B112366 Rifleman Joseph Lester “Les” Wagar was born on 19 August 1923, in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Luther Allan Wagar and Elizabeth Aileen Wilson.

He married Ethel Jacqueline Bates and they had three sons and two daughters.

Wagar served with the 1st Battalion of The Queen’s Own Rifles during the Second World War from 6 May 1942 until his honourable discharge on 14 November 1945, first as a rifleman and then as a combat intelligence man, having survived the D-Day landing on Juno Beach in Nazi-occupied France, and liberating parts of  France and Belgium.

He was being trained to join an imminent invasion of the Japanese mainland before their surrender on September 2, 1945. Les told many stories of being caught behind enemy lines and fighting through against impossible odds mapping enemy positions while a combat intelligence man.

Postwar he became a high school teacher. In retirement, Les continued to contribute to society by volunteering his time to various charities and giving war memorial lectures at schools right up until his final few years of life. Les was an avid writer, a poet, a dreamer, and an intelligent visionary who in his lifetime wrote and published innumerable literary works, including scientific thesis papers, and held several copyrights.

He died on 14 December 2013.

There are some articles he wrote attached to his Online Collections profile:

• Recollections of D-Day
• Memories of a Norman Summer 1944