Stagg Editorial- June 1994

June 6 of this year will be the 50th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy. This marks the moment when Allied troops were able to establish a beachhead in continental Europe on their way to defeating the Germans and putting a stop to the fascist atrocities of Adolf Hitler's Germany.

The Downhomer's Editorial Committee (Ron Young, Bruce Roberts, and Barry Stagg) are all post war citizens of Canada. In fact, only Ron Young, greybeard that he is, can lay claim to even an infancy lived during the days of World War II.

Collectively we have a great appreciation for the debt that we owe the heroic Newfoundland veterans of that war. We remember veterans of the Merchant Marine like Ralph Harvey of Boswarlos who braved the icy waters of the Atlantic and survived being torpedoed by Nazi submarines.

We remember the great role that Newfoundland and the port of St. John's played in sending convoys across the Atlantic especially in the darkest days of the war during the battle of the Atlantic when German submarines threatened the only supply link between fortress North America and Winston Churchill's heroic Britain.

George (Tommy) Anderson of Cape Ray is a surviving casualty of Canada's noble effort at peacekeeping in the Balkans. When he lost his legs to a land mine in the savage guerilla fighting in what used to be Yugoslavia he wrote, in his own blood, another chapter in the brave history of Canada's fighting forces. He too is now a bloodied Canadian veteran.

We remember our veterans who are now old and in need of our support in many ways. We salute them and we take our lessons from them, lessons learned in the terrible killings fields of Europe and the treacherous graveyards of the Atlantic Ocean.

We remember these veterans as ordinary citizens who rose to the occasion and fought and were willing to give their lives for their country and for the ideals of democracy and freedom and for deliverance from the murderous tyranny of Adolf Hitler.

We salute them and their fallen comrades as the very foundation of this strong and worthwhile country we know as Canada.

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