On the 80th anniversary of D-Day The Globe and Mail ran his photo on the front page. He was in full military dress—a poppy on his lapel and a string of medals and ribbons across his chest —as he walked among the graves of the Canadian War Cemetery in Normandy, not far from Juno Beach where the Canadians landed. The website of The National Post had a video of him relating his exploits from that day and for 100 years old he was as sharp as the proverbial tack. I’m talking about Richard Rohmer.
He was flying above the beaches during history’s greatest military adventure and I distinctly remember him telling me about it 40 years ago. I was doing a magazine profile on this man who wrote novels that were desecrated by the reviewers.
“There is so much cardboard in a Rohmer novel you could ship a koala bear back to Australia in it,” said Larry Zolf, journalist and erstwhile book reviewer who got sued by Rohmer for a newspaper review of Balls!, his fifth novel. The suit was dropped after the paper printed a statement saying there had been no intent to pass comment on the author.
Canada always remained front and centre in his fiction, but he also wrote non-fiction books about war. Rohmer has published more than 30 books, the most recent in 2013. It was a novel about Sir John A. Macdonald and the Fathers of Confederation arriving in London, England in 1866 for discussions to create this new country in North America. Rohmer was 89 when it came out. Right now he has a new manuscript making the rounds with publishers. Yes, at 100 years of age. On top of those literary pursuits he has enjoyed parallel careers as a lawyer, political advisor, what have you.
Indeed, Rohmer has succeeded at much in life, sort of like Forrest Gump that way because he’s a character whose path always seems to cross with famous people. During the recent D-Day ceremonies he spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden at Omaha Beach, and back at Juno Beach Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Prince William lined up to see him.
The first U.S. president he ever met was Dwight Eisenhower, but that was in Ike’s twilight years. As for royalty, the former Prince Charles—now King Charles—is a long-time friend. Notwithstanding a very long list of interactions with the rich, famous, and powerful, Rohmer remains best defined by D-Day, along with the Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Holland. He was in all of it.
On June 6, 1944, the young reconnaissance pilot saw the entire invasion from the air. When I was doing that magazine piece he described it to me in meticulous detail. Then he took out his medals and mentioned the time he came face-to-face with U.S. General George S. Patton. Patton, who stood an imposing 6’2”, was inspecting the Canadian pilots. He got to the diminutive Rohmer—all 5’8” of him—and stopped.
“Boy,” asked the man known to all as Old Blood and Guts. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty, sir,” Rohmer replied as Patton’s eyes explored the aircraft beside him.
“Do you fly that goddamn airplane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Son of a bitch,” Patton said.
Six weeks after D-Day reconnaissance pilot Rohmer spotted a German staff car rushing off with five men inside. He radioed its position and a Canadian Spitfire shot up the car. It veered off the road and crashed, killing the driver and wounding the others. One of the wounded was Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. Germany’s top general. Rommel survived, but his war was over and three months later he popped a cyanide tablet and committed suicide. In November 1944, Rohmer flew the last of his 135 missions.
Prince William greets 100-year-old Canadian veteran Richard Rohmer, accompanied by the Prime Minister of France Gabriel Attal and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, at Juno Beach in Normandy, France, June 6, 2024. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press.
We once had lunch in a swanky Toronto restaurant and he, being like Forrest Gump, who else walks in but billionaire businessman Frank Stronach, who built international auto parts company Magna. Stronach—he’s been in the news for other matters as of late—passed our table and Rohmer the lawyer didn’t miss a beat. He stood up, introduced himself, grabbed Stronach’s hand, and pressed a business card into his palm.
“If you ever need a lawyer,” he said.
Stronach might need one now but Rohmer didn’t practice that kind of law. For him it was municipal law and land development; a notable client was E. P. Taylor, the Canadian industrialist of his day. The legal work paid the bills for all the time spent writing novels, which along with flying airplanes, was his passion.
In 1942, on his 18th birthday, Rohmer enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and up to that point had thought himself a failure. A year earlier he had flunked school and forged his father’s signature on his report card, which got him kicked out of the house. The senior Rohmer was a pro football player, a running back with the Hamilton Tigers which won the 1929 Grey Cup. If that wasn’t enough, three uncles were lacrosse players and a younger brother played pro hockey. Alas, Rohmer was not of that mold.
But he made his mark and more in the armed forces. He retired as a wing commander in 1953 and has been involved in D-Day events for decades. In 1975 he was promoted to brigadier-general and in 2015 honourary lieutenant-general. Today he goes by Major-General (retired) Richard Rohmer.
This past June 5, just before leaving for Normandy as part of the Canadian delegation, he was interviewed by The Peterborough Examiner and asked about D-Day. Said Rohmer: “It’s hard for anybody who’s alive now to understand how deep that change could have been if we had failed. The people who were the enemy were very hard at work trying to conquer the rest of the world. We made sure they didn’t.”
That same newspaper once called him “one of Canada’s most colourful figures of the past half-century.” And rightly so. After all, there is Rohmer the best-selling novelist and author of non-fiction, the lawyer, personal advisor to such people as former Ontario premier John Robarts, not to mention officer of the Order of Canada, former chancellor of the University of Windsor, and a list of honours that piled up over the years and just goes on and on.
No surprise but he once had a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during which he laid out his plans for developing the Canadian North. Rohmer even organized a conference about it with such attendees as former prime minister Lester Pearson, former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin, and long-time Conservative strategist Dalton Camp. Everyone seemed interested.
Except Trudeau.
It isn’t widely known, but in 1980 Rohmer published a book of poetry under a pseudonym. This was eight years after he chaired the Royal Commission on Book Publishing. Inside the jacket, with haughty pride, it said: “published without the assistance of the Canada Council.” That in a nutshell sums up Rohmer because the man always did things his way. Much like Frank Sinatra in that regard. Hmm. Did those two guys ever meet?
I wonder.
