D-Day Approach

What they did, they put a high wall with tarpaulin so nobody could see what was going on behind. All the tanks were lining up into the LTC. It was all LTC. We loaded up. We drove up. It was quite a funny thing about driving a tank. Once you go up a ramp, you can’t see nothing but the sky until it drops. So there’s always somebody in the front of you to tell you where you are. You know, you got to do this, see, to turn. And your guys... otherwise, for awhile you can’t see. But anyway, we loaded all these things. And this was the real thing. We didn’t know that and we took off. We rode around for about a couple of days, the English Channel, then they took us out for a shower, and the last rest actually. We only knew where we were going about a day before they issued French money. And the French money was a French flag, just a little square thing. Kind of a phony stuff, but in case you had to buy something, it was valuable. But anyway, we got these, now we knew. But what I want to tell you about, we were on the boat, on the ship, whatever, the LTC, for about five days. Sixth day, about three o’clock in the morning, we start firing. The front gun, which was mine... we had four guns actually, on this thing. There was four guns and there was the first two, two behind me. And our gun start firing. The orders came down and I forget, it was black, it was dark because it was night, so I don’t know. I figure it must have been about 3:30 at night. I never... and they fired on the beach until we could see the beach. And then they halted the fire because they was too low, like, you know, the nose was too low. But now there’s another thing. You’re firing a gun on the water, on the rough water. That is tricky. They would... Now, I was not a gunner, but they trained the gunner for that. You can only pull the trigger at a certain time. The sight had a little bubble, they called. When the two bubble comes together that’s when you pull the trigger.

Mr. Ducharme describes getting ready for D-Day and taking part in the pre-landing bombardment.

Paul Ducharme

Paul Ducharme was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1919. His family moved to Lorraine, Ontario where his father had a successful career with the Abitibi lumber company. Mr. Ducharme left home, penniless, at the age of thirteen. In the years leading up to his enlistment, he was employed as a trapper, a guide, a male poster model, and a mushroom picker. He enlisted in Ontario and volunteered for the new 19th Self-propelled Artillery Regiment being formed in Borden, Ontario. After shipping overseas on the Queen Mary, Mr. Ducharme took part in the D-Day invasion, landing at Juno Beach. He saw further action in France, Belgium and Holland. He was wounded by shrapnel in Holland and sent back to England. After leaving the service, Mr. Ducharme operated an auto body shop for 40 years.