Belief in Churchill’s Words

And then came the big event, then came D Day. It’s what I waited for. It was pitch black out. Winston Churchill’s voice was very, very soothing. I felt assured we were going to win. I was a kid when I started listening to him. I honored him very, very, very much with that cigar in his mouth and I felt he was the strength of the west. And I listened to him speak, and I was very, very confident that we were going to come out okay. And he told us it was the beginning of the end after this and so our job was to hunt the warships that were coming in to attack our troops, our landing ships, and all that and we did that. We searched for three days, ten of us for three days and we found them. And we put every one of them out of commission, sank them and it was a very, very happy day. We went back to Plymouth and hoping we were going to celebrate. It didn’t wind up that way. The order of the day was that we get over the ship’s side and wash the ship’s side down. It really didn’t need it but that was to keep us occupied because you can imagine what teenage seaman were like.

Mr. Polowin recalls listening to Winston Churchill and the impact his words had in respect to being, “The beginning of the end.”

Alexander Polowin

Mr. Alexander Polowin was born in Lithuania in 1925. Growing up, his family endured many hardships and because of this Mr. Polowin’s father left for Canada in hopes of bringing new opportunities to their family. Life as a child for Mr. Polowin was focused and at age 8 he found himself selling product door to door in hopes of helping his family financially. At age 17 he joined the Navy, a service he knew nothing about but fondly looks back on as a very positive part of his life. Mr. Polowin fought during D-Day and the Battle of Normandy onboard the HMCS Huron. Never stepping foot on French soil, Mr. Polowin returned to France in June 2014 to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. He resides in Ottawa and shares his wartime experiences with youth accepting many invitations to speak at schools.