Juno Beach

by Mark Zuehlke

  Plows was closing on Camilly, when out of the blue and coming from the wrong direction for Allied tanks appeared Lieutenant Bill McCormick and his troop of 1st Hussars. The tanker told Plows there was no opposition in the village, but the infantry officer insisted on putting in a proper attack anyway, as he was already formed up for it. McCormick arrayed his tanks to provide support and they started moving across a field towards the village. An old lady sitting on a stool in the middle of the field milking a cow “never even looked up as this battalion of infantry and tanks went by,” McCormick remembered. “We just walked into the village. There was nothing there.”13

  As Plows ordered the infantry to start digging in, a Bren carrier roared up carrying Lieutenant Colonel Matheson of the Regina Rifles, who was conducting a personal reconnaissance forward of his battalion’s position. “What the hell are you Scottish doing here?” he demanded, while extending his hand to shake Plows’s.14 With that, 7 CIB’s advance inland came to a halt.

  After helping the Canadian Scottish secure their position for the night, McCormick received word to withdraw his tanks to Pierrepont, where the 1st Hussars were regrouping. He headed back with the tantalizing vision of the airport still in his mind and the worrisome thought that by morning the Germans might well have pulled themselves together after the beating they had taken this day and be ready to put up a fight to stop the Canadian advance. Mostly, however, he wanted just to sleep. Like everyone else in the Allied invasion force, the lieutenant was dead tired from an incredibly long day of almost constant battle.15

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  Such a Sad Day

  MCCORMICK’S BOLD DASH with No. 2 Troop of the 1st Hussars ‘C’ Company was the deepest penetration into Normandy achieved by any Allied forces coming off the invasion beaches on DDay—nine miles as the crow flies or about twelve miles via the actual route taken. More importantly, by the end of the day, the Canadians had advanced farther from the shore than any of the British or American divisions. Having landed later than the rest, they had pushed up to six miles inland despite fierce opposition from the Germans on the beach and doggedly persistent resistance during the advance. It was a stunning feat of arms of which the soldiers of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade could be proud.

  The cost in blood for this achievement was certainly high but the impact was somewhat softened by its being less than half what the invasion planners had feared. At day’s end, 340 of the Canadians who landed on Juno Beach were dead and another 574 wounded. Twenty-six of the wounded subsequently succumbed to their injuries between June 7 and June 28, bringing the total number of dead to 366.

  Considering that by the end of D-Day, 14,500 Canadians had been landed on Juno Beach, 914 casualties seems high enough at roughly one out of every fifteen. Since time immemorial, the “poor bloody infantry” paid the bitterest price in battle and so it was for the battalions that led the assault onto the beaches. The six battalions of 7th and 8th Canadian Infantry Brigades suffered 696 of the total D-Day casualties. Hardest hit was the Queen’s Own Rifles with 143 men killed or wounded, 61 of whom died. The Royal Winnipeg Rifles had 57 dead and 66 wounded for a total of 123, while the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment had 125 casualties, of which 33 were fatal. The men of ‘A’ Company paid the highest price in casualties of the Regina Rifles. Mustering only 28 men after the debacle on the beach at Courseulles-sur-Mer out of about 120, they accounted for most of the battalion’s total losses of 108 men, of whom 45 died. The Canadian Scottish Regiment was the only first-wave assault unit with fewer than 100 casualties—22 dead and 65 wounded for a total of 87—no doubt because only ‘C’ Company participated in the initial landing. Le Régiment de la Chaudière had 48 men wounded and 18 killed during its landing and advance at the head of the column moving from Bernières-sur-Mer to Colomby-sur-Thaon.

  Although few infantrymen fancied switching places with their tanker colleagues out of a fear of dying in the cramped confines of a burning Sherman, the armoured regiments fared better than the leg units on D-Day—the usual case in World War II combat. But while the odds of becoming a casualty was less for tankers, the likelihood of being killed versus wounded ran about equal. The 1st Hussars had 22 men killed and 21 wounded, while the Fort Garry Horse had 14 dead compared to 11 wounded.

  Oddly, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division compiled casualty statistics more thoroughly than the British or American divisions, making it difficult to compare relative casualty rates between one beach and another. Hardest hit, however, was the 1st U.S. Infantry Division, with a regiment of 29th U.S. Infantry Division attached to it, that landed on Omaha Beach. U.S. official historians estimated casualties here at about 2,000, but conceded they might have been higher. Meanwhile, at Utah, the 4th U.S. Infantry Division had the easiest time of all, suffering just 197 casualties. The British kept casualty figures only of those killed or wounded in the beach assault itself and made no effort to track casualties that occurred during the push inland. Their calculations for Sword Beach show 630 casualties and 413 for Gold.

  In addition to the Canadian casualties suffered in the Juno Beach sector of the invasion, a further 243 British soldiers who landed with the Canadians were reported as killed or wounded. For the beach assault phase, British Second Army officials identified 805 soldiers as having been killed or wounded on Juno Beach. However the figures are examined, it is indisputable that the battle for Juno Beach was won at a loss in men killed or wounded that was only exceeded by that of the Americans at Omaha.

  For 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, the grim toll of casualties was felt less in soldiers killed or wounded than in those lost as prisoners due to their being badly scattered in the night drop. Of the battalion’s 113 reported casualties on D-Day, 84 were taken prisoner. Only 19 paratroopers died and 10 suffered wounds that day. But the total loss of 113 in just twenty-four hours out of the 543 men who jumped into Normandy represented a casualty rate of just over 20 per cent.

  All airborne forces suffered heavily on D-Day. The two American divisions reported 2,499 casualties at day’s end, while the estimated toll for 6th British Airborne Division was 1,500 men killed, wounded, or missing (with most ending up in captivity).

  The U.S. has estimated total Canadian, British, and American army and marine casualties at the most conservative figure of 8,443. Canada’s World War II Army historian pegged the total at 9,000, while British military authorities decided on 10,865. All agreed that about one-third of the casualties were fatal.1

  Of the approximately 9,400 Canadian naval personnel involved in Operation Neptune on June 6, no casualty estimate is possible—the navy seeming to concern itself more with damage to ships than men in its overall accounting. The majority of Royal Canadian Navy casualties would have been suffered by the sailors crewing the landing craft that took damage from mines, collisions with beach obstacles, and hits by German shell and mortar fire. The 262nd LCI Flotilla, for example, reports 6 crew being wounded during its landing operations on June 6 out of about 253 personnel serving on eleven craft.2 Although most of the Canadian LCAs from Prince Henry and Prince David suffered damage, only three sailors were reported as casualties, none of which proved fatal.3

  No determination of the number of Royal Canadian Air Force personnel engaged in operations supporting the invasion was prepared. Given the fact that 3,258 RCAF and Royal Air Force aircraft of all types were directly engaged in the invasion as part of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force commitment, the majority of the 22,727 Canadians serving as aircrew in either RCAF or RAF units must have had some involvement.4 Although the Luftwaffe hardly ventured from the ground on June 6, anti-aircraft guns remained active and took their toll on aircraft.

  Flight Officer Frederick Wilson of ‘A’ Flight of RCAF 441 Squadron was “pranged by flak” when he strayed over Caen. The twenty-five-year-old had been tasked with patrolling the beachhead in his Spitfire Mark IX, but had become disoriented in the low, thick morning cloud cover. Suddenly he was over the city, duckin
g and turning through a sky smudged with black explosions. After four or five shells slammed into the plane, the oil pressure gauge plunged from 120 to 20, warning him that an engine seizure was imminent. Somehow he managed to keep it sputtering along until he was back over England. Unable to lower his wheels and now with no oil pressure at all, Wilson belly-flopped in the open just off the runway in order not to damage the landing surface and walked away from the wrecked aircraft without a scratch.5

  Also patrolling over the beach was Flight Officer Gordon Ockenden of 443 Squadron, which along with 441 and 442 squadrons comprised 144 Wing, RCAF under command of Wing Commander Johnnie Johnson. The young pilot from Alberta flew an afternoon patrol that circled over Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches, watching closely for any sign of German fighters. Although none appeared, the patrol lost one of its pilots when Flight Leader MacLennan’s Spitfire sprang a glycol leak and he was forced to land behind German lines. One of the other pilots on the patrol last saw MacLennan jumping from the aircraft and dashing towards a nearby farmhouse. It was soon learned that he had been taken prisoner.6

  J. Danforth “Danny” Brown, an American who had enlisted in the RCAF before the U.S. joined the war because his mother hailed from Nova Scotia, was 144 Wing’s Deputy Wing Commander on D-Day. He led planes from 441 Squadron on four separate missions over Normandy on June 6, with the first one starting at 0625 hours. He and the other pilots were pumped up and ready to rip into any Luftwaffe flyers that dared to test the covering flights of fighters swarming over the great armada below. But the ceiling was down to less than two thousand feet most of the day and not a single German fighter was to be seen, so the flights became an exercise in tedium.

  Once night fell, a couple of German fighters did duck in to try strafing the ships and were greeted by every gun aboard the more than four thousand ships still standing offshore blasting flak into the sky. “No one ever turned on fireworks like they [the ship gunners] turned on,” Brown later wrote. Allied fliers quickly learned to stay well clear of the trigger-happy gunners, who tended to fire at anything that flew near rather then making any attempt at friend-or-foe recognition, giving the invasion fleet a very wide berth.7

  BY NIGHTTIME ON JUNE 6, Major General Rod Keller began to take stock of his division’s situation with a mind to preparing for operations on June 7 that would secure the original D-Day final objectives. On the three British Second Army beaches, 75,215 soldiers had been put ashore, while another 7,900 British and Canadian paratroopers had landed from the sky. Farther to the west, the Americans had some 57,500 troops on the ground. Also crossing the British and Canadian beaches had been more than 6,000 vehicles, including about 900 tanks and armoured vehicles, 240 field guns, 80 light anti-aircraft guns, 280 antitank guns, and over 4,000 tons of supplies. From a tenuous toehold in the early morning hours, Juno Beach had been transformed into a sprawling military encampment swarming with Royal Canadian Army Service Corps personnel whose job it was to ensure the supplies got from the beach to the fighting troops inland.8

  Despite the great buildup in men and equipment on the beaches, Keller still had fewer than 20,000 Canadian and British troops on Juno Beach and only about 10,000 of these gave the division its fighting teeth. The rest were part of the vital tail that enabled the division to fight, but the numbers on the ground gave a deceptive appearance of strength.

  As the day had passed, Keller’s anxious demeanour and hesitancy in decision-making increasingly concerned his staff officers and brigadiers. Brigadier Ben Cunningham ended the day feeling overwhelmed by the two distinct duties of trying to keep Keller “steadied down” while also maintaining control over his 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s landing on the beach and movement inland.9 Also proving invaluable in bolstering Keller’s confidence was 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade’s Brigadier Bob Wyman. Deputy Adjutant and Quarter Master General (DAQMG) Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Côté noted Wyman’s frequent visits to Keller’s headquarters after the divisional staff came ashore. The brigadier, he later said, “gave Keller much guidance which Keller appreciated.”10

  Côté was no more concerned about Keller’s jumpiness than he had been about the divisional commander’s heavy drinking, which did not seem to be a factor influencing his behaviour on the beach. The quartermaster general considered that Keller had won the confidence of his staff, who would serve him “as best we could” despite any personal failings. What mattered more than Keller’s personality and leadership in an extensively pre-planned operation such as the invasion was the ability of the infantry, tank, and artillery brigadiers to handle the troops under their command on an ever changing battlefield. Côté, who considered the “division’s brigadiers rock solid competent individuals,” believed “the performance of their brigades during and right after the landing was marvellous.”11 He expected the division to continue operating smoothly as it pushed inland in the morning.

  On the Canadian right flank, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles had tied in with the 7th Green Howards of the 50th British Division at Creully in the afternoon so that the two divisions presented a solid front. To the left, however, the large gap into which the 21st Panzer Division had launched its abortive counterattack remained. The stretch of beach from Langrune-sur-Mer to Lion-sur-Mer was still in German hands, but the units fixed inside the fortifications here were isolated. This was also the case for the Luftwaffe and part of a company of the 21st Panzer Division that was dug in around the radar station at Douvres-la Délivrande.

  According to the invasion plan, the Langrune to Lion section of beach was to have fallen to the Royal Marine’s No. 48 Commando and No. 41 Commando—the former landing on the left flank of Juno and the latter the right flank of Sword and then advancing towards each other. Setting down at 0843 hours directly in front of the strong-point at St. Aubin-sur-Mer, No. 48 Commando had been shredded, losing about 40 per cent of its strength. The survivors attempted to complete the mission, but were soon brought to a standstill by the strength of the fortifications in Longrune. At Lion, No. 41 Commando had been similarly stalled.12

  Closing the gap between the Canadians and their British counterpart on the left was to have been the responsibility of the 3rd British Division’s 9th Brigade, which was to drive southwestward to Cambes and then St. Contest. This would not only tie the two divisional fronts together at the end of D-Day, but enable 9th Brigade to attack Caen from the west on D-Day + 1 if it were not taken on June 6 itself. Setbacks suffered during the early fighting at Sword Beach, however, led to 9th Brigade being diverted to other tasks. One battalion was rushed to support No. 41 Commando’s stalled attack on Lion-sur-Mer, while the other two were swung completely over to the division’s left flank to assist the embattled paratroopers of 6th Airborne Division. These moves scuttled any hope of linking the two divisions together and created the dangerous gap that threatened the Canadian left and British right flanks at the end of June 6.13

  BACK ON THE SAND of Juno Beach, Canadian Press correspondent Ross Munro had spent the late afternoon inspecting the German beach defences and considering the great battle that had been fought in an attempt to understand all he had witnessed. Having barely slept in the past two days, something he realized was equally true for most of the soldiers who had fought so hard through this long day, Munro “was dopey with weariness.” To clear his mind enough so that he could write, the reporter “munched a Benzedrine tablet every four hours.”14

  Munro was drawn with macabre fascination to the system of pill-boxes that had met the Queen’s Own Rifles at Bernières-sur-Mer and exacted such a terrible toll. Picking through the tunnels and concrete chambers, he had seen the smashed German machine guns and artillery pieces that had eventually been overrun. Munro confessed to feeling, as he gazed about at the sheer enormity of the defensive work, an “intense pride” in the Canadians who had taken it. But the “sight of wounded friends who talked to you with pain in their faltering words” served as reminder of the cost paid in blood for the achievement.15

  On the beac
h in front of Bernières, the divisional medical units had established a central facility to handle the wounded. In one area fronting the wall, more than 150 wounded Canadians and Germans had been collected. “They lay on stretchers and on the ground wrapped in blankets, their faces ashen grey. Doctors and medical orderlies were with them.”16

  Three Canadian Field Ambulance units—Nos. 14, 22, and 23—had been attached respectively to the 7th, 8th, and 9th Infantry Brigades for the initial landings. As the assault battalions had pushed inland, the ambulance sections had followed along behind, gathering in the wounded and evacuating them to dressing stations established behind the advancing lines. By 1100 hours, No. 14 Canadian Field Ambulance had a dressing station up and running at Banville-surMer, while No. 22 established a matching facility at Bény-sur-Mer shortly after 1800 hours. Closer to the beach, the medical units of No. 102 British Beach Sub-Area—responsible for administering and maintaining Juno Beach—landed two field dressing stations, two field surgical units, one field transfusion unit, one surgical team, a field sanitation detachment, Pioneer Company stretcher-bearers, and a casualty evacuation unit. In from the beach, the British medical units set up two advanced surgical centres—one at Bernières-surMer and the other at Graye-sur-Mer. Both of these were fully operational by 1100 hours.17

  Queen’s Own Rifles Lance Corporal Rolph Jackson, who had been shot in the hand on the beach, had stayed with his No. 10 Platoon of ‘B’ Company throughout the advance inland because it was so short of men. The platoon ended the day with just seven men standing. Jackson was ordered to report to the Medical Officer to get his wound treated, so with a feeling of great sadness he left the remaining six soldiers huddled in their slit trenches at Anguerny. After seeing the Medical Officer, who despite also being wounded was still treating injured men, Jackson started on a trek back towards the rear. He was picked up at a crossroads by an ambulance team operating a Bren carrier and driven to the dressing station at Bény-sur-Mer, which turned the wounded on the carrier away because it was full. The next station at Bernières-sur-Mer was set up under the cover of a large tent with the sides removed. Lacking a power generator, the inside was lit by coal-oil lamps. Each of the wounded men was quickly assessed and given a number. Then the walking wounded, like Jackson, were sent to wait in a courtyard until called for treatment.