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AJAY BHARDWAJStaff WriterMEDICINE HATCharles Lemna says he was thinking of his family the day he landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. It was D-Day plus three, he recalls.At the time Lemna, a Hatter, was 27 and a member of the Calgary Highlanders who landed on, the coast of France as the Allies invaded Europe during the Second World War. Lemna had two children and a wife at home.“We got bombed and shelled. It was grim. I was thinking mostly of home,” Lemna, 80, recalls. “You never know when you’re going to get it. I came close fourtimes.”Lemna joined the Canadian forces as a 21-year-old in 1939 and was shipped to England in 1940 where he served in coastal defence until 1944.In retrospect, Lemna says he joined the army out of “patriotism.”“We never started it,” he says. It was more of an obligation. We didn’t want Hitler to take over this country. He had a good part of Europe.”Although Lemna says he doesn’t remember the bad times, there were few good ones. However, he does recall a time at a French farm when he and several soldiers, starving for fresh meat, began eyeing several pigs.Farm animals weren’t common, Lemna says, and the farmer watched his pigs proudly. That’s when one soldier told another if he could shoot a pig, the soldier could get it out of there.The soldier shot the pig and then the other rolled it onto a stretcher, covered it with a sheet and began carrying it out of the farm. As they passed the farmer, he looked down, shook his head and made a cross over his chest, Lemna says, chuckling.Lemna followed his company deeper and deeper into Europe as the war continued. He was hit by shrapnel in the Netherlands and sent to a hospital in London.Once he recovered, Lemna says he became a “glorified taxi driver,” driving around high-ranking officers.He saw Antwerp, Brussels and Paris.One day a captain approached Lemna and asked if he wanted to go home.“‘You’ve got to be kidding if you don’t think I don’t want to go home,”’ he says he told the officer. He was discharged in October, 1945 and came home to Medicine Hat.If he were 21 again, would Lemna fight the war all over again?Under the same circumstances, 1 would.”
Newspaper Details
Medicine Hat News
Medicine Hat, Alberta, CA
Tue, Nov 11, 1997
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USA 12 Oct 2020
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