UVic Students Join D-Day Remembrance Overseas

Scenes of mud and wartime mayhem from movies like War Horse and Saving Private Ryan will seem almost too real soon for a pair of University of Victoria undergraduate students. Caylan Ayers and Meghan Stewart are two of only a dozen Canadian students selected to attend an annual tour—in time for the June 6 anniversary of D-Day—of First and Second World War battlefields, cemeteries and memorials in Normandy and Northwest Europe.

The 16-day study tour May 25 to June 10 includes visits to the First World War sites of Ypres Salient, the Somme and Vimy Ridge followed by a trip to Dieppe and a detailed examination of the Normandy campaign of the Second World War. Ayers, who studies European military history at UVic, only recently discovered his great-uncle was on the beach on D-Day and died in Europe during the Second World War. Stewart studies Russian history at UVic; her maternal grandparents are German, her great-grandfather was a prisoner of war in Russia and her great-grandmother and grandmother had to flee as the Russian army advanced west.

“These students are about to have an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Canadians who served overseas during these two wars,” says UVic historian Dr. James Wood, who taught both students for a third-year veterans’ oral history course. “Few experiences can compare with actually walking the ground if we want to really understand what happened at places like Dieppe and Vimy Ridge.”

Next month will mark the 68th anniversary of the D-Day landings. This is the 18th annual Battlefield Study Tour, organized by the Canadian Battlefields Foundation.

Media advisory: Ayers is in Victoria until May 19, Stewart on the Sunshine Coast until May 24, available at the numbers below. Both are also available by email for firsthand accounts during the overseas tour. Video and photo options might also be available.

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