Marc Milner, Author at Legion Magazine

Think again

Marc Milner — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:26:41 +0000

Re-examining Canada’s role in D-Day

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Operation Drumbeat

Marc Milner — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 20:36:36 +0000

U-boats targeted East Coast shipping in the first half of 1942 In the early hours of Jan. 12, 1942, wireless stations around the North Atlantic picked up a distress call from the British passenger freighter, SS Cyclops. The 9,076-ton vessel with 181 people aboard was 230 kilometres southeast of Cape Sable, N.S., and had just been …

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Sub vs Schooner

Marc Milner — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 18:51:01 +0000

In a U-boat rampage off the East Coast in 1918, the schooner Dornfontein was captured and burned On Aug. 3, 1918, a small boat carrying nine sailors arrived at Gannet Rock in the Bay of Fundy. They had a tale to tell. The previous day, a submarine had stopped their schooner—looted it, and took the …

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The overzealous skipper

Marc Milner — Sun, 03 May 2020 12:41:17 +0000

When Nicholas Monserrat titled his classic account of the Battle of the Atlantic The Cruel Sea, it was no accident. Nearly half of the Royal Canadian Navy vessels lost in the Second World War succumbed to marine accidents. Patrol boat HMCS Adversus ran aground; destroyer HMCS Skeena dragged its anchor and stranded on the island of …

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Chopper Mission

Marc Milner — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:17:42 +0000

Story by Marc Milner Photography by Stephen J. Thorne The word comes in late in the evening: the president and the provisional government of “West Isles” are surrounded by a rebel force in the capital city of “Blue Mountain.” They need to be saved from the rebels if the peace-support mission in the region is …

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Stopping the panzers

Marc Milner — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 13:50:56 +0000

Canada’s role following D-Day was vital to the success of Operation Overlord The problem with the well-known story of Canada’s role in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings in France in June 1944, is not what it says, but what it leaves out—just about everything that matters. In the long-familiar tale, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, …

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A quiet victory in the Gulf

Marc Milner — Wed, 17 May 2017 18:06:37 +0000

When Canada declared war on Germany in September 1939, the most immediate threat to the country was an attack on its shipping. That fear was so palpable that when periscopes were soon “sighted” in the St. Lawrence River, no one was surprised. A “submarine diviner” with a plumb-bob and a chart of the river was …

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Sinking the Bismarck

Marc Milner — Sun, 01 May 2016 12:00:26 +0000

A handful of Canadians played modest roles in the historic demise of the Nazi battleship 75 years ago On May 21, 1941, the most powerful warship in Europe disappeared from her anchorage in Bergen, Norway. The British, anxiously watching and waiting, could surmise where the brand new 50,000-tonne battleship Bismarck was going: to the broad reaches of the …

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Attack on convoy SC-107

Marc Milner — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:05:17 +0000

For a British-bound fleet and its under-equipped escort, early November 1942 brought pure carnage September and October 1942 were frustrating months for Germany’s mid-Atlantic U-boats. German Admiral Karl Dönitz’s staff attributed this to three factors: fair weather that made attacking difficult; a large number of novice U-boat captains commanding their first cruises; and the power …

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Navy: Distracting the pack

Marc Milner — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:07:32 +0000

By the late summer of 1942, the Canadian navy was stretched thin. But the corvettes were still able to disrupt several U-boat attacks. Running the North Atlantic war was all about risk management, and things were better in the early fall of 1942. The rampage along the United States coast and in the Caribbean was over. …

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