Early on the morning of October 6 th , 2017, thirty members of the Canadian military community from HQ NATO AIRCOM in Ramstein, Germany, boarded a bus bound for Normandy, France. Our objective was to tour several of the beaches and battlefields that feature prominently in the D-Day invasion, pay our respects to the fallen, and walk the ground where Canada’s World War II history was written. The Canadian community at Ramstein is fortunate to include LCol (ret’d) Ed Staniowski, formerly the CO of the Regina Rifles, who volunteered to share some of the regiment’s history with us. Pegasus Bridge is the site of the first actions of the D-Day invasion. It was a crucial choke point across two waterways for tanks. Just after midnight on June 5, 1944, a British air borne force landed in gliders a mere 47 yards from the bridge strongpoint in what has been described as the greatest feat of aeronautics of the Second World War. Ten minutes later, the German defenders had been subdued and the bridges taken. Holding the bridges would be the rest of the night’s work, but the first objective in an operation with thousands of moving parts was accomplished. The bridge remains sacred ground for Commonwealth air borne to this day.
Juno Beach is second only to Vimy Ridge when it comes to battlefields which loom large in Canadian military history. It was the site of the 3 rd Canadian Infantry Division invasion on D-Day. Today the Juno Beach Center maintains the museum, gives tours of the beach and the bunkers, and employs bilingual Canadian youth with a passion for Canada’s military history. The Ardennes Abbey was the site of a costly assault upon the German defenders. Today, a bucolic farmer’s field was a twenty minute walk for us, but was once an hours-long advance for soldiers of the Regina Rifles. The Abbey itself still bears scars from the siege and maintains a memorial to the twenty Canadian soldiers executed in its garden. At the Canadian War Cemetery at Beny-sur-Mer we had the opportunity to pay our respects to the fallen and share the stories of individual soldiers buried there which members of our unit had researched prior to the tour. This was a fantastic experience for everyone involved. It was an opportunity to commune with our shared history as members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and an excellent team building exercise for the unit.