Front Lines

Remembering the chaos of liberated Europe

Pierre Gauthier landed on D-Day with his Régiment de la Chaudière and fought through France, Belgium and into the Netherlands before a second wound ended his war.

His regiment lost 58 men killed on June 6, 1944, and 248 before the fighting ended 11 months later, but among the most unsettling images that remain burned in the veteran’s mind are those of the people they had liberated turning on each other and on those who had defeated them four or five years earlier...

There’s no accounting for the missing

The Second World War set a new standard for disappearances. Unprecedented millions simply vanished during the maelstrom in Europe and the Far East, many under genocidal conquests by Japanese forces in China and Nazis on the continent.

The German penchant for detail and meticulous record-keeping answered the questions of many who suspected Jewish and other relatives had been shuttled off to concentration camps, only to die by gas or gun...

War inside of war

The end of the Second World War in Europe led to celebrations in Allied cities the world over, but for many Europeans devastated by tragedy and loss over six long years of conflict, the continent must have seemed a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It was no place for celebration.

The cost of fascism’s march across Europe and subsequent occupations was exacted on non-combatants more than anyone. Fewer than 30 per cent of the 85 million people killed during the war were military, and the vast majority were citizens of Allied countries—
primarily the Soviet Union and China...

German U-boat crews abandon plans to scuttle; surrender instead

It was a cloudy afternoon on May 10, 1945, when four Canadian navy ships intercepted U-889 some 250 kilometres southeast of Cape Race, Nfld. The patrol aircraft that discovered the steaming German submarine circled overhead.

The war had been over less than a week and all German U-boats had been ordered to cease offensive operations, even before the surrender was formalized...

Coffee: The soldier’s drink of ‘choice and remembrance’

“I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

 

When times are tough and you’re far from home, it’s often the little things that mean the most. You’d be hard-pressed to find a soldier who wouldn’t put coffee near the top of that list....

Capture of 22-metre transatlantic narco-sub marks new era in war on drugs

Spanish authorities recently captured a 22-metre submarine after its three crewmen transported US$121-million worth of cocaine 7,700 kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean from Colombia, then scuttled it and ran.

It’s the biggest narcotics submarine ever found, and the first confirmed to have transported drugs from the Americas to Europe, signalling what experts have characterized as a new era in the distribution of illicit drugs...

Inside Afghanistan: Remember the Afghan translator

The night letters started arriving at his parents’ home in Afghanistan’s Helmand province soon after Ahmad Sajad Kazimi took a job translating for Canadian and other NATO forces fighting the war on terror.

“Tell your son to quit his job and stop working for coalition forces,” one said. “Otherwise we kill your son because he is co-operating with the Infidels!”...

Inside Afghanistan | Life and art of the barter

Over the course of three Canadian army tours in their parched and war-ravaged homeland, Alex Watson came to know and respect the long-suffering Afghan people for their courage, resilience, devotion and unfailing courtesy.

As a CiMiC (civilian-military co-operation) officer and later as a company commander attached to an Afghan National Army battalion, Watson became intimately acquainted with the citizens and culture Canadian troops were sent to protect...

The Magnificent 11

They are among the most iconic images of the Second World War—blurred, grainy and, the best of them, as stirring and in-the-moment as any battlefield photographs ever taken.

There are only 11 pictures—and nine surviving negatives—from that early morning of Tuesday, June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the D-Day landings, the one depicted in the movie Saving Private Ryan. But two of Hungarian photojournalist Robert Capa’s images, taken for the weekly Life magazine, stand out...

Christmas at war: Sent to Korea by mistake

James Victor (Vic) Johnson was a 25-year-old second lieutenant still in training at the Royal Canadian School of Military Engineering in Chilliwack, B.C., when he was mistakenly tagged to go off to war just before Christmas 1951.

The Eston, Sask., native had been in no rush to get to the front, but there were two Second Lieutenant Johnsons in training at the time and the other one, who had served several years and wanted a field assignment, had expressed his desire to go...