The Mac-Paps serve in Spain

Story by Sharon Adams

In 1936, the elected republican government in Spain faced a military coup headed by General Francisco Franco, who was backed by the fascist governments in Italy and Germany. The republicans put out a plea for international help, and tens of thousand of idealistic young men and women from many countries flocked to Spain to fight fascism.

Western governments feared they would be radicalized and return home to foment revolution. In the spring of 1937, Canada joined other countries that made it illegal for their citizens to enlist in foreign wars.

Nonetheless, by mid-July, nearly 1,600 Canadian volunteers had gone to Spain to fight with the republications. At least 400 died there.

READ MORE

A German commander’s assessment
of the D-Day invasion

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

A field report submitted by Adolf Hitler’s commander-in-chief on the western front said the Allies’ invading D-Day forces gained a foothold in occupied Europe due to four key factors. In the report filed two weeks after the June 6, 1944, invasion, Field Marshal Karl R. Gerd von Rundstedt said the Allies’ “complete mastery in the air” was the No. 1 contributor to their early successes in Normandy.

Von Rundstedt also cited “the skilful and large-scale employment of enemy parachute and airborne troops [and] the flexible and well-directed support of the land troops by ships’ artillery” as major factors in the invasion, along with painstaking preparation and a swift post-invasion buildup.

READ MORE

July 18-20, 1944

Second and Third Canadian divisions participate in an attack designed to break out of the Orne bridgehead south of Caen, France.

READ MORE

First Blood

Story and photography by Stephen J. Thorne

Wednesday, March 13, 2002, broke sunny and cool as 500 Canadian soldiers assembled on the tarmac in the yellow morning light at the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Wearing their new green camouflage fatigues on combat operations for the first time, they sat and stood in groups of 30 to 40 soldiers, preparing to board the U.S. Chinook helicopters that would take them on Canada’s first-ever helicopter-borne assault. It would also be Canada’s first wartime assault since the Korean War, nearly 50 years earlier.

READ MORE

The sinking of the Königsberg

Story by Sharon Adams

When the First World War broke out, Harold James Arnold was a wireless operator working in the remote Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida Gwaii) off the west coast of British Columbia.

In 1915, he earned a Distinguished Service Order for his actions July 6 and 11 as a wireless operator for the Royal Naval Air Service in the remote Rufiji River delta in German East Africa.

READ MORE

July 9-10, 1943

The Allied invasion of Sicily begins.

READ MORE