By Major John Stephens, CD (Ret’d), Museum Director and Archivist
Today, sixty-one serving soldiers of The Queen’s Own Rifles plus various members of the Regimental Family are participating in a pilgrimage to Normandy, France in honour of the 80th Anniversary of D-Day and the sixty-one QOR soldiers killed on D-Day, 6 June 1944.
I had the privilege of sponsoring Corporal Eric Filmer on this trip and together we remember B66008 Rifleman Albert Edward Hildreth who was killed in action on D-Day aged 23. You can read more about Rfn Hildreth on his museum profile. We each received a coin engraved with his name on the reverse.
In an email yesterday Cpl Filmer shared some thoughts about the trip so far:
“The past few days have been tremendously moving to hear about, and visit the places where our soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice. What really brings it home are the people from the towns that we liberated. Canadians, specifically the QOR, are at home in many of these places. The children have been taught the importance of what happened here, and it has been made a part of their lives Our history has been tonight to them in school, and hearing them sing the Canadian national anthem, and seeing their excitement has been very heartwarming.”
Today they are marching from the landing at Juno Beach (with some stops in other villages along the way) to the Village of Anisy which was the QOR’s final objective on D-Day.
Yesterday they attended a service in Le Mesnil Patry where the battle of the town cost 50 QOR deaths – the second most in a single day of the war. The pictures above and below are from that remembrance.
The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada Regimental Museum and Archive 
My father, Lieutenant (later Captain) William “Bill” Grant Herbert, MC, had just turned 22 when he landed with “B” Company on Juno Beach on D-Day. QOR’s Archive has a nice write-up of my dad’s brave actions that morning – actions which resulted in him being awarded the Military Cross in August of that year by Field Marshall Montgomery. Many brave men gave their lives that morning and later; my Dad received a shrapnel head wound that morning and died suddenly at age 55 of a “brain explosion”, likely caused by that shrapnel migrating through his brain to the brain stem.
I made a pilgrimage to Bernières-sur-Mer and the iconic Canada House on June 6, 2016. The beach was eerily deserted that morning and I walked alone with my thoughts of the horrors experienced by my beloved father and so many other young men that same day in 1944. I’m still haunted by my visit but so very, very grateful to have had the privilege of honouring all of them and the sacrifices they made for our freedom.
On that same trip – the “Great Canadian War Memorial Tour” – I paid homage to our brave, young soldiers at museums, sites, war memorials and cemeteries of WWI and WWII. At Vimy Ridge, I honoured my grandfather, Lieutenant (later Captain) William Shelley Herbert, whose machine-gun injuries at the Battle of Amiens resulted in amputation of his left arm. Like his son later in WWII, my grandfather was awarded the Military Cross and remained loyal to the Queen’s Own Rifles throughout his life.
Always remembered and forever missed,
J. Shelley Herbert Asserson, Calgary, Alberta
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Well done Queens Owen Rifles.
however I understand that there are still veterans of the June 06. 1944 invasion
unless I be mistaken they are upper most in our minds, as they are not forgotten, thanks to those brave soldiers.
Grant Dunbar
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Your museum shows my father Hugh McCallum Rocks joining the Queen’s Own July 18, 1944. He was killed June 6, 1944. This is my second memo asking for correction.
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Corrected now. Apologies for the confusion.
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