D-Day, June 6, 1944
Today is the Anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy. We now know it was the beginning of the end of the Second World War. Canada had a significant role to play being responsible of the landing at the beach at Bernières- sur-Mer, called Juno Beach by the Allied forces.
There is a series of 5 videos on YouTube that tell the story of "Bloody Normandy".
I have seen many pictures of the Juno Beach. One house on the beach always seems to be heroically standing battered but proud in the background, symbolic of French resistance until this day of liberation, perhaps.
You can see this house a while after the landing, with German prisoners of war assembled in front. They probably were evacuated to Britain and some may have eventually come to Canada. In Northern Ontario, there were several Prisoner of War Camps, in which German prisoners sat out the rest of the war. After the war with Europe in disarray many came back to Canada as they remembered being treated quite well as prisoners. I often wondered what they thought at the train passed through Swastika, Ontario on their way to a couple of different camps north of there.
The house on the beach at Bernières- sur-Mer after the D-Day landing
The same house today. It survived the war and apparently welcomes Canadians visiting this place important in Canadian history.
Some day I would love to visit this place in France. Canada has a lovely museum there now. It reminds all visitors of Canada's sacrifices on this beach and during the war.
The Canadian forces went on to fight the battle of the Scheldt, the estuary that went inland to the port of Antwerp, and finally to liberate the Netherlands.
posted by Tossing Pebbles in the Stream @ 12:58 p.m.
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4 Comments:
I'm so glad the house made it through D-day and has been refurbished. Somehow it gives a sense of hope.
Somebody certainly restored that place well.
When we visited Normandy, one of the most moving places we saw were the beaches where the Allies landed.
The sheer grit it must have taken to storm the beaches, to scale the cliffs, to route the enemy...the outcome shaped our future. The world certainly would have been different had the Allies not prevailed on D-Day and won the war.
June 6 was a very difficult day, Phillip. Those who stormed Juno Beach made the pastoral beauty there possible.
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