It’s just 20 years ago I learned about the toughest battle of Fred Barnard’s life. On a spring morning in 1944, our Uxbridge neighbour (then just 22) found himself on a landing craft with the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada about to storm the Normandy beach codenamed Juno. He had no family in France that needed saving. He knew none of the German soldiers occupying those Norman towns and seaports.

Still, he’d felt so compelled by the call for Canadians to help liberate the French from Nazi occupation that he and his brother Don travelled halfway around the globe to join the D-Day invasion on June 6.

“Give ’em hell,” Fred had yelled to his 20-year-old brother on the same landing craft.

Then, moments later, as he dashed for cover, among the first Canadians to penetrate Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Fred faced a horrific dilemma. There, in the sea water not yet ashore, he saw his brother with a bullet hole in his chest – dead before he’d even reached the sea wall. (more…)