Right, Left and Centre: The Politcs of Some Canadians: Chapter 42, Part One. Another Soldier Who Came Home Alive

     Another Soldier Who Came Home Alive - Part One.


          Graham Stark huddled in a landing craft, side by side with a dozen or more young Canadian men. At this moment he was a scared young Canadian who was only 19 years old. He could hear machine guns crackle, shells explode overhead and soldiers screaming in pain as they lay wounded or dying in the waters of the Channel just off the French coastline.
     For this was D-Day, June 6th 1944. Graham was just one of 150,000 Allied troops who would have to fight their way onto French beaches. Waiting for them were thousands of well-entrenched German soldiers. Thousands of Allied troops died on D-Day and after. Many thousands died afterwards as they fought their way across France, Belgium and Holland On D-day alone over 350 Canadians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. As the commanding general U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower looked on, the struggle began for Allied control of Western Europe. And 14,000 Canadian troops were part of that struggle on June 6.
      Now the landing craft that Graham Stark was on fell open and there was the beach right in front of him. It was a sliver of the French coast even now littered with bodies of dead and wounded men and packed with barb wire. "Oh my God," Graham Stark said to himself. "What a bloody mess." Then he was thrown into the battle for Europe. He grabbed his gun tightly and soon he was another combatant. The Canadians fired on the German troops who seemed to be popping up everywhere, shooting, throwing grenades and killing dozens of Canadians.
  This horrible battle was necessary. It was just another part of the Second World War. This war lasted from 1939 to 1945. In the end, the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States, Canada and other countries defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and a militaristic Japan. At war's end, Germany, Japan and Italy were crushed and lay in ruins. Yet the war's destruction left over 55 million people dead and devastated many parts of Europe and Asia.
      "When I entered Warsaw in Poland in 1945," said the American journalist John Gunther, "I don't think I saw more than two buildings in the entire city left standing."
      Canada back then had no more that 10 million people. Yet over 55,000 Canadians, mostly men, were killed in the war. Tens of thousands of other soldiers came home injured in mind or body or both. This by the way was the second time in 25 years that Canada had been involved in a world war. The First World War lasted from 1914 to 1945 and over 60,000 Canadians died in that war.