Student Tour Blog

Written by Brandon Glazebrook

Today we departed not-so-bright-but-plenty-early for Juno Beach to watch and participate in two D-Day ceremonies. Standing on the ground where one would argue that the foundations were laid for the Allied victory, I had the privilege of helping Julia lay a wreath on behalf of the Canadian Battlefields Foundation at the Canada House, and shortly after to witness Chance and Hannah lay our wreath in the ceremony at the Juno Beach Centre. For me, it was standing on the beach itself that struck me the most. I’ve found myself getting emotional at military and memorial ceremonies over the years, but I’ve been critical since a young age of the political messages that always seem to become inextricably tied to these occasions. Despite any abstract (and cynical?) political musings that I might have been having, however, I couldn’t get over the surreal feeling of standing on Juno Beach, the site where my own great-grandfather, Henry Allen MacDougall, fought and was wounded in 1944.

I feel that I can’t properly express my feelings about today without first talking about Dieppe the day before. Something about the transition in our trip from the First World War to the Second World War has made everything feel more salient. I’m not sure whether this is because the Second World War was simply more recent or whether it has something to less with the war’s less ambiguous origins, but walking the beaches of Dieppe and experiencing the open and vulnerable positions that Canadians were in during the invasion was hard for me to process. I was most moved by Nick’s story about Charles Merritt, the incredibly brave man who led his men over a narrow and exposed bridge, taking his helmet off and waving it while shouting “Come on over. There’s nothing to it!” to inspire others to cross. It was really the physicality of Dieppe and the sense that anyone standing in our shoes would be undoubtedly exposed to machine gun fire that stuck with me. Later in the day, at the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery, the human tragedy of Dieppe really hit me. Hannah and I seemed to be the ones to find ourselves most affected by this and while talking we realized that we had both wandered from the group to read the inscriptions on the stones on our own and cry.

I think it was the emotional day before that really let me work through my feelings at Juno Beach. A cousin of mine, Michael Greenslade, was kind enough to send me information about my great-grandfather and to make a wonderful infographic describing Harry’s movements throughout the war. Thanks to him, I’ve gotten to feel closer than ever to this immensely important man in my family who I never had the privilege to meet. PTSD was mentioned in one of the speeches at the Juno Beach Centre ceremony and I connected to this especially deeply here because of the way Harry seemingly had difficulty navigating his own feelings after the war. Without Michael’s work, we would have next to no knowledge about Harry’s time in the war because he simply did not talk about it. Thanks to the CBF and this wonderful trip, though, I was able to collect sand and water from the beach to bring back to my grandmother, Carol, and to my mother, Tanya, who both miss Harry more than I think they’ve ever been able to put into words. They will likely never make it over here themselves, and so my hope is that this tiny gesture will help them connect to a part of our family’s history that they’ve never had the opportunity to experience first-hand.

-Brandon Glazebrook (University of New Brunswick)