Normandy, France - An old soldier's memories of D-Day - by Bruce Bartelett
Blake McCullough sits in his living room in Rothesay, near St.John, New Brunswick, Canada, effortlessly recalling events from 65 years ago when he was 22 and the Allies began landing troops in Normandy to take Europe back from the Nazis.The ranks of those who can remember the D-Day landing of June 6, 1944 are shrinking with each passing year. McCullough sits tall and speaks with a hearty voice, full of camaraderie, that must have served him well as a lieutenant and then a captain with the 17th Duke of York's Royal Canadian Hussars out of Montreal.When D-Day started he knew it was happening. "We were locked in, but boy the air traffic, you knew bloody well it had started. There was so much air traffic we knew this was it," he says. His troop, driving armored half-track vehicles, went ashore in France four days later. Because of the number on his vehicle he was directed into a field and, within a few hours, all the men under his command were there. "One of my sections arrived and they were all cheering in a German half-track, and I said where did you guys get that and they said: 'Well ours drowned on landing and we found this and the thing worked.' I said get rid of it, somebody is going to shoot at us, so we finally got another one."
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