Editor’s note: The following article was submitted to Estevan Mercury Publications by Reg Jahn, a resident of Roche Percee. With the exception of some editing, the story is appearing in its original form. Enjoy.
All my life, I’ve been lucky. People just come up to me and start telling me their stories. Some of these stories are from and by World War 2 (WW2) veterans; they are worth repeating as we remember their sacrifices. Bear in mind that some of the stories are by our allies, the Americans. And as I didn’t ask permission to print their names, I’ve omitted names.
One day my father-in-law and I were having a cold barley-pop and he turned to me and said, “I was in the first wave to hit Omaha Beach. That was bad, but nearly as bad as the hedge rows in France.”
I’ve thought about that remark for a long time, and I wished I had asked him why. I guess it was because you see the enemy on the beach and couldn’t see them in the hedge rows. He was decorated for his actions on the beach and shot though one of the lungs in the hedge rows, and that caused him pain the rest of his life. He died fairly young, at age 59.
Omaha Beach was a landing site for D-Day on June 6, 1944. Ninety per cent of those in the first wave were casualties. It was the worst beach to land on. The second worst was Juno, the beach where the Canadians landed.
During the Roche Percee Centennial Parade in 2009, my wife Judy and I rode in the lead carriage, along with former Estevan MLA Doreen Eagles and a WW2 vet. During the course of the ride, we talked about his service in the war. He had been a tank driver during the Dieppe Raid on Aug. 19, 1942. His tank made it the furthest into the town of Dieppe, but he couldn’t get the tank turned around and was captured and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war (POW) camp.
Doreen asked how he was treated. He replied that he had been treated pretty well, but he lost weight. (If he didn’t weigh anymore than he did in 2009 he didn’t have any to lose). She then asked how his health was. He answered it was good, and he still didn’t take any medicine.
One year, some of the South Sask. Regiment vets took a tour of the Shand Power Station, and I was the charge engineer on shift and so I went down and greeted them. One of those taking the tour said he had written a book on his adventures during the war.
I asked him what the name of it was; he replied A Lifetime in a Week.
“Why that?” I asked.
His answer: “After we landed on D-Day, I was captured and the enemy put us to work digging a trench. Our planes came over and opened up, the guards took off. I crawled to the end of the trench and there was another soldier there, and I asked him, ‘Are you going?’ and he replied ‘I sure ain’t staying here.’
“It took us a week to work our way back to our lines,” the man said. “That’s why I named it A Lifetime in a Week.”
Judy and I were at the Estevan Legion one day, and one of the local vets said that during the war he had been stationed on the Aleutian Islands. They crossed the island (Kiska, I believe) only to find the Japanese had already left. It was a cold campaign.
We were camped at Mouse River Park in Tolley, N.D., and some old friends of Judy’s dropped by. They were going over to a 50th wedding anniversary and, as Judy knew the people, they asked us to join them. When we got there, we were standing next to an elderly couple and the man had one of those anchor tattoos that sailors usually get, but I couldn’t read the ship’s name, so I asked him, “Which ship did you serve on?”
His answer surprized me. “The USS Indianapolis,” he said.
I asked, “Were you on her when she went down?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Was it as bad as they say?” I asked.
“You know I was in the guard on the foot of the gang plank of the USS Missouri when the Japanese signed the surrender. The only reason I could think of for that honour was because of what had happened,” he said.
I didn’t press the question of how it was, he had switched the subject too quickly so it must have been beyond imagination.
For those who don’t know, the USS Indianapolis delivered the atomic bomb to Tinian to be dropped on Hiroshima, then continued on towards Leyte Gulf, but was torpedoed on July 30, 1945. Of the 1,196 on board, 880 survived the sinking, but only 321 came out of the water.
The rest were eaten by sharks or died of dehydration or desquamation. I can’t image what they went through.
The thing that all these people have in common is the suffering and sacrifice they endured during WW2 to ensure that we have a safe place to live in. We should never forget and remember that people are still going out and putting their lives on the line to preserve our freedoms and rights, so let us never forget and do our part by honouring them and taking time out on Nov. 11 to remember.
As an after note, there are two sides for every story, and the common foot soldier on the other side is human, too, so here’s a closing story.
Judy and I were taking a camping trip though B.C., and we stopped at a rest area. Judy took the dog for a walk. This man – at the time I thought he only looked to be about 70 – came over to me and said, “I once had a camper like that.”
My thoughts were, “Oh yeah, here we go, another tall story.”
Then he said, “Yeah, they took my commercial driver’s licence away, they think I’m too old.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I’m 87,” he replied.
Now this guy had a heavy German accent, so I asked him if he worked for the tourism industry. He replied that he didn’t. I asked him if he had served in the German army during WW2. He replied that he had, and had served on the Eastern front, but he had been lucky the Western Allies had captured him.
I asked him why he considered that to be lucky; his answer was if the Russians had captured him, they would have just shot him.
Instead he was sent to a POW camp in New Jersey. He had a couple of aunts living close to the camp, and they went to visit him, and after some time he was allowed to go visit them. I then asked him if he stayed in North America after the war, and he said no, they wouldn’t let him, so he had to go back to Germany.
He got married and they had two children. It took until 1956 before he got a visa to work in Canada, and then it was in McBride, B.C. At that time in the winter, if you wanted to go somewhere out of that area, you had to put your car on a flat car and ship it to Jasper, Alberta.
Well, he finally said “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting with some friends in McBride and then onto the coast to go fishing.”
As he was walking back to his car, Judy came back and said, “So what did he have to say?”
My answer was “You ain’t going to believe this.”
