War Stories

Introduction During my recent visit to Normandy, I traced the path of my Uncle Les Allen, a Corporal in the Mortar Platoon of the Royal Regiment of Canada. They landed on Juno Beach a month after D-Day and fought their way south in several operations leading up to Operation Tractable 8-10 Aug 1944. Personal History Leslie Orllian Allen was born on 07 December 1922 in Kingsville, ON, to Orillian Allen and Mary Alice Rawson, the sixth of eleven children. The last two children w

Introduction During my previous trips to Normandy, I had visited all of the D-Day beaches except Sword Beach, and I wanted to correct that oversight. Sword is the easternmost beach and probably the least explored. The US beaches of Omaha and Utah have plenty of visitors because of the US Marketing Machine, Gold Beach has the Mulberry Harbour and Juno Beach is the Canadian Landing zone. A ferry from the UK lands at Ouistreham, but most British Visitors usually head straight pa

Introduction I had visited Normandy several times, so this time, I concentrated on major German Defensive installations along the Normandy coast that I had not previously seen. I also threw in the British Normandy memorial. They have a seasonal display called Standing with Giants and this was my first chance to visit while the display was present. British Normandy Memorial The Memorial Surprisingly, until recently there was no British Memorial in Normandy. On the 75th Anniver