‘Contributing to a legacy:’ Campaign underway to honour Regina Rifles on Juno Beach

On June 6, 2024, the “Farmer Johns” will once again be front and centre on a Normandy beach.

To mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, an eight-foot-tall bronze statue is to be placed on the seawall at Courseulles-sur-Mer, France to pay tribute to the Regina Rifle Regiment, whose members were known as the “Farmer Johns.”

Some 1,000 soldiers from the regiment — now known as the Royal Regina Rifles — were among the 15,000 Canadians who landed on Juno Beach as part Operation Overlord, the campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation.

“The Sixth of June is very, very important to the regiment because that was the biggest day arguably in its history; it’s a battle honour for us,” says Ed Staniowski, a retired lieutenant-colonel with the Royal Regina Rifles.

“When the Rifles went ashore on the Sixth of June, they accomplished amazing things for the next 11 months until the end of the war.”

However, Staniowski notes there isn’t a permanent monument to the Rifles at Juno Beach 80 years after the invasion. That’s where the statue comes in.

“There’s a small plaque there,” he says. “It’s pretty non-descript. You’d really have to look for it to find it.

“The statue is going to be front and centre on the seawall where the Rifles landed. It’s going to be eight feet tall, it’s going to be bronze and it’s going to depict a World War II rifleman carrying a Bren gun coming up off the sand and pushing inland.”

Renowned sculptor Don Begg of Cochrane, Alta., has been commissioned to do the statue, and Staniowski said Begg has been very precise in his preparations.

A replica of the statue that will be placed on the Normandy beach where the Regina Rifle Regiment landed on June 6, 1944. (980 CJME)

“He has gone into meticulous detail to get everything right — everything from the lanyard on the canteen to the straps on the Bren gun that the rifleman is carrying,” Staniowski said. “The helmets, the packs, the buttons and everything on it are extremely accurate.”

The issue is funding and, to that end, the Rifles are seeking donations to help finance the statue. Donations can be made at canadahelps.org or by emailing rrrtrustfund@gmail.com.

“You’re contributing to a legacy of the things that were accomplished by everyday citizens,” Staniowski said. “They put down their pen and paper and their shovels or wherever they were working at — their farm tools — and picked up a rifle and went off and arguably made the world a better place.”

On June 6, 1944, the Rifles pressed further into France than any other Allied unit, and held their ground. The regiment captured Courseulles-sur-Mer — the first village liberated in that part of Normandy — as well as Bretteville.

Staniowski has been to Normandy and said the people remember the regiment’s efforts and sacrifices.

“You talk to them when you’re over there and they still talk about what they owe to the Rifles,” he says.

Over the next 11 months of the war, 458 Rifles were killed.

Staniowski said current members of the regiment will be in Normandy on June 6 of this year to take part in a D-Day ceremony, just as others have in the past. During his career, Staniowski said he’s had the opportunity to meet vets who were there in 1944 — and those conversations have stuck with him.

“I had a chance to go to Europe with them and actually walk the ground that they had fought over and see the canals they crossed and see the hedgerows they had to go through and what went on in that alley and in this village and over that hill,” Staniowski says. “Those things need to be passed on.”

The unveiling of the statue in 2024 will be part of a larger Canadian event to mark the 80th anniversary of the invasion.

Staniowski says the goal is for Princess Anne — the regiment’s colonel-in-chief — to unveil the statue, but it’s not known if the event will fit into her schedule. He hopes she can make it, along with people from communities across Saskatchewan.

“It’s going to be a place to be next year for some Canadians,” Staniowski says. “All can’t be there, but hopefully as we go down the road, especially many of the young kids and younger people here in Saskatchewan, if they get a chance to go to Europe, they can make a point of going and seeing what is their legacy and perhaps what they owe to the regiment.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Kevin Martel