‘Felt like I should be here,’ grandson of D-Day vet says of ceremony By: Katrina Clarke Posted: 4:37 PM CDT Saturday, Jun. 8, 2024 Last Modified: 5:41 PM CDT Saturday, Jun. 8, 2024 Updates

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This article was published 08/06/2024 (541 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Allan Williams looks stoic in the photo. His eyes are fixed on some unknown point, and his square jaw is clenched.

He was going into battle. His boat was approaching Juno beach.

On Saturday, Allan’s grandson Jonathan Williams remembered his grandfather’s sacrifice 80 years later at a D-Day remembrance event at Vimy Ridge Memorial Park.

“I just felt like I should be here today,” Jonathan, who looks strikingly like his grandfather, said. “I feel compelled to carry his story on.”

Allan, a member of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, was struck by shrapnel when he landed on Juno Beach. He was about 20 years old and never walked properly again.

“He never talked about it. We never asked,” Jonathan said of his grandfather’s wartime experiences.

He got a glimpse of the toll the war took on his grandfather when the two travelled to France for the opening of the Juno Beach Centre in 2003. The emotions came out, Jonathan said.

The photo of his grandfather’s landing craft approaching the beach is featured prominently at the centre, Jonathan said. He said he was surprised and pleased to see the Free Press feature it in the paper recently, something that gave him the extra motivation to go to the Saturday event, he said.

The grandfather and grandson were close. When Allan died on Remembrance Day in 2005, he left his medals to Jonathan.

“I’m the custodian of these for life,” he said.

The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, also known as the Little Black Devils, suffered 35 casualties on June 6, 1944, the Canadian Virtual War Museum’s website states. But the fighting wasn’t over. German soldiers captured and killed more Canadians — prisoners of war — in the days to come. Ninety-six Little Black Devils were killed on June 8.

James Allan (Jim) Reid was one of them.

His niece, Donna Reid, said Jim was captured by the Germans, along with two of his brothers. They were known as the Fighting Reids. Two brothers survived, but Jim was executed.

“It was tragic,” Donna said. “My grandmother never got over it.”

The family talked about Jim all the time as she was growing up, Donna said. Her own father served in the war, but didn’t go oversees because of childhood injuries.

Donna laid a wreath in memory of her late uncle at the park Saturday.

She lives nearby and regularly walks by the monument that lists of the names of the Winnipeg soldiers killed in the Second World War, including her uncle.

“It is just a daily part of my daily life to stop and reminisce on what it might have been like had he survived, or had they lost,” she said.

katrina.clarke@freepress.mb.ca