In the front row of a service in Moncton to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, you’ll find 99-year-old George Ferguson.
The left breast of his blazer is decorated with medals, but he doesn’t call himself a hero.
“The heroes are still over there, as far as I’m concerned,†Ferguson said, referring to the Allied soldiers who died during the battle.
“We waited for the first gang to go, and then the channel got so rough they couldn’t come back to pick us up,†said Ferguson, who was with the Royal Regiment of Canada and also served with the 8th Reconnaissance Regiment.
He was 19-years-old when he landed in Normandy. The 99-year-old from Orillia, Ont. remembers being brought across the English Channel on an American ship. By then, the beach had been cleared.
“We had to scoot across quite a few beaches before we got to where our guys were,†he said.
“I know we were close to the battle because we only travelled at night," he recalled. "If you're on the road in the daytime, you’re sitting ducks.â€
Ferguson and his fellow troops were sent in to relieve the soldiers who had been on the front lines.
At the Odon River, the Germans were on one side and the Allied troops were on the other.
WWII veteran George Ferguson, 99, poses for an interview (right). This composite image also shows Ferguson in an official military portrait (left). (Â鶹´«Ã½)
“We were ... bombed night and day, night and day, night and day,†Ferguson said.
On his 20th birthday, he was hit by an enemy shell while marching in Caen, France.
It was 2 a.m. He and others were moving at night in a line, six feet apart. As they silently walked along a road that ran through what seemed like a valley, a gasoline truck bringing in fuel for tanks got hit.
“It lit the place up,†he said.
Their position was exposed. Ferguson said that’s when the Germans started bombing his line.
“They dropped a bomb at the very front of the line and another at the back where I was, or a couple back there, and then they put a whole bunch in between,†he said.
Ferguson was hit and brought to a field hospital tent.
“They said 34 of you never made it,†he said. “They were all killed right then and there.â€
Ferguson remembers telling a nurse he wanted to sleep.
“When I woke up, they didn’t do any operation. They just took the steel out of us, stopped the bleeding, and put us into a cot,†said Ferguson. “Every one of them in there was badly hit.â€
Ferguson injured his foot, arm and leg. He would soon be brought to the General Hospital in England to recover.
Eighty years later, Ferguson reflects on the anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy and how grateful he is to hear Canadians thank him.
“They know I’ve been in a war and they come over and thank me,†he said. “And that’s the biggest thing they can do for us. To me, the people who we meet, it was worthwhile doing it.â€
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