Commentary Seventy-nine years ago this week, the Allies assaulted the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Their invasion marked the largest amphibious landing since the Persians under Xerxes invaded the Greek mainland in 480 B.C. Nearly 160,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers stormed five beaches of Nazi-occupied France. The plan was to liberate western…

As the orange rays from Lake Ontario’s setting sun filter through the glass windows of the tugboat’s elevated steel pilothouse, one can almost see her crew. Their faces, slightly blurred by time, are still fixed in anxious rigidity. As they pass around the binoculars, each man leans forward slightly, in a vain attempt to magnify…

A World War II veteran who parachuted into France with Allied troops on D-Day and was believed to be the last remaining member of the “Toccoa Originals” immortalized in the HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers” died on Sept. 11. Jim “Pee Wee” Martin was 101, a fitting number as he joined the 101st Airborne in 1942…

Commentary The Canadian dream of paradise surely includes a book on the dock in the dog days of summer. Or possibly on the screened-in cottage porch given the Canadian deer fly’s dream of tearing out a ragged chunk of your meat, inspiring the further Canadian dream of a dragonfly’s jaws piercing the absconding miscreant with…

Commentary At 8:00 every night, the Last Post sounds at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres, Belgium, and has without interruption since July 2, 1928. Except during the German occupation. But as soon as it ended in 1944, the ceremony resumed. Sooner, actually. On Sept. 6, 1944, Polish forces liberated that monument…

World War II veteran James Bradley celebrated his 100th birthday on Nov. 5 with local officials, fellow veterans, friends, and relatives at his Yorba Linda home in California. He shared with them his cherished memory of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. “He is one of the few World War II veterans and on behalf…

An archaeologist discovered a previously unrecorded WWII bunker—while eating fish and chips on the beach. David Etheridge noticed a concrete structure at the foot of the cliffs at Saunton Sands while on holiday in Devon. He set off to explore and realized it was part of a ruined bunker guarding the beach. Around 10,000 American…

Today, it’s a sleepy town not far from the sea, but in the wee pre-dawn hours of the morning on June 6, 1944, Sainte-Mère-Eglise was wide awake. Fires and the repeating gunshots from automatic weapons lit up the skies. Allied paratroopers dropped from above, many paying a heavy price, descending into this burning hell to…

PARIS—President Emmanuel Macron gave one of France’s highest honours on Friday to Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of the French commando unit that waded onshore on D-Day alongside allied troops to begin the liberation of Europe. Gautier, 98, rose from his wheelchair to stand, leaning on two sticks, as Macron pinned the medal on…

Commentary On June 6, 1944, the United States and its British and Canadian allies launched a long-awaited invasion of the northern European mainland, landing on five German-held beaches in Normandy. The invasion came just two days after American troops liberated Rome and nearly four years to the day after the British had fled the continent…