Description
Mr. Chiasson recalls leaving the landing crafts and the tough time many of them endured getting to shore.
Havelyn Chiasson
Mr. Chiasson was born May 14, 1921 in Misquamicut Island, New Brunswick. He attended an English and French school while his father worked as a fisherman. When war was declared in 1939, Mr. Chiasson was recruited to the Carleton York Regiment in Bathurst and later with the North Shore Regiment, a regiment he would remain with until end of wartime. Mr. Chiasson held the position of wireless operator and found himself travelling overseas which would become a 5 ½ year experience. Mr. Chiasson was part of the D-Day and Battle of Normandy landings where he reached the beaches in St. Aubin-sur-Mer, Normandy. He carried on through to Holland. Mr. Chiasson remains very active about his service years, speaking to our youth about the importance of service to our country.
Transcript
There would be three thousand landing crafts, all going around. They were all controlled by navy trained people and looked after the motors and everything. And they tried to line up so we would all hit the beaches at the same time. We hit the beaches, our beach was St. Aubin-sur-Mer and we hit those beaches. And when the landing craft hit the beaches the ramp goes down. The navy man puts the ramp down and everybody goes out, thirty six men. And sometimes we hit those reefs and everybody went overboard with all our equipment. Some of them were drowned. Some of them were able to swim but some of the crafts hit the beach completely. Our craft hit the beach. We didn’t get too wet just about that far up. But some of them and then some of the ones on our right flank, the Chaudières and the Americans on our right flank, the British on the left. They run in, we all run in to a lot of trouble when we hit the beaches. And the Germans opened up with everything that they had and our destroyers did too and then before we landed five hundred bombers came in there and bombed the beaches, you know. And it was surprising how much, how many German pill boxes were still there.