D-Day Beach--Our Visit to the Juno Beach War Memorial

We went to Normandy yesterday. My Grandpa Crockett, who is still alive and 94 years old, went there too almost 65 years ago. His reason for being there was much different than ours. Our mission was to learn French and have an amazing family vacation; his was to storm the beach and conquer the Nazis occupying it. We looked forward to a wonderful French meal after our visit to this beach, while to him it was a bloody battlefield, and he had in mind only his grueling next task of traveling north, on foot and bicycle, to free the rest of France and the Netherlands. Walking the same places that these brave soldiers walked, seeing photos (one example below) of them arriving in boats and planes, hearing readings of letters they were writing home, we were pretty overcome by emotion.

While it must have been terrifying to be taking part in war and seeing so many people killed and injured, I got the impression from their letters that they found the courage, knowing someone had to help the innocent yet imprisoned civilians in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Poland and elsewhere. Grandpa and his fellows were fully ready to give everything for their cause. There were 11 million Canadians in 1944 and a full million of them were in uniform. Of course the whole country too was part of the "war effort". They paid a huge price in lives and injuries. They are heros.

I found out that 2 years before the famous D-Day, another Canadian regiment had stormed a Nazi occupied port in Dieppe in 1942, and they were pretty much uniformly slaughtered. It was considered a huge defeat, of course, but it gave the Allied forces a chance to regroup and plan for the next invasion. That Dieppe loss was why they decided to spread out all along the less guarded beaches down the coast. The British took one part, the Americans another and the Canadians were at Juno beach.

It seems that they made significant gains on the coast line from June 6-9 1944, and they continued to push the Nazis inland past the Ore river, taking Caen, and finally closing the "Falaise Gap" on August 16. It was the day before that that my grandpa got injured.

When I was in high school, we learned the dates of D-Day and VE Day and that Canada was part of an Allied force. That's it. We learned nothing about the soldiers or the battles, so that's one reason this trip was so fascinating.

However, I do recall learning about our supposedly terrible Canadian government, how they interred the innocent Japanese families from the coast to the interior, how they stole their land and revoked their business licences. I remember vividly the photos in our textbooks of forlorn Japanese Canadians getting carted inland with very little luggage and terrified faces. But it was not until yesterday that I saw the faces of the equally terrified looking soldiers landing on the beaches and ready to die to fight the Nazis, as well as the voices of the families at home, losing their children to the war, or the mothers with 5 kids who had to leave them with strangers to go to work and make money for them to buy food or ammunition for the troops.

I can only imagine the fear enveloping everyone alive at this time. For this, I can be nothing but intensely grateful to everyone who sacrificed to put an end to the tyranny.

My friend from France told me that for generations kids here have been going to the D-Day beaches, and learning about the Allied Forces (along with the underground French Resistance) and their heroic efforts to fight worldwide occupation of Nazism.

Then again, there was an old veteran on a video at the museum saying that Canada has never made a big deal of the sacrifices that he and his fellow veterans made for their country in WWII. He said that he was fine with that though because Canada does not put a big priority on its military and he thinks that's one of the things that makes it a great country.




Canadians landing at Juno beach, France, D-day, 1944






Poster showing where each country's troops went when they landed on D-Day: yellow=Canadians, blue=U.S,. and green=British.







Canadian amphibious tank, pulled out of the water in the 80's at Juno Beach. This one sunk because it was bombed, but now, with the decades of rust scrubbed off, it stands as a monument of that pivotal day. There are plaques of all the Canadian troops and this close up is of the plaque of my Grandpa's group, the Canadian Scottish Regiment, as those who were trained in Victoria and Nanaimo were named.



Concrete and steel shapes placed on the beach by the Nazis to disallow allied aircraft from landing and to deter ground troops coming up from the sea. They obviously didn't work in the end.



Statue in front of Juno Beach Center museum.




Poster showing the first segment of the D-Day invastion, June 5-August 16. Grandpa got shot in the leg on August 15, 1944, and Aug. 16 happens to have been my dad's 8th birthday, and his dad was getting his leg patched up and being transported under the cover of night to a hospital back in England, still not quite out of harm's way, but I can only imagine what he must have been thinking on this day: perhaps that it was looking like he might have a future life after all, that things were looking good as far as conquering the Nazis went, so maybe he'd have a chance to live his life and become old which, of course he did. Or, then again, maybe he was just thinking, "wow, my leg is killing me". Pain killers were probably pretty rare on the battlefield, and they hadn't even invented antibiotics yet. Instead, they used maggots to eat away the infection. Sorry, but it's true.



Nazi underground bunker on Juno beach.




It's definitely a more fun and beautiful place now. Hard to imagine the horrors of its past.



Walking in their Great Grandfather's path.



The guide had 4 people stand to represent the different Canadian regiments from west to east in the positional order that they stormed this beach on D-Day. Lauren is representing the western regiment.



This cemetery is about 5 minutes down the road from Juno beach. The tombstones all say the name of the soldier, his date of birth and death, his rank, his Regiment, and a word from his family. There are actually 3 Canadian Military graveyards in Normandy.




This cemetery is lovingly cared for by the French people in this town near Juno beach.