A soldier from Tavistock is remembered in France
Normandy village naming walkway in honour of corporal who died there in 1944
WATERLOO REGION — Young men from Ontario died by the dozens to liberate Dominique Barbé’s village from Nazi rule in 1944.
Barbé is now helping to honour their sacrifice. On May 4, the French historian plans to guide 20 soldiers from this region — plus Canadian guests — across the deadliest battlefield this community has ever known.
He’ll show them where the Second World War battle started, where it ended, and where Cpl. Francis Weitzel, 23, fell in an act of courage that awed his comrades.
“People here love the Canadians,” Barbé said from Normandy, France. “Here, we never forget.”
Relatives of Weitzel will be there, including three nephews and a niece. They’ll retrace his final steps, visit his grave near France’s D-Day beaches, and witness a new honour.
On May 5, the village that Weitzel died to liberate is naming a walkway after him. There will be a ceremony and parade. There’s even a new French postage stamp bearing his image.
“It’s very humbling the way they’re honouring him,” said nephew Ken Weitzel, 70, a retired dairy farmer from Tavistock. “I’m very proud of him.”
Nephew Glen Weitzel, 60, chokes up, speaking about the uncle he never knew. “It would have been nice to have known him,” said Weitzel, a plumber. He’s overwhelmed by the appreciation shown for his uncle in France.
Francis Weitzel was a German-speaking farm boy from Tavistock, west of New Hamburg. Orphaned young, he raised ducks and geese and performed odd farm jobs before enlisting in 1940, possibly for
three meals a day.
His courage so impressed his comrades that they recommended him for a Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth’s highest honour for combat bravery.
Today’s soldiers honour him for leading by example, for leading beyond his rank, and for sacrificing himself for his convictions.
“These are values that we even as modern soldiers hold dear to our hearts,” said Lt.-Col. Mark Poland, commander of the local Royal Highland Fusiliers, the name of Weitzel’s regiment today.
Barbé, 65, grew up hearing about liberation around the dinner table.
His late father and late brother were at their home when the Allies landed on D-Day beaches, June 6, 1944. The next day Canadian troops reached their village. It seemed like joyous liberation after four years of occupation by Nazi Germany.
His brother, about 10, feasted on chocolate handed out by Canadian soldiers. But the celebration was premature.
Bringing more firepower, the Nazis rushed fierce SS troops to their village to halt the Allied advance. The firefight scattered bodies across the terrain. The sights horrified his brother.
A month-long standoff followed. The enemy removed Barbé’s family and other civilians from villages at the front, forcing them deeper into occupied France. The Allies regrouped. The Germans dug in.
Barbé’s vacated family home stood at the village entrance. It caught fire several times in the fighting, collapsing piece by piece into ruins. Only after the war was it rebuilt.
On the morning of July 8, 1944, the locally raised Highland Light Infantry resumed the Allied advance against SS and Hitler Youth troops, entrenched in the village of Buron. The battle is widely remembered as “bloody Buron.”
“That battle is really quite revered to us,” said Poland, commander of the Royal Highland Fusiliers. “It was the first time that they were really tested against the Germans.”
D company was ordered to advance on the right flank, across an open field, through the village, and on to an orchard on the other side. The Germans hid in trenches and buildings, behind anti-tank ditches and minefields.
Advancing across a field, Canadians were raked by machine guns and shelled by bombs and mortars. It was a killing ground for both sides. Fanatic young Germans, steeped in Nazi ideology, fought ferociously, often refusing to surrender.
Weitzel was wounded in the leg early in the battle. A sergeant dressed his wound and told him to stop fighting. Weitzel refused.
Under heavy fire, he led several men toward the orchard. He reached it with just three other men, according to war correspondent Ralph Allen.
Seeing more enemy than he expected, Weitzel sent one man back for reinforcements. Then he moved into the orchard with the other two men, wounded but unbroken.
A regimental lieutenant explained his death to the war correspondent the next day.
“He kept going down the orchard with his Bren gun on his hip and two riflemen beside him, then only one, then nobody but himself.
“The trenches were thick and well filled. The corporal cleaned them all out but the last one. He took a platoon of Germans or more with him, not counting the wounded.
“We found him this morning, lying on top of his final objective. He was full of bullets. He had cleared the orchard.”
The Highland Light Infantry captured Buron at a terrible cost: 62 killed that day plus nine more who died later of their wounds. The battle reduced the village to rubble. The regiment never had a bloodier day, fighting across northwest Europe until victory in 1945.
The Allies pressed on to capture the nearby city of Caen, on their way to routing the Germans in Normandy.
Weitzel’s name is inscribed at a church he attended in Tavistock. In 1944, so many people attended a Tavistock memorial for him that the crowd overflowed into a parking lot to hear the service on speakers. A grateful nation named a lake after him in northern Ontario.
But he did not get the Victoria Cross. “He deserved it,” Barbé said. “I want to immortalize his name.”
Saying there were not enough witnesses to his heroics, the army honoured Weitzel with a lesser Mention in Despatches instead.
Poland and other local soldiers will be in France at their own expense, supported by private donors, to represent Canada and to unveil a new stone plaque explaining the history of the Highland Light Infantry.
The town of Saint Contest is organizing the May 5 celebration in Buron’s village square, named Place des Canadiens. It’s billed as a commemoration of the 1944 battle — in the presence of Canadians.
“The day stands for us as a testament to the courage and the valour that you find in Canadian soldiers,” Poland said.
Barbé will remember his family and the young soldiers from far away who gave their lives to liberate France almost 74 years ago.
“There were many heroes on that day,” he said. Heroes his village is determined not to forget.