WINNIPEG — When a ceasefire was declared exactly 70 years ago this week, Jack Tennant says the men he was stationed with in northern Germany celebrated with both wine and tears.
“We toasted to victory and we remembered those we had left behind,” says Tennant who can still see the quiet parade of German soldiers walking down the road and away from battle.
“They were just going home, the war was over for them,” Tennant said. “Two days (prior) we would have been shooting at each other, and there you are, not enemies any more.”
May 5th, 1945, Germany surrendered to Canadian forces in Holland, and in the following days the war would be declared officially over.
After more than four years away from family and loved ones, Transcona veteran, Paul Martin, says the cease-fire was hard to believe.
“I just wanted to go home,” Martin said. “I was lonely, I wanted to go home.”
But Martin says loss of so many friends, and later, the joy he witnessed on the faces of citizens he helped to free, made him more determined than ever to go home and ‘live a good life.’
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