“Her sister outside said she heard her calling for her mother … I just thought she was crying but she looked up at me startled … I’ll never forget that.
“I was just lifting her up in my arms to put (the dressing) on her back, and she looked at me, startled, and she exclaimed something,” Bud recalled. The two girls were brought by ambulance to the dressing station, and while a doctor searched for a vein to give Emilienne a plasma transfusion, Bud pressed Vaseline-smeared gauze onto her chest and back wounds to prevent air from entering the chest cavity. Yvonne suffered less serious shrapnel wounds to her face. Émilienne was hit by a 20mm round that blew off one of her arms at the elbow and passed through her chest. Yvonne had intended to feed the cows alone, but her younger sister insisted on going. Their mother had gone into labour and so both parents had left for the hospital. As his plane dove to the ground, the pilot turned his sights from the Canadian convoy he was strafing, training his guns on two girls who were in a field, herding cattle.Įmilienne Bazin was 13.
The Messerschmitt’s canopy, Bud recounted, was locked, its pilot doomed. In the sky above, a German fighter plane was on fire. One might argue that God never quite took him out of there.īud was at the station late in the afternoon of Friday, July 14. Soon after he was sent to a casualty clearing station set up in a one-room school in Basly, a village of fewer than 250 inhabitants, eight kilometres inland.īud spent just 52 days in Basly, but his life became forever entwined with the village. The sea was rough and they were sick on the way to Bernières-sur-Mer, where they arrived amidst chaos. Bud Hannam, standing on the hood of the Jeep, was a medic and stretcher-bearer during the days following the D-Day invasion of Normandy. His first taste of war was the D-Day invasion of Normandy. On the night of June 5, 1944, Hannam, then 19, set sail for France. His unit was sent to Scotland for training in the fall of 1943, then moved to a staging camp in Botley, England, near Southampton. According to Rosy, Bud added two years to his age so he’d be allowed to go. When the chance finally arose to go overseas, Bud raised his hand and rejoined the 23rd Field Ambulance as a stretcher-bearer and medic.
A stint with the Cameron Highlanders 2nd Battalion followed, but combat training was not for him. He joined the 23rd Field Ambulance Reserve. When Canada declared war on Germany in 1939, Bud was 14 - too young to serve, but anxious to see action. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. National Capital Region's Top Employers.
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