THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 02 2023
OUR PEOPLE, OUR COMMUNITIES, OUR STORIES
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
Q&A: Brooklyn Douthwright
History and outreach at St. Mary’s
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To Riverview via Anders’ Army
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Russell Kay recalls landing at Juno Beach
“L
eading up to D-Day, I was in the Canadian Armed Forces. We were stationed in England, in Southampton. They took us out for ‘a little sail.’ Halfway out they told us, ‘you’re on your way to France. You’re not going back this time.’ That was quite a surprise. Everyone reacted a little differently, of course.” With those words Russell Kay, now 99, recalls the day he embarked for Juno Beach in Normandy as a member of the Allied forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He was nineteen. When they landed in the early hours of the morning, he remembers, “everything was happening at once. The Air Force was bombing, our guns were firing, Navy guns were firing, there were rockets, and of course the Germans were firing the other way … on the beach, it was unbelievable. We were operating on adrenaline and training.” After that day’s ferocious battles were won and the beaches secured, Kay participated in the long Allied battle march through the Netherlands and Belgium. By the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945, they had reached the town of Aurich in northwestern Germany. That route is almost 1,000 kilometres driving directly on modern roadways; it was long and tough for the Allies as they fought a series of battles along an irregular path. One of Kay’s earliest experiences was not what might have been expected.
“My first encounter with the enemy, I saw two people coming, one had a wheelbarrow, and the other guy was in the wheelbarrow. I didn’t know who they were. When they got down near me, I could see swastikas on their uniforms. They were German soldiers. One was wounded so bad that his buddy put him in the wheelbarrow to carry him.” Encountering the enemy in a wheelbarrow was not the norm. The fighting was often fierce; “just two or three days in we met stiff resistance. A gunner got his hand hurt quite badly and our Sergeant got killed.” The village of Caen, Kay recalls, “was nothing but a pile of rubble by the time we got to it. “By the end of the war I was the only gunner who ended the war on that same gun. The others all got replaced.” Early in the campaign he participated in the pivotal battle of the Falaise pocket, in
August of 1944, which helped turn the tide of the Second World War in favour of the Allies. That battle featured a friendly fire incident in which Canadian and Polish soldiers were mistakenly bombed by Allied forces, at the cost of Continued on page 3
Russell Kay of Parkland Riverview.
A map traces the path of the Allies’ long march from D-Day until the end of the war.
Russell Kay of Parkland Riverview.
