Naval Museum of Halifax

Hi, my name is Jennifer Gamble and I’m the curator here at the Naval Museum of Halifax. Today, we are going to be taking a look at a few of our D­-Day artifacts. We’re very lucky; we do have someone who recently donated to the museum in the last few years. His father’s name is Harold Tilley. Harold Tilley was present on D­-Day. He was a Royal Canadian Naval Officer. This is his photograph here and what’s really great about Tilley’s collection is that Tilley wrote a series of letters; kept journals about his experience with D-­Day. He was one of the Commanders on one of the landing crafts on the day of the operation. And this is really cool; this is the helmet that he wore on his landing craft on D-­Day. And we’re really lucky because his name is on the helmet, which is really neat. So, in here you’ll see he’s got his name on... you can barely see it, but it says his name right there –Tilley – on it. But it’s a really neat artifact and we’re very lucky to have it, because he actually wore it on D-­Day. One of the most important artifacts we have here, is Operation NEPTUNE. This is the actual operational orders for D-­Day. This book highlighted what all allied forces were supposed to do on the day; where people were supposed to land, where ships were supposed to be, what the Royal Canadian Airforce was supposed to do, what the British Airforce were supposed to do, and what the Royal Canadian Navy Ships were supposed to do. Everything from the time the mine sweepers went out or launched early in the morning to go clear the way for the landing crafts to come in. So, all those orders are in this booklet. After D-­Day happened, these were supposed to be destroyed, but whoever decided to keep this knew that this was an important event in history and kept it and preserved it. This is one of two that we know of that still exist. All was laid out for D-­Day. And as you see, there are personal notes that had been made, corrections that have been added, leading up to D­-Day itself. So, it’s a really amazing piece of primary source from the time period and just gives us a really good in­depth look of how much planning went into this campaign. This is a personal photo album that we have here in our collection. During the war, a lot of sailors, even though they weren’t really supposed to, carried personal little cameras on them. A lot of those little cameras were called Brownies. They were cameras about ‘yay’ big, and they produced little photographs. And so, a lot of these guys did have these cameras; but glad they did because they were able to document important events. And this guy, he was able to document his experience on D­-Day. Here is the invasion of Normandy on June 6th. So, he has taken a series of pictures of all the landing crafts and all of the allied naval forces coming into Normandy. So, it’s just... it’s amazing to see. But what’s also great is that we’re able to also confirm, yes, these ships were here at this time and, yes, this is what they actually were doing. It’s the personal photograph albums that I really enjoy. You just get to see a different side. You see a lot of official photographs during the wartime, like a lot of these kind of photographs; very official, standing at attention or official photos of the crew and the boat, and so these very personal photographs are a really great perspective of the first they experience during the war. Even though it was wartime, people were still people; they still laughed and had a good time, and everything wasn’t always so seriousness – and that’s neat to see through these photographs too. A message from the Government of Canada.