This week, in honour of our war veterans, I am profiling some of the men and women who served Canada in the Second World War. These veterans sat for portraits for me last year, as part of a series I was creating, and kindly shared their stories with me. Now, I'd like to share them with you.
This portrait is of Fred Turnbull. Fred enlisted in the navy at the age of 17 and served in Combined Operations, as the bowman in a landing craft (LCA). The crews of LCAs had the job of landing allied troops on enemy shores. The following passage is from Fred’s diary entry describing the D-Day landing:“At 6:45 a.m., we were given the order to lower away and unhook. The sea was extremely rough and as we started our seven and half mile run in, the soldiers were very sick. All the flotillas of our force were in line ahead and as each mile slipped by, the roar of gunfire from our own ships, the gunfire from the shore, the bombing from Allied planes, the odd plane being shot down overhead increased. It was a sight never to be forgotten, seeing Allied troops moving closer to the coast of France.
At last the town of Bernières-sur-Mer, our objective, loomed in the horizon and all was to be seen were fires and out of the fires, the odd church steeples. About one mile from the beach the signal was given for a deploy and the flotillas moved in abreast. We had been told of the minefields guarding the beaches and as we moved in at half speed ahead, the mines could be seen spread out for a distance of 500 yds. all very close, making it seemingly impossible for an LCA to get through. As I looked over the bow and saw the dead bodies of Marine commandos, floating in the water, I realized what we were facing. The Marines were supposed to have cleared the way for us and their being dead meant that we had to make our own way through the perilous “stakes in the water”. We were soon weaving through the minefield and with a strong tide pushing our stern within a matter of inches of each mine, I was ready at any moment to be blown sky high. To make matters worse, mortars were screaming over the craft and the odd Nazi sniper on shore was trying to find a good target. As we managed to skim through three rows of mines and were ready to sneak through the fourth, the craft on our starboard side could be seen breaking literally in two as she hit a mine. Then as I glanced around me I could see all the craft of our flotilla, only a matter of feet away, being blown in two, holes in their bows, holes in their stern and sinking rapidly but not before the soldiers were on their way ashore in waist-deep water. I couldn’t believe we were still afloat and making our way shoreward still.”
At last the town of Bernières-sur-Mer, our objective, loomed in the horizon and all was to be seen were fires and out of the fires, the odd church steeples. About one mile from the beach the signal was given for a deploy and the flotillas moved in abreast. We had been told of the minefields guarding the beaches and as we moved in at half speed ahead, the mines could be seen spread out for a distance of 500 yds. all very close, making it seemingly impossible for an LCA to get through. As I looked over the bow and saw the dead bodies of Marine commandos, floating in the water, I realized what we were facing. The Marines were supposed to have cleared the way for us and their being dead meant that we had to make our own way through the perilous “stakes in the water”. We were soon weaving through the minefield and with a strong tide pushing our stern within a matter of inches of each mine, I was ready at any moment to be blown sky high. To make matters worse, mortars were screaming over the craft and the odd Nazi sniper on shore was trying to find a good target. As we managed to skim through three rows of mines and were ready to sneak through the fourth, the craft on our starboard side could be seen breaking literally in two as she hit a mine. Then as I glanced around me I could see all the craft of our flotilla, only a matter of feet away, being blown in two, holes in their bows, holes in their stern and sinking rapidly but not before the soldiers were on their way ashore in waist-deep water. I couldn’t believe we were still afloat and making our way shoreward still.”
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