Freedoms, lives lost and those still with us honoured at 75th D-Day anniversary ceremony

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Wreathes laid in front of the Cenotaph

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Lethbridge Legion Branch Manager Jeff Alden explained they had decided several weeks ago that they should do a local ceremony to commemorate the 75th anniversary.

“As witnessed on the Cenotaph, we do have several soldiers from the area that did go into the second World War, and as I mentioned, Mr. Daley perished on the beaches of Juno. We felt it very important at the local level to do something.”

To have veterans come out for the ceremony meant a lot to Alden and other members of the Legion.

“These are the last remaining veterans of the Second World War. This will probably be the last major anniversary for these veterans to get out and attend. These gentlemen don’t have a lot of energy to come out, and we were very fortunate to get them to come out today. They’re frail, and it means a lot that we can provide a service to bring them out and allow them to tell their stories,” Alden said.

The Royal Canadian Legion upholds the act of remembrance across Canada with many community ceremonies big and small.

Each is equally important to foster a sense of pride and pass on to young people today the history of past military service, sacrifice and commitments that Canadians have made and continue to make in defence of Canada.

The colour guard

One of those young people was Tyler Black, a student from LCI, who gave a short talk about his experiences visiting Juno beach.

Alden says the LCI program is very active, as well as some other schools that are active in their poster and literary program.

“Every year we ask all the schools to contribute, they can draw posters, they can do poetry, and they submit lots of drawings. I believe this year we had five or six of these young people where their artwork went forward to the national or district levels in Alberta.”

The local winner takes part in the annual Remembrance Day program, and Alden believes the history of the World Wars is not lost on the youth.

“They’re very interested and want to continue sharing the stories of what happened for future generations,” he added.

Why recognizing the 75th anniversary is so important relates to the world today, according to Alden.

“If you’ve been watching TV at all in the last few weeks, veterans are concerned,” he continued. “They fought for our freedoms, and we see a lot of countries arguing about petty things.”

Alden says they feel that they’re giving up the freedoms that were fought for because some leaders have lost sight of the cost of freedom.

“It’s easy now to argue that your pigs are more important than our cows and that sort of thing, but when it comes down to it, some of this rhetoric could lead to another war. That’s more lives lost, and it’s a concern for the veterans that I’ve talked to.”

Alden has a unique connection to the anniversaries, and that’s because he was actually in the 40th anniversary of D-Day parade in France.

“To stand there for six and a half hours on the beach, and to witness the veterans at that time out there, it was something that will live with me forever. To talk to a guy who stood beside one of the houses where he was shot at by a sniper and for him to tell me that his best friend was shot right behind him and died on the spot.

“Those kinds of stories and things that you experience, you carry them with you for the rest of your life.”

Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.

The Allied victory in Normandy stemmed from several factors, including deceptions undertaken in Operation Fortitude and the allied forces achieving and maintaining air supremacy, which meant the Germans were unable to make observations of the preparations underway in Britain and therefore were unable to interfere via bomber attacks.

Alden says when you think about it, a lot of work went into Operation Overlord.

“We talk about the Normandy invasion, but there were several other invasions that took place within weeks and months around that which contributed to the end of the war. I think the importance will be lost unless we continue to tell their stories.

“What can happen when one man and one idealism can try to take over the world and tell everyone else in the world what to do, and that’s what was defeated at the end of the second World War. If one person can tell everybody how to live, then we’re not a free world anymore, and as I stated before I think we’re rolling back to that. When people start to believe in themselves over everybody else, we lose the value of freedom,” Alden stated.