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by oldbag
Lets not forget that there are members of the younger generation that frequent this site as well.
Also, this battle included members of all the Allied countries. The Canadians were at Juno Beach.
by x-marcap
I think that the stand against evil is never ending, but we get tired of the fight,sometimes...
Sometimes, we decide we won't bother to fight until things get too bad for the world to ignore.
by x-marcap
by tig2
My Uncle Frank- my grandparent's only son, was killed along with his crew (he was a pilot) but in Japan.
We too frequently forget that the liberties that we enjoy today have been paid for in blood. They continue to be.
To anyone here who has worn the uniform of their country, Thank You.
To all who have paid the ultimate price, you are not forgotten- at least not at my house.
by x-marcap
by sleepin'dawg
that there are those who are willing to stand and die for a principle and that is Freedom. Our ancestors did it back then and today our children are making that same sort of stand in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's too bad so many don't seem to understand that.
[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)
by tig2
It has long been my personal impression that we chose to stop teaching that value set.
Once upon a time- like in the olden days when I was a schoolgirl, we were taught to love God and Country and to stand up for those beliefs. We didn't have idiots running about saying things like "God Bless America" is devisive and ranting about saying the Pledge of Allegiance. And if they did, they swiftly found themselves the minority.
Now that we have become "Politically Correct" it is somehow appropriate to trash the country that gives us the freedom to do exactly that.
I am frequently dismayed at what we have chosen to become.
The Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy.
The American forces landed numbered 73,000 and in the British and Canadian sector, over 83,000 troops were landed of which 61,000 were British and the remaining 22,000 were mostly Canadian though just about everywhere was represented.
Twenty-seven war cemeteries hold the remains of over 110,000 dead from both sides: 77,866 German, 9386 American, 17,769 British, 5002 Canadian and 650 Poles though these were obviously not all casualties from D-Day.
I always like to think that the Canadians put up a particularly good show considering their population. My aunt married a Canadian just before D-Day - a really nice guy, according to my mother - and he never made it back. The rest of my family survived.
by sleepin'dawg
participation in the two World Wars.
1: On a per capita basis, Canada lost more men than any other participating nation, including the Russians.
2: At the end of the World War II, Canada possessed the third largest navy in the world.
3: Canada made its right of passage into full independant nationhood after a little British run fiasco called the Dieppe Raid, after which it was determined that never again would Canadian troops be placed at the disposal of any foreign power.
4: In World War I most Canadian casualties and fatalities resulted from the incompetence of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig who persisted in the tactics of frontal assaults against fortified positions. He might have been a hero to the British but he was/is perceived as an incompetent butcher by Canadians. While in officer canadidate school, we were taught the stupidity of this mans strategy and tactics.
Enough said. The latter two items are a bit of a sore point with me, since several of my ancestors perished as a result. Couple that with the fact that my heritage is Scottish and I was brought up on such topics as the Highland Clearances so my views of the "mother country" are somewhat jaded.
My grandparents always spoke fondly of the "Auld Country" but I noted they never made any efforts to return, even for a visit. I still have relatives there with whom I stay in touch.
[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)
by mjwx
At the end of WWI people would have hailed a pack mule if it were led down a parade. The brits (as was everyone) were glad just to see the end of the Great War. Haig is certainly misunderstood but he was not a great war hero.
Australia's baptism of fire came in 1915 in the Dardanelle peninsula near a Turkish town called Gallipoli. This campaign designed to relieve the quagmire the Russians were in, went on for a year as Aussie diggers held a strip of sand now called ANZAC cove waiting to be relieved by British and French troupes advancing from the south, an advance that never came. One night in 1916 Aussie and New Zealand troops were withdrawn with no casualties on the night. This was very much the Aussie Dieppe. We (Aussie's and Kiwi's) remember the anniversary of the landings on April 25 1915 to pay respect to all our war dead, there is a march and then followed by some drinking and a few war stories. Very much an Aussie event.
Further on in the Great War Aussie troops shot down the red baron and lead the push east on the western front at San Quentin. In WWII Aussie infantry held back the initial German assault at Al Alemain whist royal engineers cleared the minefields for the tanks and in the pacific we blunted the Japanese land advance south at Bougainville and Papua New Guinea (The Kadoka trail) using outdated aircraft (alright we had a few older model spitfires) and an Aussie made SMG called the Owen gun which was perfectly suited to jungle fighting.
was an unmitigated disaster. I don't blame the Canadian military for being hacked off.
The whole botched idea can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Ops, a member of the German aristocracy and uncle to Prince Phillip, the (now) Queeen's husband.
I wonder how he got the job...
He pushed the idea of the raid, totally against the advice of Britains senior general, Montgomery, but as Mountbatten was a favourite of Churchill, he got his way.
by jamesrl
Not that I would ever want to contradict rabid, er Sleeping Dawg....
Point number one - From the numbers I've seen we had more men in uniform per capita than most nations, so the casuality figure makes some sense. Also significant is unlike most major combatants, the vast majority of our forces were volunteer. The draft was late, small and initially supposed to be for troops to serve on Canadian soil. Only a couple of thousand drafties made it to Europe, and thats a small fraction of the effort.
2. Yes, but it was a lot of small ships. We didn't have big fleet carriers, only small carriers and a few cruisers that were built by Britain. Our Tribal class destroyers got into a few naval battles off the French coast.
3. You can argue about Dieppe, but the Statute of Westminster in 1931 was the act that gave Canada full independance and equality with Britain, although Canada had been signatories to international agreements prior to that.
Lots of reasons have been given for the screw up at Dieppe, from the withdrawl of air cover(fighter command participated, bomber command withdrew) to a poor choice of landing site (village with stone beach between two fortified cliffs) to some idiots failure to cancel the riad when the convoy was discovered by German naval patrols about an hour before landing, giving the germans plenty of time to prepare.
4. My readings of WWI Canadian histories show that while Canadian troops were used indescriminately for the first couple of years, after we have proven high value troops in several battles, Canadians were often used as "shock troops", given the tough assignments and the key sectors. By the end of the war, Canadian generals had much more autonomy than at the start.
I too am a product of the clearances, but my grandparents did go to visit, though it was their grandparents who were cleared.
James
by mjwx
Sword, Gold and Juno. We (Aussies) were there too albeit in limited number.
I don?t view those who died as martyrs but they are most definitely heroes.
I forget who it was that said "don?t regret that such men died, be grateful that such men lived"
by sleepin'dawg
We did have some larger units, the aircraft carrier HMCS Magnificent being one of them. The Dad flew the last plane off her and landed the first one on HMCS Bonaventure, her replacement. Canada also had several Q ships, heavy freighters with large calibre guns mounted. What most do not realize most of the time corvettes and some destroyer were at a serious disadvantage to a surfaced submarine which often had a larger gun mounted than the corvettes did. The Germans used a special navalized version of their famous 88 which threw a heavier shell over a greater range than most corvettes were capable of matching, in fact some of our DEs were in trouble with surfaced submarines but the subs were seldom any match for a DD or cruiser.
[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)
by jamesrl
is that a surface sub is a pretty low profile target. Given that a corvette will rock and roll with the waves more than say a cruiser, and the fact they are shooting at a small target, its a wonder any were sunk at all.
I wasn't aware of any Canadian Q ships, I was aware that both the British and the Germans used them. I recall a movie about a German one operating int he south Atlantic, and I remember one operating between India and Australia that an Australian cruiser hunted and sunk.
Wish we still had something like the Bonnie, with all this coastline we could use her. We do have some pretty good destroyers and frigates today.
James
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