Winning our Battles

To begin, artillery win battles and, of course, we had for example, I was with the 13th Canadian Field Regiment. We had four members who were walking parties, that is the forward observer, an able and a signaler, they landed with the infantry so that they could bring back fire support wherever the infantry needed it. But our battalions who landed in France were fought on a classic British manner, was two… we made the attack with two brigades up, one in reserve so the 7th and 8th brigade landed at Courseulles, Bernières, St. Aubin and there was no such word as Juno, these were Mike and Nan beaches on our maps, Mike and Nan beaches. And those landings were, I must say, we landed the mechanical devices they had invented. One of them is called a “funny” but they weren’t funny; it’s called a Petard Tank. It has a huge spigot mortar on the front of it that would throw a dust bin full of explosives weighing I think 60 pounds, close to 200 yards and that would take a pillbox out. And I know on the 8th brigade front there was a 12 foot sea wall that they blew huge holes in that sea wall. And sometimes I have heard it said that the Germans didn’t fight quite so hard on some fronts than they did on others but I watched a fellow by the name of Jock Bowlan count the empty shell cases in one of their casements there and he counted 79 empty shell cases. They fought that gun to the last round. No, these mechanical devices we landed meant that on all three British-Canadian beaches we had complete success and breakthrough on the three British beaches.