How many Canadians died in World War 2 and at which battles?

Answer 1

== == First the bare facts........... During World war Two, a total of 42,789 Canadian military personell were killed during their service. A further 97,988 were wounded, many of them loosing a limb, such as a arm or a leg, and some cases, they were multiple amputees, meaning that for the rest of their lives they would be disabled. You asked about battles. You have to realize that many men were killed in isolated places, in actions that were not really a battle in the conventional sense of that word. For example, if a fighter pilot, was shot down in a aerial combat with another enemy aircraft, he would be dead, but that does not really constitute a "battle" . The same applies to a man who was swept overboard, from a Canadian Navy ship, in the north Atlantic winter storms. He is dead, but not from enemy action. How about a trainee pilot who crashes a plane while learning to fly, in Canada. Did he die in a "battle" no , but he is still dead, just the same. About 4,000 men died in air craft crashes in Canada, while learning to fly, which was and is still a dangerous activity. Battles are either on land, on the sea, or in the air. They by their very nature involve lots of men, and lots of equipment, such as ships, aircraft and various kinds of weapons. In order to fight effectively, all of the men have to be trained and equipped, well before they go into a battle. It takes thousands of men to form a military force, and months of time to train them properly in their various tasks. They also need a large number of "support troops" who do things like manage supply of food and water and fuel, and cook the meals and do the administration jobs like keeping track of the payroll, and providing medical care. For every ONE soldier who actually faces the enemy, there are NINE others behind him in the support units, who supply him and his mates with all they need to fight with. Without support lines and supply troops, the army will collapse. You asked about battles. So I will give you the names, in chronological order, of SOME of the Canadian battles in WW2. The aerial battle of Britain, summer 1941. Bombing raids of Germany by the RCAF bomber group, flying from Yorkshire to German and French targets, 1941 thru to 1945. At sea, the Royal Canadian Navy provided escort ships to guard commercial ship convoys that brought important food and war materials to the United Kingdom from 1939 to 1945, during the LONGEST battle of the entire war, the Battle of The North Atlantic. Without those convoys, Britain would have starved to death in 1940. The German U-Boats were torppedoing many ships in the Atlantic, but the RCN was sinking a good number too, and we became the best anti-submarine force in the world by the end of the war inh 1945. On land, we we the main force in a raid on the coast of France to test the German defenses , and also the methods to use to achieve a amphibious landing on a defended beach. this took place in August, 1942, at Dieppe, France. It was a defeat for us, with many of the 5,000 Canadians being either killed of taken prisoner by the Germans. The death toll that day was over 900 killed, and only a small number of the troops got back on the ships and back to England. The prisoners would spend the next 4 years in German prisons. In 1942, we were part of the invasion force that landed in Sicily, and then went on to invade Italy. Italy was a partner with Germany in the Azis alliance. We fought hard all thru the summer fall and winter of 1943, to push the Germans and the Italians back up the country. There was heavy fighting at every river crossing, which the German army fortified strongly. It took weeks of fighting to advance only a few miles at a time, and lots of lives too. There are thousands of Canadians buried in Italy, never to come home again. That is the price that we as a country paid to defeat the evil that was the Nazis. By the summer of 1944, we had just about defeated the Germans in Italy, BUT they still held all most all of the rest of Europe, so it was important that we ( the Allies) get ashore in France, and start to drive the Germans back into their own country, and finally defeat them, once and for all. This resulted in the invasion of France, by the Allies ( Canada, Britain, and the USA ) on June 6th 1944. this was the largest military operation in the history of mankind. It was a huge effort that had been planned for 2 years, and it involved over 5,000 ships of all kinds, 4000 aircraft, and about 200,000 men in the first stages of the plan. There were 5 landing beaches, 2 for the USA, 2 for British troops, and one for Canadians. It was code named " JUNO beach" and it was about 12 miles, from end to end, and in the first 24 hours, about 20,000 Canadians went ashore, against tough German resistance, from concrete bunkers and hidden machine gun posts. The casualty numbers were high, with over 500 killed in that first day and more than 800 wounded. But the Canadians were the most aggressive, and the most successful soldiers that day, penetrating more than 12 miles inland, the farthest of any Allied group that day, June 6th ,1944. For the next 11 months, we fought thru France, into Belgium, into Holland, and finally into the heart of Germany, until they surrendered, unconditionally, on May 9th 1944. It was the most grueling and dirty part of the war, fighting in the cold and mud of the winter war in Holland, where the Germans had flooded the country by blowing the dykes that hold back the waters of the North Sea, so that we had to fight in 4 to 6 feet of water, everyday. It is no wonder that the Dutch people regard Canadians as their saviors, even today, 60 years later. We liberated them and they remember us fondly. As a Canadian soldier, in the 1980's, I could NOT spend my money in Holland, when I was there in my uniform. Nobody would take my money, they said I could have anything I wanted for FREE, as a thank you for what WE CANADIANS had done to free their country, long ago.