation for the Township of Southwold, this year with no audience, just a video camera. (more…)
Just northeast of Paris, France, lies a small wooded hill. The few acres of green have been peaceful for most of the last century. Aisne-Marne American Cemetery resides here. It’s home to the memorial stones of 2,289 war dead, mostly Americans. A few hundred yards down the hill, 102 years ago, a great battle raged here.
Near the start of it, French troops found themselves overwhelmed by a charging enemy. In March 1918, the German Army had launched its largest offensive, that it hoped would drive the Allies into the sea and deliver them victory in the Great War. On June 2, 1918, a retreating French soldier is alleged to have shouted to arriving U.S. troops:
“Withdraw! Withdraw! We are overrun!”
Historians tell us, in that moment, Lloyd Williams, a young Marine captain from Virginia, shouted back, “Retreat? Hell, we just got here!” (more…)
Gen. Eisenhower encourages U.S. airborne members on eve of D-Day, June 5, 1944.
Conditions gave him little cause for optimism. A large low-pressure weather cell had socked-in England and occupied France. Low clouds and high winds portended the worst circumstances for a crossing of the English Channel. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces commander chain-smoked his Camel cigarettes and shared stiff drinks with other SHAEF members at the back of the Red Lion public house in Southwick, England, waiting for better news.
It came on June 5, 1944. The rain let up. Winds abated. The Channel calmed. And Gen. Dwight Eisenhower reclaimed the element of surprise and unleashed “Operation Overlord” against Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.
“You are about to embark upon a great crusade,” he wrote to Allied troops on the eve of D-Day. “The eyes of the world are upon you…” (more…)
With a line on the grass between them, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (Queen Mum) beyond meet airmen of the Dam Busters squadron at RAF Scampton in May 1943.
Everybody was new at this. Royalty meeting members of the public at such close range hadn’t really happened much before. The organizers of the meeting, however, went so far as to paint a white line on the grass – like marking side lines on a football field – to keep the planned inspection orderly. Two Royal family members walked on one side of the painted line, and members of the military being inspected stood on the other, including a Royal Air Force pilot named Dave Shannon.
“It’s Flight Lieutenant Shannon’s 21st birthday,” his commanding officer told the King and Queen as they paused before him.
“You seem to be a very well preserved 21,” King George VI told Shannon. “You must have a party tonight.”
The King could probably have spoken for the entire British Commonwealth that day, three-quarters of a century ago. (more…)
Dutch liberation vet Ron Charland (left) is joined by air cadet Bo Gibbons during VE Day parade in Apeldoorn, May 9, 2010.
As a boy, not surprisingly, he joined the scout movement. He loved to listen to the wireless radio broadcasts that came all the way from the BBC in England. But in every other way Jan Van Hoof was an ordinary Dutch boy during the Second World War. That is, until Sept. 17, 1944. During the next 24 hours, as Allied paratroops descended through the skies over his hometown of Nijmegen, Van Hoof left his youth behind. And it was summed up in what he said to his parents that day.
