"Canuck Soldiers 'Murdered,'" said one headline in the Halifax Herald that summer. The Battle of Normandy was still underway, weeks later, when news of the massacres reached Canada. Keep on smiling and everything will turn out for the best." "If you don't hear from me for a while don't worry. "This may be the last chance I get to write to you before the big day," wrote George Meakin in a letter to his mother before the invasion. Later that day 45 of the Canadians were murdered, in batches, in the grounds of the Château.Īmong the executed Canadians were George Meakin, 23, and his younger brother Frank, 20, from the tiny Prairie town of Birnie, Manitoba, both of whom had come ashore and survived the fighting of D-Day. The prisoners were marched to the Château d'Audrieu, a Normandy estate commandeered by On 8 June 64 other Canadians, including several dozen members of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, were taken prisoner during fighting near the village of Putot-en-Bessin. The next morning seven more POWs, all North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were taken outside the Abbaye and shot. Later that night, 11 of the Canadian prisoners of war were taken into the Abbaye's garden and shot in the head. To the nearby Abbaye d'Ardenne, an ancient stone church where Colonel Kurt Meyer, one of the 12th SS commanders, had set up his headquarters after D-Day. On 7 June dozens of Canadians with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment (the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment) were taken prisoner following heavy fighting around the village of Authie.
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