The Torch: Legion magazine

Legion Magazine is available for sale at newsstands and book and magazine stores for the first time in over 80 years of publishing. From an e-mail I was sent:

The May/June issue is largely dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings and features writing by many of Canada's most eminent historians and authors including Jack Granatstein and David Bercuson.

While much of the magazine is available online and, now, on the newsstands, it is also perhaps noteworthy that a one year subscription to the magazine costs merely $7.35.

That's one hell of a value, folks. Especially when you get content like this:

The Germans were on full alert and manning their heavy weapons. They were not the Wehrmacht’s finest troops: from the 736th Infantry Regiment of the static 716th Infantry Division, they were older men and reluctant conscripts with some Ost-truppen from Nazi-conquered territories. But firing from their almost impregnable bunkers, the enemy posed a serious problem for the Canadians. One deadly 88-mm gun wiped out most of a platoon of riflemen before it was knocked out of action. Another half company of Canadians fell to machine-gun fire from a large concrete bunker before the survivors managed to reach the cover provided by the high seawall 200 metres inland.

The losses were heavy. Jim Wilkins, a rifleman from B Company, remembered that his Landing Craft Assault, “stops and begins to toss in the waves. The ramp goes down and without hesitation my section leader, Corporal John Gibson, jumps out well over his waist in water. He only makes a few yards and is killed. We have landed dead on into a pillbox with a machine-gun blazing away at us. We didn’t hesitate and jumped into the water one after the other—I was last of the first row,” Wilkins said.

“Where was everybody? My section are only half there—some were just floating [dead or wounded] on their Mae Wests. My Bren gun team of Tommy Dalrymple and Kenny Scott are just in front of me when something hit my left magazine pouch and stops me up short for a moment. The round had gone right through two magazines, entered my left side and came out my back. Kenny keeps yelling come on, ‘come on’—’I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I yell to him,” Wilkins recalled. “We are now up to our knees in water and you can hear a kind of buzzing sound all around as well as the sound of the machine-gun itself. All of a sudden something slapped the side of my right leg and then a round caught me dead centre up high on my right leg causing a compound fracture. By this time I was flat on my face in the water—I’ve lost my rifle, my helmet is gone…. The man beside me is dead within minutes. All the while we are looking up at the machine-gun firing just over our heads at the rest of our platoon and company and then our platoon sergeant and friend of mine, who had given up a commission to be with us, was killed right in front of me.”