Boots worn on D-Day going on tour

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This article was published 08/05/2019 (2487 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Among the thousands of Canadians who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, to roll back the tide of fascism was a 19-year-old Métis soldier from Deloraine named Francis Godon. 

On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the military-issued boots Godon wore during the war will be returned to Juno Beach where he fought alongside 14,000 other Canadians to liberate Nazi-occupied France.

At VIA Rail’s Union Station Wednesday night, the same place Godon had shipped out for war decades earlier, those boots – alongside the boots of other D-Day veterans – were loaded onto a train to begin the trip east.

While Godon’s are destined for the beaches of Normandy, others are being shipped to Halifax in time for a national commemoration on June 6.

Wednesday’s ceremony was part of a Canada-wide effort to keep the memory of the Normandy landings alive. Similar events have already been held in Vancouver, Edmonton and Churchill, among other cities.

After leaving Winnipeg, the boots will continue east, making pit stops in Toronto, Kingston, Quebec City, Moncton and, finally, Halifax.

Godon died in January at the age of 94. Prior to his death, however, he requested his boots be shipped back to the beach he’d once stormed with his comrades.

In 2003, he had the chance to return to Juno Beach, alongside his son, for the first time. That experience led him to open up about his memories from the war for the first time in his entire life, Godon Jr. said

“We were walking along the beach together and I remember him looking out into the English Channel. Then he looked back at me and he said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that when you look now you see… the people enjoying themselves all because of what we did,’” Godon Jr. said.

“There were tears in his eyes when he was saying that… He started telling me what had happened that day on the beach, what he had done.”

“We were walking along the beach together and I remember him looking out into the English Channel. Then he looked back at me and he said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that when you look now you see… the people enjoying themselves all because of what we did'”– Frank Godon Jr. 

Also in attendance Wednesday was Leonard Van Roon, 97, a surviving D-Day veteran. He was 21 years old when he landed on Juno Beach in 1944.

Van Roon said that while it’s important to keep the memory of those who died alive, no one who wasn’t there that day will ever understand what it was like to fight your way onto those beaches.

“That beach, the shellfire just landed on that beach… those shells landed on the beach, that’s where the guys were and you couldn’t get off the beach because of the mines,” Van Roon said.

“What would the world be like if it failed? Some of those early days were pretty rough. People don’t realize the numbers… that either made it or it didn’t and both sides knew they had to succeed.”