Local historian Kevin Hicks has the stories which brings history alive from his conversations with World War II veterans and he will tell those stories at the Nutana Legion tomorrow afternoon (Sat) in honour of the 80th anniversary of D-Day June 6th.
Hick is also the principle volunteer at the Saskatoon Museum of Military Artifacts housed at the Nutana Legion, and a former British soldier. He was asked to talk about D-Day, not just the beach landings, but looking at the whole picture from different perspectives.
Hicks notes the decision to go ahead with the landing all stemmed on a weather report from the wife of a lighthouse keeper in Ireland. He wonders how odd it must have been for her to get a call from Whitehall asking what the forecast was. She was known to report the weather on the radio and had reported there was going to be a gap in the weather, so Whitehall called to double-check. Hicks says, “And this lady just goes to the barometer, taps it, reports what the barometer says and looks out the window, because she can see from southern Ireland all the way down the Atlantic there, so there is a gap in the weather. It’s a go. D-Day will go ahead.” During the Second World War some basement offices in Whitehall served as the centre of Britain’s war effort.
Hicks also points out the equipment soldiers were carrying was very heavy. He gives the example of what a paratrooper would experience, saying, “He’s carrying over a hundred pound of equipment, and when he jumps out of that airplane he’s going to go some. Fortunately part of it is his parachute so of course once that cracks, he’s got that little bit of light, but you imagine dropping into the sea up to your shoulders and you’ve got 30 to 40 pounds of kit or if you are carrying extra stuff like a light machine gun.” He adds that their uniforms were wool and not water repellent. Hicks will also be bringing up some of the artifacts from the museum so people can see how heavy they were.
The bar opens at 3:30 Saturday afternoon and the presentation is at 4. Tickets for the fundraiser for the Nutana Legion are $10.
