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…)
Pilot Officer Albert Wallace wearing his air gunner’s brevet.
A boy who’d become a man by joining the Royal Canadian Air Force and graduating as an air gunner (second highest marks in his class), marched to the harbourfront in Halifax on a fall day in 1942. Albert Wallace boarded the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth – transformed by the war into a troopship – and prepared for the transatlantic crossing to Britain to join the Allied air war effort over Europe. He figured the Queen E couldn’t be hit by U-boat torpedoes. She was a lucky ship.
“I know luck,” he wrote in his diary that day, Oct. 27, 1942. “I’ll never forget the close call I had trying to stop my CCM (bike) by jamming my foot against the front tire. I ended up flying ass-over-teakettle over the handlebars onto the streetcar tracks (in Toronto).” (more…)
John Birnie Dougall, a Canadian third mate aboard British merchant vessels. Jane Hutchison photo.
I never met John Birnie Dougall. But I came to know him this week, 79 years after his death. He spoke to me by way of his letters – letters he’d written as a Canadian merchant sailor keeping the supply of food, oil, munitions and hope flowing to Britain during the Second World War. As an example of his correspondence home, Dougall characterized the fate of Britain, in 1940, when it seemed Hitler’s U-boats would choke Britain’s shipping lanes to death:
“Even though England may be doomed,” he wrote in a letter to his mother Rachel, “each of us has fixed determination to do or die – a spirit that will not be beaten.” (more…)
Winston Churchill greets public with signature V-for-Victory signduring Second World War.
It’s come back to me often the past few weeks. It’s the last scene from the movie Darkest Hour. Winston Churchill, just a few weeks into his wartime administration in May 1940, watches across the English Channel as Belgium falls to the Nazis. Then, France falls. Desperately, he entreats thousands of private boat owners in England to retrieve retreating British Army troops – 300,000 of them – from the beaches of Dunkirk. And he contemplates Hitler’s invasion of Britain, delivering in the House of Commons one of many momentous wartime speeches:
“We shall fight on the beaches…” he proclaims. “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.” (more…)
Prescribed physical distancing at a bus stop. Vancouver Transit photo.
Monday was Day 10 of our physical distancing. As I’ve done most days of my wife’s and my voluntary isolation, I emerged from my house early enough to retrieve both the newspaper at the foot of my driveway and at my neighbour’s. Coincidentally, he came out his front door at the same time. Keeping our distance, I tossed him the paper.
“How’re you doing?” I asked.
“Bored!” was all he said.
He didn’t have to say another thing. We nodded, smiled. He went back inside. I went on my way. (more…)
Sgt. Bill Wilson on deployment in Afghanistan 2002.
I don’t think I’d ever encountered a more driven medical professional in my life. When I met Bill Wilson back in 2004, to me he epitomized the ultimate first-responder. He was young, fit, even-tempered and well-informed; in fact, when I interviewed him, he’d already served as a front-line medic in Canada’s military operations to Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan.
Yet, there he was, a veteran from all those military hotspots, back studying at Canadian Forces Base Borden.
“I enjoy the role of responsibility,” he told me. “I love the challenge.” (more…)
Admired for his service in WWII, remembered by 151 Squadron in Oshawa, W/C Lloyd Chadburn lives on in modern cadets.
Not since the Second World War has this country required that young people complete service in the military. The Canadian Forces have relied solely on volunteers since 1945. Consequently, this week, while attending a student awards night at Centennial College, I was surprised to meet a young scholarship recipient who’d previously completed military service. His name was Yonghwan Seok.
“Before I came to Canada in 2018,” he told me, “I dropped out of (school) and went straight into two-year, mandatory military service.” (more…)
WWII glider pilot, Martin Maxwell, attending Dutch Liberation observance, in 2015.
Early in May, almost 75 years ago, a Second World War glider pilot named Martin Maxwell tasted freedom for the first time in nearly eight months. On Sept. 17, 1944, during his second airborne operation, he had delivered British soldiers and equipment in a controlled crash landing near Arnhem, Holland, during Operation Market Garden, only to be wounded and captured days later. But on May 1, 1945, with the Germans surrendering all over Europe, Maxwell regained his freedom.
“A British tank came into our POW camp,” he said, “and we were liberated.”
This May of 2020, Martin Maxwell, a 96-year-old WWII veteran, will relive that moment, three-quarters of a century ago, as he re-joins me and our Merit Travel group for a 12-day tour marking the 75th anniversary of the Allies’ liberation of the Netherlands in 1944-45.
You can join us. Our tour plans include visiting the place where Maxwell was captured at the “Bridge Too Far” site in Arnhem. We’ll participate in the emotional “Silent March.” And we’ll tour the Scheldt estuary where 5,000 Canadians died clearing the way to the port of Antwerp and the final push against German Armies to liberate Europe.
Canadian vet Martin Maxwell receives adoring cheers and handshakes in VE Day parade at Apeldoorn, in 2015.
To this day, Martin Maxwell recalls every moment of liberation. Even with the war officially over after May 8, 1945, and now freed by advancing Allied armies, pilot Maxwell found ways to assist the oppressed people he encountered in former Nazi-occupied Europe. To speed their way home, he and a friend traded a navigation watch to a Russian officer for a jeep and six containers of fuel. They packed the jeep with biscuits and cheese and soon came upon Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“In a small corner of the camp, called Kinder Heim (children’s home,) we found dozens of children dead and dying. A little girl ran up to my friend, threw her arms around his leg and called out, ‘Papa! Papa!’”
A woman in the home informed Maxwell that Hannah, this little girl, thought anyone in uniform was her father. Maxwell promised to return the next day with food and provisions for the children. He even traded four cigarettes for a doll he planned to give to little Hannah.
“The next day, we handed out the food and water,” Maxwell said. “And I searched for the little girl to receive this precious doll. A woman emerged shaking her head. Hannah had died in the night.”
The Second World War left deep scars on civilians and soldiers. That’s why veteran Martin Maxwell, at 96, insists that neither the freedom he and his comrades restored, nor the sacrifice Canadians made for peace, can be forgotten. If you’d like to join Martin and me – May 1-12, 2020 – seats on our Dutch Liberation Tour are still available.
They are few, but this Facebook posting inviting readers to send veteran Fred Arsenault a birthday card, was a redeeming use of social media.
It’s just over a year now – Feb. 9, 2019 – that a young woman produced a video that showed her pitching a patio chair from a balcony 45 floors above the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. Her stunt on Snapchat got thousands of social media hits. Instagram later picked it up and carried her response to the resulting charges of mischief endangering life.
“Chair girl wants charge dropped,” social media outlets said. (more…)
I met a couple of teachers, a few years ago. At least, I came to know a little of their lives. There’s not much I can relate. They were both Polish. One was named Jan Ciechanowski, born in March 1882. And Jerzy Brem was born in September 1914, as the Great War began. They both came to the area of Poland, around Krakow, in 1941. Or, more correctly, they were brought there, to the small town of Oswiecim, which elite German armies then occupied. The Nazis renamed the place, Auschwitz. And here’s the way the Nazis’ records summed up those two teachers:
Jan Ciechanowski, teacher.Jerzy Brem, teacher.
“Jan, number 11193, executed Oct. 29, 1941” and “Jerzy, number 10190, executed August 19, 1942.” (more…)
