Location 6 – NAN Red Sector, JUNO Beach, Aubin-sur-Mer

Directions – Drive back along the quayside and take the road to the left sign-posted to Bernières-sur-Mer. This will take you back onto the D514. Proceed out of town and onto Bernières. The beach here was codenamed NAN White Sector and was the objective of The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada and their supporting armour. Continue through the town and, hugging the D514 coast road, peel off to the left at the sign for Aubin-sur-Mer. Within a few minutes you will reach a car park and a series of memorials together with a concrete emplacement housing a gun.

What Happened on D-Day? – NAN Red Sector was the landing beach for the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment of the 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade. As with the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade landings on MIKE and NAN Green further to the west, the operation was badly effected by the navigational error and subsequent ten-minute delay that prevented the DD tanks of the Fort Garry Horse and armoured engineer vehicles from beaching ahead of the infantry. As on the Canadian beaches to the west, the naval and aerial bombardment had suppressed the German defences but not destroyed them. The fortifications here were centred on WN27, which encompassed the ground on which the car park, road and houses to the south now stand and included the seafront anti-tank gun in its emplacement.

A Company of the North Shores reached the beach about 500 yards further west, and landing in a less-well-defended sector, made quick progress through the wire at the rear of the beach and inland. For B Company, however, landing directly in front of WN27, the story was very different. Initially, without supporting armour and under withering fire from machine-guns and snipers, their attack stalled at the sea wall. As the armour came ashore, however, despite accurate 50mm anti-tank fire from the concrete emplacement by the sea wall, an assortment of Sherman Flails, DD tanks, Royal Marine Centaurs with their 95mm guns and Churchill AVREs with their massive high explosive mortars, began to reduce the defences. Once the tanks had done their work, B Company got in amongst the trenches, weapons pits and emplacements to wipe out the garrison. By 1115 hours 50 Germans lay dead or wounded and nearly 80 had been taken prisoner although isolated pockets of resistance continued to fight on until 1800 hours.