Intermission Stories (23)

John Edmunds, RCN

John Edmunds

The Canadian Seaman

On D-Day, John Edmunds, from Burlington, Ontario, 19 years old, was in the Royal Canadian Navy assigned as a helmsman on an escort ship leading cargo vessels to Normandy.  Aboard the HMCS Drumheller, he was headed for Juno Beach.

Seaman Edmunds stood at the helm of his ship as his captain barked down orders from the bridge, “Port, two degrees!”  John sailed the Flower-class corvette vessel in circles around a convoy of 15 cargo ships for the length of their three-hour voyage across the English Channel.  And then – he looked toward the approaching shore.  The reality of what laid ahead of the Allies came into view, “We looked out across the English Channel and whole horizon was ships, thousands of ships.”

HMCS Drumheller

Men lined the deck with binoculars, searching the seas for German submarines.  Edmunds had already seen the U-boats sink 12 of the 60 ships the Drumheller had helped across the Atlantic in the first days of the war; men screaming for help in the open water. (“You heard the yelling and the screaming, but we couldn’t stop,” Edmunds recalled.)

Quickly there was a sound, unforgettable, advancing like a wave; a heartbeat of cannon fire like two tractor-trailers continually colliding head-on in the distance.  Allied destroyers, their warring sides turned toward the French shore, strafed the hills beyond the beaches for German concrete bunkers.  The Germans answered in a roaring rhythm as the Allied troops landed on the shores in bloody waves.

John Edmunds, (center), during the war years

Edmunds had never heard or seen anything like it.  “When the tide came out, there were bodies floating everywhere.  Unbelievable.”  Cannon fire burst overhead as the Drumheller made way for the 15 cargo vessels to sail near shore, perilously close to scraping bottom.  He watched the Liberty ships line up bow-to-stern, parallel to the shore to form a breakwater, an artificial harbor where troop-carrying ships could land and unload their tanks, men and supplies.

Then, these ships would scuttle themselves into a permanent position; some of them remain there rusting off the shores of Normandy to this day.  The Drumheller was ordered to escort supply ships throughout the invasion.  The crew slept in 4-hour shifts, ready to drop depth charges off the back to blast any German subs.  They did not set foot on land for 42 days.  “You sort of went stir crazy,” Edmund said.

HMCS Drumheller, pix taken by Charles Sadler, RCNVR, 1st Class Stoker, while serving on the HMCS Columbia.

John Edmunds is now 89 years old, retired and living in West Palm Beach, Florida.  His memories were given to Carlos Frias of The Palm Beach Post for print.

For further information on the HMCS Drumheller. 

Click on images to enlarge.

#############################################################################################

Farewell Salutes – 

Dale Anderson – Toledo, OH; US Army Air Force, Col. (Ret.), WWII, ETO

From, Anna, Maiden On The Midway

F.William Bauers Jr. – Washington DC; US Army Air Corps, WWII, pilot – 68 missions

Leslie Graves – Groton, NY; US Navy, Lt. JG; pilot instructor, WWII

Marshall Johnson – Woburn, MA; US Army, Korea

Hugh McKinnon – New Zealand; RNZ Army # 462352

Joseph Melarango – Cleveland, OH; US Navy, WWII

Raymond Palumbo – Hillside, IL; US Army, Korea

Thomas Seigle – Knoxville, TN & Sarasota, FL; US Navy, Pilot, Vietnam

#############################################################################################