Banford Family receives Memorial Cross

Carl Banford was just 20 years old when he enlisted in the Canadian Infantry Corps in 1942. He was with the second wave of Canadian troops on Juno Beach in June of 1944, up against  the dug in and fanatical German defenders of Fortress Europe.

He was one of the lucky ones. He got to come home when the fighting was over. 

Now, 70 years later, the late veteran’s family has been presented with the Memorial Cross by the government of Canada in gratitude for their personal loss and Carl’s sacrifice. 

Son Eric received a letter in July, 2015, from Veteran’s Affairs Canada, notifying him that the medal would be given to the Banford family.

The Memorial Cross was created in 1919 following the Great War. It is granted to the loved ones of the fallen on behalf of Her Majesty’s Canadian government to recognize their loss and sacrifice.  

The letter reads in part, “You should be very proud of the contribution (Carl) made towards helping to shape Canada into the great nation in which we live today – a nation blessed with peace and freedom…We owe it to our brave Veterans to learn, to understand and to appreciate their sacrifices.”

Carl, who had been assigned to the Winnipeg Rifles just before the D-Day invasion, was with that unit when they were cut off, surrounded and captured by a Panzer unit on June 9. 

At one point, Carl said, in a story which first ran in the Leader in August, 2008, the men were certain the SS troops intended to shoot them out of hand. “They ordered us to line up. They didn’t want prisoner baggage, not with a counter attack going on.”

For some reason, the orders were changed and the Rifles were marched to Reims, where they were forced into boxcars, designed to hold eight horses. There were 40 men crammed into each car, with virtually no food, no water and no sanitation. 

A terrifying 23 day journey to Stalag 4 followed. During that time, the prisoner train was strafed by Allied bombers and then left sealed on a siding for eight days in the June heat.

Carl spent the next months in a POW camp, short of rations and often ill. His young wife, Hilda, did not know until November, 1944, what had happened to her husband. 

May 5, 1945, Carl was among the prisoners suddenly marched out of camp by the guards,  supposedly headed to another Stalag. However, on May 6, the German guards vanished. On the 7th, a jeep of American soldiers found the hungry, exhausted POWs.

Suffering from trench mouth and malnutrition, the young soldier eventually made it back to Canada.  As a self trained artist, in later years he sometimes painted scenes from his ordeal in Europe. 

Carl Banford died in 2013.

His Memorial Cross, given in recognition of Carl’s WWII service, is cherished by his family.