Sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on the Celebrity Eclipse, which arrived in Southampton early this morning, allowed us to do something special. No, not the wedding — our invitation never did arrive. The re-positioning cruise allowed us to take a ship “overseas” as both our fathers did almost 70 years ago, when they left home to help the free world stop a madman from Germany in what was already World War II.
Somehow, we don’t think our Dads crossed the ocean in anything remotely resembling the palatial vessel that is the Eclipse. They certainly weren’t sitting in a breakfast buffet 13 stories above the water wondering what kind of croissant to have with their coffee in the morning, and we can only guess they could likely feel every whitecap hitting the hull that encased their cramped sleeping quarters.
Yesterday, to get a small idea of what awaited them “overseas”, we headed for the beaches of Normandy when the Eclipse docked at Cherbourg, France even though we don’t know if either of them had ever been there. We do know that they were in the Canadian Army, and that there is a memorial saluting Canadian troops at Juno Beach, so named only because that was the code name Allied troops used on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The Juno Beach Centre was the brainchild of families of the 45,000 Canadian soldiers who died — many in Normandy, is a non-profit facility and is staffed by young Canadians in four-month shifts. Without Juno Beach, the now-pretty town of Courselles-sur-Mer wouldn’t have a pseudonym and people like us wouldn’t make the trek from 90 minutes away to try to remember.
Of the many fascinating and intriguing stories and artifacts, one really caught our attention.
It was about a man and a tank. To the best of our knowledge, there’s never been a movie made about Mac Dixon and The Bold but maybe there should be, because in his native land he remains something of an unknown soldier.
He was on the amphibious tank when it was hit by German fire and sank before reaching Juno Beach early that morning. Once The Bold filled with water he was able to escape, and be picked up by a vessel retrieving soldiers like him. However, that boat was also sunk by heavy artillery.
Nobody’s quite sure how, but Mac made it to the beach, where he picked up a German rifle and joined the fight with the Canadian infantry. Three months later, he was wounded in action somewhere else and hospitalized for two months. Upon his release, he jumped back into action in Holland and Belgium, returning home after the war ended about four months later.
After the war, The Bold was pulled up on the beach and today (above) it sits in the heart of Courselles-sur-Mer. While it lives in perpetuity, Mac ran out of lives, as everybody does, and died…55 years later.