92-year-old D-Day vet still making sure stories are passed on

At 92-years-old, Martin Maxwell has a life full of stories that need to be shared.

He was part of some of the most pivotal moments of the Second World War, as a first-hand witness to Nazi atrocities to part of the D-Day forces and one of the liberators of Holland.

He is telling those stories to young people, to make sure this generation never forgets, and he's in P.E.I. for a talk Sunday night in Cornwall.

An Austrian Jew, Maxwell was orphaned as a young child, and managed to escape his country after Kristallnacht in 1938, thanks to a letter of support given to his brother by a sympathetic S.S. officer.

While Maxwell and his brother were ushered through one door, the rest of the Jewish people in the area rounded up by the Nazis were sent out another.

"The next day we found out that all those going out the left went to concentration camps," he told CBC Mainstreet's Angela Walker.

Having escaped to the West, Maxwell joined up with Allied Forces in England at the age of 17, and trained to become a glider pilot.

D-Day, minus-1

His first combat mission came in the advance force for D-Day, when his squadron was sent to take six key bridges.

"We had to hold these bridges so the Germans couldn't send reinforcements," said Maxwell. "So the night before D-Day, six gliders, including mine, landed in Normandy. We landed at night in the moonlight.

"We had a job. We had to kill the guards on the bridges without making a noise. We couldn't use our rifles, so unfortunately we had to use our knifes and bayonets, and we killed them. Then we killed the whole garrison. And the next day, we saw the invasion, which was unbelievable."

Maxwell was sent back to England, and then was part of the liberation of Holland.

He was among the troops sent to take the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem, famously known as A Bridge Too Far, in the movie version of the battle.

After intense fighting for seven days against a tank division stationed there, Maxwell was sent to find out what was happening in another sector.

"I'd gone about 20 yards when the tanks fired and fired and fired behind me, unfortunately killing everybody," he said. "I myself was lifted up in the air, and smashed against a tree. My uniform was torn off me, my right hand was broke, and my thigh was sticking out, and I fainted.

"I came to and somebody was screaming. I was the one who was screaming. But I noticed two men with red crosses, our own, and they had sticks to go into the trenches to see if anyone was alive. And they said, 'Hey, this guy is still with us!' So they bandaged me up, gave me a wooden splint, and took me to a makeshift field hospital."

Captured by Germans

Fearing more attacks, Maxwell and another soldier crawled from the hospital, but were taken prisoner by the Germans overwhelming the area, and taken back through Arnhem.

"What got to me more than anything else was the dozens and dozens of Dutch men, women and children hanging by their necks on wires strung across, because they had tried to bring us water and food," he said. "And when the Germans caught them, they shot them immediately."

Liberated from a prison camp at the end of the war, Maxwell still had more work to do, thanks to his Austrian heritage and knowledge of the German language.

Investigated war crimes

"I interviewed thousands of German soldiers because some of the high-ranking officers got private's uniforms, not to be discovered."

He even spent time working at the Pentagon in war crimes investigations.

Eventually Maxwell found out that his sister had survived the Holocaust, and had moved to Toronto.

He was reunited with her, and stayed in Canada, but has often returned to Europe, one of the heroes of the war.

"I went back for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Holland [in 2005] and there were tens of thousands of us," he said. "Five years ago there were 1,500, and this year, there was just 70 of us. But I couldn't believe, 200,000 people lined the streets. The kids were given the day off school, and 10,000 of them waved Canadian flags."

A 12-year-old Dutch girl pushed her way through the crowd, to give him flowers and a letter, which he read for Mainstreet.

"So long ago, many, many of you came and fought and died, so that we Dutch could have our freedom. You save my Oma - grandmother. She was sick and you gave her medicine. She was hungry and you gave her food, and you threw your food from the planes so that we, the Dutch people wouldn't die of hunger. And because you saved my Oma, I'm here today to shake your hand and say thank you."

Capt. Martin Maxwell will be telling more of his stories at a public talk on Sunday evening at 7 p.m. at the West River United Church in Cornwall.

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