MOOSEJAWTODAY.COM — A statue dedicated to soldiers from the Royal Regina Rifles who fought Nazi Germany eight decades ago has been officially unveiled in France a day before the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
The eight-foot bronze rifleman was revealed on Wednesday in the town of Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse in France, near the beaches of Normandy, where the Rifles landed on June 6, 1944.
Her Royal Highness Princess Anne attended the ceremony in her capacity as the colonel-in-chief of the regiment.
The Rifles — formerly known as the Regina Rifle Regiment — were the first to storm Juno Beach on that fateful day and advanced further inland than any other Allied unit within the first 24 hours of the invasion, with 102 men losing their lives.
Nearly 150,000 Allied troops stormed the French beaches on D-Day as part of Operation Overlord, including 14,000 Canadians, with 359 Canadians dying that day. During the three-month Battle of Normandy, about 5,000 Canadians were killed.
Operation Neptune was the name given to the naval aspect of the invasion, as an Allied fleet of 5,333 ships and landing craft, shepherded by thousands of Allied fighters and bombers, carried the soldiers. Their cargo totalled 100,000 tons of equipment, including 50,000 vehicles ranging from jeeps to tanks.
Depending on the port of embarkation and the assigned landing beach, the trip ranged from 80 to 160 kilometres across the roiling dark water.
Alberta artist Don Begg sculpted the two-metre bronze statue of a soldier on the move, weapon raised. It’s meant to depict the Everyman from Saskatchewan. The face on the statue shows a soldier stressed from battle but determined to liberate France.
Begg told reporters in April during the official unveiling in Regina that the soldier’s face carries a mix of fear and determination.
“Fear, determination, (fear of) the unknown — but you had a job to do, you were asked to do it and you were going to do it,” he said.
Begg said the statue stands eight feet tall so it can be viewed at a distance. The equipment is all accurate as well.
“(The Rifles) were very good about giving us a helmet and jackets and the boots and everything to make it authentic for what they were wearing at that time in 1944,” he said.
Kelsey Lonie, a military historian on the Royal Regina Rifles Trust committee, said 458 members of the regiment died during the Normandy campaign. Their names will be marked at the base of the statue.
“There’s just so many stories of brave men who stormed the beach that day,” Lonie said before the statue travelled to Europe. “Being able to be a part of preserving their memory is (an) incredibly great honour for me to be a part of.”
“I just hope that the legacy continues (and) the statue promotes further recognition of what Saskatchewan men did during the Second World War.”
“It’s a real sense of pride,” said Lt.-Col (retired) Ed Staniowski said.
Staniowski was the lead planner for the Royal Regina Rifles Trust for the 80th anniversary and said he was able to see the statue from conception to finished statue.
“It’s a real thrill for me to be able to see that the legacy of this great regiment is continuing,” said Staniowski. “When you see it for real, the size of it, the intensity of it, it’s very moving. It’s something that has stuck with me.
“I’ve had a chance to serve with the Canadian Armed Forces in the regiment in various places in the world in several conflicts, and the intensity that is on that statute is what you see on the faces of Canadian men and women when they serve on far off places in the world.”
Staniowski said it was great to “think we could commemorate” those who fought in the war and “pass on that legacy today, and it’s very important. The world’s a dangerous place … . That needs to be remembered. It was a terrible, terrible price that was paid in the Second World War and we don’t want to see that again.”
