Charles Millette, son of Romain Millette and Marie Cousineau, was born June 20, 1920, in L’Orignal.

In August 1941, at the age of 21, the last of a large family, he joined the Army and trained in Cornwall, Kingston, and then Petawawa.

Soon after, he embarked for England with the 3rd Battalion, and crossed the Channel toward France after the Dieppe raid where the Allies were attempting to retake the country. Charles remained in France from 1942 to 1944. After the Allied invasion of Normandy, he was sent to Belgium, followed by a brief stay in Holland in early 1945. Like many others, he had the arduous task of retrieving corpses, identifying them, collecting personal belongings that would be returned to their families and finally burying the dead soldiers far from their homeland.

From the rank of private, Charles Millette was promoted to corporal, then to sergeant. In Holland, he contracted a skin disease caused by continuous contact with cadavers. He was saved, in extremis, by treatment with penicillin, a new drug of the time.

Back in Belgium, he worked as a stenographer, among other things, in the service of the 3rd Battalion at the Belgian Court. It was in Belgium, on November 15, 1944, that he met Marcelle Vanderwilt, a young schoolteacher from Waterloo, Belgium, who would become his wife on September 24, 1946.

Sgt. Charles Millette returned to Canada in January 1946.