THUNDER BAY – It has been remembered as The Longest Day. June 6 1944 has and will go down in history as D-Day. This year is the 70th Anniversary of the invasion of Fortress Europe by Allied Forces landing on Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha and Utah Beach. On D-Day, Canadian soliders were the furthest inland after very bloody battles on Juno Beach to secure a foothold in Europe and make the defeat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany possible.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day on June 6th, The War Amps YouTube channel will feature iconic footage of Canadian troops storming Juno Beach in Normandy in 1944. These famous scenes were the first motion pictures the world would see of the D-Day invasion.
The cameramen who scooped the international press were soldiers from the Canadian Army Film Unit.
This D-Day footage is just one segment of a total of 106 newsreels filmed by the Canadian Army that document the infantry in training and on the front lines.
The War Amps will release a newsreel every week on its YouTube channel at YouTube.com/warampsofcanada, a two-year project that will make the complete set of Canadian Army Newsreels available to the public for the first time online.
Photo: Army cameramen assigned to capture the first wave of the D-Day invasion. (Library and Archives Canada PA#206120)
