On June 6, 1944, a then-17-year-old Ed Beniston was on coastal defence outside of Plymouth, a port city in Devon, in southwest England.
The Newmarket resident, now 92, said he was performing the duties of a gunner that day, firing off double-barrel four-inch guns.
Beniston paid tribute Thursday to the significance of the day known as D-Day, along with six of his fellow Second World War veterans, all guests of honour at the opening day of the Elman W. Campbell Museum’s D-Day exhibit.
“This day means everything,” Beniston said. “But the biggest day for me is the surrender of the Japanese because I was there. I was right there at the final surrender.”
The Newmarket resident recalls being in Singapore and witnessing the Japanese officers who took off their swords and laid them in a pile on the ground.
“Our ship, the H.M.S. Bulolo, went into the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and we took off 500 women and children of Dutch nationality, because the Japanese were still there,” said Beniston of the rescue mission that found the area being shelled after the official end of the Second World War.
“It’s all in a lifetime,” Beniston said.
In opening remarks, Mayor John Taylor thanked the veterans in attendance for their bravery and service, including Ed Beniston, Douglas Moores, Wilfred O’Hearn, brothers Joseph L. Reynolds and Jeffrey Reynolds, Robert Locke and Harold Moore.
“This day is best described as a pivotal day, a watershed moment in the history of the world,” Taylor said. “The world could have gone a very different way on that day and on the days subsequent to that. This day was a massive undertaking of the like that has never been seen before, with thousands of aircraft, 150,000 soldiers from Allied forces together, 14,000 Canadian soldiers on the Juno beach and 1,078 of those soldiers died that day.”
“Those soldiers understood the threat to the world, understood what we were facing,” Taylor said. “If not for the bravery of those soldiers that day, think about it, they were going on the beaches of Normandy where there were hundreds of kilometres of entrenchments of concrete and steel, barricades and bunkers, heavily fortified and heavily armed. And they charged up and into that regardless, and they knew that death was a real possibility. And they watched soldiers and friends and sometimes brothers perish beside them.”
“In that day, the bravery and the commitment to our democracy and our freedom ruled the day. And because of that, the soldiers succeeded, they went on to reach their goals over the days and 11 more months of war ensued after that.
“Imagine right now, kids playing in the splash pad at Riverwalk Commons, families biking down the trail in Newmarket, us standing here today having this event, people going to church on Sunday.
“We live in an exceptional time, an exceptional place, an area of unbelievable beauty, tranquility and peace. And we live here today because of the bravery and valour of those veterans, the veterans that are sitting right in front of us here today. It is truly remarkable. This could have been a very different place we are standing in.”
D-Day, the 75th Anniversary Commemoration Exhibit continues until Nov. 9, 2019.
Curated by Rod Bruton, June 6 marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, an exhibit that marks the landing of Allied Forces in Normandy in 1944, one of the largest military assaults in modern history that signifies the beginning of the end of the Second World War. A wide range of artifacts including photographs, uniforms and music and videos of the period will be on display.
For more information, visit here.