World history was made 79 years ago Tuesday, signalling one of the great turning points of World War Two.
More than 150,000 soldiers participated in D-Day on June 6, 1944, storming the beaches of Normandy on the northern coast of France.
“This is the invasion of Hitler’s Europe,” said NBC radio broadcaster Robert St. John in an American news bulletin at the time.
Canadian, British and American troops teamed up as part of the Allied Forces to clear beach defences and minefields, as well as occupy nearby villages.
Roughly 14,000 Canadians took part in D-Day.
“A great landing in western Europe is the opening of what we hope and believe will be the decisive phase of the war against Germany,” said then-Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, to Canadian radio listeners at the time.
D-Day is recognized as a historic turning point, as it marked the beginning of the end for World War Two.
War broke out on Sept. 1, 1939, and Canada joined forces with Britain on Sept. 10 to support the war effort overseas.
The Allieds fought for a staggering 10 weeks in Normandy until the campaign ended in August 1944.
Out of the 1,074 Canadian soldiers who participated in the battle, 720 were injured and 359 were killed in action.