Colonel Bernd Horn - Men of Steel. Canadian Paratroopers in Normandy, 1944

CANADIANS AT WAR

CANADIAN PARATROOPERS
IN NORMANDY, 1944

_______Colonel Bernd Horn_______

DUNDURN PRESS
TORONTO

Copyright Colonel Bernd Horn, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy Editor: Cheryl Hawley
Design: Jennifer Scott
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Horn, Bernd, 1959
Men of steel : Canadian paratroopers in Normandy, 1944 / Bernd Horn.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55488-708-8

1. Canada. Canadian Army. Canadian Parachute Battalion, 1st--History--Juvenile literature. 2. Canada. Canadian Army--Airborne troops--History--Juvenile literature. 3. World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, Canadian--Juvenile literature. 4. World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--France--Normandy--Juvenile literature. I. Title.

D756.5.N6H67 2010 j940.542142 C2009-907466-4

1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.
www.dundurn.com

Contents

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As with any book, many people played a part in the development of Men of Steel. First and foremost, I must thank the many paratrooper veterans who gave so freely of their time and memory to recount stories of their wartime experience. I also need to thank 1 Canadian Parachute Battalion Association as a whole, particularly Jan and Joanne de Vries, for their constant support and use of materials.

I must also acknowledge the encouragement, advice, and editorial comments of friends and colleagues. Specifically, my thanks are extended to Denise Kerr, Dr. Emily Spencer, and long-time writing and research partner Michel Wycyznski. Additionally, I wish to thank Chris Johnson for his mastery with the map work and Ted Zuber for his outstanding cover art and sketch work to support the text.

Last, but certainly not least, as always, I owe the greatest debt to Kim for her continual tolerance of and patience with my pursuits.

1st Canadian Parachute Battalion
Area of Operations
6 June 1944

1st Canadian Parachute Battalion Area of Operations, 6 June 1944.

The dark, turbulent sky leaked a tiny bit of light from the moon that peeked out between the rapidly moving clouds. Flight Lieutenant Lucian Robichaud stared out of his cockpit window as the constant droning of the C-47 Dakota engines lulled him into reflection. The day had finally arrived; the invasion of Occupied Europe was a go! Robichaud and his crew had trained for this moment for over a year, and now he was part of the greatest invasion in history D-Day.

He was jolted from his thoughts by the sudden drop of the aircraft as it hit an air pocket. His co-pilot, Flying Officer Jim Kellogg, chuckled. I wonder how the poor paratroopers in the back are doing, he said.

Theyre supposed to be tough, retorted Robichaud. Theyll live it could be worse. And, he thought to himself, it probably will be.

The short flight across the English Channel was bad. First, it was a windy night. Second, because the armada of aircraft flew in formation, the turbulence of the preceding aircraft caused those in the wake to pitch and roll like corks on the ocean.

The fuselage of the plane was packed with paratroopers of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, a unit filled with the best of Canadas fighting youth. Created in July 1942, exclusively from volunteers who were required to pass a rigorous selection process, the unit was attached to the 3rd Parachute Brigade of the British 6th Airborne Division during the summer of 1943. Like the crew of the Dakota aircraft, they had been preparing for this historic moment for a long time. Robichaud recalled the faces of the young men as they boarded the aircraft. There was a mixture of apprehension, excitement, and fear. But there was one thing that radiated from all of the troops: a fierce determination. A flow of pride swelled in him when he thought of the boys in the back of the airplane. He was momentarily struck by the irony of his thoughts. Although he was only in his late 20s, he could not help but think of those soldiers, many only 18 to 20 years old, as boys. Their boyhood would be over soon enough. He wondered how many would survive the impending combat.

A Canadian paratrooper exiting a Douglas C-47 Dakotaduring a training jump in England.

FROM THE WEAPON LOCKER
C-47 Dakota Aircraft

The Douglas C-47 Skytrain, or Dakota, was a military transport aircraft that was developed from the Douglas DC-3 commercial airliner. It was a workhorse for the Allies in the Second World War to transport troops and cargo. Over 10,000 aircraft were produced during the war. In the European theatre of operations the C-47 and a specialized paratroop variant, the C-53 Skytrooper, were used in large numbers, particularly during the later stages of the war, to drop airborne troops and tow gliders. It was the C-47s in Canadian, British, and Commonwealth service that took the name Dakota, from the acronym DACoTA for DouglasAircraft Company Transport Aircraft. The aircraft was so reliable that the United States Strategic Air Command continued to use the C-47 after the war, up until 1967. The Royal Canadian Air Forces also adopted the C-47 and used it throughout the 1940s and 1950s. After the Second World War thousands of surplus C-47s were converted to civil airline use. Some C-47s remain in use as late as 2010.