Posted on behalf of R.G.C

[Christel]

Time : End of August 1984, 40th commemoration of the end of the Battle of Normandy.
Lieutenant J.A (Junior) Dunlop, from Canadian Lincoln and Welland Regiment, 4th Canadian Armoured Division, who , under command of Major D.J Crurrie who commanded the combat group who closed the west side of the ‘’Corridor of Death’’ at the entrance of the small village of St Lambert sur Dives, was making a tour of the battlefield in my Jeep bearing the ‘Lincs and Wells’ tactical signs.
I must point here that while Major David Currie won his Victoria Cross for his action at the Qunatité crossing at St Lambert, young Leutnant Junior Dunlop won his French ”Croix de Guerre” at the ‘Moulin de St Lambert’, where a small footbridge was one of the three passages, with the ‘Ponts de St Lambert’ and the ‘Gué de Moissy’, were left open to the escaping German 7th Army remains from 19th to 21 August 1944.
The day before the commemoration, we went to the Moulin, where Arkle Dunlop told to a group his relation of those three days. There were hundreds of German soldiers crossing the river and were ‘welcomed’ by Lt Dunlop’s platoon. They were disarmed and sent in groups along the river to Trun, with the only control of a Sherman on top of the hill, who simply threw a burst of .50 MG when one was leaving the main route!!!.
Junior was telling the loss of his corporal, who was shot in the head when leaving cover of the corner of a barn. Showing exactly the place whee he was, Junior pointed the finer …. And, at the exact place where the tip of his index was pointing was the strike of a bullet still clearly visible on the stone wall….. The corporal was buried there, but never found after the war. His name is on a plaque at the Bayeux Memorial.
Back home, I showed Junior a tin hat with a bullet hole in it, who was found a few years before in the river. He immediately noticed yellow paint marks inside who formed a 5 or 6 digits number, clearly discernible, but that we never noticed before.
Looking into the Regiment history book, we discovered the helmet bore the number of the corporal.. Imagine the Arkle’s and wife Edith’s reaction on this discovery…The helmet is now in the regiment’s Museum in Canada…
The following day was the official commemoration. We attended the Office and Ceremony, and Junior, instead as attending the banquet, wanted to make a last tour of the battlefield.
Approaching St Lambert, he asked me to stop the Jeep at a place overlooking Quantité, where a well know 1944 photography showing Major Currie accepting surrender of Hauptmann Rausch was taken, with his Jeep on the background. While remaining in the Jeep and Junior taking pictures, I noticed a large German-registered Mercedes Coupe leaving Quantité crossing and entering the track leading to ‘Le Moulin’.. When Junior came back to the car, I told him:
- ‘Look this one, he is certainly doing the pilgrimage as well!’..
We also drove the track to the Moulin, and saw the Mercedes coming back from the nearby
farm. Stopped the Jeep and asked the car to stop as well.. There was two passengers, a white-haired man in his sixties and a young one driving. I asked in German if I could help, and they showed some embarrassment. I told them :
-‘Look, this gentleman is Canadian coming back here, and you are here for certainly the same reasons.. forget about the rest”.
The young man told then he and his father were trying to find a place where there was the
river and a small footbridge where his father was wounded and made prisoneer..
-‘Turn the car back and follow me’, I answered.
Arriving at the footbridge, the man recognized the place as the one he was looking for, and we started a long conversation in German, me asking many questions on the event, his unit, etc…
Junior noticed the tension and was keeping pulling my arm asking:
- ‘What does he says…. What des ha says??’’…
Finally, I turned to him and said:
-“You were here on the 20th August 1944 at around 11.00am?”..
-’Of course I was’’..
-”Then; he was also, and you make him a prisoneer’’!!…
This was intense emotional moment, the two men falling in tears and in each other”s arms.. All finished at home with Champagne and long war stories? I have unfortunately lost the German name and address. What I remember he was an architect from Mannheim area..
John Arkle Dunlop ended war at the rank of Major and was one of the three surviving officers and 22 men from the initial Regiment who landed Normandy in July 1944 to parade in 1946 in St Catherine, Ontario, the regiment original town.
Junior died in Markdale, Ontario, 2 years ago.
R.G.C

[Ovenpaa]

Thank you for posting this on behalf of R.G.C Christel and Robert thank you for the contribution, a very touching story.