Goddard - D-Day: Juno Beach, Canadas 24 Hours of Destiny

D-DAY

Dedicated to my sons,
Ethan and Cameron.

CANADAS 24 HOURS
OF DESTINY

LANCE GODDARD
FOREWORD BY MAJOR-GENERAL RICHARD ROHMER, D.F.C.

Copyright Lance Goddard, 2004

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.

Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy-Editor: Andrea Pruss
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Friesens

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Goddard, Lance

D-Day : Juno Beach, Canadas 24 hours of destiny / Lance Goddard.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55002-492-2

1. World War, 1939-1945 Campaigns France Normandy. 2. Canada. Canadian Army History World War, 1939-1945. I. Title.

1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04

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 Book Publishing Industry Development Program 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 Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

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 credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.

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Confront them with annihilation and they will then survive. Plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

~ Sun Tzu

by Richard Rohmer

The sixth day of June 1944 was D-Day. That day, starting just after 0001 hours, the first Canadian, British, and American paratroopers jumped out of their transport aircraft into the black darkness over Normandy. Their task was to open the long-expected attack against Hitlers Fortress Europa, an assault designed to liberate Western Europe from the oppressive, brutal, deadly, humanity-crushing rule of Nazi Germany.

The paratroopers of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, a strong part of the combined Canadian-British force that jumped out of the Dakota and Albemarle aircraft, were the first Canadian troops to land on French soil on D-Day. Notwithstanding the horrendous handicap of the darkness and the confusion, the Canadians, while suffering major casualties, succeeded in gaining their assigned objectives east of the Orne River and north of Caen.

H-Hour was the time designated for the landing of Canadian, British, and American troops at their assigned beaches, starting from the Orne on the east and reaching miles to the west to Sword (British), Juno (Canadian), Gold (British), Omaha (American), and Utah (American).

At H-Hour, I was over the Canadian-British beaches at five hundred feet in my single-seater fighter reconnaissance RCAF Mustang 1 aircraft watching for attacking enemy Focke Wulfs and ME109s. At the same time I was taking in the incredible sight of the first landing craft approaching and hitting the beaches, and the distant-on-the-horizon smoke and winking flames of the battleships firing their huge shells at the enemy emplacements that I was flying over.

Now, sixty years later, comes this D-Day book, with its human, I was there descriptions of D-Day by surviving Canadian army, air force, and navy personnel on an hour-by-hour basis. It is an incredibly graphic tale from many Canadian mouths of what actually happened on that momentous day.

Lance Goddards book will be published in advance of D-Day in its sixtieth anniversary year of 2004. This literary achievement, together with the many videotaped interviews by him of many of the now ancient young Canadian boys who took part in D-Day, is a rich accomplishment and a worthy recognition of the victories, the sacrifices, the achievements, the blood of injuries, and the deaths that came with the brave Canadians who arrived on D-Day in or over Normandy or on the waters of its approaches in the English Channel.

Richard Rohmer, Major-General, OC, CMM, DFC, QC

Flying Officer 430 Squadron, 39 Recce Wing, 2 Tactical Air Force, on D-Day: June 6, 1944.

Also Chair, the 60th Anniversary of D-Day Advisory Committee to the Minister of Veterans Affairs.

430 Squadron (RR) Mustang P-51A over German vehicles at closing of Falaise Gap, August 19, 1944

Charles McNabb
Queens Own Rifles C Company

Roy Shaw
Queens Own Rifles B Company

Arthur Perry
7th Canadian Infantry Brigade

Mark Lockyer
1st Canadian Parachute Battalion B Company

Ed Reeve
Armoured Corp HQ

Charles Fosseneuve
13th Field Artillery Regiment 22nd Battery

Francis Godon
Royal Winnipeg Rifles B Company

August Herchenratter
Highland Light Infantry

Douglas Barrie
Highland Light Infantry

Roy Clarke
RCAF 419 Squadron

Hal Whitten
Royal Canadian Navy

Jim Parks
Royal Winnipeg Rifles

Rolph Jackson
Queens Own Rifles B Company

Joe Oggy
Queens Own Rifles B Company

John Turnbull
RCAF 419 & 424 Squadrons

Ernie Jeans
1st Canadian Parachute Battalion

Wilf Delaurie
1st Canadian Parachute Battalion

Richard Rohmer
RCAF Fighter Reconnaissance 430 Squadron

Jan de Vries
1st Canadian Parachute Battalion