Pep Talk on Juno Beach

We didn’t get to the continent until July. We were an armoured division and they just didn’t penetrate far enough to put all the armoured divisions on the ground so we sort of sat around and waited. And the whole regiment was there and I can remember CO, Colonel Hay, he was killed on our first outing but he said “Okay now fellas, you’re here and I want you to think about your training, training that you have and bare in mind, and think your training and keep your mind on what you’re trained and what you’ve learned and this will stand you in good stand. Now he said, “there’s a church parade over there, the Protestants are over there, the Catholics are over there.” and everybody went somewhere. The rest of the time, they’re all scampering around, but nobody left, everybody went somewhere. There’s no atheists in the slit trench.