James Strachan: Old enough to die;
too young to drink

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

The grim cost of the D-Day invasion still haunts James Strachan, 75 years after he delivered troops to the beaches of Normandy.

Strachan was a signaller aboard a Landing Craft, Infantry (Large), manning the Oerlikon gun as his assault vessel shuttled back and forth across the rolling English Channel, ferrying seasick soldiers in and dead and wounded out during history’s greatest seaborne invasion.

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Billy Bishop’s early morning raid

Story by Sharon Adams

In the first two months of Billy Bishop’s flying career, from the end of March to the end of May 1917, the flying ace had brought down 22 planes and earned the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross. And his most famous exploit was yet to come.

On June 2, he took off in his Nieuport 17 aircraft from the home base of No. 60 Squadron in northern France, deliberately early in the morning, intending to destroy an aerodrome. “Dawn was the hour I considered advisable, as there would be very few machines in the air, and I would have a great chance of evading trouble on the way to the aerodrome,” he wrote in Winged Warfare.

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May 30, 2007

Combat cameraman Master Corporal Darrell Jason Priede of Burlington, Ont., is among seven NATO soldiers killed when their Chinook helicopter is reportedly brought down by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

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