Roland ‘Roly’ Armitage (1925-2024): Normandy veteran dies just days after D-Day anniversary

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Juno Beach was in flames when 19-year-old Roly Armitage first glimpsed it from the deck of his troop ship, the SS George Wythe.

Canadians had stormed ashore on D-Day just 10 days before, and now it was the turn of Armitage and the 3rd Medium Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery to join the fierce and bloody battle for Normandy.

The beach was packed with soldiers, but they weren’t Canadians. Instead, as Armitage waded ashore, long lines of German prisoners of war boarded the ship he’d just left.

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“They went out and got on the boat and went back to England,” Armitage recalled in a 2019 video he made for the Juno Beach Centre. “They were just waving at us saying, ‘Have a good day! Enjoy it!’”

Armitage died this past week at Perley Health’s veterans’ home, just days after the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 1944. The Second World War veteran, veterinarian, horseman, former West Carleton mayor and renowned community builder was 99.

Roland Montgomery Armitage was born Feb. 8, 1925, at the family home in South March Township, one of eight children. A member of the cadets, he joined the army on a whim in high school when he was just 17. He and his friend saw a group of teens in the recruiting line and decided to line up themselves.

“It was very impromptu,” he told the Juno Beach Centre. “We lined up and we were in the army that afternoon.”

After wading ashore in Normandy, Armitage’s artillery unit was thrown into the fighting for Caen, just a few kilometres from the D-Day beaches. Armitage was a range-finder, setting fuses timed to burst in the air just a second before impact, maximizing the devastation from shards of white-hot steel shrapnel.

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“I always felt bad about that,” he told the Juno Beach Centre. “All those things in your mind … Somebody was getting it.”

He recalled seeing his commanding officer severely wounded by a German shell and pleading for Armitage and another soldier to inject him with pain-killing morphine.

“He didn’t last a minute after that,” Armitage said, his voice catching in his throat. “Bled out. Too many holes in him.”

A couple of days later, Armitage himself was wounded in a shell blast that permanently deafened him on his left side and left him bleeding from his eyes and ears. He refused to be evacuated to England and, after two weeks in a forward aid post, rejoined his unit as it fought its way through Calais, across France and into Holland.

On a rainy night near Eindhoven, Armitage was driving a Jeep when he noticed movement at the side of the road. He stopped and found two Dutch children covered in mud and cowering, far from any town.

“I picked the two of them up and got them into the Jeep and I took them back to the kitchen,” he said. “We got them cleaned up. They never stopped eating until finally they went to sleep. We rolled them up in a blanket and we put them to bed. We had those kids for two weeks before we could find anyone who would take them.”

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Incredibly, in 2023 Armitage reunited with one of those children. He had told the story to Dutch media and 83-year-old Sonja Jobes of Minnesota saw the story online.

“I read it and I knew that was me,” Jobes told CTV Ottawa last summer.  “It was like a puzzle kind of came together.”

The two reunited along with their family and friends in Ottawa.

“He was my hero,” said Jobes, who had been just three years old at the time they first met.

Armitage returned to Canada after the war and studied to be a veterinarian at Guelph Veterinary College. He practised in Shawville until he moved to Dunrobin in 1968.

The horse lover was general manager of Rideau Carleton Raceway and was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame and the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame. He served as mayor of West Carleton from 1990 to ’94 and was given the keys to the City of Ottawa in 2006. He was named to the Order of Ottawa and the Order of Ontario. He was also general manager of the Carp Airport for nine years.

Armitage returned to Normandy in 2019 for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings — he kept a glass jar of sand he scooped from the beach in his home — and had hoped to attend this year’s ceremonies until ill health intervened.

Armitage was married to Mary Spearman from 1947 until her death in 1985. They had four children: Maxwell, Ann, Blake and Donald. His second wife, Karen Flahven, died in 2013.

A celebration of life will be at the Highland Park Funeral Home in Carp on July 13 from 1 to 4 p.m.

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