{"id":4100,"date":"2015-11-09T14:53:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T21:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steveschwarz.com\/?p=4100"},"modified":"2019-02-14T21:36:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T04:36:12","slug":"my-piece-of-remembrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/?p=4100","title":{"rendered":"My piece of Remembrance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seventy one years after that fateful day it is hard to imagine what happened here.<\/p>\n

To my left, there is a large house-size concrete box, it is tipped almost on it\u2019s side.
\nBehind it is a building with several Canadian flags, and the village of Courseulles-sur-Mer.
\nIn the village, there is a small monument, and a World War 2 vintage Canadian Tank.<\/p>\n

Years ago this beach was called called Juno Beach.<\/p>\n

I walk across the beach towards the ocean.
\nThe sand is soft, with patterns sculpted by the tides.
\nI walk quietly over the sand, the silence broken only by the
\nsoft crunching of sea shells under by shoes.<\/p>\n

Seventy one years ago, there were many, many more sounds on this beach.
\nSounds of gunfire, sounds of explosions, sounds of pain and  the silent sound of death.<\/p>\n

On that fateful day seventy one years ago,
\nCanadian Soldiers disembarked from small thinly armoured ships.<\/p>\n

There was no shelter, no place to hide.
\nThe Germans were well prepared and well defended, with large cannons inside the concrete boxes, machine guns, minefields and beach obstacles.<\/p>\n

Many of these small ships were blown to pieces by the German guns
\nthat were inside the large concrete boxes.
\nOther ships were blown to pieces after hitting explosives buried in the sand.
\nSome ships carried armoured tanks with canons to destroy the german guns.
\nMany of these tanks were destroyed by the German guns.<\/p>\n

For the Canadian Soldiers that arrived on that beach on June 6th, 1944 –
\nIt was Hell.<\/p>\n

This is a piece of twisted and rusted metal that I found on the beach.
\nWas it a piece of one of those small thinly armoured ships that brought the Canadian Soldiers to the beach?, or was it a piece of a destroyed German cannon ?
\nWithout specialized testing of its metallic properties – we will never know.<\/p>\n

The jagged edges and bent shape of this small piece of metal are a silent witness of what happened on that fateful day seventy one years ago.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of Canadian Soldiers died on this very beach, on fateful day, and hundreds more before the war was over.<\/p>\n

\"SHSB5053\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This small piece of rusty jagged metal is my piece of Remembrance of all those Canadian soldiers that came ashore on this very beach and also all the other soldiers, sailors and airmen from from Canada, United Kingdom, US, Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland that participated in D-day and liberated Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seventy one years after that fateful day it is hard to imagine what happened here. To my left, there is a large house-size concrete box, it is tipped almost on it\u2019s side. Behind it is a building with several Canadian flags, and the village of Courseulles-sur-Mer. In the village, there is a small monument, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[1208,879,1207,546],"class_list":["post-4100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-the-universe","tag-canadian-soldiers","tag-d-day","tag-rememberance","tag-rememberance-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4382,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4100\/revisions\/4382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steveschwarz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}