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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-06-16, Page 19THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2005. PAGE 19 Remembering the beaches of Normandy No ordinary boy Blyth’s Stewart Ament was one of many ‘ordinary’ Canadian boys who stormed the beaches of Normandy June 6- 11. He enlisted at the age of 22. By Rev. Eugen Bannerman Special to The Citizen If you ask teens today what D-Day means to them, they are most likely to draw a blank. “I don’t know. . . Something about war?” The war that today’s teens have on their minds is “Bush’s war,” the war in Iraq. Not the Second World War taught now only in history classes. Unless you happen to be an exchange student in France. Rightly so. More than six decades and two generations separate the landing at Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944, from the American invasion of Iraq. Yet for Canadians who were part of the D-Day invasion, it is not a time they will ever forget. One of those veterans is Blyth resident, Stewart Ament. (Blyth has another D-Day veteran, Russell Cook, and a WWII veteran, Ralph McCrae, who served on other fronts during the war.) I recently talked to Stewart Ament about those “long gone” days. BIRTHDAY Stewart Ament was born in Wallace Twp. near Listowel on Oct. 9, 1920. “It snowed all day on the day I was born,” he said his mother told him. Ament remembers coming home from school on his ninth birthday in his bare feet. “There was snow on the ground. Mother put blankets around our feet to warm them up. We were hard up in those days. Everybody went to school in bare feet in the summer time.” Ament never had the chance to go to high school. Money was scarce and he had to work. For four years before enlisting in 1942, Ament was employed by J. C. Stolz near Auburn. ENLISTING Like many other Huron County men, Ament enlisted in the armed services in 1942 in Kitchener. The young men and women who enlisted came from the farming communities, small towns, the factories, and the inner cities all across Canada. These ordinary young Canadians, only half of whom had completed high school, have been called by historians, “the true citizen soldiers of Word War II.” These “citizen soldiers” spearheaded the Allied invasion of Europe. Stewart Ament was among them. Ament volunteered for the Armed Service Corps, the transport division of the Canadian army. Ament had always wanted to drive a truck, and this gave him the opportunity to learn. He was sent to England for military training. “Mother nearly went crazy when she heard I was going overseas. She figured I would never return home again,” Ament said. D-DAY Two years after arriving in England, Ament was part of the Allied invasion of Normandy, France. It was the greatest invasion in the history of war, and marked the beginning of the end of Hitler’s domination of Europe. The entire Allied invasion lasted from June 6 to June 11, 1944, at the end of which 326,000 troops, 54,000 vehicles, and 104,000 tons of supplies had been landed on the five beaches. Casualties were high on both sides as the Allies courageously broke through the heavily fortified “Atlantic Wall.” Ament’s convoy landed in Juno (code named) Beach on the second day of the invasion. D-DAY + 1 Ament remembers the preparations in England, and embarking in Normandy. The trucks of the Armed Service Corps lined up to board the landing barges. The exhaust pipes had been moved above the hood so they would not fill with water once they landed on the beach. Ament remembers driving onto the landing barge. He had all his belongings strapped to his back. This included his “three best friends, the rifle, the gas mask, and the steel helmet,” as well as a blanket, an extra pair of shoes, a water bottle, and mess (food) tins. And eating utensils, some of which he had brought from Kitchener. KNIFE AND FORK Ament had been issued a stainless steel knife and fork back in Kitchener. He decided to take these along with him as part of his military pack. After the war, he brought the knife and fork back with him to Canada. He continues to use them for breakfast, lunch and dinner to this day. Sixty years later. “They will still be good for another 60 years,” Ament laughed, as he showed them to me. LANDING ON JUNO BEACH Ament was inside the front cab of the truck as a “spare driver,” as the truck drove off the landing ramp and into the water, and sputtered onto the beach. “You could see the bullets splattering on the water,” he recalled. What he did not expect to see were three Canadian soldiers lying dead on the beach. “1 was sick. I didn’t eat supper that night. I thought I would be the next in line. It was a sad day, that day.” When the convoy landed on the beach, it was escorted to a field with an orchard. The roads were too heavily mined and not fit to travel on. CAMPING IN THE ORCHARD The company was ordered to camp in the orchard. “We had no place to go. We couldn’t deliver what we had. So we waited. For three weeks. Some of us slept in trenches, some in the trucks, some under the trucks, wherever you could sleep.” Some of the trucks carried petrol, some live ammunition, some supplies and rations. One truck was “the cook house.” Ament was trained to shoot a gun, but never had to use it. “We weren’t infantry.” Nor did they see action on the front lines. The supply trucks had to stay at least half a mile from the front line. The convoy travelled through France, Belgium, Holland and had reached Germany when they heard, “The War Is Over.” RETURN TO CANADA A few months later, in December 1945, Ament joined hundreds of other young Canadians and returned home on the Queen Elizabeth ship over Christmas. It apparently was such a rough passage that the captain was requested to turn the ship around, but he refused. At one point the seas were so rough, they knocked some of the lifeboats on the top deck overboard. Ament was met in London by his parents, his brother, and the Auburn United Church minister, Rev. Harold Snell. There was jubilation all around. Ament’s name was placed on the Honour Roll of the Auburn United Church with all those who had served overseas. WEDDING BELLS In the Fall of 1946, Stewart bought a farm on the 13th Line of Hullett. On June 5. 1948, he married Mildred Carter on her parents’ farm in Westfield. Stewart and Mildred farmed and raised their family on the farm until 1970, when they moved into Blyth. They joined Blyth United Church where Mildred became active in the UCW. Both of them joined and became actively involved in the Canadian Legion. Blyth Branch 420. Mildred died on June 3, 2005, two days short of her 57th wedding anniversary. “OUR GREATEST GENERATION” It has been noted by historians that the capture of Juno Beach was accomplished by very ordinary young Canadian boys. Under fire and duress, they showed exceptional Solemn occasion Members of the Blyth Legion and its Ladies Auxiliary paraded into Blyth Union Cemetery on Sunday afternoon to begin the annual Decoration Day service. Pastor Les Cook officiated. (Vicky Bremner photo) Memories remain strong Like many of his fellow veterans, Stewart Ament is now in his 80s, yet still has vivid memories of his years serving Canada in the Second World War. Ament was part of the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. His convoy landed on Juno Beach on the second day of the invasion. (Bonnie Gropp photo) courage. A very Canadian trait. I had purposefully stayed away my entire life from any serious discussion of the Second World War. War seems such an ugly waste of human life. But talking to Stewart Ament and reading up on the Juno Beach invasion made me realize we must honour those veterans who fought for our freedom, and are willing to share their stories. Their incremental success led to the liberation of Europe and the ultimate defeat of the Nazi warlords. Granatstein, Canada’s war historian, notes that Canadians need to know we owe the freedom we take for granted to those young Canadians. “Our greatest generation? Absolutely,” says Granatstein.