Juno Beach

Canadians have fought heroically in many battles throughout history. Canada’s troops continue to persevere no matter how difficult the battle may be. The battle, which Canada fought on June 6, 1944, was no exception. D-Day refers to the day when a military operation commences, such as the landings on the Normandy beaches did. The landing area code-named Juno Beach was approximately 10 km (6 miles) wide and stretched on either side of the small fishing port of Courseulles-sur-Mer. Two smaller villages, Bernières and Saint-Aubin, lay to the east of Courseulles. Smaller coastal villages lay behind the sand dunes and had been fortified by the occupying Germans. From the D-Day landings on June 6th through to the encirclement of the German army at

“The vast majority of men with the 3rd Canadian Infantry division, who would go to shore at Juno beach, had no combat experience…they had been training hard in Scotland and England for more than a year” (TheCanadianEncyclopedia.ca) This quote shows that some men had not even experienced real combat and were being sent into battle with very experienced fighters. If the tanks had not arrived in time, the landing on Juno Beach could had been a catastrophe: the beach is encumbered by hundreds of destroyed vehicles, shredded bodies, various material abandoned during the attack. Even though nearly 3,200 vehicles were landed, the losses of the 3rd infantry division are very high: 1,074 soldiers were killed or are wounded. It is the heaviest ratio of losses of the three invasion beaches for the Commonwealth forces. Even with great loss of live for the Allies on Juno beach, the Canadian’s were still able to take the beach and pave a way for more troops to be

Canadian airmen were among the first into action. Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadrons belonging to Bomber Command’s No. 6 Group had already been involved for several months in bombing key enemy targets in the invasion area: roads, bridges, railways, airfields, and command and communications centers. As the moment to launch the invasion neared, Allied bombers dropped thousands of tons of explosives on German coastal defense’s, approximately 6,000 tons in just the last few hours before the invasion. On D-Day, RCAF fighter and fighter-bomber pilots flew with 171 Allied squadrons to protect the soldiers on the beach from the Luftwaffe and to attack German formations on the ground. Ivor Williams, a Spitfire pilot with 443 Squadron, assisted in patrolling Juno Beach on D-Day” The sky was full of airplanes of course. We were circling back and forth over the beachhead, we didn’t go back, we were making sure that the German aircraft didn’t get to strafe our own troops, so it was a recce to make sure the sky was kept clear of enemy aircraft. We were back and forth, we could see there was fighting on the ground, we could see tanks blazing and trucks, we really knew the invasion was on at that time.” (Ivor