Portsmouth, England, the landing at
Juno Beach and the eleven-month
long trek that ended in Germany
in May 1945.
“Everywhere you see those big X’s
there was a major battle,” he says,
pointing to Courseulles, Bény-Sur-
Mer, Caen, Falaise. “Falaise Gap,
that was a bad one where our troops
got bombed by our own aircraft. We
lost almost a whole battery there —
killed and wounded — all on the
14th of August. It took us over two
months to get there and that was a
turning point.”
Then the 12th Field Regiment,
alongside other Canadian
Russell Kaye placed a rose on the grave of Capt. J.
regiments, moved on through
D. Dobbs in the Brettville-Sur-Laise Canadian War
France and Belgium and into
Cemetery. Although he died on D-Day, Dobbs is
Holland where they spent the
buried with his men from the 12th Field Regiment
winter near Utrecht. He recalls
who died on August 14, 1944 at the Battle of the
Falaise Pocket.
heavy fighting, as well as flooding
PHOTO:
Submitted
by son Chris Kaye
after the Germans breached the
dykes. In spring they moved into
Eleanor Dixon, before re-joining the
Germany, encountering Russian
army for 25 years, serving in Korea
troops at Aurich at war’s end.
and as a peacekeeper.
Kaye was discharged in Fredericton He and Eleanor, who passed on
in 1946, where he met and married
January 14, 2017, were blessed with
five children. The oldest, Jimmy
was killed in a truck accident in
British Columbia. Living in the
local area are daughters, Linda
Bonnie and Susan, and son, Chris
who served in the military for
30 years as Regimental Sergeant
Major, with two tours of duty in
Afghanistan and one in Bulgaria.
“I worried about him and that
was when I realized how much
my mother worried,” Kaye says,
noting that his two older brothers,
Aura and Arnold, also served, with
Arnold wounded in Italy.
“I’m glad I went back,” he says
of his recent trip to France,
sponsored by the Wounded Warriors
Group. He visited war cemeteries
and attended 75th anniversary
Russell Kaye returned to Juno Beach, Normandy, ceremonies at Juno Beach as the
France on June 6, 2019, for the first time since he only still-living member of the 12th
went ashore there 75 years ago as a gunner with the
12th Field Artillery as part of the D-Day invasion. Field Artillery.
He’s reflective when asked what he
would say to young people. “Don’t
start wars. War is stupid when you
think about it. It’s a stupid thing
that to solve a problem you have to
kill people. I don’t know if they’ve
learned anything or not.
“When I went to that cemetery in
Dieppe … there are over 1000
buried there … I stood looking at
those graves and I said to myself,
all those kids, 19, 20, 21 years old
… there were thousands of them.
What a waste! Here’s all those
families that never were. I said I’m
a lucky dog. I got to have a family
and they didn’t and that is so stupid.
But it happened. We did what we
had to do and there was no other
answer at the time.”
...le français suit à la page 8
PHOTO: Submitted by son Chris Kaye
FALL/AUTOMNE 2019 PrimeTime
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