Explaining the horrors of war to a generation that has never known it is no easy task.
How can one explain the motivation that drove more than one million Canadians to fight for their country, or what they felt as they were handed a gun or grenades and told to charge toward a crowd of equally armed men with orders to kill them?
For Leonard Van Roon, it all starts with his combat boots.
A lance-corporal with the 19th Canadian Army Field Regiment, Van Roon was 21 years old when he was part of the Allied force that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day, then moved on Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany before the end of the Second World War.
“I didn’t feel that there was any hopelessness or anything like that, but I knew it was darn dangerous,” Van Roon told CTV News Winnipeg.
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Now 97, Van Roon speaks about his experiences in the war at schools around Winnipeg. When he’s not sure his message is landing, he invites the students to touch his boots – telling them that one day they’ll be able to tell their children that they touched part of the uniform of a soldier who fought for their freedom long before they were born.
“I [tell] them they have a nice library, they have good teachers, they have all these things because somebody sacrificed themselves,” he said.
As the 75th anniversary of D-Day approaches, Veterans Affairs Canada is giving Canadians the opportunity to connect with the war in the same way Van Roon encourages schoolchildren to.
A scheduled Via Rail train is picking up boots from veterans as it makes its way across the country. The program was inspired by the similar cross-Canada journey many soldiers made as they travelled to Halifax before going overseas.
The boots will be displayed at a ceremony to mark the D-Day anniversary in Halifax on June 6. They will be returned to their owners next spring as part of a similar train trip timed to VE-Day and designed to mimic the soldiers’ voyage home.
Robert Loken, Veterans Affairs Canada’s manager of national commemorations, honours and awards, told CTVNews Winnipeg that the organization wanted to do something special to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Specifically, they were looking for a way to commemorate the anniversary that brought together people from across the country – just as common footwear bonded farmers and city-dwellers from coast to coast during the war.
“One of the things that linked everyone was that trade-in of their own personal shoes,” he said.
“Everybody had different gear as far as the clothing and equipment, but the boots were a common element for each service.”
Frank William Godon understands the importance of the boots as a symbol of Canadian wartime efforts. His father Francis didn’t start talking about his experiences overseas until 2003, when he visited the Juno Beach Centre in France.
Francis William Godon was so moved by what he saw at the museum that he became a repeat visitor. During his final trip there, in 2014, he told the centre’s curator that he wanted his uniform and boots to be donated to the museum after his death.
“I remember him looking out into the English Channel, and then he looked back at me and he said ‘Isn’t it wonderful? You look now and you see the people on the beach, you see the families enjoying themselves … all because of what we did,’” Frank William Godon told CTV Winnipeg.
“There were tears in his eyes as he was saying that.”
Van Roon and Godon were two of the 14,000 Canadians who stormed Juno Beach on D-Day. More than 350 were killed.
