Re: D-Day

by Thunder Thu 19 Sep 2019, 9:40 pm

At 98, D-Day vet jumps again, with eyes on the big 100

https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/at-98-d-day-vet-jumps-again-with-eyes-on-the-big-100-1.4600472

by Mojave Wed 19 Feb 2020, 7:27 pm

Nantyr Shores students recall trip to mark 75 years since D-Day (6 photos)

Feb 19. 2020

D-Day - Page 13 2020-02-15nantyratihsmk-01

https://www.barrietoday.com/local-news/nantyr-shores-students-recall-trip-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-d-day-6-photos-2099629

by **Luxray** Sat 06 Jun 2020, 2:53 pm

1 man lays wreaths in Normandy on D-Day amid coronavirus pandemic

BY RAF CASERT AND ALEX TURNBULL THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted June 6, 2020

British expatriate Steven Oldrid, centre, carries wooden crosses with names of Second World War dead as he walks to the local war cemetery in Benouville, Normandy, France on Saturday, June 6, 2020.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7034659/coronavirus-normandy-d-day-commemoration/

by **Slider** Sat 06 Jun 2020, 9:10 pm

06.06.2020

by **Slider** Sat 06 Jun 2020, 9:10 pm

06.06.2020

by **Slider** Sat 06 Jun 2020, 9:11 pm

06.06.2020

by Cypher Sun 07 Jun 2020, 11:35 am

06.07.2020
Barrie Legion commemorates D-Day

by **Kizzer** Mon 02 Nov 2020, 3:37 pm

Nick Lees: D-Day war veteran from Edmonton featured in upcoming documentary

Nick Lees • Edmonton Journal
Nov 01, 2020

Troops from the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and Regina Rifles, after establishing a beahead on Juno Beach on June 6, 1944, watch as tanks of the 1st Hussars land to join the fight to free western Europe from Nazi occupation. PHOTO BY SUPPLIED /National Archives of Canada

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/nick-lees-d-day-war-veteran-from-edmonton-featured-in-upcoming-documentary?fbclid=IwAR0iPmJ_wsog6BQg74R4d3PSSQ_ccFKeSBFGH2UcCGJH1_zn_sXSKx2IZbU

by **Accer** Sat 05 Jun 2021, 12:20 pm

D-Day spirit of remembrance lives on, despite the pandemic

Published Saturday, June 5, 2021

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/d-day-spirit-of-remembrance-lives-on-despite-the-pandemic-1.5457674

by **Alpha** Sun 06 Jun 2021, 2:46 pm

by **Oliver** Sun 06 Jun 2021, 4:38 pm

Normandy commemorates D-Day with small crowds, but big heart

Published Sunday, June 6, 2021

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/normandy-commemorates-d-day-with-small-crowds-but-big-heart-1.5458367

by Covert Wed 01 Jun 2022, 7:57 am

MOUNTAIN MEMORIES:
Remembering Hamilton's D-Day
veteran artifacts

Memorials become more important with each passing year, writes Robert Williamson

Examples of large military machines surviving the Second World War are rare in Canada, especially those veterans of major battles on distant shores such as Normandy. With the approaching anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, what better time to take an inventory of our local military heritage. Hamilton has an impressive collection of D-Day artifacts. Recognizing that our D-Day veterans are all but gone, these artifacts will soon be all that is left to remember them by. Each passing year these rare memorials, the last of their kind, become more important. Their story, which connects them to our veterans and our heritage, must be told before they too are lost.

Let’s begin with the Douglas C-47 Dakota No. FZ692, a military version of the versatile DC-3 transport aircraft built for the United States Army Air Force. It was used for parachute drops and glider towing. Transferred to the Royal Air Force in 1944, it dropped the 3rd Airborne Brigade, including the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion on the vital eastern flank of the Canadian amphibious assault at Juno Beach. The entire success of the invasion depended on isolating large enemy formations defending the Pas-de-Calais to the northeast opposite Dover.

Postwar this C-47 was assigned to search and rescue work at the Canadian Forces base in Trenton, then to Environment Canada for mineral and environmental surveys. In May 2014, the aircraft was donated to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton and restored to its veteran wartime colours of 437 Squadron from the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Next, we turn to Toronto’s bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics on their Ontario Place waterfront site. The plan did not include HMCS Haida, a rusting Second World War memorial warship, which graced Exhibition Park since 1970. This provided an opportunity for then federal heritage minister, Sheila Copps, to declare the ship a national historic site with a new home, abetted by the Commander of Hamilton’s naval reserve at HMCS Star. Declared the “fightingest ship” in the Canadian navy, HMCS Haida on May 26, 2018, was designated the ceremonial flagship of the Royal Canadian Navy, the last of Canada’s destroyers to serve on D-Day.

During the weeks leading up to D-Day and Operation Overlord, Haida patrolled the French coast of the English Channel participating in 19 missions to suppress enemy activity. On June 8-9, Haida engaged a flotilla of four enemy destroyers attempting to sneak into the invasion perimeter in the dark. She sank one destroyer and the rest withdrew. Similarly, on June 24, she sank an enemy submarine U-971 off Land’s End. On the night of July 14-15, Haida intercepted an enemy convoy sinking one anti-submarine vessel, a supply ship, two minesweepers and a fast patrol boat. By the end of the war, she had sunk more enemy tonnage than any other Canadian warship.

But Hamilton’s D-Day connection does not end there. When moving to my commander’s office at HMCS Star in 1982, I found a very large 180-pound brass ship’s bell hidden and almost immovable at the back of my closet inscribed “HMS Ramillies 1917.” Research established it belonged to a former British battleship that had served in the Second World War protecting Canadian Atlantic convoys. In 1944 it was a bombardment ship suppressing enemy defenses on the eastern flank of the Normandy invasion beaches where Canadian paratroopers and soldiers fought on D-Day. Her 15- inch guns helped the Canadians make the deepest penetration of the Normandy beachhead.

When the battleship was scrapped in 1947, the ship’s bell, the spiritual heart of one of the largest bombardment ships on D-Day, made its way to Canada as part of a sea cadet exchange program involving local cadets. It was eventually passed on to HMCS Star for safe keeping. In recognition of the significant role that HMS Ramillies played in our naval history, I had the bell mounted and installed in the entrance lobby (Quarterdeck) of Hamilton’s Naval Reserve as a reminder of Canada’s role in the D-Day Invasion and a 75th anniversary memorial to the Canadian Navy in 1985.

— Mountain Memories, written by historian Robert Williamson for the Hamilton Mountain Heritage Society, appears monthly. See Hamiltonheritage.ca.

Hamilton Mountain News

by Logan Sun 05 Jun 2022, 7:45 pm

Marking the 78th anniversary of D-Day

By Joanne CulleySpecial to the Examiner
Sat., June 4, 2022

Today, June 6, marks the 78th anniversary of D-Day, considered the time when the tide of the war turned in the Allies’ favour. My father, Harry Culley, helped to bring music to Allied troops and civilians as part of the Royal Canadian Air Force dance and concert bands.

After his death, I discovered over 600 letters that my parents wrote to each other during that time. My book, “Love in the Air: Second World War Letters,” includes selections from those letters, historical background, scenes inspired by the letters, and photos.

When the band wasn’t travelling, they were stationed in Bournemouth, on the English Channel. During late May and early June 1944, Allied troops gathered along the south coast of England, surreptitiously, so as not to arouse any suspicion of what was being planned.

At that time Harry and his fellow bandmate Smitty noticed that the Bournemouth beach was still cordoned off with barbed wire and that the middle section of the famous Bournemouth pier was missing. The citizens had removed sixty feet of it themselves earlier in the war so that enemy ships couldn’t land. They also noticed that many more American and Canadian troops were coming into the city and that there were more supply trucks on the roads. They saw children in the town square climbing all over an American tank covered with camouflage netting.

Even though everything was “hush-hush,” they had an inkling of what was in the works. Late on June 5, 1944, about 500 boats left from the quay at Poole, just west of Bournemouth, as well as over 6,000 naval vessels and approximately 11,000 aircraft from many other points along the southern coast of England, travelling across the English Channel to invade Europe. On D-Day, the 156,000 Allied troops, including 14,000 Canadians, landed on the French beaches at Normandy for what was called Operation Overlord.

The invasion was the result of years of training and practice, under utmost secrecy, with elaborate camouflaging and false military exercises designed to deceive the enemy as to the actual plans. Upon landing, over 4,000 were killed, including about 340 Canadians.

Throughout the summer, the remaining troops pushed deeper inland, steadily unsettling the German stronghold.

In his letter, Harry was reluctant to refer to D-Day directly because of the military censors and the printed caption that was at the bottom of the blue airmail letters: “Think — Any reference to shipping or troop movements will result in the delay or mutilation of this letter.”

But he did write this to Helen on June 7, 1944: “When we awoke the next morning we were told the news that the whole world had been waiting to hear for months [i.e. about the D-Day invasion.]”

Here is an excerpt from a letter from Toronto that Helen wrote on June 7, 1944:

Dear Harry,

I heard the big news [about D-Day] about seven o’clock yesterday morning, and I just couldn’t sleep after that. There just wasn’t anything else on the radio all day. They told us the news was received very quietly in London. The general comment was “That’s good.”

When I went to work yesterday afternoon [at the Toronto Transportation Commission as it was then known] the men were talking about it and kept us back from our work for an hour or so ...

As you will conclude from what I’ve said, I’m still missing you and loving you and will until I can have you with me again, and always after that.

Love and kisses, Helen

“Love in the Air: Second World War Letters” is available in the Peterborough Public Library, at www.friesenpress.com, and on Amazon. For more information, please visit joanneculley.com.

The Peterborough Examiner

by Logan Sun 05 Jun 2022, 7:49 pm

D-Day ceremony held in Victoria Park Sunday

Published June 5, 2022

D-Day - Page 13 London-d-day-ceremony---june-2022-1-5933946-1654466513034

CTV News

by **Victor** Fri 11 Nov 2022, 7:17 am

This 98-year-old stormed Juno Beach on D-Day. He'll be portrayed in an upcoming documentary

Sara Jabakhanji · CBC News · Posted: Nov 10, 2022

CBC News

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