Canada's Maple Leaf flag flew proudly over my local village green in west Sussex this weekend. It was there to mark the day Canadian soldiers took part in the raid on Dieppe in August 1942.
They were billeted just outside the village of Wisborough Green, in fact not a hundred yards from where I am writing this, and a wall plaque commemorates that fact on a neighbour's house. A now, sadly, dwindling band of veterans come over from Canada, along with their country's High Commissioner in London, every year and the village turns out for a church service to pay its respects and remember the Canadian soldiers, over 900 of them, who lost their lives. It is a sad yet uplifting day in the village's passage of time.
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