It’s a debt that can never truly be repaid.
Last Friday, June 6, people all over the world celebrated the 70th anniversary of one of the most bloody and costly operations of the Second World War.
The D-Day invasion of Normandy saw some 150,000 Allied troops establish a presence on Continental Europe after several years of Nazi occupation. It was the largest amphibious assault in the history of warfare, and thousands of men were killed and injured as a result.
After all was said and done, the good guys had won. But even then the battle wasn’t over, as it would still be nearly a year before the Nazis were pushed back into their own territory and ultimately surrendered.
It was the single most effective operation on the Western Front, and although the Eastern Front is where some of the bloodiest battles of the war took place, the end result was the D-Day invasion was the liberation of millions of people and an end to a war that threatened an entire way of life.
Westlock is a long way from the shores of France where that decisive battle was fought and won so many years ago, but we’re privileged to have among us living history — men who remember that battle and that war because they were right there.
Westlock’s Ernie Wood was among the men who landed on Juno Beach on June 6, and to hear his description of the beach that day is a bone-chilling reminder of the horrors human beings are capable of perpetrating on each other.
It’s also a heart-warming reminder that sometimes when things look the very darkest, there is enough resiliency in the human spirit to fight back, face seemingly insurmountable odds, and risk making the ultimate sacrifice. Thousands of men never came back, or came back with serious disabilities as a result of their service.
Ernie Wood, Tom McConaghy and Sandy Latimer made it home from the war and are around to share their stories with us on the anniversary of that bloody day so many years ago.
Sadly, there will come a day when our living connection to that war, to those sacrifices, will be gone. We’ll only be able to read about it in the history books.
Even so, we’ll never forget what they’ve done for us.
