Although it was a long time ago, Dick Bailey said he will always remember June 6, 1944.
Bailey, a Parksville resident since 1975, served in the Second World War. Now 97 years old, Bailey said he was about 22 years old when he enlisted. Bailey said he served with the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment.
“The only date I remember about that war was
June 6 when we landed in France,” Bailey said.
He said he remembers landing at about 10 a.m. with the tank on Juno Beach on D-Day.
“When we landed, the shore was loaded with dead Canadian soldiers on the shore. The airforce got rid of the guns that were killing us,” Bailey said.
Bailey said he was there for about a week before being transferred to a Sherman tank. From there, Bailey said he went through France, Belgium and Holland.
“I got as far as about 10 miles into Germany,” he said.
It was in February of 1945 that Bailey said he was wounded.
“This was about 4 o’clock in the morning, we drove into a big shell hole and I got out of the tank and just as my feet hit the ground, a shell hit the top of the tank where I would have been. It killed the crew and all I got was a wounded foot,” Bailey said.
“I was lucky by about seconds. If I was in the tank, I wouldn’t be here.”
But it wasn’t until about midnight, about 20 hours later, that Bailey made it to a hospital in Belgium. He said he spent a few months in the hospital.
While he was in the hospital, Bailey said he contracted scarlet fever and had to stay longer.
“By the time I got through the wound, while I was in the hospital I got scarlet fever, and by the time I got out of there, the war was over,” he said.
After the war, Bailey said he went back to France a couple of times, but it was “just ordinary.”
“I don’t suppose many people knew why I was there or what Juno Beach was like,” he said.
See the rest of The NEWS special Remembrance Day section in our e-edition.
