SOURIS - It was 50 years ago that Jimmy MacIntyre from Souris and his brother Ambrose huddled with the rest of B company in a landing craft that plied the English Channel towards Normandy. It was D-Day and Jimmy had never seen combat before.

He was a corporal and a section leader with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. When the invasion that would change the course of the Second World War finished, less than half his battalion remained.

Three miles off the French coast that morning the sky brightened and they came in range of German guns. By 6 a.m. they'd reached the beach head. The mouth of their huge craft dropped outward and the troops plunged into neck high water amid the indescribable noise and chaos of war.

Before the door opened there was fear. Afterwards there was no time for anything but making it to shore.

"It was an awful noise," MacIntyre said, remembering the crashing guns and shouting, as men waded past others who floated by. "You would see that and just keep going, " he said.

Miraculously he and Ambrose both survived the beach head. Once ashore the B company boys hitched a ride on tanks and headed inland from Beny-sur-mer. About three miles in they ran into the beginnings of the 22nd German Panzer Division that started picking them off like birds from perches. Losses were heavy when they encountered the full division.

"This division was full of Hitler Youth, and was notorious for not taking prisoners. They captured a lot of lads, and most were killed," said MacIntyre.

Ambrose was one of the fortunate ones. He was captured there, and although he lost a leg, he survived. Backgrounding the killing and dread were the beautiful days in Normandy where they moved through sunlit oat fields growing three-and-a-half-feet high. Worst of all for James MacIntyre during that invasion were the night attacks on enemy-held villages that terrorized the attackers as much as the attacked.

Streaming forward while blazing search lights shined on the village from behind them, the B company soldiers were lit up like carnival ducks by their own army.

But despite being flattened by the concussion of exploding bombs, or dodging tracer bullets so close they left burn marks, some of them survived.

Luck seemed to be with the MacIntyre boys. There were six of them all together who went to war, and all six returned. There were James and Ambrose, both corporals in the army; Chester and Roddy in the navy; John D. the air force, and Herbie in the light infantry in Italy.

"Odd how things work, isn't it... how many families lost their only son, yet all six of us came back," he said.

Some of MacIntyre's luck, was undoubtedly due to good soldiering, although he claims it was because he kept his head down and dug in.

He is probably is right...about the digging in, that is. Because he recounted the story of a replacement who was shot almost immediately after arriving at the front. He was brand new. Wasn't even wearing his tie pin yet.

"I told him, you'd better dig in good and deep," said MacIntryre. But the fellow evidently didn't dig deep enough because within five minutes he was hit. MacIntyre somehow ended up with the tie pin, and when he ran into this man in a retirement home not long ago, he gave the pin back.

"I recognized him immediately, and he had no trouble remembering that pin."

James MacIntyre came home from the war, returned to fishing and carpentry and got married. He and his wife Mary raised five girls. He passed away in March 2006.

This article, written by Nancy Willis, was published in the Charlottetown Guardian, June 4, 2004. This story originally appeared in the Guardian's June 1994 edition commemorating the 50th. anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Copyright
Waldron H. Leard