Nazi occupation Archives • Ted Barris

Cpl Fred Barnard of the Queen’s Own Rifles.

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.

Rifleman Don Barnard of the Queen’s Own Rifles.

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…)

Dorothy Taylor holds my book; she was delighted to be recognized for her wartime service.

She’d sat pretty quietly a few rows in front of me – a woman with an intent look, a tailored leather jacket and a sparkle in her eye. Older than many in the room in Orillia where I spoke, her eyebrows responded continuously to my story – curving up when it was humorous, down when sad. When my talk was over, a man at the back of the room pointed out the very same woman and indicated she was his mother-in-law.

“She worked in war munitions in the Second World War,” he said, “but her most important work was in quality control at Victory Aviation.”

“You mean where they built the Lancaster bombers?” I asked.

“Ask her,” her son-in-law said. “And she’ll tell you she was in charge of rivets.” (more…)