![]() Sent overseas in June 1943, my dad practised and drilled for the next year in Great Britain in anticipation of the Allied invasion of western Europe.Īllied soldiers watch the bombing of enemy positions during the Battle of Normandy. He enlisted three years later, in October 1942, in Winnipeg and trained as a gunner-operator and crew commander with the Canadian Armoured Corps.Īccording to his attestation form, he wanted to see action. ![]() Ted was working on a Canadian Pacific Railway section crew when war broke out in September 1939. My dad liked to joke that he was a guest of Conservative Prime Minister R.B. He spent the winter of 1933-34 in the Hope relief camp in British Columbia. When depression and drought crippled the farm economy in the early 1930s, he took to the rails and joined hundreds of other single men criss-crossing Western Canada in search of work. ![]() Ted left school after Grade 8 and worked as a hired hand in the district. Trooper Thaddeus (Ted) Louis Waiser, a member of the 28th Canadian Armoured Regiment (British Columbia Regiment ), landed near Courseulles-sur-Mer (Juno Beach), Normandy, on July 26, 1944.īorn in 1913 to immigrant parents in Glennella, Man., he grew up in the southwest corner of the province, in Lyleton, where his father ran a harness shop. Trooper Thaddeus (Ted) Louis Waiser at enlistment in October 1942. Like many Canadian soldiers, he was lucky to have survived. My father Ted took part in one of those battles in August 1944. These and other battles that brought an end to the Second World War in Europe are largely forgotten, if even known.Ĭanadian remembrance is largely restricted to the start of the Normandy campaign - the June 6, 1944, Allied landing more popularly known as D-Day - and rightly honouring the men who died on Juno beach or trying to get ashore that day.īut the breaching of German defences along the coast had to be matched by victories inland if D-Day was going to be a turning point in the war. Seventy-five years ago this week, Canadians were on the verge of helping win the Battle of Normandy.Ĭanadian forces sustained nearly 20,000 casualties (dead and wounded), including 5,021 killed, during the fight to end the Nazi occupation of northwest France. The death rate was 65 men per day over 77 days. This piece was originally published on Aug.
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