The French town of Vire was bombed by Allied aircraft late on June 6, 1944; 95 per cent of the town was destroyed. (CONSEIL RÉGIONAL DE BASSE-NORMANDIE/U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Allied bombing of Europe’s villages and towns leaves complicated legacy

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

The June 4, 1944, letter written by a Norman woman was unequivocal in its fury at her Allied liberators, describing the pilots who destroyed her French port city of Cherbourg as “bandits and assassins.”

“My dear Henri, it’s shameful to massacre the civilian population as the supposed Allies are doing,” she wrote her husband, who was being held in a German prison camp. “We are in danger everywhere.”

The French port on the Cotentin Peninsula was a key stepping-stone in the Allied advance—a coveted harbour, a heavily defended German garrison of 40,000 troops, and one of the Allies’ earliest objectives in the weeks after D-Day.

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Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry returning from patrol in Korea, 1951. (LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA/PA-128073)

Remembering the Forgotten War: The Korean conflict in Canada’s collective consciousness

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

On Sept. 25, 1975, Vic Thompson of Manotick, Ont., joined a small contingent of Canadian veterans bound for South Korea. Boarding a flight from Los Angeles, he crossed the international date line and landed in Seoul.

There, Thompson found a very different country from the one he had first laid eyes on more than two decades earlier. Gone were the wartorn ruins of yesteryear. Now, under the auspices of democracy, the faraway nation flourished.

The 25th anniversary of the Korean War’s outbreak—June 25, 1950—had technically taken place three months earlier. Nevertheless, at various ceremonies and battlefield tours, the veterans were welcomed with open arms.

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Major Stewart Hastings Bull commanded ‘A’ company of the Essex Scottish Regiment at Caen until he was wounded and lost an eye. (THE CANADIAN LETTERS AND IMAGES PROJECT)

Wounded at Caen: A survivor describes combat in Normandy

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

It was early July 1944 and Stewart Hastings Bull had just followed the D-Day landings into France when he was promoted and handed ‘A’ company of The Essex Scottish Regiment to lead through the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe.

The regiment had been gutted at Dieppe. Major Bull’s first taste of war came almost two years later during the battle for Caen. A runner summoned him the night he arrived at their encampment in an orchard just outside the city, 15 kilometres from the D-Day beaches. His second-in-command wanted to see him.

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CORB children en route to their new home 1940. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES UK)

A warm reception: Canada’s children of the Blitz

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

It was around 11 a.m. on Aug. 4, 1940, when Margaret Beal bid farewell to all she had ever known. Departing on a train from Scarborough, U.K., the 14-year-old watched as her parents, standing on the platform, faded into the steam.

Exactly 26 years before, the British teenager’s home country had been mobilizing upon the outbreak of the First World War. Now, she, too, was on the move, although her journey was destined to be markedly different.

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