Honourable senators, in commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the invasion of Normandy this June 6, Canadian Heritage took a moment to reflect on the services of the North Shore Regiment, a regiment of boys and young men from the Miramichi, from Chatham, Newcastle, Bathurst, Campbellton and the Acadian Peninsula of New Brunswick; and Major Archie MacNaughton from Black River Bridge who re-enlisted at the age of 43 because he could not leave the boys he had trained on their own.

We have all seen the carnage in clips and movies, mainly American movies about D-Day showing the heroics of American soldiers. They were heroic, but no more than any other. No more than the Miramichi men caught up on the beach or dying in the surf. In fact, one man told me that when he jumped from the landing craft he was over his head in water for the first 10 or 20 yards, struggling in the surf with his rifle and backpack. He was 19-year-old Ron Cook, a great hockey player from Bathurst, New Brunswick, who lost his left leg in the battle of Caen that July.

As soon as the men from the landing craft attained Juno, they were under a desperate attack, and men of 19 and 20 years old fell mortally wounded. Unarmed, Father Hickey of Chatham, New Brunswick went from one dying soldier to another to administer last rites. A bullet hit the chalice he had, but he was unscathed that day. He credits that chalice with saving his life. The North Shore fought their way off that beach and toward the town of Tailleville.

Major MacNaughton was with Company A and his radioman was a 19-year-old kid named Bill Savage from Bartibog Bridge. Bill Savage was walking behind MacNaughton as they entered the town. He had received a radio dispatch that the town had been cleared, but that was not the case.

The radio operator from Company B had radioed from the perimeter of the town, not the centre. MacNaughton and his men, unaware of this discrepancy, entered the main street where a company of German soldiers and two German machine gunners sat.

Two men from Company B helped a young French woman give birth that day. She was alone and went into premature labour in the midst of the fighting. Major MacNaughton and his company entered the main part of town about that same time.

Major MacNaughton had already done more than most men ever would. He had fought as a young soldier in the First World War, seeing terrible action in the trenches, and came home to the Miramichi to marry, start a family and be a farmer.

A First World War German commander put it this way: That the Canadians seemed so disorganized they didn’t even look like soldiers, but they fought as fiercely as the elite Prussian guards.

Major Archie MacNaughton had a daughter who was 6 years of age when he left again at the age of 43. Which, when one reflects, might be more like 63 today. His wife said: “Archie, no one can live through two World Wars.” But he felt a deep and sacred obligation to his men. He wrote to tell her this and to ask her forgiveness for not giving her the life he felt she was entitled to.

He was killed on June 6, 1944, at the age of 47, by a burst of machine gun fire. The oldest Canadian to die. The radio man behind him, Bill Savage, was also hit and lying near death, and might have died had not Bill Adair from Newcastle found a pulse.

He was evacuated out that day to a British medical tent, coming under German fire again and a bullet going through his foot. He managed to recover and live, he always told me, with the help of a pint of rum he and another wounded soldier had stolen. Bill Savage was my wife’s uncle and walked Peggy down the aisle when we were married. We fished the Bartibog River and the northwest Miramichi together on many a day.

He often told me that Major Archie MacNaughton was a great man. I never, ever had a reason to doubt that.

Thank you.