Last Reunion of the HLI

The Highland Light Infantry of Canada has seen its numbers depleted greatly by time, but time can never erase what the unit has so proudly achieved
May 09, 2009
Jeff OuthitRECORD STAFF
WATERLOO REGION
They can remember when reunions lasted two days and drew hundreds of war veterans, keen to reminisce about when they were warriors.
Now they can barely summon 20 old men to a luncheon. The youngest is 83. Some are quite frail. They are outnumbered by wives and widows. And so at noon today, the Highland Light Infantry of Canada plans its last annual reunion. There are just too few veterans left to carry on.
Don Matthews, 84, is taking it hard. He loved being in the regiment in the Second World War. These men are his brothers-in-arms. He lived with them, fought with them, cheated death with them.
"I'm one of the proud fellows," he says. "I worship them."
But after today, he may only see the handful who are left at funerals. "I don't want it to end," he says. He dabs at his eyes as they fill with tears.
The Highland Light Infantry mobilized locally in 1940 to help defeat Nazi Germany. Its men fought across northwest Europe and left more than 260 comrades buried there.
The regiment passed into history long ago. Its bloodline survives in the Royal Highland Fusiliers.
Time is taking its men, but can never erase what they achieved.
When Canada asked for help, they responded. They trained and then they fought, to help save the world from a terrible tyranny.
The regiment's darkest day is seen as its finest hour. On July 8, 1944, the Highland Light Infantry was ordered to capture Buron, a village in Normandy held by ferocious Hitler Youth and SS troops.
Liberating the village cost 62 dead, 200 wounded. In a daylong battle, launched across an open field where enemy bombs fell like rain, the regiment lost half its assaulting force.
It was the regiment's first major battle, and the first time local soldiers fought together as a single unit. Veterans remember it as bloody Buron.
Matthews was there. He was just 19 and so green, experienced soldiers left him behind on night patrols. They worried he would make too much noise and get them all killed.
He left Buron a much harder man.
Matthews never knew bullets could whistle so loud, until they screamed past his head that day. He learned you don't dwell on why the man next to you falls in combat. And you don't stop to help him. You keep going, because that's your best hope to prevail, and to survive.
"I prayed after it was all over," he says. "I was scared. Not enough to cry. But I was scared."
Nelson Hilborn was there. He was 20 when an enemy rocket killed the soldiers around him, leaving him dazed and bleeding, the lone survivor of two mortar crews.
That day, he learned how to plant rifles in the ground to mark the dead. He learned what a man looks like after he's been cut to pieces, trying to reach a trench.
He learned you can save a man by using your bare hands to squeeze his brain back into his shattered skull, then bandage it up as tightly as you can.
Though shaken by the carnage at Buron, it was not Hilborn's first shock. That came a month earlier on D-Day, when the door of his landing craft opened onto the bodies of three men killed taking the beach.
"Of course I hesitated," he says. But he had to get out quickly so he drove his tracked carrier over their corpses. "That hurt me very badly," says Hilborn, 85.
After Buron, the Highland Light Infantry fought across France and into Belgium, Holland and Germany. A long honour roll lists the men who fell. They are buried across north-west Europe.
Today's reunion is 64 years after the Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945. Bob Roos and Ray Brayshaw helped organize it, planning it to be the last. "I guess it's time," says Roos, of Cambridge.
Roos, 86, went overseas to fight with the Highland Light Infantry, but ended up with the South Saskatchewan Regiment. They had their own Buron, but it was called Foret de la Londe.
The three-day battle near the Seine river killed 44 of his comrades and wounded 141, in August, 1944.
Brayshaw, of Cambridge, went overseas three months before the Nazis surrendered in 1945. The army held him in reserve in England and he never saw combat. It frustrates him still.
"I just felt I missed something," Brayshaw says. He'll be the youngest veteran there, at 83.
What veterans want people to remember about the Highland Light Infantry is that its brave men chose to fight.
"They were all volunteers," Roos says. "That's the most important thing of all."
They stepped up when Canada asked. Many gave their lives. There's no greater sacrifice.
jouthit@therecord.com
Highland Light Infantry of Canada
Motto: Defence Not Defiance
Headquarters: Galt
1866:
Creation of the 29th Waterloo Battalion of Infantry. Several name changes later, this becomes the Highland Light Infantry.
1915-1918:
Earns eight battle honours in the First World War.
September, 1939:
Canada declares war on Nazi Germany, to launch the Second World War.
May, 1940:
The Highland Light Infantry mobilizes in Waterloo County. Hundreds enlist within three weeks.
July, 1941:
With almost 1,200 men, the regiment sails for Great Britain from Halifax and disembarks in Scotland.
1941-1944:
Training and exercises in Great Britain. The regiment trims to just over 800 men.
June 6, 1944:
Highland Light Infantry lands in Normandy, hours after the beaches are secured.
July 8, 1944:
The HLI attacks and takes Buron, a village outside Caen, suffering heavy casualties.
October, 1944:
The HLI helps clear the approaches to the Belgian port of Antwerp in the Scheldt campaign.
Feb.- March, 1945:
The HLI helps clear the Rhine river in Germany.
April-May, 1945:
The HLI helps liberate the Netherlands.
May 8, 1945:
Nazi Germany surrenders. Victory in Europe.
1954:
The Highland Light Infantry merges with the Perth Regiment.
1965:
Merger with the Scots Fusiliers creates the Highland Fusiliers of Canada.
1998:
Named the Royal Highland Fusiliers of Canada.

Juno Landing

Perhaps the most famous picture of the Canadian invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, shows the HLI (Highland Light Infantry) of the Canadian Third Division landing on Juno beach at Berniers in France

Concerning:

Highland Light Infantry Canada: 9th Brigade, 3rd Div., Galt. D-Day, Juno Beach, Berniers, Normandie, Gap, Bologne, Belgium, Turnzin, Amber Beach, Hoofplaatd, Breskens Pocket, Hochwald, Liberation Holland google0ec2de70ebf95457.html.

Thought you might appreciate a recent article on a personal hero of mine.
Paul Tibbets. He did the right thing in 1945, then the right thing in all the years that followed. Unlike the common horde, he did not bend to misplaced guilt and the political correctness that had grown out of it. It's interesting to look back and see how far we've "progressed".


Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay pilot, 92
JULIE CARR SMYTH
Associated Press
November 1, 2007 at 12:16 PM EDT
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night.
Mr. Tibbets died at his Columbus home, said Gerry Newhouse, a long-time friend. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months.
Mr. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, lest it provide his detractors with a place to protest, (What A Shame) Mr. Newhouse said
.
Mr. Tibbets's historic mission in the plane named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.
The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton “Little Boy” bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.
Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb – codenamed 'Fat Man' on Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people in Nagasaki. Mr. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.
“I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing,” Mr. Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. “We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Tibbets, at the time a 30-year-old colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces, never expressed regret over his role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.
“I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did,” he said in a 1975 interview.
“You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal.”
He added: “I sleep clearly every night.”
Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami.
He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to

Tibbets and The Enola Gay, the aircraft which carried the bomb and which he named after his mother. You gotta love this guy for his clear thinking, morality and loyalty to mother and country.






withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
After the war, Mr. Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumours that he was in prison or had committed suicide.
“They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions,” he said. “At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon.”
Mr. Tibbets retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1966 as a brigadier-general. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.
But his role in the bombing brought him fame – and infamy – throughout his life.
In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Tex., air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.
He said the display “was not intended to insult anybody,” but the Japanese were enraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.
Mr. Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.
The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have examined the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the administration of Harry S Truman of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of the target.
Veterans groups objected, saying the proposed display paid too much attention to Japan's suffering and too little to Japan's brutality during and before the war, and that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion.
They said the bombing of Japan was an unmitigated blessing for the United States and the exhibit should say so.
Mr. Tibbets denounced the planned exhibit as “a damn big insult.”
The museum changed its plan and agreed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.
He told the Dispatch in 2005 that he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war.
Mr. Newhouse, Mr. Tibbets's friend, confirmed that Mr. Tibbets wanted to be cremated, but he said relatives had not yet determined how he would be laid to rest.

Bibliography

Highland Light Infantry of Canada1st Battalion, the Highland Light Infantry of Canada: 1940-1945 / by Jack Fortune Bartlett. Galt, Ont.: Highland Light Infantry of Canada Association, 1951. 126 p.UA602 .H4 B35 1951

Bloody Buron: the Battle of Buron, Normandy, 08 July, 1944 / by J. Allan Snowie. Erin, Ont.: Boston Mills Press, 1984. 120 p.D756.5 .C3 S66 1984

Highland Light Infantry of Canada, 1940-1944 / by Richard Mark Dykeman. Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1986 (c1984). [microform]UA602 .H4 D95 1984

Trail of the HLI

German Defences--The Atlantic Wall

(members.shaw.ca/junobeach/juno-5.htm)

The Germans used millions of slave labourers during four years of occupation to construct the 'Atlantic Wall' - a modern fortification system along the coast of France. The fortifications consisted of a series of reinforced concrete gun emplacements supported by well protected infantry strong-points and heavy machine gun nests overlooking the beaches. These were surrounded by trenches with mortars and machine guns. The beaches were strewn with obstacles and mines. Tetrahedral obstacles - three iron bars intersecting at rights angles had been constructed on the beaches. Fields of barbed wire and mines covered the land past the beaches. Also the seafront houses provided excellent observation and firing positions for snipers. There were 32 static infantry Divisions of widely varying quality defending these fortifications along the French and Dutch coast. This first line of defence was backed up by Panzer Divisions (armoured and motorized divisions) positioned inland from the Atlantic wall. The strategy was, if the Atlantic wall were breached, theses elite formations of crack mobile troops would strike as soon as possible after the landing and throw the Canadians and the Allies back into the sea. Within striking distance of the coast were five first-class divisions: the 21st Panzer Division with an estimated 350 tanks, the 12th SS with 150 tanks, the Panzer Lehr Division in the Le Mans area and two more tank divisions in the Seine. The proximity of 12th SS and 21st Panzer Divisions made it difficult for the British and Canadians to capture their objectives of Caen on D-Day.The coastal defences along Juno beach were defended by 3 battalions of the 716th Infantry Division with a strength of 7,771 soldiers all ranks. Although the division was made up of ordinary second rate troops, they proved to be strong defenders when concealed and protected by the coastal fortifications. The German plan was for the 716th Division to delay the Allied advance with artillery, mortars, mines and anti-tank guns until reinforcements from the 12th SS and 21st Panzer Divisions positioned near Caen could arrive. The 12th SS Division positioned 50 miles behind the coast had 20,540 men and a full establishment of 150 tanks. The 12th SS was a fanatical Hitler Youth formation raised to believe in the German master race and the Fuhrer. Two thirds of these soldiers were18 years of age and had received sophisticated battle training starting at the age of 16. They were a dangerous combination of patriotism, self righteousness and brutality. Colonel Kurt Meyer commanded three battalions of the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment. Meyer and the 12th SS would become the nemesis of the Canadian Army in Normandy.

9th Brigade (http://members.shaw.ca/junobeach/juno-4-11.htm)
The 9th Brigade consisting of the Highland Light Infantry, Stormont Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders, and North Nova Scotia Highlanders regiments landed later in the morning. The Sherbrooke Fusiliers tanks (27th Armoured Regiment) provided tank support to the brigade.
At 10:50 a.m. Divisional Headquarters ordered the 9th Brigade to land. The preferred plan was to land the 9th Brigade at St.Aubin and Bernières and alternatively Courseulles. Then the 9th Brigade would pass through the lead brigade and head to the divisional objective, the high ground around Carpiquet airport. Based on the information General Rod Keller had received, he made the decision to land the 9th Brigade at St.Aubin and Bernières. He did not know at the time the Navy had closed Nan red beach at St. Aubin because of the enemy gun still in action there. The entire brigade was forced to land at Bernières and the resulting traffic jam on the one road leading to Beny-sur-Mer caused a critical delay for the 9th Brigade's advance.
The North Nova Scotia Highlanders, commanded by Lt.-Col. C. Petch, landed at 11:40 a.m. The narrow beach was already packed with troops from 8th Brigade. The narrow streets were jammed with impatient troops, bicycles, vehicles and tanks. At 12:05 Brigade Headquarters reported, "Beaches crowded, standing off waiting to land"; but fifteen minutes later it signalled that the brigade commander had landed and the units were moving to their assembly area near Beny.
The severe congestion around Bernières slowed the movement and the battalions halted on the outskirts of the village. The North Nova Scotia Highlanders who were in the lead, did not move on towards Beny until 4:05 p.m. They were accompanied by the 27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment), commanded by Lt.-Col. M. B. K. Gordon, and were followed by the other battalions of the brigade, The Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders (Lt.-Col. G. H. Christiansen) and The Highland Light Infantry of Canada (Lt.-Col. F. M. Griffiths).
At 6:20 p.m. the North Nova Scotias and the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment tanks, acting as the brigade's advanced guard, moved off from the assembly area at Beny to pass through the Queen's Own and the Chaudière and carry the advance southward. Three companies of the Highlanders rode on the Sherbrookes' tanks. Machine-gun fire held up the advance along the way and in the vicinity of Colomby-sur-Thaon 'A' Company met opposition which caused further delay. The North Nova Scotia's reached Villons-les-Buissons by 2000 hours and ran into more German resistance. It was now evident that the advanced guard units could not reach their objective in the Carpiquet area before dark. They received the order to halt and begin digging in. The infantry and tanks accordingly formed a fortress in the area Anisy-Villons-les-Buissons. The brigade's other battalions were still in the assembly area at Beny.
They were less then 4 miles from Carpiquet airfield, the final divisional objective. But with the rest of the brigade strung out on the road from Beny, and the fear of a counter attack from either the 12th SS Panzer or 21st Panzer division, it was decided to secure their positions and the bridgehead.

On D-Day the 716th Infantry Division took the main weight of the Canadian assault and was virtually destroyed. By evening they had lost 80% of their artillery. The 21st Panzer Division was into action early on D-Day, unsuccessfully attacking the British Airborne to win back some of the bridges at Ranville-Benouvile. In the early afternoon the 192nd Panzer Regiment of the Division counterattacked the British on the west side of the Orne river. Parts of the regiment broke through to the coast but by 2100 hours had been stopped by the British. Having lost 25 % of its armour and no prospect of reinforcement, the regiment fought its way back to Caen.
At 1505 hours General Speidal ordered the 21st Panzer Division, 12th SS Division and Panzer Lehr to be grouped under 1st Panzer Corps for a coordinated attack at the Anglo-Canadian bridgehead. The plan to rapidly commit armoured divisions to prevent the Allies from consolidating their positions had assumed that the armour would be in position and coastal defences were capable of holding the allied advance. By this time however, the Canadians had decimated the German regiments defending the coastal positions and advanced miles inland. With the 21st engaged against the British and the reserve divisions arriving in pieces it became difficult to launch this coordinated counter attack.
The German Counterattacks
The 12th SS moved forward towards the front starting at dawn on D-Day but air attacks slowed their advance. The division's vanguard, the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, commanded by Colonel Kurt Meyer moved into the area west of Caen. Meyer established his headquarters in the Ardennes Abbey on June 7 (D-Day + 1) and discovered the Canadian 9th Brigade advancing toward Carpiquet airport. The 25th Panzer Grenadiers attacked the exposed Canadian flank with two battalions supported by tanks. The Germans struck with great force and in vicious close quarter battles forced the Canadians out of Authie and Buron after heavy losses in tanks and men.
In defence, the Canadians infantry proved as stubbornly ferocious as the Germans, especially once they were able to bring their artillery to bear. In Normandy artillery was the most lethal weapon on both sides, causing three out of every four wounds. Supported by the big guns of a British cruiser, and the 12 remaining Sherbrooke Fusiliers tanks, the 9th Brigade fought their way back in forcing the Germans in turn to withdraw from Buron. The vanguard of the 9th Brigade was decimated. The North Nova Scotia casualties were 84 killed, 30 wounded and 128 captured. The Sherbrookes casualties were 26 killed and 34 wounded along with 28 tanks destroyed or damaged. The Germans had also paid, the Sherbrookes claiming to have destroyed up to 35 German tanks, thus reducing the effectiveness of the 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment.
At dawn on June 8th the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 12th SS attacked the Canadian 7th Brigade that had advanced up to the Caen-Bayeux road. The Germans attacked the town of Putot-en-Bessin with two battalions and surrounded the Winnipeg Rifles. The Canadian Scottish supported by the 1st Hussars moved back into the village under a creeping artillery barrage. After two hours of fierce fighting the Canadians recaptured Putot-en-Bessin and linked up with the remnants of the Winnipegs still holding on.
A third German battalion attacked Bretteville. The Regina Rifles stubbornly defended the town and the battle raged all night in the village streets. At dawn the next morning the 12th SS retreated after suffering heavy losses. To stop the German counter attack the Canadians paid a high price. The Winnipeg Rifles lost 256 men including 105 killed. The Canadian Scottish lost 125 men, including 45 killed while the Regina Rifles losses were smaller.
Many of the Winnipeg Rifles had been taken prisoner and were among the 45 Canadians executed by the 12th SS at the Abbey of Ardenne on June 8th. The previous day, 23 Canadian prisoners from the North Novas and Sherbrookes were shot by the men of the 12th SS. After the war Kurt Meyer would be held responsible for these war crimes and sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment.

BURON Calvados - 5 km north-west of CaenThe revenge of the Highland Light InfantryOn 8 July 1944, the Ist British Corps launched the Operation Charnwood, the objectives were the German positions north and north-west of Caen. Buron had been already the field of fierce fighting on 7 June, the Canadians had been badly mauled. On 8 July, artillery preparation was heavy, 80,000 shells were fired within five days in the Caen sector. At dawn the Canadians of the Highland Light Infantry, of the 3rd Infantry Division, spanned an anti tank ditch in front of Buron, they fought hand to hand with the SS grenadiere. At 4:30 pm a shell fell on the Canadian staff and caused several casualties. In the evening the Canadians counted their losses : 262 men. The following day the attack was renewed and Buron was finally taken to the SS around 10:00 pm, the town was strewn with dead Canadian and German bodies.

===================================================================

July 1941

HLI sails for Great Britain from Halifax.

1941-1944

Training in Britain. Regiment is trimmed from its original 1200 to just over 800 men.

June 6, 1944

The Highland Light Infantry lands in Normandy as the reserve batallion.

July 8, 1944

HLI takes the village of Buron NW of Caen suffering heavy casualties.

October 1944

Battle of the Scheldt: HLI part of the Third Division clearing of the heavily guarded approaches to key Belgian port of Antwerp (one of the few not destroyed by the Germans)

Winter 1945

Clearing of the Rhine River in Germany

Spring 1945

Liberation of Holland