June 6th marks the 75th Anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Allied troops stormed German defenses on the beaches of Normandy, France that day. The victory at Normandy came at a great cost to Canadian forces as they suffered the most casualties of any of the British Army Group.
As I didn’t have any direct family members that fought in WWII, I didn’t know a lot about D-Day, so I spent time today doing Google searches and going to various sites and was able to learn quite a bit from the site, Veteran Affairs Canada.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve seen those photos and videos of the troops as they arrived on the beaches but I wasn’t aware of the huge number of men that lost their lives. Wikipedia tells us that there were at least 10,000 Allied casualties with 4,414 confirmed dead and that German casualties were between 4,000 to 9,000 men.
Today has been a great learning experience for me and if you have an ancestor that fought in this battle then you should be very proud.
Ancestry and Newspapers.com is offering a FREE weekend so you can expand your family research.
Ancestry is providing FREE access to over 250 million military records in their global military collection this weekend. Below I’ve given you the links to the various Ancestry sites to gain access.
Newspapers.com also offers a FREE weekend not only to access the regular collection but also the Publishers Extra collection. This is the access I use to look at the Edmonton Journal and other Canadian papers. This is an excellent opportunity to read the newspaper as your ancestors would have. You can access the collection HERE.
Note: The post above contains affiliate links. This means I make a percentage on sales via these links. This does not INCREASE the price you pay as a consumer. It’s simply a supplement to my income so I can continue to support The DNA Angel Project and to make donations to the Alzheimer’s’ Society