PW exhibit marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day
It has been 80 years since soldiers waded ashore on the beaches of Normandy France in the early morning hours of June 6. D-Day was the first day of what still is the largest seaborne invasion in history.
The Plympton-Wyoming Museum in Camlachie has been putting together a display commemorating the anniversary of the battle since last fall, said Don Poland, chair of the museum’s military committee. The D-Day exhibit comes alive in the museum’s military room, recounting the pivotal battle in the Second World War.
Nearly 160,000 allied troops landed at five beaches along an 80 kilometre stretch of beach to begin the liberation of France and Western Europe after a four year occupation by Nazi Germany.
And there is a local connection to the battle with a notable distinction. The First Hussars, based in London and has a squadron in Sarnia, was in the thick of battle - the allied troop with the deepest penetration on D-Day. The second troop of the First Hussars were the only Allied unit which landed on Juno Beach to reach its D-Day objective of the Caen-Bayeax Highway by the end of June 6. In fact the unit had to pull back as they were too far ahead of the front lines with too few men to hold the position.
The museum will be officially launching the exhibit on June 8 and Poland hopes to have representatives of the First Hussars attend, in a nod to the local regiment’s achievement on D-Day.
There were many other aspects to the battle which went to its success, including Operation Neptune, the naval component of Operation Overlord, involved 7,000 ships and landing craft who were not only involved in landing troops and equipment on the beach, but clearing mines in the run up to the beaches.
Deception was also involved in the days and months before the landing, said Poland, as a fake army was established in the south of England commanded by American General George Patton, across the English Channel from the Pas-de-Calais in France. German Dictator Adolph Hitler was convinced the invasion would happen at Pas-de-Calais and even after the Normandy invasion was underway it took him a long time to realize he had been fooled.
Among some of the artifacts on display is a giant wheel wrench from a Sherman Tank and German officer’s decommissioned sidearm. There is even a model of the Holy Roller, which is one of the two Canadian combat tanks to not have survived the landings on D-Day but continued right to the end of fighting in Europe in the spring of 1945. The Holy Roller sits in Victoria Park in London and when the tank went through a restoration in 2022, scrap metal was taken from the original tank, melted down and made into a model, said Poland. It weighs 25 pounds.
The exhibit can be seen at the Plympton-Wyoming Museum which is open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Independent
