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Local university students profile soldiers who fought at Dieppe, Normandy

History students in a London university class are profiling soldiers who took part in both the Dieppe raid and the D-Day invasion during the Second World War for a Juno Beach Centre exhibit marking the raid's 80th anniversary.

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History students in a London university class are profiling soldiers who took part in both the Dieppe raid and the D-Day invasion during the Second World War for a Juno Beach Centre exhibit marking the raid’s 80th anniversary.

Upper-year students at King’s University College will contribute their work to the exhibit that details the lives of 10 soldiers who fought in the botched raid on Dieppe and went on to join the D-Day invasion two years later.

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The exhibit and student research includes French, Polish, British and Canadian soldiers who fought alongside one another.

“Somehow these people were involved in Dieppe in 1942 and then they go on to be involved with the invasion of France in 1944,” said Katrina Pasierbek, a PhD candidate in history with a background in world war history. “That was the unique tie that brought this exhibit together.”

Though some of the 10 soldiers lost their lives in 1944 and 1945, others went on to become political leaders at home or simply settle down to have families, Pasierbek said.

The Dieppe raid took place on Aug. 19, 1942, with Canadians leading the assault on the French port. Of the almost 5,000 Canadians, only 2,210 returned to their bases in Britain.

The 17 King’s students on the project are the first to be awarded the Juno Beach Centre fellowship that comes with a $5,000 grant.

Established in 2003, the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer on the Normandy coast of France, where Canadian troops landed on D-Day, is a permanent memorial to Canadians who served in the war.

The free exhibit, called From Dieppe to Juno: Exceptional Destinies, opens in March and will run until 2023.

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Pasierbek and Prof. Graham Broad, who also has an expertise in world wars, are the co-designers of a King’s experiential history course called The World Wars in History, Memory and Reconciliation.

“I take students out of the traditional classroom to engage with commemoration and memory of the world wars, and how our society still understands those big events today,” Pasierbek said. “What we wanted our students to do was take them out of the classroom, go and see (military landmarks), learn about them, so we can better understand them.”

King’s students are also doing research for other Juno Centre displays as part of its Faces of Canada Today permanent exhibition that is slated to open in 2024 on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The King’s students worked in pairs to produce their biographies for the Dieppe to Juno exhibit.

“It was very interesting because it was on the soldier prescribed to us,” King’s student Emily O’Neill said. “It gave us this element (that we had) to dig in deeper — challenge our historiography skills even further to get details based on people we were not necessarily familiar with.”

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History student Natan Penner Andrade said being part of the class allowed him “to do actual historical work and research and not just (write) argumentative papers.

“It’s a real opportunity to contribute to a meaningful exhibit people are going to see,” he said.

The students hope to travel to the Juno Beach Centre as part of their course.

Some of the soldiers students researched:

  • Toronto-born Andrew Allan Wedd was 21 when he was injured during the Dieppe raid while helping an injured soldier on the beach. He was able to return to safety on a landing craft. Wedd survived the war and returned to Canada.
  • Born in Ottawa, war correspondent Ross Munro was sent overseas in 1940 and was selected to cover the Dieppe raid. In September 1944, he was part of the unit that returned to Dieppe to liberate the town. Munro survived the war and returned home to Canada.
  • Born in Montreal, Lloyd Vernon Chadburn served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He survived the Dieppe raid but was killed in action while flying over France on June 13, 1944, a week after D-Day. He was 24 and is buried in Ranville War Cemetery in France.

hrivers@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/HeatheratLFP

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