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Sask. veterans’ war memories fresh 70 years after liberation

May 8, 2015 | 5:32 PM

Friday marks the 70th Anniversary of Victory in Europe, or VE day, when Nazi Germany officially surrendered to Allied forces.

This week, four Saskatchewan veterans were awarded the rank of Knight of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour for their role in the liberation of France. It was a thank you 70 years in the making.

James Bennett, Howard Leyton-Brown, John Milani and Arthur Ramshaw were presented with medals by the French Ambassador to Canada at Government House on Monday. They are among more than 600 to receive this honour as part of a French campaign to honour the Allies who liberated their country.

For these men who fought to liberate Europe, the first-hand experience of those battles remains etched in their memories.

Arthur Ramshaw, 8th Canadian Reconnaissance Battalion

On the day the Allies declared victory with an absolute surrender from Nazi Germany, Arthur Ramshaw was a long way from his home in Nokomis, Saskatchewan.

“We were all lined up to go into Germany and they said war is over at 9 and it was nice to feel that,” he said, remembering the relief he felt. “I can’t describe it but just knowing I don’t have to go up on the front anymore.”

Ramshaw landed at Juno Beach in Normandy on July 12, 1944 – one month after D-Day.

“That evening they asked for 30 volunteers to go in the trenches and I went,” he said.

He remembers asking someone where his co-driver was and that’s when he was told he had been taken prisoner the day before. He still wonders why he wasn’t in that group taken prisoner, but he didn’t have time to think back then because he had to get to the trenches to relieve French soldiers who had been there for a week.

“That trench warfare was something else,” he said, recalling the sites and the smell. “There was 30 head of milk cows that had all been killed by shell fire (and had) been laying there for two weeks.”

He says the stench was so bad even the pilots flying above could smell it. The young farm boy from Saskatchewan saw a lot more death in those days.

“There were all kinds of German paratroopers, young fellas. We had to bury quite a few of them,” Ramshaw said quietly.

His regiment screened the advance of the Allied troops across Europe. He was on the very front lines driving light armoured vehicles sometimes 25 miles ahead of the army.

“When you’re way out by yourself in the lead armoured car there was five of you and it was hard on the nerves,” Ramshaw explained.

It was a precarious position and two of the vehicles he drove were hit by enemy fire. Both times he made it out. The second time was shortly before the end of the war. He was crossing a bridge.

“I knew there was a gun on the other side and they should have known. But I (saw) the dirt kind of move so I wheeled it over and bailed out and the bridge blew up. If I had been on the bridge when it blew up I probably would have drowned in the river because how are you going to get out of an armoured car?”

Ramshaw simply laughs as he recalls feeling annoyed that he had left his clean underwear and cigarettes in the burning vehicle.

James Bennet, 1st Batallion of the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment

James Bennet of Yorkton enlisted with the army in 1942. Earlier in the war, he was part of a joint operation between Canadian and American troops on the Aleutian Islands. In July 1944, he shipped over to England to serve in France, the Netherlands and Germany.

For Bennett, one day stands out clearly in his memory of the war. He was on the border between the Netherlands and Germany in 1945.

“I got into a fight with a flame thrower that morning. One of our sergeants got burned up with a flame thrower and then I helped put the fire out on another guy that was burning,” Bennett said.

It was the same day, just a few weeks before the war ended, that he was wounded.

“I got wounded out on the road. A friend of mine picked me up or I’d still be there,” he said.

On May 8, 1945, Bennett missed out on the celebrations of Victory in Europe. He was in the hospital in England when he heard the news.

“I heard the news yes, but I was in the hospital and it was a couple of months before I got out on the street but I was just a kid then,” he said.

Bennett says he never expected to be awarded a medal from France for his service in the war.

“The way people treat us now, I never expected that when I went into the war,” he said.

For the next generation, Bennett hopes there is never another war quite like that one.

“It’s something you never forget. As I long as I live, there isn’t a day in my life that I haven’t thought about that war,” he said. “It leaves a scar on you.”

“I’m not sorry I went to war, I’d do it again.”

Howard Leyton-Brown, RAF Pilot for Bomber Command

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Howard Leyton-Brown enlisted at the beginning of the war and trained as a pilot for the Royal Air Force.  He spent two years as a flight instructor in Estevan before shipping over to England where he joined Bomber Command with the Lancasters 576 Squadron. He moved to Regina after the war in 1952.

“Some people talk almost in an apologetic way about it. I don’t. I thought we had a job to do and we had to do it well if we were going to survive,” he said. “I was one of the fortunate few.”

Leyton-Brown was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying a tour of 37 missions over France, Germany and Holland.

“There were two squadrons on the same station and 21 crews in each squadron,” he explained. “My crew and I were only the second of the 42 to survive. So the losses were horrendous.”

He understands the devastation caused by those bombs, but says they were necessary to survive. Flying so high above the invasion, his memories of the campaign are very different from what soldiers saw on the ground.  

“I remember one of my raids on Calais. Usually in Bomber Command, we were bombing at something like 15,000 feet but for this raid we had to bomb at 2,000 and as we flew over, we saw German soldiers shooting at us. That was the most personal that it got for me,” Leyton-Brown explained.

On another mission, he remembers flying behind a Halifax bomber and watching as the pilot opened the doors to release the bombs.

“At that precise moment he exploded. So he was hit by anti-aircraft fire and we flew through all the debris,” Leyton-Brown recalled.

There were 55,573 young men who died while flying with Bomber Command during the Second World War.

After 70 years, Leyton-Brown sees the wars Canadians are still fighting in around the world and he wonders if there will ever truly be peace. But he hopes that the men and women who serve in Canada’s Armed Forces around the world right will perhaps get a thank you someday – even if it takes decades for peace to come.

panews@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AdrianaC_JME