D-DAY SERVICE
Parade and ceremony takes place in New Waterford.
Twenty-five people showed their respect for the soldiers who helped bring an end to the Second World War during a D-Day ceremony on Wednesday.
Royal Canadian Legion branch 15 commemorated the 74th anniversary of D-Day with a memorial ceremony to remember June 6, 1944, which is thought to be the beginning of the end of the Second World War.
Called Operation Overload, 13 countries participated in the seaborne assault and 150,000 soldiers landed on the shores of Normandy, France. The attack resulted in Nazi troops retreating from parts of Europe and their eventual surrender.
The events of that day are always the same and the importance of remembering what happened that day also remains the same, according to people who attended the event.
“Kids have got to remember this day. If it wasn’t for the soldiers (who fought on D-Day) they wouldn’t be here,” said Ozzy Landry, a decorated Korean War veteran.
James Leadbeater, a retired RCMP officer who spent 25 of his 38-year career working in forensics, said D-Day ceremonies are also important for soldiers who are serving today because it promotes the legion as a resource.
“It’s not only a matter of not forgetting. It’s also so the young ones know there’s a place they can go … so they can talk to people about their experiences,” he said.
During the two world wars and up to the 1970s, Leadbeater said it was easier to build “camaraderie” within a team because soldiers often worked together
in large groups. Now, there are smaller teams working with smart weapons and there are less chances for team building.
“A lot of the (soldiers today) don’t know there’s a place available to them, where they can talk about their experiences.”
Coun. Kendra Coombs represented the Cape Breton Regional Municipality council and mayor at the event. She said there are examples of the same type of “rhetoric” used during the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany surfacing today, adding this makes it important to keep the events of D-Day fresh in people’s minds.
Legion branch 15 member George McLellan addressed the gathering. Calling himself an amateur historian, MacLellan said he was able to find a D-Day fact that not many people might know — there was one woman who landed on the shores of Normandy with the 150,000 soldiers.
Her name was Martha Gellhorn, a journalist and ex-wife of author Ernest Hemmingway. The British government had approved 558 reporters and photographers to document the D-Day landings, but Gellhorn’s application was refused so she snuck on a boat and covered it anyway.
A number of soldiers from New Waterford were part of the D-Day attack and three of them are still alive — Marshall Deveaux, Joe Petrie and Michael Laffin, who celebrated his 100th birthday in January.