(I'll throw in some color commentary that's not really relevant)The Priest that baptized (clearly I'm not a practicing catholic) me was second wave Juno Beach and wrote a book about it, The Scarlet Dawn. Mom knew him but never spoke of the war with him. A friend of mine growing up had an older father, he was in Hong Kong when it was run over by Japan. I was a punk ass teenager, he wasn't about to share his horror stories with me but I do remember if we ever were anywhere and anyone Asian was there he'd leave. He would drive his son and I to the mall and sometimes his son would come to me and say 'c'mon, we are leaving' He'd never say anything, it just reminded him of being POW, his memories were as you can imagine that intense.

The story I spoke with Lemmy about started in a dive restaurant in the 80's. My hometown was front and center of the landings at Juno which had pretty much identical casualty rates as Omaha beach. Canadians will see this and site % to show that Juno was worse, Americans will spout % saying Omaha was more dangerous but at the end of the day whoever's numbers you believe they were very close. Omaha however was bad because A) the bombers missed completely and B) essentially none of the armor made it to shore. Had the bombers and tanks did their job properly Omaha wouldn't have been the mess it was but Juno was going to be Juno no matter what. So the vets I'm talking to gave me a lesson in being poor and small. I don't remember the words exactly but I do remember the message. Imagine it's Jan 1944 and you and a bunch of generals are planning the landing beaches, Normandy has already been picked. The Americans are rightly in charge as they are putting the most bodies into the fight. They don't choose the landing they know is going to be the worst after all if 4 of 5 beaches succeed and one fails nobody wants to be remembered in history as the general that failed. They take a pass on the tough beach and give it to the Brits. The Brits are humans as well and give it to their little sister Canada. Canadians are humans as well so they knew what they were in for, they don't want any of their famous regiments to be the one that failed so they ponder Newfoundland. After that fateful one hour on July 1 1916 you couldn't in good conscious put Newfoundland through another mauling like that only 20 years later (yes Newfoundland was not part of Canada at the time). Who in Canada was the poorest, least connected regiment, the regiment that nobody in power would be shamed if things went to shit on D-Day? Why that'd be the North Shore Regiment of New Brunswick. If the landing failed it'd be the fault of those poor redneck fucks in NB. Those 2 guys viewed the biggest event in their lives as them having been political pawns. They thought it was criminal that they had bolt action rifles during the landing and not something like the semi-automatic Garand that the Americans had. I'm not enough of a history buff to know what rifle they did have, and although these guys were generally happy with it (as I remember) they thought at least during the landing and next couple of days they should have had Garands.