Canadian Forces in 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Nov 27, 2021 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
They said she couldn’t fly in a jet because her "female parts would be damaged."

#16Days
“It was quite a thrill breaking the sound barrier at 100 feet...”
They said she couldn't complete the same basic training. They said she couldn’t work on the operations staff. They said she couldn't work in Intelligence. They said she couldn’t work overseas. They said many things.

She proved them wrong.
On one course, an instructor threatened to resign rather than accept a woman in his classroom.

When she finished first in class, he had the staff review all the results. When they found no cheating or academic misconduct, he accepted her. Only then.

And then he apologized.
They said she couldn’t work overseas because she would be vulnerable to blackmail.

Naturally, she went to Germany to be the Chief Intelligence Analyst during the Gulf War.
She overcame discrimination, sexual harassment, physical assault, ignorance, prejudice, and chauvinism to fight for Canada.

She fought to fight for Canada.

Lieutenant-Colonel Susan Beharriell proved them wrong.
The men who said she couldn't, she shouldn't, she wouldn't? The men who stood in her way, confronted her, assaulted her, harassed her? The men who should've defended her?

They were us, too.

Never forget.
If you see it, call it out.
If you hear it, call it out.

It's not someone else's problem.

Don't stand by in silence.

• • •

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More from @CAFinUS

Sep 22, 2022
He dropped behind enemy lines on D-Day with the Screaming Eagles, his brothers.

He stared down the enemy in Belgium, Holland, and Germany.

He saw the horrors of the camps and helped take Hitler’s house in the mountains of Bavaria. ImageImage
Jim “Pee Wee” Martin, 101, died earlier this month. Image
“I’ve been there and I’ve done that.”

Things and places didn’t impress him, he would say. “What I like, are the people that I know.” Image
Read 7 tweets
Aug 23, 2022
With his Jewish mother weeping after hearing her brothers and sisters were murdered by the Nazis, Alex Polowin wondered what he could do. He wanted to try to help her remaining relatives.

“I felt I owed it to them try to save their lives.”
Born to a Jewish family in Lithuania, his parents brought him to Canada when he was three years old.

14 years later, in the middle of the Second World War, he lied about his age to enlist in the Navy.
As he and his shipmates protected the supply routes from U-Boats, he stared down antisemitism.

Fighting the Nazis on the Atlantic crossing, the Murmansk Run, off Normandy on D-Day. Fighting the intolerance of his own shipmates.

He had to fight Canadians to keep fighting Nazis.
Read 12 tweets
Aug 16, 2022
Airborne!
When his father took him to the train to head off to the war, he looked him in the eye and said words Vince Speranza never forgot. As he was about to jump for the first time, those words came rushing back.

"Son, don't do anything to shame the family."
When they were surrounded by the Nazis in Bastogne, his wounded friend asked him for a drink. He scoured the bombed out local taverns until he found the fruitful tap.

Vince filled his helmet with beer and brought it back to Joe Willis.

"Aid and comfort to the wounded."
Read 6 tweets
Aug 8, 2022
A combat medic when the Americans stared down Nazis in the frozen Ardennes, he saw everything and carried it home. His wish for his 100th birthday?

To hear Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on the church organ. But he died the day before his celebration.

Rest, Robert Heinzen. Image
To remember him, the show went on.

The show must go on.
“He never spoke of it. He just never wanted to speak about it. He kept it to himself.”
chicago.suntimes.com/obituaries/202…
Read 4 tweets
Jul 28, 2022
Stoker 1st Class Ernest Howell likely wouldn't have been in Panama that night if his father hadn't died two years earlier back in Nova Scotia.
Born to Newfoundlanders in Cape Breton, Ernest headed across the pond to serve in the Merchant Navy when he was 18 years old.

Three years later he was in the Royal Navy.
Ernest was a stoker aboard HMS Duke when his father was killed in an accident back home, prompting this request from his mother.
Read 12 tweets
Jul 20, 2022
Frank Slade was helping his Aunt Ethel run her gas station in Goldsboro, North Carolina, when there was a knock on the door.

Two men told him he had a choice between joining the U.S. Army for the Korean War or returning to Canada.

What did he do? Image
He returned to Canada. But at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, he bumped into a buddy from Newfoundland.

Don Penney was in a Canadian Army uniform and about to head to Korea. He told Frank to join him.

The next day, Frank Slade signed up. Image
Frank and Don were from fishing villages in Newfoundland, their childhood far removed from the conflicts they read about in the newspapers and heard on the radio.

Frank's first job was carrying messages to people in town who didn't yet have telephones. His pay?

Food. Clothing.
Read 16 tweets

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