Description
Mr. MacLeod describes the ease of landing in Normandy thirty days after the invasion, and not seeing any substantial consequences of war until he reached Carpiquet Airport.
Malcolm MacLeod
Malcolm MacLeod was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on March 21, 1923, and was one of three children. Despite his father being a rural school teacher, he had to complete grade twelve via correspondence. Mr. MacLeod enlisted in the army rather than the air force in the spring of 1943, and the army performed hernia surgery which he couldn't personally afford. He was quickly sent overseas to reinforce post D-Day efforts in France, joining the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders. Mr. MacLeod's war service ended near Antwerp, Belgium when his leg was badly fractured during a shelling.
Transcript
We went down in trucks and we were put right straight onto small ships, small boats and went over and we went across D +30, 30 days after D-Day, went up to the same beach. It was quite peaceful, there was all sorts of activity. People were going and coming, but the small ships were pulling in and I don’t even think we got our feet wet. I think we were on sort of a walkway that we could climb down off the, off the front of the landing craft and go up the beach and that was it, yeah. No problems there at all and went in, marched in, oh, three or four or five miles I guess before we made camp again. And then we were on the airport, we were on the outskirts of an airport, Carpiquet, as I remember where there was. What I remember there, the big guns from the ships, big shells going over just like a train and, of course, lots of air craft and firing, cannon firing all over the place, but the thing that really strikes you is all the dead animals in the fields, the cattle and horses, cattle mainly, yeah, but then you knew it was really, it was war then.