OLDS — The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 105 in Olds held a pared-down ceremony on Saturday, June 6 to commemorate D-Day.
On June 6, 1944, nearly 150,000 Canadian, U.S. and British troops parachuted in or stormed the beaches of Normandy on their way to the eventual liberation of Europe from the Nazis during the Second World War.
By the time the battle of Normandy ended, the allies had suffered about 209,000 casualties, including more than 18,700 Canadians. More 5,000 Canadian soldiers were killed.
The Legion’s commemoration was held at 6:30 p.m. at the cenotaph in Centennial Park. Only about 12 people – basically just members of the Legion’s executive – were there; a smaller crowd than in previous years.
President Tom Bartholow said that was directly due to concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak.
“With what’s going on, we decided we didn’t want to get into a jam with too many people around,” he said.
“Our way of thinking was we wouldn’t get into trouble with everything that’s going on and yet we still paid our respect to it.”
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