The Valour and the Horror

World War Two, saving private ryan, Second World War, W.W.II

Ý Ý Ý Ý Jacques Dextraze

JACQUES DEXTRAZE As quoted in "The Valour and the Horror"

A 19 year-old French Canadian company commander, who later became Chief of Defense Staff.

On French and English Canadians' debate over whether or not to go to war:

V&H 01:07:25:05 I could see that this guy Hitler was going all over Europe, and I was very deeply affected when I saw what was happening to France. And ah... Not that I joined up you know to defend French speaking Canadians, or English speaking Canadians. I joined up to defend Canada.

On POW's

V&H 01:27:27:20 I used to tell my men, "Your job is to kill the enemy, that's your principal job. But the minute an enemy comes out with his hands up in the air, you must respect him, and you must protect him, and you must ensure that this man is as protected as your own men."

V&H 01:33:37:10 We crossed the river - the bridge had been blown up. Take the little city by the rear. Eighty five prisoners we take. I select an officer, "take them back to the P.W. cage". He goes back, making them run, to the bridge that we had...a farmer's bridge that we had come over you know. These guys had been running for a couple of miles. They came to the bridge (bad cut) No no, you don't take the bridge, you swim. Now these guys fell...went into that water you know. Most of them drowned. Imagine having run you know, they had been fighting before, running you know for a couple of miles, and then the water you know. Now, they were picked up by the engineers rebuilding the bridge. I could have been accused of not having protected them. I'm responsible for these prisoners you see. I felt very bad when I saw them all piled up beside the bridge. I didn't like that very much.

On his own early views on war:

V&H 01:39:32:05 When I was a young boy, I used to go hunting with my father. I was seven, eight, nine years old, and I used to love hunting. And of course I went to war, I was in my twenties, and it was just another form of hunting to me, except that this one, this particular deer, you know, could respond at a gun, and so it made hunting that much more interesting.

On VerriËres:

V&H 01:44:59:15 As a matter of fact, I was smoking my pipe, and ah, I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and I lit a cigarette. So I'm finally smoking a pipe, having a cigarette, I threw my pack of cigarettes away, which was half full... We were laying down and running, the balance of us, and when I threw myself in the wheat, it just looks to me as if there were wasps in the field, I could hear this bzzz, bzzz, going around. It didn't take long that I realize these weren't wasps, or they were pretty lively wasps. It was the tank that was firing - it was cutting the grain, which was of course about that high by that time.

I thought I was a well-trained man for war when I landed here. Boy I learned about fighting, and learned that I didn't know much. But I learned...

We came into that square. The Germans were firing at us from the old girls' school at the other end. We were at these houses ourselves. The Germans were in this particular building there, pouring fire at us and we at them, when all of a sudden, fire stopped coming from them and we stopped our own fire, and I looked up to see the reason why. There was a kid that had come out of the school there, right into the square, about five years old, four or five years old, its little finger in the mouth, and just looking left and looking right. And all of a sudden, a woman comes out, I suppose the mother, grabbed the child, put her to her chest, looked to the left, looked to the right, and ran back into the church. Really, it was quite something. And then, the Second World War resumed boys, the Germans on one side and us on the other, trying to kill each other.

On brigadier Dan Cunningham:

V&H 02:06:24:20 There's got to be courage at a level higher than the unit, the courage to take the decision not to do a certain thing. Courage is not only taking your sword out, going over the parapet and bashing right and left and .....(inaudible)....and so on. The moral courage of standing on your two feet, assessing the situation and saying, "No, this ain't on...".

On his August,1944 attack on a church:

V&H 02:26:15:05 Well I was going out for dinner with a couple of the boys that night - chicken, a couple of bottles of wine, that was to be our evening, when I heard the battalion was to be committed at St- Martin and Fontenay. When the brigade listened to the orders and suggested that the attack might be better done in another manner, promptly, the C.O. turned to me and said, "Jim, would you come down to the unit and do battle." So, I said "I should have kept my mouth shut maybe". So anyway, I reported to the unit, made a quick reconnaissance from the top of that farmhouse over there, noticed that the plan that had been evolved before I joined the unit wasn't feasible. Noticed a breach on the left flank and said, that's the way to go in.

02:27:00:20 A breach was a hole in the church wall. Burst into the breach, and the wall, men this side, men this side, each with machine guns, the third section started running for the door. We were firing as we were going from the hip. We got to the church, and the third section got in there, and then we threw grenades in, used our machine guns, firing left, firing right. ...we were throwing grenades at them and firing machine guns.

Well...we took a quick survey of the Church, what it looked like, and I told them that they should place themselves in these windows, away from the floor, because the counter attack would come from probably that corner, and they would be really raking the floor level with machine gun fire as they'd come, and throwing grenades.

ROMAN

02:28:25:00 Did you feel in awe, or superstitious, about breaking into a church, destroying it, throwing grenades?

DEXTRAZE

02:28:30:00 No, not at all. The relationship between my god and I was very intimate you know, and I knew that my friend would understand what I was doing you know. The Germans were in there, they had no business being there, they were in the way, they had to be gotten the hell out of it, and I think he understood.

02:28:49:25 I had faith. It pulled me through more. I didn't go down on my knees every minute and every day, but there was a little prayer that I used to say and that was the only one. That prayer was "Thy will be done". That's all. And a great peace came over me, because you know, you're in front of death, and you have to be honest with yourself, and when you say that little prayer, you have to mean it, you can't fake it, that's you and your god you see that's there. But, that pulled me through.

On allied air superiority:

V&H 02:34:25:00 We've got artillery, media, light; we've got aircrafts coming in, we've got Typhoons, you know it's a whole symphony this whole thing. You go to the theater and you listen to the music that's being played, if you listen only to the trumpet that doesn't give you much, but it's everything together that...that really...makes this opera or this symphony meaningful to you. You can rest in your chair, and you can listen to it and you say "Ah, that's something..."

We were good with all the weaponry that we had. Some were less good than the ones he had, maybe in some case our tactics were a hell of a lot better than theirs. We believed that we had the guns, the support, the armament, the aircraft, the artillery pieces, and our guts, apart from that, and our ability to want to do the thing, and we did it.

After reading inscription on tombstone:

V&H 02:41:40:00 Hm, 16 years old...A child. Well son, we owe you a lot.