WW II

On this day in 1944, Sgt Joseph Abel Boudreau, 4^th Fd Coy, Spr George Edgar Parker, 1st Fd Coy, and Sgt Hugh Winslow Shiers, 1st Fd Coy, were each awarded the Military Medal in separate instances for courage under fire while completing route preparation tasks leading to the assault on the Hitler Line.

On this day in 1941, No. 2 Canadian Tunnelling Company, RCE, arrived in Gibraltar to take over extending the defences of the island, absorbing elements of No. 1 Canadian Tunnelling Company, RCE.

By LCol Don Chipman, CD (Ret'd)

Background

We often forget that the Battle of Normandy was more than the D-Day landing.  Until the Canadian and US Armies closed the Falaise Gap on 21 August, the Normandy Battle raged at a pace often compared to that of Passchendaele in the First World War.  At its peak, over one million Allied soldiers were engaged suffering over 209,000 Allied casualties. Of these, nearly 55,000 soldiers and airmen were killed.

The stories of the 3^rd Canadian Infantry Division's assault on Juno Beach on 6 June 1944 have been told many times and in many ways. This page will not attempt to re-tell those stories.  It will simply set the scene and list members of the Royal Canadian Engineers who were decorated for gallantry that day.

Background

Background

The Rock of Gibraltar is the key to the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. Thrusting 1300 feet above the Spanish plain on the Bay of Algeciras, the Rock of Gibraltar has been a great British fortress and an important defensive outpost since its acquisition in 1704. Through the years the Royal Engineers had excavated tunnels and galleries in the rock for defensive purposes.

During the First World War, there was an “underground war” fought below the trenches all along the Western Front. This was very much an Engineer War fought in the tunnels of both sides. On the Canadian front, the tunnelling tasks fell primarily to the Tunnelling Companies, Canadian Engineers.

Canada had provided overseas railway troops for the Great War and anticipated that a similar request would come from Great Britain for WW II. Such a request was delayed because of the fall of France but Canada continued the planning process. Eventually the request came and Canada mobilized No 1 Railway Operating Group, Royal Canadian Engineers on 19 March 1943. Comprising two railway operating companies and a railway workshop company, the unit was manned mainly from employees of the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the British Government had determined that it needed facilities outside the United Kingdom for the training of large numbers of aircrew for the Royal Air Force. Canada, with its large land areas and clear weather conditions was considered to be an ideal location. With the outbreak of war in September 1939, the decision was made among the Allies to make Canada the location for much of the British Commonwealth aircrew training.