From: The Devils' Blast, the Annual Journal of The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, May 09
Gunner W.C. Milner’s D-Day Map
During the early minutes of the Allied assault on Normandy on 6 June 1944, Gnr William C. Milner, 13th RCA, from Sackville NB, landed on “MIKE Green” beach, right behind the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. While he waited in the shelter of the dunes for the rest of his unit to come ashore, Gnr Milner picked up a 1/50,000 scale British Army Ordnance Survey map of the Normandy beaches that was poking out of the pocket of a fallen Rifleman. A high resolution digital scan of that map is now in the hands of the RWR museum. However, a mystery remains and maybe the RWR community can help solve it.
Bill Milner joined the artillery in early 1943 went overseas that fall, where he joined the 14th RCA, an Ontario unit. When 14th RCA was deemed overstrength, Milner was sent to the 13th RCA: he never regretted the transfer. The 13th RCA was a western unit, composed of batteries from Red Deer, Gleichen and Prince Albert. He always recalled fondly that he and the few other Maritimers in the regiment were treated well by the Prairie gunners. They were all militia men and a little older, and “We Maritimers were kind of a novelty” he used to say. But they never let ‘outsiders’ near the guns. So Milner, a qualified Bren gunner, was assigned to the RHQ.
13th RCA was one of four RCA field regiments assigned to the assault wave on 6 June. Normally attached to 8 Bde, for Operation Overlord it and 12th RCA, supported 7 Bde. The regiment’s FOOs went in with the Regina Rifles and the Canadian Scottish, while most of the guns came ashore later in the day across the RWR beach. In the meantime, various parties of the 13th RCA landed all along MIKE beach that morning: including the Unit Landing Officer and his detachment, Gun Position Officers and their men, and the RHQ.
My father’s probably came ashore with the RHQ - with whom he served throughout the Northwest Europe campaign as a cook, driver, despatch rider and machine gunner. We do know that his landing craft grounded some distance offshore and “the Sergeant” put a rope in his hand and told him to wade ashore and tie it off so that everyone else would have something to hang onto. At over six feet tall Gnr Milner was a good choice for the job: his first step off the ramp was a plunge into about six feet of water. Once he secured the rope, my father scampered across the beach – which was still under mortar and small arms fire -- into the shelter of the dunes to clean his rifle. Somewhere between the edge of the surf and the time the Sergeant arrived the give him a kick and a sharp rebuke “to get the hell off the beach there was a war on!”, he picked-up the map.
The account of the acquisition of the map which I heard my whole life was that he found it “sticking out of the pant pocket of a dead Warrant Officer of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles,” and that the blue ink arrow (pointing to MIKE beach) was on the map when he found it. I never doubted the truth of his story. In 1993 I travelled to Normandy with him (his first trip back in forty-nine years) and we stood on MIKE Green, just under the huge Cross of Lorraine which now dominates the site, and he related the story again. “This is where I landed,” he said firmly, “The Winnipegs were still fighting in the dunes when we came ashore.”
After over a year in the army and months of training in Britain as part of 3rd Canadian Division, there seems no reason to doubt that my father could identify a Warrant Officer and a Rifleman. So who could it have been? Only one senior NCO fatality, Sgt W. W. Miskow, is listed on the RWR Honour Role for 6 June 1944: in his case as “Died of Wounds”. The regimental history and available sources say nothing of him: could he have been an acting CSM? It is also possible, given the tense state of the moment, that the ‘dead’ Warrant Officer my father saw was only seriously wounded and ultimately survived.
So, some puzzles remain for this D-Day map, and perhaps members of the RWR family can help clear them up.
Dr J. Marc Milner
A native of Sackville, NB, Dr Marc Milner earned his doctorate from the University of New Brunswick in 1983.He is the author of seven books on Canadian naval history and wrote D-Day to Carpiquet: The North Shore Regiment and the Liberation of Europe. His articles have appeared in Military Affairs, Acadiensis, RCN in Retrospect, Canadian Defence Quarterly, Horizon Canada, The RUSI Journal, Journal of Strategic Studies and elsewhere.
He was formerly with the Directorate of History at the Department of National Defence, Ottawa, and wrote portions of the second volume of the RCAF's official History.
Dr Milner is the Director of UNB's Brigadier Milton F. Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society.
Dr Milner writes: The pencil sketch of my father was done in Brugges, Belgium in November 1944. His contacts with the RWR seem to have been very limited, 13th Fd Regt, RCA spent most of its time supporting 8 Bde, except during the initial stages of Overlord when they and the 12th backed up 7 Bde. My father was at the RRR HQ in Bretteville for the battles of 7-11 June 1944.
The only other reference he ever made to the 7 Bde and the RWR was Calais, where he was nearly court martialled for being found in a boat poling his way into the town as the assault wave went by in DUKWs (the FOO caught him and another New Brunswicker from 13th RCA). He told me that the Germans were going to surrender anyway (white flags were out) and if the infantry got there first they would get all the Lugers -- which he was selling to pilots and anyone else. So, the map would simply be further evidence of a pattern of behaviour!
