Month: June 2025

Canadians took part in many hard struggles to help the Allies to victory during the Second World War. D-Day and the Battle of Normandy was one of the best-known chapters of the entire conflict and our service members would play an important role in this pivotal campaign.

Destroyers and supporting craft of the Royal Canadian Navy shelled German positions onshore and cleared sea mines in the approaches to the French beaches. Many Royal Canadian Air Force planes were among the some 4,000 Allied bombers and 3,700 fighters / fighter bombers that relentlessly struck at shoreline defences, inland targets and enemy squadrons that day.

More than 450 members of the 1^st Canadian Parachute Battalion jumped inland before dawn on June 6 and were the first of our soldiers to engage the enemy on D-Day. A few hours later, some 14,000 Canadian troops from the 3^rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 2^nd Canadian Armoured Brigade—composed of military units from coast to coast—would begin to come ashore at Juno Beach. Their mission was to brave heavy fire to establish a foothold along an eight-kilometre stretch of coastline fronting the villages of Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, Bernières-sur-Mer, Courseulles-sur-Mer, and Graye-sur-Mer. Our soldiers would then push inland towards the city of Caen, an important communications and transport centre.

Victory in the Battle of Normandy came at a terrible cost. The Canadians suffered the highest casualties of any divisions in the British Army Group during the campaign. Some 359 Canadian soldiers were killed on D-Day alone, and a total of more than 5,000 of our men would die during the two-and-a-half-months of fighting in Normandy. Most of these fallen heroes lie buried in France in the beautiful Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery and the Bretteville-sur-Laize Canadian War Cemetery. Over 13,000 more of our soldiers were wounded in Normandy, with many suffering injuries to body and mind that they would carry for the rest of their lives.

Canada’s impressive efforts in the Second World War remain a point of great national pride, even many decades later. The brave Canadians who came ashore on D-Day and saw action in the Battle of Normandy were among the more than one million men and women from our country who served in the cause of peace and freedom during the conflict. Sadly, over 45,000 of them would lose their lives.

Read the full account at Veterans Canada

Image credits: Library and Archives Canada