Fred Barnard as member of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in WWII.
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.” (more…)
WWII veteran Harry Watts addressing guests attending his 90th birthday in 2013.
About five years ago, I travelled to Kitchener to help a Second World War vet celebrate his 90th birthday. Harry Watts had served as a dispatch rider, a.k.a. motorcycle messenger, in Italy and Holland, 1943-45. Suddenly, during the birthday wishes and cake cutting for Harry, members of the Canadian Army of Veterans (CAV) pulled up on motorcycles to pay tribute to Harry, their eldest member.
“We’ve come to help you celebrate, Harry,” the CAV riders said.
“Thank you, brothers,” said Harry, his eyes welling up with emotion. (more…)
Rick Askew, from Oshawa, joined me in Normandy to pay tribute to wartime service.
When he was a kid at school, he dreaded show-and-tell days more than just about anything. Especially around Remembrance Day. When it came time to tell the class what his dad did in the war, sometimes he’d invent a fighter pilot dad. Other times, a bomber pilot dad. But just last week when he reconsidered his father’s wartime career, Rick Askew’s attitude about his dad had changed.
“I had him winning the war all by himself,” he told me. “In truth, he never fired a gun once in the war.”
Last week, Rick Askew, a semi-retired cosmetics salesman from Oshawa, travelled with me (and a larger Merit Travel group) in northwestern France. We toured key locations in Normandy where Allied armies had gained a critical toehold against the Nazi occupation of Europe beginning on June 6, 1944. I took him and the tour group to Juno Beach, Pegasus Bridge, Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc, where the men of our fathers’ generation had turned the tide of the Second World War. But unlike the history books, I explained to Askew and my other travel guests that it wasn’t the generals and politicians who’d achieved these objectives. It was the average citizen soldiers, such as his father and mine.
To emphasize the point, I offered a story I’d been told by friend Braunda Bodger. A dozen years ago, she’d informed me that her father, a stationery worker in Regina before the war, had come ashore in France in the clerical section of Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. I was curious about the role a clerk might have played during the Allied advance. And when I spoke to the man himself – Wally Filbrandt – my view of the entire Allied invasion of Normandy turned on a dime.
“There were reinforcement companies, battalions and brigades all ready to jump into action,” Filbrandt told me. “We would simply receive casualty reports and then assign reinforcements where they were needed.”
In other words, he kept the invasion army functioning in fact the way it was supposed to on paper. It was a remarkable turnabout for me as a documentarian of the war. In those minutes spent with Filbrandt, I’d come to realize that sometimes the least visible acts of service were among the most influential contributors to winning the war. Filbrandt’s dispatching the right replacement ultimately meant the difference between victory and defeat.
Like Filbrandt, Bill Askew (Rick’s father) had served King and country not with a gun, but with a behind-the-lines skill. Askew Sr. had played brass instruments in the RCAF band stationed at Goose Bay, Labrador (then technically “overseas” because Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t join Canada until 1949). He and his 30 fellow bandsmen had played for parades, dances and ceremonies; they were the sound foundation to every official event on base.
“I had him winning the war,” Rick Askew said. “It took me 50 years to figure out he was just as much a veteran as anybody.”
Bill Opitz (left), D-Day vet from Canadian minesweeper Bayfield, receives Rick Askew’s commemorative flag at Juno Beach, on June 6, 2014.
Actually, Rick Askew had joined my Normandy trip for a number of reasons. Initially, a few months ago, he’d decided to get his buddies at a club in Oshawa to autograph of Canadian Maple Leaf flag. It would be up to Rick to find the right veteran attending D-Day ceremonies in France to receive the autographed flag as a symbol of gratitude and remembrance. As we awaited the ceremony last week at Juno Beach, Askew suddenly ran up to me.
“I found him,” he told me excitedly.
“Who?” I asked, not remembering his plan.
“The vet to receive our autographed flag.”
He led me through the maze of vets awaiting the 70th anniversary ceremony in front of the Juno Beach Centre and introduced me to Bill Opitz, who’d served as a stoker aboard the Royal Canadian Navy minesweeper HMCS Bayfield on D-Day. Ultimately, that proved only half of Rick Askew’s quest in France. During most mornings, when he smoked a cigarette out on the balcony of our hotel in Normandy, he began to realize the diversity of service that Canadians had delivered that spring back in 1944, had actually included his father.
With the story of Filbrandt in his thoughts and with his autographed flag delivered to an ordinary navy stoker, Rick Askew perhaps sensed his father’s role as a bandsman had been more important than a son had given his father credit. As a bandsman, the elder Askew had given tempo to military parades, melody to receptions and often the correct somber atmosphere to station memorials. He’d learned that service in such a desperate time had come in all shapes, sizes, and contributions.
“This trip has changed my life,” Rick Askew told me on the last day of our tour. “I’m really proud of what my father did now.”
British and Canadian troops took the bridges east of the invasion beaches before daybreak June 6, 1944.
The day seemed rushed and complicated. People and vehicles rushed in every direction. Time flew more quickly than anyone wanted. There seemed no room, but to hurry through the day. It was D-Day, 2014, and we had tried desperately to get to an appointment with history – a commemorative ceremony at Bavent, in Normandy, France. In fact, when we arrived, the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion padre, who had already conducted the scheduled ceremony, realized our predicament.
“I know you weren’t late 70 years ago,” he said. “However, traffic jams and road blocks notwithstanding, you’ve made it.”
1st Can Para vets Sullivan and Jones salute comrades killed in action or deceased since the war, at Bavent memorial.
Two veteran members of the original Canadian Paras – Mervin Jones, 91, from Quebec, and Robert Sullivan, 91, originally from Oregon – and Joanne de Vries representing her late husband, paratrooper and Legion of Honour recipient Jan de Vries of Toronto, had rushed in to the Bavent memorial location at the last moment.
“And it would be a shame not to mark this occasion with your comrades and your successors today,” the padre noted.
And so, the young clergyman conducted a second, smaller commemoration to fallen members of the battalion. On that very day – June 5 – 70 years before, Jones, Sullivan and Jan de Vries had parachuted from transport aircraft into the night to protect the flanks of the invasion beaches – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword – not knowing if they might succeed or die in an attempt to dislodge the Nazis from occupied Europe.
On this 70th anniversary of the Allied invasion, I and 48 other Canadians (who had travelled to France for D-Day commemorations and were also late for the original tribute) were relieved that Joanne de Vries would be allowed to join the veteran Paras placing a wreath of poppies at the foot of their regiment’s Bavent memorial.
“They were young,” the padre said before the minute’s silence. “Strong of limb, true of eye. Staunch to the end against odds uncounted.”
By the middle of the D-Day morning, June 6, 1944, about the time 150,000 assault troops were establishing the Normandy beachhead behind them, survivors of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion had achieved all the objectives assigned them in Operation Overlord. They had captured a vital German battery, made impassable all the bridges on the eastern flank of the D-Day landings, and they had isolated potential German counter-attacks.
Joanne de Vries and daughter Andrea stand where Jan de Vries dug in with the Can Paras on D-Day 1944.
“In fact, Jan had landed miles from his intended objective,” Joanne de Vries told us this week in France. Then, following the wreath-laying ceremony at the Paras’ memorial, she walked us up the road to where her husband, Jan, had dug a slit trench on the evening of June 6, 1944, and defended this spot unrelieved for almost two months.
I have always admired Joanne de Vries’ support for her husband’s post-war campaign raising the profile of veterans. When Jan de Vries co-founded the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer, when he led the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion Association, and when he spearheaded the effort to keep fellow Para Fred Topham’s VC medal in Canada, Joanne de Vries was there at his side. Now she does it in his memory.
A few kilometres away from the Canadian Paras’ site at Bavent, another of the women who joined the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorative tour I’m hosting this year, paid tribute to her father’s Normandy campaign story. On June 6, last Friday morning, we visited Beny-sur-Mer, home of Canada’s D-Day cemetery.
Pat Rusciolelli stands at grave of her father’s comrade-in-arms – K.G. Starfield – in Beny-sur-Mer cemetery.
Pat Rusciolelli checked the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site directory and then walked to the grave of trooper K.G. Starfield. She stood at behind his marker and explained to me what had happened. In early July, Starfield and Pat’s father, T.A. Bullock, were travelling in a Bren-gun carrier. At that time, their regiment, the 14th Canadian Hussars, was supporting the Allied liberation of Caen in an area known as Louvigny. A German mortar shell landed in the carrier, and severely wounded both men. Starfield died on July 15. Pat’s father nearly died.
“A piece of shrapnel lodged beside my dad’s spine,” she said. “He was paralyzed. They came to him and asked if he was OK. But the concussion had twisted his legs backwards, so he didn’t think he was.”
Pat went on to explain that her father thought he’d lost both his legs because he couldn’t feel them. Bullock was shipped home to Canada, where he eventually learned to walk again living a relatively normal life. As she stood there expressing how privileged she felt to attend Starfield’s grave at Beny-sur-Mer, Pat Rusciolleli was on the verge of tears. She pointed out her father was alive and well back home in Canada acknowledging an important moment.
“My father is 92 today,” she said. “Happy Birthday, Dad.”
Of course, wreaths and graveside visits – even on coincidental birthdays – don’t keep the memory of veterans alive. It’s the act of revisiting their achievements. If we continue to tell and retell the stories of their service, they live on.
The Great Escape talk incorporated story of Gordon Kidder, who taught German to eventual escapers. Photo Bev McMullen.
I had just completed one of my talks on The Great Escape. It was about an hour’s presentation at the Legion hall in Port Carling (in Muskoka) last Saturday. I asked someone to turn up the lights, so I could see the audience and take some questions. It’s in those moments that I prepare myself for a tough question and maybe some criticism. And I’m OK with that. Then, a man in the front row put up his hand to speak and the room went silent.
“I spent months in a POW camp just outside Munich during the war,” Jack Patterson said quietly, but steadily. “It was exactly the way you said.”
I walked over to him, shook his hand and asked him to stand and face the audience of about a hundred people. Then I asked if he would explain. He offered an abbreviated story of his capture by German troops in Normandy in July 1944.
Ultimately, he said, he and other members of his Algonquin Regiment (from central Ontario) wound up at a place called Stalag (German for Straflager, or prison) VII-A at Moosburg, near Munich. He was tossed into a prison compound there with Americans, South Africans, British and Arab troops – all prisoners of war. He called the compound “a real league of nations.”
When he was done, everyone in the hall stood and applauded his service. Later, Patterson offered me a number of additional anecdotes – including deprivation, isolation, and near annihilation – as a prisoner of war. I’d heard many of his experiences before. But the one flashback he shared that stood out for me was his liberation. Patterson said the U.S. Third Army under Gen. George Patton freed him and his fellow Algonquins. On May 5, 1945, with the war ending in Europe, all POWs were taken to a German aerodrome for transport back home.
“We boarded Lancaster bombers to take us back to England,” he said. They weren’t made for carrying troops, so I was sitting on a (navigator’s) desk where I could look out a window, and it wasn’t long before I saw the white cliffs of Dover. … It was great to have our feet back in England.”
Another encounter from that very same audience, on Saturday afternoon, occurred when a man approached me with a plastic bag. It contained a book, entitled “Drei Tage I’m September” (Three Days in September), written by German author Cay Rademacher. The man with the plastic bag was Philip Gunyon and the book was about the three days surrounding the sinking of the British cruise vessel S.S. Athenia by a German U-boat on Sept. 3, 1939, the very day Britain declared war on Germany. Gunyon opened the book to the photo section and pointed to an image of a woman and her three children. Gunyon’s family (exluding his father) had all been aboard Athenia when it was torpedoed.
“I was seven when it happened,” Gunyon said.
The book details the events leading up to submarine commander Fritz-Julius Lemp’s decision to fire a torpedo from U-30 at Athenia, mistaking the passenger liner for a British armed merchant cruiser. The ship was sailing with 1,100 passengers aboard (60 kilometres off the coast of Ireland) on a regularly scheduled passage from Glasgow to Montreal. Though the passenger vessel remained afloat for 14 hours after the attack, 98 passengers and 19 crew died in the wreck.
“Liner Athenia torpedoed and sunk,” read the headline in the Halifax Herald on Sept. 4. And across the centre of the page, “Empire at War!”
History records that a Canadian girl, 10-year-old Margaret Hayword, was killed in the sinking. She was the perhaps the first Canadian to die, the result of enemy action in the Second World War. Philip Gunyon, showing me the book in its original German script, pointed out that his mother, two siblings and he had survived.
One more surprise awaited me Saturday afternoon at the Port Carling Legion. After my talk about The Great Escape by tunnel from German POW camp Stalag Luft III, another man approached me to comment on the book.
“My name is Frank Pengelly. I’m a cousin of Tony Pengelly, the man in charge of forging documents in the Great Escape,” he said.
He explained that his cousin, as I described in the book, had led a stable of 100 artists and calligraphers in the creation of phony documents (looking exactly like originals) that would allow the Great Escapers to get through train stations and across borders because they had look-alike passes and visas.
“The story is exactly as you wrote it,” Pengelly said.
Saturday afternoon proved to be one of those remarkable moments one imagines when the stars align. I had chosen to speak in a room where much of the history I was recounting had been experienced first-hand by some of those present. I marveled at the history. I reveled in the coincidence.
A visit to the Centre Block on Parliament Hill now includes a stop inside the door at a security check.
I was on my cellphone several times during a recent trip to Ottawa. I had a couple of conversations with family while I was in the National Capital attending meetings of The Writers’ Union of Canada. I also texted several of my colleagues back at the college about some of the writers’ workshops I attended. But once, last Thursday, I was doing something completely unrelated when I took a cellphone call from newspaper reporter Katie Starr of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.
“I’m doing a story about a veteran friend of yours,” she said. “Do you have time for an interview?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I’m in the middle of something.”
Late on June 6, 1944, Lt. Garth Webb (standing at centre) and his 14th Field Regiment artillery crew paused to reflect on the highs and lows of their D-Day experiences.
The day before the big opening the French police built a security fence around it. Workers set up wooden benches for an audience of 5,000. Rain left the glass and titanium-clad building on the Normandy beach glistening like a polished jewel. And inside the museum itself Canadian army cadets removed the pins from nearly 44,000 poppies – the pinless Remembrance symbols would be dropped from an aircraft during the ceremony – symbolizing the number of Canadians killed in the Second World War.
“I was on this beach 59 years ago,” Garth Webb said during the opening of the Juno Beach Centre on the D-Day anniversary in 2003. “And it’s just as big a thrill to be here today.”
"The Canadians held on and won at Kapyong because they believed they were the best men on the hill that night," author Dan Bjarnason writes in his book. "And they were right."
It was just over a decade ago, as I recall. We were on the eve of a different federal election. The membership of the local Royal Canadian Legion had asked me to address the Remembrance Day banquet. I chose to acknowledge veterans of a forgotten war for a forgotten principle. At the branch, that night, was friend and veteran Bud Doucette. I recognized him and those other Canadian volunteers who fought in the Korean War to uphold the peace charter of the United Nations.
“I felt very proud,” former Lance/Corporal Doucette told me that night. “The war and our service have gone pretty much unnoticed.”
