REMEMBERING BRAVE BRACEBRIDGE SOLDIER WHO LANDED ON JUNO BEACH 80 YEARS AGO TODAY IN D-DAY INVASION

Lois Cooper | MuskokaTODAY.com

D-Day June 6, 1944:

Today, as I listen to the BBC broadcast of the weather report that delayed D-Day from June 5th to the 6th, I remember Uncle Ernie Kennedy.

He was on that landing 80 years ago today — on the shores of Normandy.

And although he did not talk of the war, over the years of our friendship he occasionally casually offered snippets.

Ernie Kennedy, of Bracebridge, landed D-Day on Juno Beach in Normandy, 80 years ago today, with his Canadian Forces. He trooped across France and into Belgium carrying a radio on his back.

I remember a comment of the actual landing and how the men experienced the long wait to be able to disembark and wade through water up to their armpits to get ashore.

Of the experience of trudging through the mud in France with the radio weighing about 50 pounds strapped to his back.

He trooped across France and into Belgium carrying the radio on his back.

I recently saw one such radio displayed.

Imagine the determination it would take to carry on.

Of the bad food rations, he said the troops were fed rations left over from the First World War. He said the biscuits were so hard they could not be eaten, so the men put them into the mud one night and the next morning the biscuits remained hard and dry. They had not soaked up any muddy water.

In Brussels he bought a crucifix from an old woman in the street. She had made the cross out of medallions made of little wooden match boxes. She needed the money and Uncle Ernie sent the crucifix back to Canada to his wife, Verna, in Bracebridge, Ontario.

It hangs in my sitting room as a constant reminder of the sacrifices made by many during WW II.

Sacrifices that brought my generation the freedoms we have enjoyed all our lives.

Long may we remember.

The Canadian radio operator bought this crucifix — made from wooden match boxes — from an old woman in Belgium who needed the money. He sent it to his wife, Verna, in Bracebridge. Lois Cooper keeps it as reminder of the “sacrifices that brought my generation the freedoms we have enjoyed all our lives.”

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