History Feature — espritdecorps (2024)

By Mark Zuehlke

As far as Urquhart could determine, the 10th Battalion men were not digging in, possibly because its command structure was in disarray after Boyle’s death. Hoping to help restore order, Urquhart approached the battalion’s second- in-command, Major Joseph MacLaren, and relayed Leckie’s orders about digging in. Seemingly distracted, MacLaren replied that “he was wounded in the leg” and headed toward the rear. MacLaren was eventually loaded into an ambulance, but it was struck by an artillery shell while passing through Ypres and the officer was killed.

About 0100 hours on April 23, one of 16th Battalion’s machine-gun squads brought its Colt machine gun forward. The machine-gun officer, Lt. Reginald Hibbert Tupper, had the gun set out on the flank in an attempt to enfilade the German trenches in front of Oblong Farm and the area extending back from the farm to the southwest corner of the wood. This section of wood had yet to be cleared and seemed strongly held by the Germans, who often shouted that the Canadians had best surrender for they were surrounded. While the men could ignore the verbal harassment, there was nothing they could do to stop the deadly crossfire cutting into their lines from the German positions. The enemy fire from the southwest kept intensifying.

As the machine gunners ventured forth to try and meet the German fire with their own, Lt.-Col. David Watson brought two companies of his 2nd Battalion into the woods while sending a third company to directly attack Oblong Farm. Soon intense gunfire could be heard from the direction of the farm and then all fell silent, leading Watson to advise Leckie that he thought his men had succeeded in taking that position. The two bat- talion commanders decided these reinforcements should consequently try and clear the trenches in the woods, but the two companies had too few men to succeed at this venture.

A thirty-minute assault launched at 0130 hours was finally repulsed. During the course of this fight, Tupper’s machine-gun squad was “practically surrounded and subjected to intense fire.” Tupper was “dangerously hit, and rendered so helpless that he was only able to drag himself back into the Canadian lines lying flat on the ground.” When the 2nd Battalion attack failed, the Germans used the opportunity to charge and overrun the gun, taking two of its crew prisoner. But the crew managed to destroy its breach and block, rendering it useless. One gunner, who managed to escape, had his hand smashed by a bullet. Later, he discovered his kilt had been riddled by fourteen rounds.

On the northern edge of the wood, the news that the flank remained exposed was sobering. Unless reinforced before morning, Rae considered his position would be untenable and that his men would soon be cut off from the rear. Rae ordered a withdrawal, just as the first glow of light touched the horizon.

Leaving behind small groups of men to guard the recovered British artillery pieces, Rae led the rest of the battalion back. The men moved so quietly that the Germans failed to twig to what was happening, so the withdrawal neither attracted artillery fire nor any pursuit by infantry. When these troops arrived back at the trench on the edge of the woods, however, it was clear there was insufficient room for all of them. A large group were sent 150 yards out into the field to create a secondary trench line, which they finished digging just before dawn.

April 24 dawned clear and sunny, bearing the promise of an unusually hot spring day to come. A lull descended on the battlefield, few sounds of gunfire or artillery heard. In their trenches, the men of the 16th and 10th Battalions took stock of their situation and reflected on all that had happened in that night “which seemed like a life-time.”

One Canadian Scottish diarist noted that “the fellows looked frightfully tired and discouraged.” As the light improved they saw on their left flank the German position in the woods that had subjected them to such deadly fire. Stretching back across the field they had crossed, rows of their dead lay strewn. “On certain parts of it the bodies were heaped; on others they were lying in a straight line as killed by the enfilade machine-gun fire. The men of the different companies of the 16 th could be picked out by the colour of the kilt—the yellow stripe of the Gordons, the white of the Seaforths, the red of the Camerons, the dark green of the Argylls—with the 10th Battalion men in their khaki uniforms mingled everywhere amongst the High- landers. [Despite the battalion officers having earlier decided that allowing the men to wear four different kilts would not do and a simple khaki one would replace the various tartans, the replacements had not yet reached the field so the men were still fighting in the tartans that identified their original regiment.]

Slight movements of some of the bodies showed that life still lingered. Attempts were being made to get help to these men, but the spurts of dust, knocked up by the bullets hitting around the rescue party, indicated that the ground was under a fire. At last a stretcher-bearer was hit; he pitched forward on his face, whereupon the enemy’s fire was much increased, and the relief work came to an end.”

With Leckie in command of both battalions, his brother Jack was responsible for 16th Battalion while Major Dan Ormond—the most senior surviving 10th Battalion officer—had charge of that unit. Fearing a counterattack was imminent, the officers began hurriedly regrouping their battered forces. The trench remained overly crowded and the first action was to put the dead up over the parapet and to dig small nooks into which the wounded could be sheltered. While some men began extending the trench on the right flank, others were sent crawling back through the cover of a mustard patch to Leckie’s headquarters area in a trench about a thousand yards west of St. Julien. Within a couple hours a coherent defensive line had taken shape.

By Mark Zuehlke

8 company had two platoons ahead of the other two and, in No. 4 Company, Lt. Urquhart’s 15 Platoon was leading on the left while Lieutenant Victor John Hasting’s 13 Platoon was to his right.

At first the orderliness of this formation held but, once the troops had advanced a short way, it became clear the ground was not as open as expected. Urquhart came to a ditch bordered by a hedge and saw that 13 Platoon was on the other side and moving away from the obstacle while his own men were following the line of the hedge which veered to the right. In the dark the hedge seemed impenetrable, so the only option was for 15 Platoon to spring alongside the hedge until they came to a break. Passing through they jumped the ditch and ran to catchup with 13 Platoon.

German artillery began falling on the field at a rate that suggested the gunners were still seeking the range, but several men were struck down by shrapnel. Before the attack began Urquhart and the other officers in the battalion had only been told by Hughes that they were attacking a wood across the field. Urquhart kept straining his eyes for some sight of trees, but all he saw ahead was “a dark blur.” They had crossed about 500yards and now seemed to be in a level pasture free of further hedges or ditches.

Such was not the case for Captain William Rae’s No. 2 Company. From the outset Rae’s men had been forced to find ways through thick hedges, jump one ditch after another, and cut openings in several wire fences. Then a German flare arced into the sky. The Canadians were suddenly bathed by its harsh glare and, a second later, Oblong Farm erupted with tongues of flame as dozens of machine guns and rifles opened fire.

There was no cover, nothing the men could do but keep advancing toward the woods as the Germans in the farm tore into their flank. Urquhart walked “over absolutely bare ground as[if] on a rifle range going from the Butts to the Firing Point with ceaseless angry zip, zip of bullets from rifles and machine guns.

You could see the spit of fire from the rifles to our front and left.Then came the cries of those who were hit, the cracking of the bullets so close to our ears made them sing and it was impossible to make yourself heard".”

“I know now the meaning of a hail of bullets,” Rae later wrote his mother. “I never dreamt there could be anything like it. At first I never for one moment expected to come through alive, but afterwards in some extraordinary way I made up my mind I was not going to be hit and went right on.” All around other men fell. They had been ordered to make no sounds. No shouting, no cheering as they advanced. But with bullets scything them down, with those coming from behind trying not to step on the fallen underfoot, with many of the wounded screaming in agony, the need for reassurance and to muster courage to keep going overcame this order. “Come on Seaforths!” men in Rae’s company cried. “Come on Camerons,”Urquhart’s platoon shouted. “Come on the 16th!” others bellowed as they realized all the Highlanders were in this together. One soldier broke from the line, screaming and tearing at his shirt which had burst into flame. Captain Geddes had been knocked to his knees with a mortal wound, but still urging No. 4 Company on he crawled forward a short distance before collapsing. Doggedly the ever-shrinking battalion made “for the spit of fire and flickering line of flame showing up in front against the darkness of the wood.”

Rae’s company twice halted in the midst of this hell storm to straighten its line, the second pause coming while only about forty yards short of the woods. There was no set formation now, the16th had overtaken the 10th and the two advanced the last part of the distance intermingled. Suddenly, with just yards between the Canadians and Germans the fire from the latter melted eerily away. The men let out a mighty cheer and then without Rae or any of the other officers shouting a command “rushed right at the German trench.”As they plunged in they found that “barely a few of them waited for us and these were shot or bayoneted at once. I jumped clear over the trench and rushed into the wood with some men. It was full of undergrowth and most difficult to get through but ultimately we came to the far side, the Germans flying before us. I cannot tell you everything that happened, but ultimately we established a line about 1000 yards back from the original German front.” Rae and the others who had spontaneously driven on through the wood rather than holding up at the trench began digging in where they were.

Moving through the woods one Can Scot “vaguely saw some Germans and rushed at the nearest one. My bayonet must have hit his equipment and glanced off, but luckily for me, another chap running beside me bayoneted him before he got me. By this time I was wildly excited and shouting and rushing into the wood up a path towards a big gun which was pointed away from us. Going through the wood we ran into several Germans, but I had now lost confidence in my bayonet and always fired.” The gun the soldier saw was one of the British field guns overrun by the Germans.

Urquhart, too, had plowed into the woods, firing his revolver at retreating Germans until it jammed. He scooped up a rifle lying next to a 10th Battalion man who had fallen seconds before right in front of him. Some horses were tied to trees in the wood and Urquhart noticed one “standing on three legs, holding one leg up as if it had been hit by a bullet. We rushed through the wood coming out on the further side from the German trench we captured. German flares were now going up behind us to the left and it looked to us as if we had broken through the German line. We started to entrench on the far side of the wood. ... Col. Boyle of the 10th I met on the right of the wood a short time afterward, also Col. Leckie. ... Col. Boyle was wounded about this time.

Col. Leckie was directing the digging in and giving orders that the 10th who were collected in a group near a house were to connect up from the hedge where we were digging in to the right where a further party of the 16th had started to entrench.”

Boyle had been asking a junior 16th Battalion officer about where the Canadian Scottish were deploying. Drawing out a map, Boyle turned on an electric torch, pronounced “he was satisfied with the information given” and then started walking back to his men. Moments later he was struck by a machine-gun burst. Five slugs shattered his thigh. Mortally wounded, the battalion commander died three days later in hospital.

Next Month: The Battle for Oblong Farm intensifies

By Dan Black

Earlier in the day, many of the Chinese had managed to escape long hours of boredom by doing what many Canadian servicemen did on the troop trains. If they could write, they composed letters or maintained diaries. Others sketched, told stories, daydreamed or played games. Gambling was prohibited, but policing it was another matter. Besides, the men were quite inventive when it came to finding ways to amuse themselves.

One game involved a group of men taking turns striking each other on the head or palm with increasing force until one man gave in. Boredom was boredom and such tests of endurance and masculinity were not unique to the young men of the CLC. It is also more than likely some of the games kept the guards entertained.

In some cars, singing and the welcoming sound of Chinese folk music rose above the monotonous clacking of the carriage wheels. More than a few labourers had brought along the fourstringed sihu or two-stringed erhu. Depending, of course, on the player’s skill, the wooden, bowed instruments could lull a listener to sleep or send him into a world of irritability.

The erhu’s light weight and lack of bulk made it easy to carry long distances and play in confined spaces. Losing the bow usually meant losing the entire instrument because the bow was attached, placed between the two strings. For the men occupying the uncomfortable seats, the music helped free their minds. Few, if any, had a sense of where they were going or what the war in Europe would look like. But the sound of a well-played folk song took away much of the worry and made these non-combatants think of home or paint their imaginations with stories of honour and adventure.

While they slept or tried to sleep through the night between Fort William and Chalk River in eastern Ontario, the Canadian military guards were under orders to maintain their twenty-four hour watch.

The work of the Railway Service Guard (RSG) began the moment they and the Chinese boarded the trains at Vancouver. At any one time throughout the journey, there were two uniformed guards posted in each Colonist car, one at each end. Armed with rifles, but no ammunition, most of the men took their job very seriously and their vigilance extended to station stops during which they peered under carriages while patrolling both sides of the train.

No one wanted to be the man who allowed a labourer, employed under the massive British scheme, to escape.

This fear among the guards and those higher up on the chain of command was probably over-exaggerated. The Chinese very likely had no idea where they were or how they could live in such a strange land. Even if they did want to shirk their filial responsibility and slip away, the risk to health and safety was high.

Many of the men from Shantung (Shandong) province had grown up in heavily populated villages next to other crowded villages. On the trains, when they could peer through the windows, they saw mostly unpopulated wilderness. The prospect of disappearing into a dense, bug-infested forest or some other seemingly hostile landscape, especially in winter, was not appealing. Station stops in towns and cities were more appealing to would-be runaways, but in addition to the RSG, an escapee would have to get past the CPR’s railway police.

A language barrier may have also contributed to keeping the men on the trains. At the time, there was no standard Chinese, only a common written language, and regional dialects. The Chinese community in Canada was composed of many people from Guangdong and Hong Kong, and most spoke Cantonese. Few would have been able to understand the Shantung people from northeastern China.

That same summer—three months into the transcontinental train movements of the CLC—Canadian immigration, military and railway authorities were under a lot of pressure. The war, which now involved the Americans, continued to make a very high demand on shipping. With so many labourers arriving on Canada’s west coast, a temporary holding or transit camp was erected at Camp Petawawa. The first two CLC specials rolled into the camp in August and they were the same two trains that passed Livingstone’s westbound train.

In the weeks leading up to that, there was much debate behind closed doors on whether Petawawa was the best location. And when it was agreed to house the men there, ongoing secrecy remained part of the equation. By then, keeping news of the CLC scheme out of the press was—for the press censor—less like keeping all of one’s fingers in a dike and more like a game of whack-a-mole. Newspaper editors across the country cooperated with the censorship rules, but stories popped up, including one in a Pembroke weekly that told of the CLC movements and use of Camp Petawawa.

With all the efforts to keep it quiet, it must have been strange for eastern Ontario food suppliers to receive government orders for large amounts of product. Issued with great haste on August 2, 1917, the government tenders went to several commercial establishments at Ottawa’s Byward Market Square. The initial order from the Department of Militia and Defence called for fifteen thousand tins of sardines, six hundred pints of peanut oil and “Chinese” sauce, plus six hundred pounds each of garlic and brown sugar. All of it destined for Camp Petawawa.

Before resuming their journey to the east coast, the CLC men worked at the camp. A September 26 memorandum from the camp’s engineer lists hammers and axes among tools purchased for the Chinese work details. “The Chinese men are distributed approximately as follows: Over 500 lowering water-mains in Central Camp below frost, Over 200 clearing up bush around Camp for prevention of fire, The balance are employed renewing beds of septic tank and filtering systems, gathering and breaking stone for roads, grading roads, spreading manure, and generally improving the Camp.”

On board one of the last trains to reach the camp in September was twenty-five-year-old Chou Ming Shan (Zhou Mingshan) who, as noted in Part 1 of this book excerpt, died of malaria on September 22 near Chapleau, Ontario. He had crossed the Pacific on the Empress of Russia, which landed her passengers at Vancouver at 5:30 p.m., September 17. The ship’s bill of health was “Good.” But the young man more than likely fell ill on the ship, not long before he arrived in Canada.

Chou Ming Shan’s body was carried from the train by fellow labourers to a grave dug by his compatriots. In the summer of 2019, in conjunction with research for this book, the Canadian Agency of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission arranged to have a headstone erected for Chou Ming Shan at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. The author was honoured to attend the ceremony and say a few words.

For the most part, the railway journeys across Canada, through Maine to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia went well. Equipment failures contributed to delays, and there were accidents. On January 15, dozens of CLC men nearly died in a train wreck in northeastern Ontario. It occurred at 6:13 a.m., four kilometres west of Eau Claire Station north of Algonquin Park.

British 2nd Lieutenant Ashley McCallum was in command of a 3,549-man contingent crossing Canada on separate trains. In addition to the locomotive, the train McCallum was on was composed of thirteen Colonist cars, two Tourist coaches, a commissary and a baggage car. There were 750 labourers on board when it left Vancouver for Halifax.

The sun was below the horizon when the big locomotive entered a series of curves some twenty kilometres west of Mattawa, Ontario. The CPR’s great steel ribbon cut through rolling landscape where plateaus and ridges of tree-covered granite dropped into narrow gorges or descended more gradually onto frozen, windswept lakes. Deep, fresh snow covered the open fields, and the temperature was hospitable for mid-January. Curled up in their upper and lower berths or sitting upright on wooden benches, the labourers were just waking up; many had not dressed, let alone put on their slippers.

Entering that stretch of track, the train was moving along at roughly forty kilometres per hour when four of its Colonist cars left the rails and careered into a field of snow. After rolling over and sliding to a stop in a cloud of white powder, the wrecked cars were lying more than nine metres from the track.

Tossed upside down and sideways, eighty-eight Chinese men were injured. “The depth of the snow was responsible for the marvelous escape of the coolies,” wrote McCallum in his report several days later. “Immediately after the accident…the train guard turned out and inside of one hour the coolies from all the damaged cars had been removed. The conduct and the discipline of the coolies was wonderful. Many of them had to leave the coaches practically naked, then wade through deep snow to the track and run about 50 yards to the nearest coach standing intact. Many coolies covered this space without socks or shoes.”

Anyone who has walked on snow in bare or socked feet, even for a few seconds in mild temperature, knows how it feels. The snow the men waded through while practically naked was likely waist high, so it took strength and perseverance to get off the field once they emerged from the cars. Looking around at the wilderness, many had to wonder where they were, but it appears, at least from McCallum’s report, they did it without complaint.

The Tourist car did not derail and there is no mention in the report of the RSG car derailing. In various states, the labourers boarded these surviving carriages where they received cigarettes and other canteen stores. Incredibly, the locomotive, with ten remaining cars loaded with CLC, reached Mattawa where three labourers were hospitalized. While no one died in the wreck, two labourers succumbed within days. Li Chin Hsiang (Li Jinxiang) was buried at Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery but his remains were repatriated to China after the war. Feng Chai Li’s (Feng Jiali) grave is in St. John’s Cemetery, Halifax, where a headstone was installed in 2017.

By mid-December 1917, Captain Harry Livingstone of the Canadian Army Medical Corps had completed his journey to China, spent weeks conducting medicals at the CLC recruitment depot, and returned to Canada with a CLC contingent. He had also reached France accompanied by the Chinese. Harry Livingstone’s Forgotten Men: Canadians and the Chinese Labour Corps in the First World War is available at major bookstores where it can also be ordered. It is also available through the publisher at www.lorimer.ca and Amazon.ca.

By Dan Black

Captain Harry Livingstone had dozens of birds’ eggs, tucked under glass in three wooden display cabinets at his home in Listowel, Ontario: each specimen carefully labelled and placed in its own cubicle, on a bed of cotton batting. But while this fragile collection was safely stored, the small-town family doctor, grand-nephew to the world famous African explorer Dr. David Livingstone, was putting himself at tremendous risk. It was August 10, 1917, and the recently commissioned officer of the Canadian Army Medical Corps was moments away from boarding a train at London, Ontario. The twenty-nine-year- old bachelor was on a top-secret, wartime mission aimed at delivering himself to a dusty recruitment depot in northeastern China, then back across Canada to the Western Front. More than once, the five-foot-ten, 145-pound physician was warned not to breathe a word about the assignment, at least not in public. Especially sensitive was the part about Canada’s role in transporting tens of thousands of unarmed Chinese labourers across Canada in sealed, guarded railway cars.

Starting in early 1917, special trains of the Canadian Pacific Railway raced day and night across the Dominion, working to keep pace with a highly complex British scheme that became the world’s largest international mass movement of Chinese from the Far East to Western Europe. The trains rumbled past farms and through towns and cities, and the public had no idea what they were transporting or who was on board because the press was barred from reporting on the highly classified operation. Overall, nearly 81,000 members of the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) were transported across Canada en route to Britain and France where they were assigned a variety of heavy work behind the lines. Another 3,600 boarded the Empress of Asia and sailed from Canada’s West Coast to the United Kingdom via the Panama Canal. Then, well after the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Canada again facilitated the movement of the CLC, only this time the operation was in reverse, sending more than 48,000 of the men home to China.

The land and sea logistics were enormous and involved multiple nations. But it was here — in Canada — where many of the Chinese formed their earliest impressions of Western civilization. Indeed, for those who had not travelled far from their villages, the enormity of Canada’s varied geography and the time it took to cross the country was truly surprising.

The fact that most Canadians have never heard about the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC), let alone Canada’s historic role in the larger British effort to utilize such labour on the Western Front, is understandable. Our military history rarely, if ever, touches on the subject. Yet it is a wartime story that goes well beyond the timely provision of a transportation network. Many individuals, including other doctors and Canadian missionaries, were called upon to officer CLC companies in France and Belgium. Several were employed at the large CLC hospital at Noyelles-sur-Mer in northern France. But even before these highly educated men reached the Western Front, many assisted with recruitment in China and, like the Chinese workers, endured dangerous journeys, particularly across the stormy North Pacific to Canada and then across the U-boat-patrolled waters of the North Atlantic to Britain and France. But even the journey by rail across Canada was dangerous as well as tedious. Labourers died en route, some even before they entrained at Vancouver.

Those who crossed Canada made up more than 86 per cent of the nearly 95,000 Chinese recruited by the British between the fall of 1916 and early 1918. The French, who launched their own drive to recruit 50,000 Chinese in 1916, had, by 1917, approximately 37,000 Chinese navvies under their command, thousands employed in industry. Meanwhile, tsarist Russia recruited between 160,000 and 200,000 Chinese to work at a number of places throughout Russia. Altogether, at least 300,000 Chinese men joined various labour schemes during the First World War. This book, however, is about Canada’s largely unrecognized role in the British effort, which also coincided with the age of steam, not to mention the global mobilization of mil- lions of armed combatants that began in the summer of 1914.

The recruitment of Chinese labour may not have changed the duration or outcome of the war, but it was an important measure. It came at a crucial time, owing to the desperate need for more men and equipment in war-torn Europe. And while the Chinese workers were non-combatants, they represented the largest and longest-serving non-European contingent in the war. What is also interesting is that the Chinese employed by the British were subject to military law and discipline, and not just in France and Belgium. One old photograph taken on Vancouver Island shows a labourer being caned in front of his peers. On the Western Front, at least ten Chinese labourers were executed during and after the war. Chinese labourers also earned medals for acts of courage, but most simply carried on with the hard and often dangerous work assigned to them. Some of the riskier and certainly more gruesome work came after the Armistice when the men cleared the battlefields and recovered the remains of soldiers for proper burial. One of the CLC’s final acts, which the Chinese Embassy in London expressed a strong desire for, involved carving names and inscriptions on headstones for fellow labourers who did not survive. Sixty Chinese stonecutters, along with tens of thousands of other Chinese labourers and many of their Canadian officers, were the last to be repatriated in 1919 and 1920.

The reason the British and French went looking for labour is well told. Skilled, but mostly unskilled, men capable of hard work were recruited from every part of the globe, including South Africa, Egypt, the Seychelles and even as far as Fiji. However, the CLC was, without doubt, the largest workforce to go to France. Such men were needed the moment war was declared, but no specific plan was developed until much later. For the British War Committee, pressure began to mount through 1915 and into the first half of 1916 with the alarming loss of frontline soldiers. The Ypres Salient, St. Julien, Festubert, Givenchy, St. Eloi and Mount Sorrel — all familiar places to Canadians — were among the battles that introduced stark efficiencies to mass killing, including the first use of chlorine gas.

The battles between early 1915 and mid-1916 produced horrendous casualty figures, yet the numbers were far less than those exacted on the Somme in 1916.

Recruiting labourers from China and elsewhere allowed the British and French armies to release more of their able-bodied labourers behind the lines for frontline duty. Thousands could join the ranks of the fighting men, while the crucial supply lines — from the wharfs to the ammunition depots — were maintained by foreign as well as British and Canadian labour units. “The danger then was not so much of direct defeat in France through shortage of soldiers as an indirect defeat through failure to supply those who were there,” wrote British historian Michael Summerskill in his 1982 book, China on the Western Front. The British knew this before the first shots were fired in the Battle of the Somme, but it took them longer than it did the French to realize they, too, had to look further afield for manpower.

Travelling from Vancouver’s waterfront — and leaving only an hour apart — the CLC trains followed the transcontinental line across a seemingly endless landscape. The trains, some twenty cars long, followed the same route carved and blasted out of the landscape by that earlier Chinese workforce. They moved through tunnels into the clear, sudden brilliance of steep mountain valleys, across the Prairies and into the seemingly revolving vistas of the Canadian Shield. They came down the Ottawa Valley, past Chalk River and Smiths Falls, and on toward the St. Lawrence River and Montreal. In the summer of 1917, a special holding camp, enclosed with barbed wire and patrolled by guards, was erected at Petawawa, northwest Ottawa. Buried there in 1917 was a young Chinese labourer, Chou Ming Shan (Zhou Mingshan, No. 39038), who died on one of the trains. The CLC specials that bypassed the docks at Montreal continued to Lac-Megantic in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. After a thirty-minute stop, they headed south, crossed into the United States and steamed over the hills and through the dense forest and swamps of remote northern Maine. From there, they continued over the Saint Croix–Vanceboro Bridge to Saint John, New Brunswick, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Canadians and other Allied military personnel travelling with the CLC formed both good and bad impressions. Livingstone was intent on learning from the Chinese while being mindful of the men’s health. During his time at the CLC recruiting depot at Weihaiwei, and on the long journey to France, he remained open to the language, and patient around cultural differences that were often ridiculed by other officers. When the doctor nearly missed his train in late 1917, a number of labourers became anxious and began to hang out the windows. When they spotted him running along the railway platform, they cried out: “Dai fu lai la!” or “Here comes the doctor!” Most of the Chinese who did not survive the war and its dangerous cleanup are overseas. Approximately two thousand are buried in some forty cemeteries throughout France and Belgium under the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) — their lives cut short by accidents, bomb- ings and, mostly, by disease. The largest of those cemeteries, at Noyelles-sur-Mer, has 838 identified and four unidentified casual- ties. Of those, more than 50 per cent died after the Armistice. Nearly forty others with no known grave are listed on the cem- etery’s memorial panel.

The Chinese also lie in cemeteries in the United Kingdom, from Shorncliffe to Liverpool to Plymouth. Here in Canada, their graves exist across the country, from William Head to Regina, to Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Petawawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax. At last count, more than fifty lie here, some of them without a headstone or defined location, a difficult situation that the Canadian Agency of the CWGC has made great headway with as part of its ongoing commemoration and in co-operation with research for this book. It is believed through this research that the body of one man, found by Livingstone on the troopship Olympic at Halifax, Liu Chih (Liu Zhi) of Tongshan, China, simply vanished after being taken ashore before the transport sailed to Liverpool. That was five days before the Halifax Explosion.

By Mark Zuehlke

When one of the men began muttering darkly to the others that they should refuse the night mission, Swim slammed him against a wall, shouted into his face, and shook him roughly. But the soldier was undeterred, so Swim reported the man to MacLean, who in turn took the matter to Major Hanson. The major, a big, blustery, raw-boned man, called the entire section out of the house and lined them up. He dressed them all down, as if every one of them was attempting to shirk his duty. Then he grabbed the shirker, slapping him roughly several times, and left “him in no doubt about what would become of him if he ever showed signs of disloyalty again.” As the major stormed off, the other paratroops looked at each other in dismay, feeling Hanson had tarred them with the same brush as the man who cracked. Sergeant MacPhee quickly called the men together and assured them this was untrue, but Hanson’s fit of temper did little to improve chances of any managing some desperately needed sleep.

At 1900 hours, the patrol was formed up and given scant servings of food drawn from the twenty-four-hour ration packs of men who had either been evacuated with wounds or killed. Then the paratroops blackened their already filthy hands and faces with camouflage cream. The sergeants moved carefully down the line of soldiers, checking each man’s combat knife, gun, grenade load, and ammunition for problems. As the light bled from the sky and a moderate evening gale blew in off the ocean, each man studied maps and aerial photographs of the ground that must be crossed in darkness, memorizing bearing markers vital for keeping oriented.

Thunder rolled in the distance and lightning flickered across the sky as the patrol of paratroopers and six Royal Engineers filtered through the front lines. Once again, the men crept through the orchards to the lane bordering the canal and ventured along it with mounting trepidation. Private Swim walked point, with Sergeant MacLean and the platoon’s runner close behind. Then came Lieutenant Sam McGowan and his batman followed by Sergeant MacPhee, with the other Canadians and the engineers strung out behind. Bringing up the rear were privates Bill Chaddock, Ralph Mokelki, and Andy McNally.

Despite knowing the other men were there behind him, Swim felt as if he walked alone. All his senses were focused out to his front, as he led the way up the “deadly straight section of the canal, breathlessly expecting an enemy magnesium flare and the violence of machine-gun fire [to come] lacing down the canal.” Thankfully, the earlier lightning had ceased and the heavy storm clouds obscured the moon and stars. Finally, Swim estimated the patrol was almost up to the outskirts of Bavent and turned to pass the word for a halt to allow a brief pause before going into the assault. A soft rasping sound out front caused Swim to freeze. A rifle bolt easing home? Swim waited, listening. Behind him, the others froze in place, waiting for the man on point to move or act. It was his call.

Swim discreetly signalled for MacLean and the runner to come up and he whispered a report into the sergeant’s ear. MacLean sent the runner creeping back down the line to fetch McGowan and caution everyone to maintain maximum silence. McGowan pondered Swim’s description of the sound he had heard and decided that rather than a rifle bolt being prepared for firing, it was more likely a German emptying the weapon for some reason. He sent word for Mokelki, fluent in German, to join the point group.

Then they eased forward to find a German sentry, stupefied with terror, standing alone, leaning on an unloaded rifle, its butt braced against the ground. McGowan gently eased the rifle away from the shivering soldier and they left him standing there, sending word back along the line for the paratroops to just ignore the man as they passed. The lieutenant realized the German would be afraid to tell his comrades that he had seized up with terror at the approach of the paratroop patrol and had been disarmed. Had any resistance been offered, a knife would have been drawn and the man’s life taken.

Swim guided the patrol past the enemy defences and into Bavent without incident. The paratroops slipped up darkened streets to the northeastern quadrant of the village, helping the engineers set booby traps in doorways and empty dugouts with explosives. On the edge of Bavent, the paratroops quickly established a firm all-around firebase among some of the buildings.

While some of the men set up weapons here, the engineers and remaining paratroops ventured into the open ground towards the vehicle park. It seemed incredible that they remained undetected as the engineers opened truck doors to stuff bombs under seats, dropped charges down the barrels of unmanned heavy mortars, tucked other explosives into scattered buildings. Finished, the troops fell back to the firebase to rendezvous with the others.

It was about 0400 hours on June 8. Just as the men began to think an undiscovered extraction could be possible, a German shout broke the silence. The jig was up. “There was shouting from both sides. Tracers raced across the night through the apple orchards on the fringes of Bavent. Wild firing of handheld weapons ripped the area as bullets snapped past and added to the ruckus. Soldiers and bullets careened through the dark streets of the village which neither side had known for long…. Ricocheting steel whined, snapped and moaned on the night, feet scurried, men called for help, the devil danced to his own tune and blind combat in lovely Normandy took its toll.”

Bullets snicking all around him, Swim dived into a depression, only to realize it contained an open cesspool. Unable to claw his way out, drowning in the deep sludgy waste, Swim cried out for help. MacPhee dashed through the bullets to drag the man to safety and the two men zigged and zagged out of the village towards the canal. When they reached it, Swim dove into the water to wash as much of the sewage off his skin as possible. The patrol was scattered to the winds now, men making their way back to le Mesnil crossroads in ones and twos. It was 0700 hours when the last soldier walked into the front lines.

Miraculously, not a single patrol member had suffered injury. From Bavent, the sounds of gunfire continued throughout the night as the Germans fought it out with phantoms, and the paratroops listened with satisfaction as the sound of random explosions carried on the morning breeze, testimony to the effectiveness of their booby-trapping operation.

The exhausted men of ‘C’ Company heard with relief, however, that they would not be expected to patrol back to Bavent again. Lieutenant Colonel Bradbrooke thought the patrols so far run had been sufficient to convince the Germans to keep their distance from the battalion’s lines. Keeping the enemy at bay was critical, for if the Germans ever realized how few paratroops stood between them and the River Orne bridges, they would surely hit the battalion with overwhelming fury.

Hartigan and Morrison covered the fighting party’s rapid retreat from the village, with the corporal throwing down a mix of smoke for cover and shrapnel bombs to keep the Germans ducking. The whole raid was concluded in minutes, and then the patrol scrambled back to the crossroads under heavy protective fire laid down by the men in the front lines. When Morgan “came tumbling over a low stone wall, which had marked our jumping off point to begin with,” Hartigan noticed that “he was clasping his bleeding abdomen.” The sergeant gave a terse report to ‘C’ Company’s Lieutenant Sam McGowan and then, rejecting offers of assistance, walked straight to 224 Field Ambulance’s surgery for treatment.

Even as the patrol had scampered out of the southeastern corner of the village, the troops had noticed the Germans were also on the run—pulling back into Bavent’s northwestern quad- rant. A three-man follow-up patrol a couple of hours later, which managed to capture a slightly damaged German mortar on a rise overlooking the village and bombarded the enemy until all the munitions were expended, observed that the troops in Bavent had not yet reoccupied the abandoned area. Nor did they venture out to try and silence the mortar harassing them.

Hartigan noticed how this report substantially bolstered ‘C’ Company’s morale. “They now knew their enemies were, like themselves, subject to human frailty. They [Morgan’s platoon] had done it all, and the enemy though well armed and in good positions, had managed to kill only one of them.... Knowing that they could shake up a much larger body of enemy soldiers boosted their confidence. Even so, everyone was happy to be well out of it and figured it would be some time before they’d have to do something as crack-brained again. Nine men with light but well-organized support from a firm firebase had assaulted a considerably greater enemy force, killed four to six of them and wounded others, and got away with it.”

But ‘C’ Company’s patrolling work for June 7 was not yet over. To the amazement of all the section leaders, they were summoned to the company headquarters in an old house next to the crossroads and briefed by their commander, Major John Hanson, on another daylight mission towards Bavent that would be followed up by a patrol after dark. The sections of Sergeant Dick MacLean and Sergeant M.C. “Mosher” MacPhee would carry out both operations, while Morgan’s section, now led by Hartigan, would be responsible for ‘C’ Company’s defensive positions at the crossroads. The daylight task entailed escorting two Royal Engineers and a couple of British artillery Forward Observation Officers to where the earlier patrol had captured the mortar. From this height, the artillerymen would direct fire by the 302nd Field Battery on enemy targets, while the engineers plotted a route by which the night patrol could enter Bavent from the north. The purpose of this penetration was to plant booby traps and antipersonnel mines around an enemy vehicle park.

When Sergeant Dick MacLean briefed his men on the task, privates H.B. “Sinkor” Swim and Willard Minard looked at each other in consternation—realizing that this patrol and the night one would be using exactly the same route to approach Bavent as Morgan’s fighting patrol had earlier traversed. The two privates muttered to each other that “taking the same route... was certain suicide.” Surely the Germans would twig to how the Canadians were getting into their front yard—much of which followed a tree-shadowed bank of le Prieur irrigation canal.

All they had to do was set up a machine gun at their end of the canal and fire down its length to slaughter the advancing patrol.

Despite thinking the mission the height of lunacy, the fourteen paratroops walked out into the afternoon sun with their four charges in tow. A sharp breeze was blowing as they moved through several apple orchards and then ventured out on the narrow track that bordered the canal. The overhead branches rustled loudly, while the tall grass growing up around the trees shivered as if Germans were crawling around there. MacLean and Swim were on point, one watching forward and left and the other forward and right, while also furtively scanning the overhanging branches for enemy snipers. Finally, they reached a canal crossing, slipped over it, gained the rise, and hunkered down while the engineers discussed viable approaches for the night mission and the two artillery officers looked down upon an amazing target.

In a meadow beside Bavent, a large group of German soldiers had dug a series of slit trenches to form a fighting position and were now lying around on the grass enjoying the breeze and warm sunshine. One of the artillerymen spoke into the handset of the No. 18 wireless he carried. Soon a shell exploded to the east of the Germans. The FOO radioed a correction that brought a shell down this time west of the enemy. Both having landed well away from their position, neither round alerted the Germans to the closing threat, which struck a few minutes later when the artillery battery dropped a full concentration directly onto them. Although Swim knew the men below were the enemy, he found it “agonizing to watch their awful fate.” When the smoke cleared “dead bodies [lay] everywhere as the living squirmed along the ground, trying to reach their slit trenches.”

By 1530 hours, the patrol had returned unscathed to le Mesnil crossroads and the men were told to bed down in Hanson’s house to get some rest before going out on the night patrol. It was the first sleep any of the men had managed since a dawn reveille on June 5 at Harwell Field in England. Yet the majority of the soldiers, including Swim, found rest elusive. After the early morning raid on Bavent and the shelling of the soldiers—obviously brought down on them by someone direct- ing fire from nearby—the Germans would surely be lying in wait.

By Mark Zuehlke

Stunned by the ferocity of this charge, the grenadiers took to their heels and several were taken prisoner. One of the captured soldiers warned that the “Germans were desperate to capture the brickyard and the crossroads.” Having had the wind knocked out of them, however, the grenadiers opted against launching a second attack in favour of sniping at the Canadian lines and harassing them with mortar and artillery fire.

The sudden appearance of the 346th Division on his front left Bradbrooke with two quandaries. First, there was obviously now a large, determined German force between the crossroads and Robehomme, where Captain Griffin and the hundred paratroops with him were besieged. The lieutenant colonel was anxious to find a way to extract those men before they were overrun. Second, the Germans were obviously well endowed with armoured support—something he totally lacked. Leaving the German commander free to attack the Canadian front at will guaranteed that the combined tank and infantry forces would eventually penetrate the line and possibly overwhelm his men.

Bradbrooke decided the solution to both his problems was to be found in aggressive patrolling. While sending fighting patrols towards Bavent to throw the Germans off balance and perhaps force them to assume a defensive posture, he would also send a small patrol through the Bois de Bavent to find an unblocked route to Robehomme that could be used to guide that unit home. Lieutenant Bob Mitchell, who commanded ‘A’ Company’s No. 2 Platoon, drew the job of trying to get through to Robehomme. Knowing he could only succeed by remaining undetected, the lieu- tenant decided to take just three men along. Private Ray Newman, who had proven his worth the night before as a scout for Mitchell, walked point. The other two men were selected more for their language skills than fieldcraft. Private E. Schroeder spoke fluent

German, while Private L.S. Jones was equally adept at French. In the early afternoon, Mitchell and his three men crept past the front lines towards the woods. Newman thought it a shame to be going on such a mission with an empty stomach, but there had been no alternative. No rations had come up with the ammunition and heavy weapons, so food was in desperately short supply. Of course, when the paratroops were in action they would always take bullets over food. Death by starvation was not as likely as being killed by the enemy.

It was still light when Newman spotted “a character skulking along the edge of the Bois de Bavent. He was wearing a black beret, a civilian coat and airforce blue pants. He didn’t fool us for a minute. We lined him up in our sights and ordered him to advance. Sure enough, he turned out to be a Canadian Typhoon pilot who had been shot down on D-Day and who was now very relieved. We explained to him how to behave in the kind of territory we were in, and sent him on his way to le Mesnil.”

The patrol pushed into the woods on a three-mile circuitous trek Mitchell had mapped out as the most likely route for reaching Robehomme undetected. Out on point, Newman kept expecting to sight enemy soldiers at any moment, or at least French civilians. But the forest remained eerily devoid of life. They had been briefed that Robehomme was surrounded, yet the four men passed through the woods without incident. Even more to Newman’s surprise, they were then able to move up a soggy lane running through flooded pastures and fields to where it intersected the road running from Bricqueville to Bavent. It was now dark, and the Germans covering the road from a position east of Bavent failed to notice the patrol as it struck off on the raised roadbed running through the flooded ground that ended just short of Bricqueville. Skirting this settlement, which seemed deserted, Newman led the patrol into Robehomme by moving off to one side of a small road. That they made it through struck Newman as being nothing short of “miraculous.”

Of the forty or so Canadians at Robehomme, thirty-five hailed from ‘B’ Company, while only a handful of the British paratroops were from the same unit. This meant the Canadians had the most cohesion as a fighting force, so Griffin decided they would lead the way out, with Mitchell’s little patrol on point as guides. Those wounded soldiers unable to walk were either put into a car volunteered by Robehomme’s priest or a horse-drawn wagon provided by a local farmer. At 2330 hours, the entire force filed quietly out of Robehomme and headed into the darkness. Several times, the car, wagon, or both bogged down in mud, requiring a lot of pushing and pulling by the men on foot to wrest the stuck conveyance free.

Just past Bricqueville, a German sentry barked a challenge. The men at the head of the column immediately rushed the position, firing as they did so. In a matter of seconds, they killed seven of the eight Germans maintaining a guard post and captured the other. A few minutes later, “an automobile with headlights dimmed down to...narrow slits, and which therefore appeared ghostly, was perceived sliding along the Bavent road towards the column. When it was quite close it met a fierce volley of well aimed fire from our column,” the battalion’s war diarist later wrote. “It careened into a ditch and upon examination was found to contain the dead bodies of four German officers. The way was now clear to get on through the Bavent forest.” At 0330 hours, the column reached le Mesnil crossroads. The Canadians were quickly integrated back into their units, which greatly bolstered the fighting strength of ‘B’ Company, and the British troops headed off to return to their various units.

While Mitchell’s patrol was engaged in rescuing Griffin’s force, Bradbrooke had also sent out three ‘C’ Company patrols over the course of the day towards Bavent. Although the first patrol was to use stealth to reach the village, avoiding enemy contact was not in the plan. Rather, Sergeant Harvey Morgan was going to attack Bavent with six men, while Corporal Dan Hartigan and Private Colin “Wild Bill” Morrison of Innisfail, Alberta covered them from a low rise to the right of the village. For this job, Hartigan was packing his two-inch mortar, a rifle, two bandoliers of rifle ammunition, all the mortar rounds he could scrounge, several grenades, and a Gammon bomb. The latter weapon, formally known as a Type 82 grenade, was a canvas bag stuffed with two pounds of plastic explosives fitted with a tumbler fuse covered by a plastic cap. Removing the cap exposed a detonator atop the fuse, which, when subjected to the slightest motion or impact, exploded the charge. The weapon had been invented by British paratrooper Lieutenant Jock Gammon to give airborne troops an ability to fight tanks without having to carry heavy conventional antitank mines. Morrison, “a huge raw-boned farm lad of twenty-one,” was equally heavily loaded down with bandoliers of magazines for his Bren gun.

While some Canadian paratroops still wandered lost or purposefully navigated through no man’s land to reach the battal- ion’s objectives, most were engaged in set- ting up a strong defensive position astride the vital le Mesnil crossroads. Another smaller group remained dug in at the village of Robehomme, which overlooked a bridge crossing the River Dives that the paratroops had blown on D-Day. The force here, under command of Captain Peter Griffin, numbered about one hundred. But only thirty to forty men—mostly from ‘B’ Company—were Canadian. Lost British paratroopers, drawn towards Robehomme by the sounds of gunfire as Griffin’s men had fended off several determined German counterattacks on June 6, made up the rest.

From the bell tower of Robehomme’s small church, Griffin watched German infantry slowly tighten a noose around his position throughout the daylight hours of June 7. Three miles separated Robehomme and le Mesnil crossroads, with the town of Bavent situated at roughly the midway point. From his vantage, Griffin could see German troops gathered around Bavent, which stood astride the road they needed to take to get through to the battalion. A stretch of low country almost a mile wide had been flooded between Robehomme and Bavent when the Germans had breached the banks of the River Dives as a defensive measure, intended to prevent these open fields’ use as airborne drop zones. The raised roadbed connecting the two communities via Bricqueville provided the only viable route across the flooded ground. Griffin was under no illusions that his paratroopers could hold Robehomme indefinitely. They were surrounded and would eventually be outgunned and outnumbered. It would be wise to be gone from the village before the Germans decided they were strong enough to overrun the position.

Hoping that the Germans at Bavent might still be disorganized, Griffin and Lieutenant Norm Toseland decided to try slipping a patrol through to le Mesnil. Private W.J. Brady was one of the men sent on this mission. They returned soon enough, having determined that the Germans had established a roadblock to prevent such an attempt. With water covering the ground on either side of the road, there was no way the blocking position could be outflanked, even in darkness. The Canadians had learned during the night of June 5–6 the perils of trying to slosh about in the flooded zones. Some men had drowned in water that was over their heads, while others had become hopelessly mired in deep mud, and it was virtually impossible to move quietly enough to avoid detection, anyway. There seemed no alternative. Griffin’s small force would just have to stay put. The paratroops were determined to protract the siege as long as possible, exacting a stiff price for their inevitable elimination.

At the crossroads, Lieutenant Colonel G.F.P. Bradbrooke had problems of his own. The aloof commander of the parachute bat- talion, who had proven before the invasion to be more concerned with fussy administrative paperwork than preparing the men for combat, had gathered about four hundred Canadian paratroops around him by the morning of June 7. He had also surprised some of his officers and men during the long day’s fighting on D-Day by leading them with steely resolve on a bitterly contested march from the drop zone to the crossroads. There had been those who had thought Bradbrooke would prove a poor combat officer, but his performance that day indicated otherwise.

Most of the men at the crossroads were armed with rifles or Sten guns. Only a few had Bren guns. Ammunition and grenades were in short supply. During the dispersed drop, the containers containing the heavier weapons had by and large gone astray. Those that were found had usually broken open and the equipment inside was either wrecked or damaged. The mortar platoon had lost its mortars this way, and the majority of the battalion’s wireless sets had similarly been scattered to the winds or broken. Equipment lost in the drop tallied up to 50 per cent of the battalion’s total.

The crossroads formed the intersection point for five roads that ascended the ridge’s gradually rising slopes from opposite compass points. Bavent ridge was only a significant feature because the country surrounding it was so low and flat. Run- ning along a generally north-south line from Sallenelles near the coast almost to Troarn, which was east of and parallel to Caen, it formed the only viable defensive ground that the airborne division could use to advantage in securing its eastern flank. If the counterattacking Germans broke through the defensive line holding the ridge, they would likely succeed in pushing the division’s lines back to the River Orne bridges. These bridges, captured by British glider troops on D-Day, were vital to Second British Army’s plan to break out from the Normandy bridgehead and advance towards Paris.

Holding the ridge from Sallenelles to Bréville was the 1st Special Service Brigade, a commando force that had landed at Sword Beach and linked up with the airborne troops late on June 6. From Bréville, which stood atop the highest point, to where the ridge overlooked the southern extremity of a small forest known as the Bois de Bavent was the responsibility of 6th Division’s 3rd Brigade. The 9th Parachute Battalion held the line from right of Bréville to just short of the crossroads, then the Canadians took over the defence from the crossroads to the forest’s northern edge, where they handed off to the 8th Parachute Battalion.

The crossroads was easily identifiable on the ridge’s skyline because rising above it was the smokestack of a nearby brick and pottery plant. Bradbrooke had been quick to establish his headquarters inside the building, whose stout walls provided good protection against the German artillery and mortar firing that was directed against the paratroopers with ever increasing intensity as June 7 wore on. A short distance to the right of the crossroads, Brigadier James Hill put his headquarters in a small château and the 224 Field Ambulance’s aid post set up on the same property. Each of the 3rd Brigade’s battalions was responsible for about a mile of line that numbers would not allow to be held by positioning men along its entire length. Instead, Bradbrooke organized small strongpoints, with the strongest in front of the crossroads, and covered the flank positions with Vickers machine guns. These weapons had arrived mid-morning, having been landed at Sword and moved up to the battalion by jeep. A good stock of ammunition and a trio of mortars were also included in the resupply package. Happy to be back in business, the mortar crews established a firing position beside the brick factory from which they could bombard targets to the front of any point on the Canadian line.

In addition to the vital supplies, Bradbrooke also received the cheering news that the battalion would be able to call on the British cruiser Arethusa and a destroyer for naval gun support. These two ships had been allotted specifically to fire missions assigned by 3rd Brigade, which was also given the dedicated support of the 302nd Field Battery of one of the 3rd British Infantry Division’s artillery regiments. The paratroops would not have to rely entirely on their own combat resources, after all.

By Bonnie Sitter

In 1945 Betty-Lou Denton left Sault Ste. Marie with her girlfriends to become a Farmerette. Now at age 93 she still loves to talk about her experience.
You needed to be 16 years old, have good grades in school and have parental consent to qualify. We all qualified for the first two criteria. Since we were going to be working with other girls on farms, would be living in a communal setting with a “camp mother” and strict rules to obey, our parents gave their permission for us to go. None of the patriotic rhetoric was meaningful to me.
I was getting out of writing my chemistry exam and escaping the watchful eye of my mother. The train ride with all my pals from the Soo to St. Catharines was great fun. We were looking forward to a spring and summer sharing this exciting new adventure. Instead we were all sent to different locations. I ended up at Camp Gregory, up on a cliff overlooking Lake Ontario knowing no one. My fellow Farmerettes came from far and wide and were formed into teams; each team was picked up by a farmer and driven to our work site each day.

Our team worked for Horace Troupe. He had a wife who tended to her chores and kept a watchful eye on three little ones.

Arthur was the oldest, about 4. I can still hear Mrs. Troupe hollering across the field: “Arthur git out of them thar strawburries, they aint no good if thur squished!”

Our first crop to harvest was long rows of asparagus. It was back-breaking work in the sun with no letup until noon when Mrs. Troupe came out with a pail of cold water from their well; we all shared the dipper for a welcome drink along with our lunch which we had prepared after breakfast. Our lunches were in brown paper bags and had been lying beside the field. I seem to remember my sandwiches were peanut butter or cheese with a piece of fruit for dessert. Meat was never an option as there was no refrigeration. After lunch it was back to the row upon row of asparagus with all of us working in unison each on our own row but working parallel to each other. We all got along well with no arguments or complaints; we were too busy thinking of when 5:00 would come.

The day the war ended, a farmer pulled into Camp Gregory with his huge stake truck, meaning no gate on the back, and announced that as many as could fit while standing up, could climb aboard and he’d take us into town for the parade. I remember feeling the thrill of knowing my Dad would be coming home! As we rode along the street people were cheering and waving and we had a good feeling that we had contributed to the war effort. Being a Farmerette was time well spent.

Rita (Coyne) Christensen left Capreol by train in early June 1944 with her six girlfriends to “Lend A Hand.” She had her 96th birthday last October.

Their destination was Jordan Station with a change of trains in Toronto. She recalled that excitement reigned supreme. No one got much sleep. The view of the acres and acres of orchards and grape vines certainly was like nothing like they had ever seen in Northern Ontario. They were met by a camp counsellor and she hustled them into the back of a truck for a 20 minute ride to Vineland Farm Service Depot where they were introduced to their summer home, a bunkhouse in a farmer’s field which had six sets of bunk beds. They chose their bed and investigated the surroundings and discovered they would be having their meals in an old farmhouse that had been converted into an eating area and kitchen. There was an area in the basem*nt that served as a recreation room where Monopoly and Chinese checkers and magazines were available for leisure time.

The next morning, everyone was awakened at six thirty and when breakfast was eaten and lunches were made from the bread and fixings set out for them, the Farmerettes were picked up by the farmers and off to work. Mrs. Hammond, the cook, reminded us to take a salt pill each day and be sure to cover our heads.

With thirty six girls arriving back at camp at the end of the day the first thing on their minds was getting cleaned up. Shower and washroom facilities were basic but adequate. A building known as a lean-to, had 3 open shower stalls and no privacy, 4 sinks and 3 toilet stalls.

The planks on the floor were well spaced to handle the over- flow. There was no time for primping in the bathhouse, hence not a mirror in sight. Two galvanized tubs and a scrub board served as laundry facilities. As you can imagine hot water was at a premium.

For the first week Rita recalls they could barely find the strength to shower and eat before flaking out on their bunks. They developed muscles they didn’t know existed.

Rita was assigned to a farmer named Rittenhouse whose farm was situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Ontario. His farm had a large peach orchard and acres of tomatoes, strawberries and celery. She recalled that noon hour swims were impossible because the icy water of Lake Ontario was a far cry from the small spring fed lakes they swam in near Capreol.

When the strawberry crop had been picked they planted celery and had black muck up to their elbows. Thinning the peaches resulted in the unbearable itchy peach fuzz clinging to their arms and necks. The resulting rash was miserable and sometimes required a visit to the doctor. Some girls had to be assigned to other jobs in canning factories.

Payday was Friday and when the pay packets were handed out the Farmerettes were expected to pay their room and board.

Rita recalls hitchhiking with friends to Niagara Falls and St. Catharines on the weekends for a movie or a gooey sundae at a restaurant called Diana Sweets.

They kept their pledge. They ensured food production would help win the war. They laughed, moaned, shared secrets and wrote letters to family and boyfriends. Rita recalled it as a won- derful experience, a great time to be young! These ladies were definitely members of the greatest generation.

By Bonnie Sitter

On a winter’s day in 2018, as I was sorting through photos that had belonged to my late husband Conrad Sitter, a black and white photo caught my eye. Three girls had posed for the photo by sitting on the running board of a very old car. Their faces were not familiar. I felt sure they were not relatives. I turned the photo over, hoping to see that someone had recorded their names. No luck. Ah, but there was a clue. Clearly written was, “Farmerettes about 1946.” I had no idea who the Farmerettes were and why the Sitter family had a photo of them. I was curious and decided to make an effort to learn about the Farmerettes. To date, I have not discovered the names of the Farmerettes in the photo, but my life has been forever changed and enriched by researching the Farmerette story. A chain of events that is quite amazing led me to Farmerettes who are now in their late 80s and 90s. As I set about researching the Farmerette story I discovered that most people were like me, they had never heard the term Farmerette until I mentioned it. When no help was forthcoming I discovered a novel had been written by Gisela Sherman. It was titled “The Farmerettes.” A novel for teens was not what I was looking for. I wanted answers to the questions of who, what, why, where and when. I caught a major break when my girlfriend Sarah asked me what I was doing. I replied that I was researching the story of Farmerettes. Right away she asked me if I would like to meet a Farmerette and of course I replied yes. She then told me that her mom had been a Farmerette in 1946 at an Ontario Farm Service Force Camp near St.Catharines. Since her mother now lived nearby in Huron County where I live, she said she would arrange for me to interview her. Her mother, Norene Pye Turvolgyi invited me into her suite and told me her story about the summer of 1946.

The next excitement was the fact that the 17 letters she wrote to her family that summer had been saved and returned to her. At nearly 90 years of age and numerous moves that included living in Montreal and Toronto she still had the letters! The letters included descriptions of the long work days cutting asparagus, the new sprayer for the orchard, and a dress she had her eye on in a St. Catharines shop for her grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. It was forbidden to swim in the Welland Canal but that did not stop the young girls from climbing the fence and jumping into the 50 feet of water. Soon after arrival, Norene’s letter had a sketch of the inside of the Nissen Hut she shared with 3 other girls that summer. The post cards mailed home showed views of Niagara Falls, Queenston Heights, Brock’s Monument and the Rainbow Bridge. For Farmerettes who worked in the Niagara Peninsula hitchhiking to these places was considered a must.

I felt I had won the lottery. The interview with Norene and the information I had gleaned from the internet and through newspaper articles and photos convinced me it was time to write an article for a magazine called The Rural Voice. The story was published in June 2018 and a few months later the August edition of The Rural Voice had a letter to the editor that brought another surprise. The letter was written by a Farmerette named Shirleyan English. She did not subscribe to the magazine but it had passed through 2 sets of hands and ended up in hers because a friend said she remembered Shirleyan talking about being a Farmerette. Her letter to the editor described the summer of 1952, which was the last year of the Ontario Farm Service Force program, when she was at Camp No. 6 Thedford Ontario. She had worked for the Sitter family in the peppermint and onion fields. She said reading the article brought tears to her eyes as she still remembered it as the best summer of her life. She also said she had dated the farmer’s son George that summer. She felt I must be connected and I was. I married his brother Conrad. I located her in London and the conversation led to the amazing fact that she had planned to write a story in 1995 for a women’s magazine about that summer of 1952 when she left her home in North Bay and became a Farmerette. She placed an ad in newspapers all over Ontario asking for former Farmerettes to get in touch with her. Nearly 300 ladies wrote letters to her. Many said, “send me the questionnaire” and others said “what do you want to know?” Some even said “call me, I would like to help.”

A few ladies wrote detailed letters of the summers spent as Farmerettes. Shirleyan never did write the article but I discovered she still had the letters. Without hesitation I said, “we are going to write a book!” Then I added “we are going to have it ready to read in a year so the Farmerettes who are still alive will be able to read their stories.”We will finally acknowledge their service in food production from 1941-1952. So important was their contribution that it continued for 7 years after the war ended!

It was my turn to read the letters , which I did, and then I began to try and locate the ladies. Naturally I got a lot of “This number is no longer in service,” recordings. When I would find a Farmerette and explain what I was doing the joy in their voice as they recalled their time spent as a Farmerette was amazing. Many had never spoken about their Farmeretting experiences simply because no one had asked them. They did their bit and then went on with their lives.

By David Pugliese

As the public prepares for yet another Remembrance Day efforts are under way to push for the removal of three monuments in Canada glorifying Nazi collaborators and instead replace them with statues to honour Canadians who fought against the Third Reich.

As the public prepares for yet another Remembrance Day efforts are under way to push for the removal of three monuments in Canada glorifying Nazi collaborators and instead replace them with statues to honour Canadians who fought against the Third Reich.

The offending monuments include a cenotaph at Oakville’s St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery honouring Ukrainian volunteers of the 14th Waffen SS “Galicia” Division and another similar cenotaph honouring the same Nazi division in Edmonton. In addition there is a bust of Roman Shukhevych, a Nazi collaborator in Ukraine who oversaw the murder of Jews, ethnic Poles, Belarussians and others. The organization he was involved with is linked to the killings of more than 100,000 people. That bust was erected at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton in the 1970s.

As author Lev Golinkin points out, the monuments were originally built by the Nazi collaborators themselves who Canada took in with open arms after the war.

B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Polish Congress have jointly called for the removal of the three monuments.

Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, an official with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, has also echoed that call. “It is beyond shameful to have (these) monuments here in Canada,” noted Kirzner-Roberts. “These monuments are nothing less than a glorification and celebration of those who actively participated in Holocaust crimes as well as the mass murder of Polish civilians.”

Others are calling for the monuments to be torn down and replaced with memorials honouring the 40,000 Canadian- Ukrainians who joined the Canadian military and actually fought against the Nazis.

The monuments have long been controversial. Canadian Jewish groups have tried for years to have the Shukhevych bust removed. Last year B’nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Polish Congress raised questions why such monuments even exist in Canada, labelling them as an affront to veterans. “Such monuments dishonour the memory of the victims and those who fought against Nazi Germany in World War II,” they added in their statement.

The Ukrainian nationalists who are behind the monuments have refused to take them down. Since the commemorative structures are on private property there seems to be little that can be done.

Ukraine’s 14th SS Division was formed in 1943 when Nazi Germany needed to shore up its forces as allied troops, including those from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Soviet Union, started to gain the upper hand and turn the tide of the war. In May 1944, SS leader Heinrich Himmler addressed the division with a speech that was greeted by cheers and clearly reflected the views of those who served in the unit and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler. “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews,” Himmler said. “I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”

There are allegations members of the 14th SS Division took part in killing hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944 in the village of Huta Pieniacka. The division was also used by the Nazis to crush a national uprising in Slovakia, again prompting allegations of war crimes.

Ukrainian nationalists in Canada defend the monuments, claiming falsely, that the SS unit was used to only fight for Ukraine independence and that Shukhevych was never involved in the killing of Jews and Poles. They say those who object to the monuments are anti-Ukrainian or supporting a Russian disinformation campaign.

But those who want the monuments torn down point out their efforts aren’t about being against Ukrainians but instead they are speaking out against those Ukrainians who supported the Nazis and took part in the Holocaust.

Questions have also been raised why the Ukrainian nationalists in Canada are so reluctant to honour Ukrainian-Canadians who actually fought against the Nazis. While there are two monu- ments in Canada for the Ukrainian SS division, there is no similar monument to the 40,000 Ukrainian Canadians who served in our country’s navy, air force and army during the Second World War.

The Shukhevych bust and the two SS cenotaphs have also been the target of vandalism, with slogans being scrawled on the monuments pointing out the Nazi connection. In the summer the cenotaph in Edmonton was defaced with “Nazi Monument” and “14th Waffen SS” in red paint, noted the Progress Report, an online publication.

That prompted some Ukrainians to complain that the SS division was being “defamed.” Someone also painted “Actual Nazi” on the Shukhevych bust.

But critics have proposed a simple solution to stop such vandalism. “If they want people to stop spray-painting ‘Nazi’ on their statue then they should take down the Nazi statue,” Evan Balgord of Anti-Hate Canada told the Progress Report.

Canadian Ukrainian nationalists aren’t the only ones supporting public monuments to Nazi collaborators and members of the Third Reich.

In 2020 individuals and various groups such as B’nai Brith Canada rallied to successfully rename a street in Ajax, Ontario that was dedicated to Hans Langsdorff, who commanded the Graf Spee. Langsdorff hailed Hitler as “a prophet, not a politician.” The naval officer committed suicide after scuttling his warship. His suicide note pointed out that “I shall face my fate with firm faith in the cause and the future of the nation and of my Führer.”

In 2017 various groups rallied to force organizers of an aviation conference in Lachute, Quebec not to celebrate Nazi pilot Hanna Reitsch.

Reitsch was a darling of Nazi propaganda, a test pilot for the Stuka dive bomber among other planes and the first female helicopter pilot. She also presented Hitler with Operation Suicide, a plan to use pilots as human glide bombers to attack Canadian and other allied forces. Reitsch went to her grave in 1979 as a true believer of the Nazi cause, boasting that she still wore the Iron Cross with diamonds that Hitler gave her. Reitsch said she and all Germans did have guilt from the era of the Third Reich but that guilt was because they had lost the war.

Organizers with Women of Aviation Worldwide, the group co-ordinating the conference, saw nothing wrong with honoring the Nazi pilot, claiming she could be a role model for females around the world. “Are we going to do something and change the world and make it a better world, or are we going to keep on talking about the past?” organizer Marguerite Varin told the CBC.

But disgusted by the decision of the conference organizers to celebrate the Nazi, politicians in Lachute acted. Lachute Mayor Carl Péloquin said when the town found out about the event they contacted the organizers, threatening to prevent the event from taking place at the municipal airport. “We told them that we wouldn’t be accepting or tolerating any kind of events in relation with Nazism or any other kind of extremist movement,” Péloquin said to journalists.

As a result, the plan to honor Reitsch was dropped from the program.

Controversy is now starting to grow over another monument now being built in Ottawa.

The $7.5 million Memorial to the Victims of Communism is being financed mainly with Canadian tax dollars. The structure has support from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Alberta premier Jason Kenny, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler, former Green party leader Elizabeth May, and former NDP leader Tom Mulcair.

But in July 2021, the CBC reported that the monument received donations in honour of known fascists and Nazi collaborators. The structure is being partly financed by a campaign which sells “virtual bricks” which are supposed to be dedicated to victims of communism and include biographical notes about the individuals being commemorated.

But some of those bricks have been purchased to commemor- ate Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators such as Ante Pavelić, the CBC reported. Pavelić was the leader of the notorious Ustaša who ran Croatia during the Second World War on behalf of the Nazis. The Ustaša murdered more than 300,000 Serbs and 55,000 Jews and Roma. Ustaša methods of killing were so brutal that even some SS officers complained.

Other bricks have been purchased for additional Ustasa officials as well as Hungarian fascists who helped the Nazis. The League of Ukrainian Canadians’ Edmonton Branch, purchased five virtual bricks in honour Shukhevych, the CBC reported. “If Canada commemorates Ante Pavelić or Roman Shukhevych, it can throw its human rights record right in the trash,” Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, told the national broadcaster.

So why are Nazi collaborators finding honours in Canada, a country that did so much to help destroy the Third Reich? With Canadian Second World War veterans dying off and the horrors of the Holocaust a distant memory, an opening has emerged for those who want to rewrite the history of Adolf Hitler’s regime and those who served it.

A movement is afoot to claim that the Nazi collaborators and the SS units made up of Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians and other eastern Europeans, were actually nationalistic heroes and in no way associated with the Nazis. These days there are parades in Latvia and Ukraine to honour these SS units who fought under the Swastika. These parades and memorials have attracted the support of Neo-Nazis and other fascist groups.

By Commodore (ret) Mark Watson

Le mois dernier, nous sommes revenus sur la création, en 1925, du Corps canadien des Commissionnaires, qui avait pour but d’offrir des emplois valorisants à d’anciens militaires et membres de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada (GRC).

En 1947, le lieutenant-colonel (Lcol) Edmund Walter – un descendant de Sir Edward – alors commandant du Corps britannique, accorde au Corps canadien la permission d’adopter la Médaille de service des Commissionnaires. Avec l’autorisation de Rideau Hall, qui reconnait l’importance que revêtent les médailles dans les traditions militaires, le Secrétariat d’État approuve, en 1948, la Médaille de long service des Commissionnaires (MLSC), qui est décernée aux employés possédant douzeannées de service au sein du Corps. Elle est officiellement intégrée au Régime canadien de distinctions honorifiques en 1998.

Les traditions militaires demeuraient importantes aux yeux des Commissionnaires. Les contingents du Corps étaient invités à participer à des défilés lors de l’Exposition nationale canadienne et aux cérémonies du jour du Souvenir; cette tradition se poursuit encore de nos jours. À Halifax, les Commissionnaires ont été les premiers reconstituteurs historiques; portant l’uniforme victorien, ils ont assumé la responsabilité de tirer le coup de canon de midi à la Citadelle. Des officiers militaires supérieurs prenaient part aux cérémonies de remise des diplômes, et un défilé a été organisé. Le Corps était un élément indispensable de la vie pour bien des vétérans en procurant à ces frères d’armes un lieu de rencontre et un réseau d’anciens militaires. Pour bon nombre d’eux, faire partie des Commissionnaires constituait un honneur tel qu’ils désiraient, à leur décès, être inhumés dans leur uniforme des Commissionnaires et faire graver l’insigne du Corps sur leur pierre tombale.

En 1950, le Corps comptait près de 5000 membres, éclipsant son cousin britannique avec pratiquement le double du nombre des membres. En Australie, un corps des commissionnaires fondé dans années 1930 avec un objectif semblable a fini par changer de cap, passant de l’emploi des vétérans à un rôle d’organisme exclusivement philanthropique visant à aider la cause des vétérans.

Le Corps a poursuivi son évolution; l’une de ses principales transformations a commencé en 1952 lorsque le Lcol Mary Dover a été élue au Conseil des gouverneurs de la division du sud de l’Alberta, devenant ainsi la première femme à siéger à un conseil au Canada. Dover avait fait partie du Service féminin de l’Armée canadienne (CWAC) durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Elle était la fille de M.A.E. Cross, l’un des pères du Stempede de Calgary, et la petite-fille du Colonel(Col)MacLeod, fondateur de Calgary qui a donné son nom à la ville de Fort MacLeod. Il faudra pourtant attendre encore 20 ans, soit jusqu’en 1972, avant que Mme Audrey Morton devienne la première femme commissionnaire à occuper un poste d’agent de sécurité au Musée du Nouveau-Brunswick de Saint‑Jean. Antérieurement, elle avait servi pendant 17 ans dans la milice et quatre ans au CWAC durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en Angleterre et au Canada. Elle a de plus contribué à la conception de l’uniforme. Le command de corps de la Seconde Guerre mondiale Guy Simonds, les amiraux de la Marine Hennessy et Yanow, le commandant de l’Armée de terre Mike Jefferey, la première femme à commander un établissem*nt de la Marine royale canadienne (MRC), le lieutenant-commandant Isabelle MacNeil, et la première femme à obtenir un grade de général, le brigadier-général Sheila Hellstrom, entre autres, ont siégé à différents conseils.

Les liens avec la Couronne avaient en outre une grande importance. On décernait aux gouverneurs généraux une médaille d’ancienneté en argent en reconnaissance de leur lien avec les Commissionnaires; le premier récipiendaire sera Ed Schreyer. Au fils des ans, plusieurs représentants de la Reine, au niveau national tant que provincial, ont effectué la revue de la Garde d’honneur des Commissionnaires.

En 1982, l’effectif du Corps se chiffrait à 10000 personnes, tous des vétérans, soit le triple du Corps britannique. Aux quatre coins du Canada, les 18 divisions autonomes, fortes d’une longue expérience des services de sécurité auprès d’institutions fédérales, ont commencé à obtenir une vaste gamme d’autres contrats dans le domaine de la sécurité. Il s’agissait notamment de services de soutien aux activités policières (parfois appelés modes de prestation de services diversifiés), tels que l’application des règles régissant le stationnement et la surveillance de centres de détention pour la GRC. L’évolution des Commissionnaires avait fait d’eux un excellent fournisseur de services de sécurité. Pourtant, le plus grand changement du Corps était encore à venir et n’allait pas tarder.

Les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 aux États-Unis ont entraîné une poussée immédiate et exponentielle des besoins en matière de sécurité au Canada, au niveau fédéral comme dans le secteur privé. Dans le but de répondre à la demande croissante de travail, les Commissionnaires ont pour la première fois commencé à intégrer du personnel non militaire dans leurs rangs. Pour mieux s’ancrer dans la modernité, les Commissionnaires ont adopté un nouveau logo et ont modifié leur uniforme. Partout au Canada, ils ont troqué l’uniforme paramilitaire pour le veston et la chemise bleue et la chemise blanche pour les superviseurs.

Parallèlement, les Commissionnaires ont convenu d’un mandat social officiel pour le Corps, consistant à « procurer de l’emploi valorisant aux anciens membres des Forces armées canadiennes (FAC), de la GRC et à tous les autres qui souhaitent contribuer à la sécurité et au bien‑être des Canadiens ». Ce mandat est devenu le cœur et le fondement qui guident tout ce que les Commissionnaires faisaient et continuent de faire, en plus de permettre au Corps de tendre la main à d’autres Canadiens, souvent nouvellement arrivés, tout en demeurant fidèle à son mandat fondamental.

En 2014, une évaluation du droit de première option (DPO) par le Conseil du Trésor a débouché sur le rapport Goss-Gilroy, qui soulignait que le Corps représente un bon investissem*nt pour le gouvernement fédéral et le Canada. Le rapport indiquait également que le concept de DPO constitue un mécanisme des plus pertinents à l’appui de l’emploi direct et des besoins autres que financiers des vétérans, ce qui conférait un caractère officiel à la valeur du Corps. À peu près au même moment, un protocole d’entente était signé avec les FAC. En vertu de ce document, les FAC et les Commissionnaires travaillent de concert, dans la mesure du possible, aux niveaux local et régional, dans le but d’offrir de l’emploi à quiconque est libéré honorablement des FAC. Les Commissionnaires ont également convenu d’embaucher certains membres des FAC blessés ou malades qui participent au programme de retour à l’unité, de même que des membres des FAC qui passent à la vie civile et désirent obtenir de l’aide dans leur recherche de possibilités d’emploi.

Conscients que les besoins des vétérans ne sont plus les mêmes et compte tenu du fait que l’amélioration des services aux vétérans passe nécessairement par la prise en considération de leurs familles, les Commissionnaires ont modifié leur mandat social en 2020 afin d’y inclure l’emploi des familles des militaires et des vétérans. Les membres des familles sont donc considérés pour l’embauche préférentielle au sein du Corps. Parallèlement, le DPO a été prolongé pour une période de trois ans la même année, alors que le gouvernement fédéral prenait conscience que les Commissionnaires offrent des avantages inégalés. Le Corps est reconnu non seulement pour le calibre de son travail, mais aussi pour sa capacité à titre de plus important employeur de vétérans au sein du secteur privé au Canada.

Le Corps canadien des commissionnaires a joué un rôle capital dans l’essor de notre pays. Sa réussite est souvent attribuable à la solidité de sa gouvernance. Parmi les bénévoles qui siègent à ses différents conseils se trouve le gratin des FAC. Les innombrables membres retraités de la GRC et des FAC connaissent l’importance du Corps pour les vétérans. Il s’agit d’un véhicule d’emploi de premier plan, mais aussi d’un lieu de rencontre pour les vétérans. Pour bon nombre d’entre eux, les Commissionnaires donnent le sentiment d’avoir un but bien précis.

Au fil des ans, les possibilités offertes aux vétérans se sont élargies, mais les Commissionnaires sont toujours présents pour apporter leur aide. De nombreux vétérans occupent des postes d’officiers supérieurs au sein du Corps; par conséquent, la direction comprend comment venir en aide aux militaires et aux membres de la GRC qui partent à la retraite et qui se dirigent vers une nouvelle carrière et, éventuellement, vers la retraite complète. Les Commissionnaires procurent des emplois là où d’autres organismes pourraient se montrer réticents, notamment à ceux qui vivent avec un syndrome de stress post-traumatique (SSPT) ou d’autres défis post-service. Le Corps a aussi prêté main-forte à de nouveaux immigrants, comme Gurbachan Singh Bedi, un vétéran de la Seconde Guerre mondiale originaire de l’Inde, qui a accédé à la demande de sa fille d’émigrer au Canada en 1985 à la seule condition qu’il puisse trouver un emploi valorisant au Canada. C’est le Corps qui lui a fourni cette possibilité; il y a travaillé pendant 20 ans de plus, soit jusqu’à l’âge de 90 ans. La vétérane canadienne de la guerre d’Afghanistan Helen Goldie a de son côté trouvé une nouvelle carrière au Corps pendant qu’elle poursuivait son service dans la Réserve.

Les possibilités d’emploi auprès des Commissionnaires ont bien augmenté depuis leurs humbles débuts. Le Corps offre maintenant des services-conseils en sécurité, en cybersécurité, des services d’enquêtes et de la formation. La philanthropie est une importante partie de l’engagement du Corps à l’appui de la cause des vétérans, ce qui comprend le programme Sans limite et le projet de Maison des vétérans de l’Initiative multiconfessionnelle sur l’habitation d’Ottawa, qui fournira des logements, de l’orientation et d’autres services de soutien aux vétérans sans abri. L’éthos militaire du Corps garantit un soutien sans égal à ses employés, aux vétérans et aux civils et assure un esprit de corps et une volonté d’aider qui se compare davantage au contexte d’une famille régimentaire qu’à celui d’une entreprise privée.

De nos jours, les Commissionnaires comptent 22000 employés dans 1200 collectivités d’un océan à l’autre. La Fédération englobe 15 divisions qui s’acquittent de contrats conclus avec le secteur privé et avec tous les niveaux de gouvernement. Cette institution canadienne unique a su évoluer avec les besoins des vétérans et ceux du Canada. À l’approche de son centième anniversaire, qui sera célébré en 2025, le Corps canadien des commissionnaires entend bien continuer de soutenir tous les vétérans, leurs familles et tous ses employés durant le prochain siècle.

By Commodore (ret’d) Mark Watson

In last month’s excerpt we covered the 1925 foundation of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, for the purpose of providing meaningful employment for military and RCMP veterans.

In 1947, LCol Edmund Walter (a descendant of Sir Edward), then the Commandant of the British Corps, gave his permission for the Canadian Corps to adopt the Commissionaires’ Service Medal. With permission of Rideau Hall, which recognized the importance that medals have in military tradition, the Commissionaires Long Service Medal (CLSM) was approved by the Secretary of State in 1948, awarded to employees with 12 years of service with the Corps. It was formally made part of the National Honours System in 1998.

Military tradition remained important to Commissionaires. Corps contingents were invited to parade at the Canadian National Exhibition and at Remembrance Day ceremonies, a tradition that continuestoday. Commissionaires in Halifax were the first historic re-enactors as they wore Victorian uniforms and took on the responsibility of firing the noon gun at the Citadel. Senior military officers participated in course graduations and a march-past was created. To many veterans, the Corps was an indispensable part of their lives. It provided a social outlet and an alumni network for this band of brothers. Many were so honoured to be a Commissionaire that they requested to be buried in their Commissionaires uniform and even have their headstones engraved with the Commissionaires crest.

By 1950, the Corps had reached nearly 5,000 members, dwarfing its British cousins by nearly double the size. An Australian Corps of Commissionaires, founded in the 1930s with a similar aim, would eventually transition from focusing on employment of veterans to become an exclusively philanthropic organization to assist veteran causes.

The Corps has continued to evolve. One of the first major transformations began in 1952 when LCol Mary Dover was elected to the Board of Governors of the Southern Alberta Division. In doing so, she became the first woman to serve on a board in Canada. Dover served in the CWAC during the Second World War and was the daughter of Mr. A.E. Cross, one of the founding members of the Calgary Stampede, as well as being a granddaughter of Col. MacLeod, founder of Calgary and for whom the city Fort MacLeod is named. Yet it would be twenty years later, in 1972, when Mrs. Audrey Morton became the first female Commissionaire, acting as a security guard at the New Brunswick Museum in St John. She had previously spent 17 years in the militia and four years with the Women’s Canadian Army Corps during the Second World War in England and in Canada. She helped design the uniform. Boards have also included Second World War Corps Commander Guy Simonds, Naval Admirals Hennessy and Yanow, Army Commander Mike Jefferey, the first woman to command an RCN establishment Commander Isabelle MacNeil, and the first female general B-Gen Sheila Hellstrom, to name but a few.

Links to the Crown were also very important. Beginning with Ed Schreyer, Governors General were given special silver medals of long service to recognize their relationship with the Commissionaires. Many of the Queen’s representatives, at the national and provincial level, have inspected Commissionaires’ Guards of Honours over the years.

By 1982, the Corps workforce had grown to 10,000—all veterans—triple the size of the British Corps. Eighteen autonomous Divisions across Canada with a long history of providing security guards to federal institutions, began winning a wide variety of other contracts in the security field including non-core police services (sometimes referred to as Alternative Service Delivery) such as parking enforcement and overseeing detention centres for the RCMP. Commissionaires had evolved and become a very successful security provider. But the Corps’ greatest change was just around the corner.

The 9/11 attacks on the United States caused an immediate and exponential growth in the need for security in Canada, for both federal property and private security. To keep pace with the growing demand for work, Commissionaires began to hire non-military personnel into its ranks for the first time. In keeping with modern times, a new logo and a change in uniform was adopted. Commissionaires across the country moved away from the paramilitary uniform, and began wearing blue shirts and jackets, white shirts for supervisors.

At the same time, Commissionaires agreed to a formal Social Mandate that the Corps would“provide meaningful employment for veterans of theCanadianArmed Forces, RCMP and all others who wish to contribute to the security and well-being ofCanadians.” This mandate became the heart and foundation of everything that Commissionaires would do, and continues to do, and has allowed the Corps to reach out to other Canadians, often new Canadians, while simultaneously holding fast to the core of its mandate.

In 2014, a Treasury Board evaluation of the RFR resulted in the Goss-Gilroy Report which reinforced that the Corps represents good value for money for the federal government and Canada. The report also noted that the concept of the RFR is still a very relevant mechanism in supporting both direct employment and the non-financial needs of veterans, formalizing the value of the Corps. Around the same time, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The MOU states that CAF and Commissionaires will work in concert, where possible, at local and regional levels, to offer employment to anyone honourably released by CAF. Under the MOU, Commissionaires agreed employ selected injured/ill CAF members who are participating in the Return to Duty program, as well as members of the CAF who are transitioning to civilian life who wish assistance seeking employment opportunities.

Recognizing that the needs of veterans had changed, and that providing enhanced support for veterans means considering the veteran’s family, Commissionaires amended its Social Mandate in 2020 to include providing employment to military and veteran families. This means that veteran families are considered for preferential hiring into the Corps. Coincidentally, the RFR was extended for a three-year period that same year as the federal government realized that the benefits Commissionaires offers are unequalled. The Corps’ is recognized not just for the calibre of its work, but for its capacity as the largest private-sector employer of veterans in Canada.

The Canadian Corps of Commissionaires has played an important role in the development of this nation. Its success has often been due to the strength of its governance. Volunteers on its various Boards include a veritable list of “who’s who” from Canada’s military. Countless retired RCMP and military officers know the importance of the Corps for veterans. Not only is it an important employment vehicle, but it is also a social outlet for veterans. For many veterans, Commissionaires offers a continued sense of purpose.

The opportunities available for veterans have expanded over the years. Still, Commissionaires is always there to assist. With so many veterans working as senior officers within the Corps, the leadership understands how to assist retiring military and RCMP personnel with their transitioning to a new career and, eventually, to full retirement. Commissionaires offers employment where other agencies may not, including to those who live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other post-service challenges. It also helped new immigrants like Gurbachan Singh Bedi, a Second World War veteran from India who agreed to his daughter’s wish to emigrate to Canada in 1985 on the sole condition that he could find valuable employment in Canada . He found that opportunity with the Corps and worked for an additional 20 years—until the age of 90. Canadian Afghanistan War veteran Helen Goldie found a new career in the Corps while still serving in the Reserves.

Job opportunities within Commissionaires have expanded from its humble beginnings. The Corps now provides security consulting, cyber security, investigations and training. Philanthropy is an important part of the Corps’ commitment to support to veteran causes including Soldier On, and the Multi-Faith Housing Initiative’s Veteran House project in Ottawa which will provide housing, counselling and other support services to homeless veterans. The Corps’ military ethos ensures unparalleled support for its employees, veteran and civilian, and maintains an esprit de corps and desire to assist that is more akin to what is found in a regimental family than a private company.

Ceci est une traduction de la version anglaise, disponible sur le lien suivant : http://espritdecorps.ca/history-feature/the-canadian-corps-of-commissionaires-a-proud-and-unique-canadian-institution

By Commodore (ret) Mark Watson

Toute personne qui est déjà entrée dans un édifice fédéral a sans doute remarqué la présence d’un agent de sécurité portant un uniforme bleu ou blanc et qui demande des pièces d’identité ou remplit d’autres tâches de sécurité. Les visiteurs croient généralement que cette personne est un employé fédéral. En réalité, il s’agit d’un commissionnaire.

Si le nom des «Commissionnaires» est bien connu, rares sont ceux qui connaissent les origines de cet organisme canadien unique et l’important rôle qu’il tient pour les vétérans et pour le Canada depuis 96 ans.

Officiellement appelé le Corps canadien des Commissionnaires, cet organisme canadien privé sans but lucratif et à caractère unique a été fondé en 1925 dans le but de procurer des emplois valorisants aux anciens militaires et anciens membres de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada (GRC) et d’offrir des services de sécurité au Canada et aux Canadiens.

Pour bien saisir l’histoire du Corps, il faut remonter au milieu des années 1850, en Grande-Bretagne. La guerre de Crimée, un conflit militaire de deux ans et demi qui a opposé la Grande-Bretagne ainsi que ses alliés à la Russie, dans la péninsule de la Crimée et au Caucase, avait généré un grand nombre d’anciens combattants. Bon nombre de ces soldats avaient été blessés et arrivaient difficilement à trouver du travail à leur retour au bercail dans les îles britanniques. Il n’existait pas de filet social gouvernemental viable pour ces vétérans, qui étaient laissés à eux-mêmes.

Un capitaine retraité de l’Armée de terre, Sir Edward Walter, était conscient de la nécessité de corriger la situation en offrant des emplois valorisants aux anciens soldats qui avaient servi avec tant de courage. Il savait qu’il était possible de mettre à profit la discipline, le professionnalisme et l’entraînement propres aux soldats afin d’assurer la surveillance de propriétés et de remplir d’autres tâches.

En 1859, Walter confie à sept vétérans handicapés la sécurité de commerces locaux à Londres. Désirant donner à ce groupe de vétérans un nom approprié, Walter cherche son inspiration en France. Sur le continent, tous les hôtels des grandes villes se sont dotés de «commissionnaires». Ces derniers aident les clients à franchir les frontières avec leurs bagages en toute sécurité, font des courses et portent du courrier.

Pour éviter de copier trop fidèlement le français, il nomme l’organisme qu’il vient de mettre sur pied le Corps of Commissionaires, anglicisant le mot «commissionnaire» en laissant tomber le deuxième«n». Le terme «Corps» vise à souligner les racines militaires des employés. L’organisme adopte un uniforme et connaît une lente croissance, faisant souvent appel au soutien de bienfaiteurs fortunés.

Le Corps conserve des liens étroits avec les Forces britanniques. Plusieurs officiers militaires de haut niveau remarquent et apprécient le travail exceptionnel accompli par Walter. L’un de ces officiers est le prince Arthur, duc de Connaught, qui avait été officier de la revue lors du défilé annuel du Corps britannique, en 1904. L’image des vétérans défilant avec motivation lui avait laissé une impression indélébile, qu’il aura encore à l’esprit au moment d’assumer les fonctions de gouverneur général du Canada, en 1911.

Pendant que la guerre fait rage en Europe, le duc écrit au président de la Commission des hôpitaux militaires, en 1915, pour l’inviter à considérer la possibilité de créer une organisation semblable au Corps of Commissionaires de la Grande-Bretagne à l’intention des militaires qui rentrent à la maison. Il faudra attendre jusqu’aux années 1920, après la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale et le retour au Canada de milliers de soldats blessés, pour que plusieurs éminents Canadiens créent une version canadienne de l’organisme, avec l’aide du gouvernement fédéral.

En 1925, un an avant la création de la Légion royale canadienne, cinq avocats montréalais unissent leurs efforts pour poser les jalons d’un organisme centré sur les vétérans. Les cinq membres fondateurs, John MacNaughton, Albert Isidore Livingstone, Joseph Horace Michaud, Philip Meyerovitch et Max Bernfield, reçoivent, le 25 juillet, une autorisation fédérale leur permettant de trouver des emplois pour les vétérans. Un autre groupe sera également mis sur pied à Toronto peu après. Ensemble, ces deux organismes constituent les Compagnies 1 et 2. Le Corps des commissionnaires de la Colombie-Britannique est ensuite établi à Vancouver le 6 octobre 1927.

Malheureusem*nt, il n’existe que peu de cohésion entre les groupes de Montréal, de Toronto et de Vancouver. Leur efficacité décroit graduellement jusqu’au moment où, en 1937, le ministère des Pensions et de la Santé nationale de l’époque, par l’intermédiaire de la Commission d’assistance aux anciens combattants, acquiert les droits privés et prend en charge la surveillance de la formation du Corps à l’échelle nationale. Sous la direction du major-général (Mgén) W.B.M. King, qui devient le premier président national, le Corps est enfin géré de la manière voulue pour s’établir solidement. Des membres du Conseil, tous d’anciens chefs militaires, se portent volontaires pour assurer la surveillance du Corps et veiller à sa gouvernance efficace.

Pour souligner les origines et les liens militaires du Corps, le gouverneur général Lord Tweedsmuir a été le premier président d’honneur du Corps, en 1937. La tradition consistant à nommer le gouverneur général à ce poste se poursuit encore aujourd’hui.

Vers la fin de 1937, le Corps canadien des commissionnaires avait établi des compagnies à Montréal, Hamilton, Windsor, Calgary et London. Dans les deux années qui suivent, d’autres sont établies à Winnipeg, Edmonton, Halifax et Ottawa. Les Commissionnaires étaient accueillis aux quatre coins du pays. Comme on pouvait le lire dans l’Edmonton Bulletin en 1939:

Dans leur impeccable uniforme bleu, avec les insignes du Corps sur la coiffure et le baudrier, les membres de la première unité du Corps canadien des commissionnaires d’Edmonton sont maintenant au travail. Bientôt, une patrouille de nuit et un service de protection de la propriété seront à la disposition des citoyens d’Edmonton. La patrouille de nuit sera effectuée sous la surveillance de militaires triés sur le volet et possédant un excellent dossier de service. [Traduction]

En 1945, la Seconde Guerre mondiale tire à sa fin, et le nouveau ministère des Anciens combattants approuve une présentation au Conseil du Trésor qui désigne le Corps comme un important employeur civil de vétérans. La présentation se lit comme suit:

L’adhésion à ce type d’organisme (le Corps) est réservée à des hommes d’exception possédant de longs et dignes dossiers de service auprès des Forces de Sa Majesté et qui souhaitent maintenant, afin de garantir leur autonomie financière, obtenir un emploi civil mettant à profit les qualités personnelles qu’ils tirent de la discipline et de l’entraînement militaires. [Traduction]

Le Corps bénéficiait d’une reconnaissance unique qui n’était accordée à aucune autre organisation du secteur privé. Ainsi, le Conseil du Trésor, dans une lettre à tous les ministères, affirme que:

Le Conseil considère que la Fonction publique du Canada offre des emplois qui pourraient avantageusem*nt être occupés par du personnel issu du Corps canadien des commissionnaires. Par conséquent, il demande que tous les ministères, conseils et commissions étudient la possibilité de confier à ces personnes des postes exemptés de la Loi sur l’emploi dans la Fonction publique. [Traduction]

Cette mesure est devenue le droit de première option (DPO), une politique qui oblige les organismes du gouvernement fédéral à obtenir leurs services de sécurité auprès du Corps – ce privilège est encore applicable de nos jours. Le Corps des commissionnaires britannique n’est jamais parvenu à établir une telle politique. Les Commissionnaires assuraient la sécurité dans les édifices fédéraux de tout le Canada, procurant ainsi des emplois valorisants aux vétérans. C’est probablement ce qui a donné lieu à la confusion au sein du public, qui croyait que les commissionnaires étaient des employés du gouvernement fédéral.

Le Corps était toujours présent pour venir en aide aux nombreux vétérans de la Seconde Guerre mondiale qui arrivaient difficilement à trouver du travail dans le secteur privé. Parmi les milliers de vétérans qui ont travaillé sous les auspices des Commissionnaires après la guerre, mentionnons Collin Borrow, récipiendaire de la Croix de Victoria de la Première Guerre mondiale qui a travaillé au siège social de la CBC, à la prison Don Jail et à l’hôpital Sunnybrook; le vétéran de la Première Guerre mondiale Hari Singh, l’un des premiers sikhs à servir au sein des Forces canadiennes; Oren Foster, qui a été fait Membre de l’Ordre de l’Empire britannique (MBE) pour avoir capturé des soldats allemands lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le calibre des employés des Commissionnaires et leur désir de servir constituent les fondements de ce solide organisme national.

De 1945 à 1950, avec les milliers de vétérans qui rentrent au Canada après la guerre, le nombre d’unités du Corps double pratiquement. Sept nouvelles divisions sont créées, dont l’une qui englobe le Nouveau-Brunswick et l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard, une à Québec, deux en Saskatchewan et une autre à Kingston. La division de Terre-Neuve lance ses opérations en janvier 1950, moins d’un an après l’entrée de cette province au sein de la Confédération.

À mesure que l’organisme prend de l’ampleur un peu partout au Canada, les Commissionnaires tiennent à projeter une image de fierté et d’honneur. Malgré l’absence de lien direct avec le Corps des commissionnaires du Royaume-Uni, il est décidé que l’uniforme qui sera adopté sera modelé sur celui des cousins britanniques, sans toutefois lui être identique. Cette décision est en grande partie une manifestation de respect pour ce que le capitaine Walter a créé. Le nouvel uniforme comprend une veste de serge bleue, une coiffure blanche, une chemise blanche et un baudrier. Les grades et les traditions militaires sont intégrés au Corps; celui-ci adopte un drapeau, tient régulièrement des défilés, des diners régimentaires et des revues. Un sergent d’allégeance est adopté selon l’équivalent militaire. Les postes reposent sur une structure militaire; on retrouve un commandant et des capitaines-adjudants dans ce que l’on appelle alors des divisions. Les commissionnaires sont fiers de leur service et de ce que le Corps représente.

Pendant de longues années, seuls les anciens militaires, de même que les anciens membres de la GRC qui avaient fait preuve d’un service distingué lors de plusieurs conflits militaires, dont la Première Guerre mondiale, étaient admis au sein des Commissionnaires. Leur aptitude était déterminée par un processus de sélection rigoureux. Les commissionnaires étaient embauchés dans des postes de responsabilité, comme aides de camp, réceptionnistes, téléphonistes, messagers, garde-barrière d’usine, contrôleurs, gardiens de nuit; d’autres effectuaient des tâches de sécurité dans des installations privées, fédérales et provinciales. Les commissionnaires pouvaient également remplir des fonctions temporaires à court préavis pour quelques heures ou quelques jours au besoin.

Le mois prochain: Partie deux: Le Corps en évolution pour relever les défis modernes.

By Commodore (ret’d) Mark Watson

Anyone who has entered a federal building will have undoubtedly seen a security guard wearing either a blue or white uniform asking for identification or performing other security duties. Visitors tend to believe that this individual is a federal employee. In fact, this person is a commissionaire.

While many recognize the organizational name “Commissionaire,” few are aware of its origins and the important role this uniquely Canadian organization has played for veterans, and for Canada, over the last 96 years.

Officially known as Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, this uniquely Canadian, private, not-for-profit organization was founded in 1925 with the purpose of providing meaningful employment to military and RCMP veterans and delivering security services to Canada and Canadians.

To fully appreciate the Corps’ history, one needs to go back to Great Britain in the mid-1850s. The Crimean War—a two-and-half-year military conflict which saw Great Britain and her allies fight against Russia in the Crimean Peninsula and Caucasus—resulted in a large number of veterans. Many of these soldiers were wounded and had a hard time finding employment after returning home to the British Isles. There was no viable government social net for these veterans; they were left to fend for themselves.

Retired army officer Captain Sir Edward Walter recognized the need to right this wrong by providing meaningful employment to these former soldiers who had served so gallantly. He knew that a soldier’s innate discipline, professionalism and training could be tapped to provide oversight of property and other duties

In 1859, Walter arranged for seven disabled veterans to provide security to local businesses in London. Walter wanted to give this group of veterans an appropriate name and looked to France for inspiration. On the continent, attached to every hotel in every large town, were “commissionnaires.”They were responsible for assisting guests in getting baggage safely through customs, running errands and carrying letters.

Not wanting to completely copy the French, he called his new organization the “Corps of Commissionaires,” anglicizing the word “Commissionnaire” by taking out the second ‘n’—Commissionaire. The term “Corps” was included to emphasize the military roots of the employees. The organization adopted a uniform and grew slowly, often calling on wealthy benefactors for support.

The Corps had a close relationship with the British Forces. Many senior military officers noticed and appreciated the distinctive work Walter was doing. One such officer was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. He had been the Inspecting Officer for the British Corps’ annual parade in 1904. The image of veterans parading with a new sense of purpose made quite an impression on him, something he carried with him when he became Canada’s Governor General in 1911.

With war raging in Europe, the Duke wrote a letter to the President of Military Hospital Commission in 1915 to suggest that “the formation of an organization similar to the Corps of Commissionaires in Great Britain should be considered” for returning servicemen. However, it was not until in the 1920s, after the Great War had come to an end and brought thousands of injured soldiers back to Canada, that several prominent Canadians, supported by the federal government, created a Canadian version

In 1925, a year before the Royal Canadian Legion was founded, five Montreal lawyers united to lay the groundwork for a veteran-centric organization. The five founding members—John MacNaughton, Albert Isidore Livingstone, Joseph Horace Michaud, Philip Meyerovitch, and Max Bernfield—received a Federal Charter on 25 July to find employment for veterans. Another agency was instituted in Toronto soon after. Together they became known as Companies 1 and 2. Vancouver became home to the British Columbia Corps of Commissionaires on 6 October 1927

Unfortunately, there was little cohesion among the Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver groups, and their effectiveness gradually declined until finally, in 1937, the Department of Pensions and National Health, through the Veterans’ Assistance Commission, acquired the private charter and undertook to oversee the formation of the Corps on a national basis. Under the leadership of MGen W.B.M. King, who was appointed the first national president, the Corps finally had the oversight needed to become firmly established. Board members, all former military leaders, volunteered to oversee the Corps and provide good governance.

To highlight the fact that Corps was based on military ethos and linkages, Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir was made the Corps’ first Honorary Patron in 1937, a tradition for Governors General ever since.

By the end of 1937, Canadian Corps of Commissionaires companies had been established in Montreal, Hamilton, Windsor, Calgary, and London. Within two years, there were new operations in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Halifax, and Ottawa. Commissionaires were welcomed everywhere across the country. As the Edmonton Bulletin wrote in 1939:

“In smart blue uniforms with the badges of their Corps on cap and cross-belt, the first unit of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires in Edmonton is now on duty, and shortly, a night patrol and property protection service will be at the disposal of Edmonton Citizens. The night patrol service carried out under supervision by hand-picked ex-servicemen with the best of records.”

In 1945, with the end of the Second World War in sight, the newly formed Department of Veterans Affairs approved a Treasury Board submission that identified the Corps as an important civilian employer for veterans. The submission explained that:

“Membership in such organisations (the Corps) is limited to men of exceptional character who have had long and worthy records of service in His Majesty’s Forces and who now, to be self-supporting, desire employment in civilian occupations in which personal qualities developed by military discipline and training would be or particular value.”

The Corps received unique recognition not afforded to any other private sector organization. Specifically, the Treasury Board sent a letter to all government departments, stating that,

“The Board considers that there is work in the Public Service of Canada that could, with advantage, be performed by personnel obtained through the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires and requests that all Departments, Boards and Commissions, give consideration to the employment in positions exempted from the Civil Service Act.”

This became known as the Right of First Refusal (RFR), a policy through which Federal Government bodies are required to provision security guard services from the Corps—a privilege that continues to this day—a unique policy which the UK Corps of Commissionaires was never able to achieve. Commissionaires would be found across Canada providing security to federal buildings as a way to provide meaningful employment to veterans, and likely confusing the public into believing commissionaires are employees of the federal government.

The Corps was always there to assist the many Second World War veterans who had difficulty finding jobs in the private sector. Included in the thousands who worked under the Commissionaires’ banner after the war was Collin Borrow, a Victoria Cross winner from the Great War who worked at CBC headquarters, the Don Jail and Sunnybrook Hospital; First World War veteran Hari Singh, one of the first Sikhs to serve in Canada’s military; and Oren Foster who won the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for capturing German soldiers during the Second World War. The calibre of people employed by Commissionaires, and their desire to serve, laid the foundation for this strong, national organization.

Between 1945 and 1950, with thousands of veterans returning to Canada following the war, the number of units in the Corps almost doubled. Seven new Divisions were founded including one that covered New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, one in Quebec City, two in Saskatchewan and one in Kingston. The Newfoundland Division commenced operations in January 1950, less than a year after the province joined Confederation.

As the organization grew across Canada, Commissionaires needed to project an image of pride and honour. While there was no direct link to the UK Corps of Commissionaires, it was decided, nevertheless, to adopt a uniform that was based on, but not identical to, its British cousins. This was done largely out of respect for what Captain Walter had started. The new uniform included a blue serge jacket, white cap, white shirt, and a cross belt. Military ranks and military traditions were incorporated into the Corps. This included the acquisition of Corps Colours, regular parades, mess dinners and inspections. An oath of allegiance was adopted based on the military equivalent. Positions were based on military structure with Commandant and adjutants being found in what was then known as Divisions. Commissionaires took pride in their service and what the Corps stood for.

For many years, only former servicemen—including veterans of the RCMP who had served with distinction in several military conflicts including the Great War—could become Commissionaires. They were carefully screened to determine suitability. Commissionaires held responsible positions as aides-de-camp, receptionists, telephone operators, messengers, factory gatekeepers, checkers, night watchmen, while still others were employed on security work at private, federal and provincial installations. Commissionaires were also often available on short notice for temporary duties—a few hours or days—if needed.

Next Month: Part Two: Evolving the Corps to cope with modern challenges.

By David Pugliese

Over the years some Ukrainian Canadians have staunchly defended the 14th SS Division Galicia. They have falsely claimed that Ukrainians who served in the division were conscripted, when in reality 80,000 volunteered and 13,000 were selected. Other apologists argue that the division fought only to protect Ukrainian territory. This too is false.

Then there are the claims that reports about 14th SS Division Galicia are the result of Russian disinformation or propaganda. Marcus Kolga, an Estonian activist with the right-wing Macdonald Laurier Institute in Ottawa, falsely claimed that articles linking the division to the SS and wartime criminal activity have “parroted the Kremlin’s tailored narratives.”

But the most common method that Nazi apologists use to defend the 14th SS Division Galicia is to cite the 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, often referred to as the Deschênes commission after its chairman, judge Jules Deschênes.

Supporters of 14th SS say the Deschênes commission cleared the division and all its members of any involvement in war crimes. “Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this Commission,” Deschênes concluded. “Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.”

At the time critics labelled the commission’s report as a whitewash. The decades since have further reinforced that view as additional information about the 14th SS Division Galicia’s war crimes have emerged.

Deschênes either ignored or appeared to be unaware the Waffen SS – which the Galician Division was part of – had been declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremberg Trials. This omission is particularly incredible as Canada participated as one of the allied nations in the prosecution of war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King actually visited the court and attended some of the trials.

Even a cursory glance at SS Galicia reveals its links to the Nazi campaign of destruction against the Jews and murder of civilians. Its commander was Oberfuhrer Fritz Freitag, a fanatical Nazi, who was directly involved in the mass murder of Jews.

Among the commanding officers of SS Galicia was Ukrainian-born SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Heinrich Wiens, who served with the Einsatzgruppen D murder squad and personally took part in mass executions of Jews. Another division officer, SS Obersturm-bannfuhrer Franz Magall, was also a seasoned killer of Jews.
SS Galicia worked alongside SS-Sonderbattalion Dirlewanger, a unit that contained rapists, murders and the criminally insane and the two organizations, at times, transferred officers between each unit, noted Per Anders Rudling, a historian of Eastern European history and Associate Professor at the Department of History at Lund University, Sweden.

In addition, SS Galicia had officers and NCOs who came from the Nachtigall battalion, a Ukrainian collaboration organization that had taken part in the mass killings of Jews in the summer of 1941, added Rudling, who has extensively studied the division.

In 2003 a Polish government commission into Nazi war crimes concluded the 14th SS Galicia was responsible for the massacre of women and children in the village of Huta Pieniacka. Based on eye witness accounts, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, pointed out that members of the 14th division, entered the village and began executing civilians.

In 2005 the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences arrived at the same conclusion. The main difference between its investigation and the earlier Polish government investigation was the number of civilians murdered, added Rudling.

The Ukrainian investigation estimated around 500 people were killed. The Polish commission put the number of those murdered at 700 to 1,500.

Deschênes and his commission stayed in Canada, never travelling to Europe to interview those who suffered atrocities at the hands of 14th SS Galicia and the Nazis. Even a cursory examination of British government archives would have revealed the report the Polish underground sent to the Polish government-in-exile in London about the massacre at Huta Pieniacka. “The 14th Division of the Ukrainian SS surrounded the village Huta Pieniacka from three sides,” the report to Poland’s government- in-exile explained. “The people were gathered in the church or shot in the houses. Those gathered in the church – men, women and children – were taken outside in groups, children killed in front of their parents. Some men and women were shot in the cemetery, others were gathered in barns where they were shot.”

The 14th SS Galicia is also implicated in other atrocities in four other Polish villages, according to historians.

During part of 1944 the unit was stationed in Slovakia where it was involved in fighting partisans and took part in crushing the Slovak National Uprising. The division then moved to Slovenia in early 1945 where it continued fighting anti-Nazi partisans. These actions undercut claims by some in the Ukrainian-Canadian community that the SS Galicia Division only defended its Ukraine homeland. The division’s operations hunting down partisans, killing civilians, and burning down villages clearly show their actions were part of the greater Nazi war machine.

More concerning is the fact that Deschênes concealed a report prepared for his commission that concluded, “At least some persons who served with the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian police/militia units that participated in killing actions (of Jews) in 1941-1943 would have found their way into the ranks of the (Galician) Division.” The commission kept that report secret and it was only years later that a heavily censored copy was released through the Access to Information law.

Some have defended Justice Deschênes, stating he was under pressure from the Canadian government to clear the division and appease the Ukrainian Canadian community.

But over the decades as Holocaust historians publish more details about the atrocities of those who served in the SS Galicia Division, it has become clear to critics that the Deschênes commission was simply a whitewash of a military unit that subscribed to and served the ideology of Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

Deschênes died in the year 2000. But his report lives on to be used by those who want to continue to whitewash the Nazi regime’s crimes and the eager collaborators who helped in those atrocities.

By David Pugliese

In May both the Globe and Mail newspaper and CBC’s As It Happens radio show carried laudatory reports about a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran and his efforts to bring Ukrainian refugees to Canada in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Flight Lt. Bohdan Panchuk was the man behind the Ukrainian Canadian Servicemen’s Association (UCSA), which supported the cultural and social needs of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage serving overseas during the Second World War. Panchuk was also involved in the effort that saw as many as 30,000 Ukrainian refugees brought to Canada after the war.

The media focus on Panchuk, who died in 1987, came about because Ukrainian groups in Canada and the United Kingdom were honouring him and the UCSA by unveiling a stained glass window on the 75th anniversary of the Victory in
Europe.

By all accounts Panchuk contributed to Canada’s war effort and helping Ukrainian refugees from war-torn Europe.

But missing from the accolades in the Globe article and the CBC broadcast were the details about some of the Ukrainian “refugees” that Panchuk managed to convince the Canadian government to accept – 2,000 members of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS.

Panchuk was able to get members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia into Canada by lying about their past.

Members of the unit had surrendered to Allied forces and were being held in a camp in Italy. In an attempt to hide the SS connection, the unit had changed its name in the last few days of the war to the First Division Ukrainian National Army.

Panchuk was trying to get Canada to accept large numbers of soldiers from the unit but he had a major problem. The Canadian government would not accept as immigrants anyone who voluntarily served in the German military. Not only had the Ukrainians voluntarily served in Hitler’s war machine but they had eagerly signed up for the Waffen SS, which had been declared a criminal organization by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

Those who served in the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia had taken an oath to Hitler and had received education in Nazi doctrine. Ukrainian officers had been trained at SS facilities in the Dachau concentration camp. In fact, some of the division’s members have noted in their memoirs that concentration camp prisoners were required to remove their hats as a sign of respect for the Ukrainian SS. Unit members were given SS tattoos under their left arm indicating their blood group. Leadership of the division included some key figures who had been directly involved in the Holocaust.

As part of his efforts to have Canada accept the Ukrainian SS soldiers, Panchuk pushed a “positive narrative portraying the former Galicians as an anti-Soviet” German Army unit, noted Ukrainian historian Olesya Khromeychuk. She is the author of the book “Undetermined Ukrainians” which looks at the various narratives surrounding the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia.

No mention was made of the SS. Instead, the Ukrainians were portrayed by Panchuk as being victims, having been forced into the division against their will.

If Canadian immigration officials had actually probed deeply into the background of the 14th Waffen-SS division they would have found few victims in its ranks. “The volunteers (of the Galician Division) committed themselves to German victory, the New European Order, and to Adolf Hitler personally,” explained Per Anders Rudling, a historian of Eastern European history and Associate Professor at the Department of History at Lund University, Sweden. The division not only fought the Polish Home Army but it took part in the crushing of the Slovak National Uprising and hunted down anti-Nazi partisans in Slovenia. There were also allegations of war crimes being committed by division members.

While some in the Canadian government didn’t probe deeply into the background of the Ukrainian “refugees,” British government bureaucrats knew who they were dealing with and were more than happy to dump the SS troops into Canada’s lap. “The Division was an SS division and technically all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals,” noted a report from Britain’s Under-Secretary of State.

The British government also knew only cursory background checks had been conducted into the division members and their activities during the war. In 2005 the release of new documents from the British archives outlined the extent of the efforts in the late 1940s to pawn off members of 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia on to Canada. “What little we know of their war record is bad,” wrote Beryl Hughes, who was handling the issue for Britain’s Home Office. “We’re still hoping to get rid of the less desirable Ukrainian PoWs either to Germany or Canada,” Hughes added in another note in 1948.

Even Panchuk knew he was dealing with some unsavoury individuals but that didn’t stop him in his deception. “We must defend the principle of the refugees and DPs (displaced persons) and victims of war, but, in actual fact, God forbid and protect us if some of these parasitic bandits ever get into Canada,” he wrote to a colleague, John Karasevich.

Not everyone was fooled. Some members of the Canadian-Ukrainian community knew exactly who these “refugees” were and Panchuk’s campaign faced strong opposition from the Association of United Ukrainians in Canada, Khromeychuk, the historian, revealed in her book. “It is clear that Mr. Panchuk and his Association either forgets the facts, that no Canadian could forget or feels that Canadians have already forgotten their sons who have fallen on the battlefields of Europe,” the association wrote to Canadian immigration officials. “Ukrainian Division (Galicia) was part and parcel of the Hitler army. It was against them that our Canadian boys fought on the battlefields of Italy. Many a Canadian son remained over there, shot by the VERY ONES that Mr. Panchuk would wish your Department to bring to Canada.”

But pressure from the nationalist Ukrainian lobby in Canada as well as the British government was too great and Panchuk was successful. As many as 2,000 members of 14th SS Division Galicia arrived in Canada in the 1950s and immediately started to whitewash and cover up their past.

The effectiveness of that whitewash was on display in 2020 – neither the CBC nor the Globe and Mail appeared to have a clue about the SS connection to Panchuk’s “refugees.” The Globe article even has a photo of Panchuk visiting members of “Ukrainian Division Galicia” in 1947 as they awaited their release from the PoW camp in Italy. Globe journalists and photo editors were oblivious that those in the photo were members of the notorious 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia.

By Bill Twatio

Blacks in Canada had no problem choosing sides in the American Civil War. Enlisting in the Union cause in great numbers, they too fought for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Among them was Harriet Tubman, who made repeated trips into the South to guide slaves north on the Underground Railroad.

Convinced long before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that the fight against slavery and the preservation of the Union were synonymous, Henry Jackson, a black Canadian wrote: “I wish to impress upon your mind that the war is a trial between freedom and slavery not only here, but all over the world.” True to his convictions, he enlisted in the Union Army and was killed at Campbell’s Station on November 16, 1863.

Black Canadians had no problem in choosing sides in the American Civil War. Bred in slavery, they rallied to the Union cause as soon as President Abraham Lincoln issued a directive allowing black enlistments in the Union armies. Maritimers made their way to Massachusetts to enlist in the famous 54th, celebrated in the movie “Glory,” while young blacks from the Elgin and Buxton Settlements in Ontario crossed the border at Detroit to join the 1st Michigan Coloured Infantry. Others, encouraged by Joseph Henson, a schoolteacher at Dresden whose escape from slavery inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, would serve in the cavalry, artillery and navy in every theatre of war. Two of every 100 Canadians who served were black Canadians fighting for the freedom of black Americans.

The Road to Freedom

Although most black Canadians were American born, blacks had settled in Canada as early as 1629 when David Kirke arrived at Quebec with a black slave from Madagascar who he promptly sold to Champlain’s master-builder, Guillaume Couillard. Little is known about this first black resident of Canada except that he was baptized under the name Olivier Le Jeune, served as a domestic and died, still a young man and a slave, in 1654.

Slavery was forbidden in France, but Louis XIV gave it limited approval in Canada, informing the colonists that “His Majesty finds it good that the inhabitants import Negroes there to take care of their agriculture.” Blacks were soon set to work as household servants and field-hands and did much of the heavy work in the new fur-trading outposts. Although there would be fewer slave-owners in New France than in the neighbouring English colonies to the south, the attitude to slavery was similar. Enumerated with the animals, a black was a slave everywhere and no one was astonished to find him in bondage.

Slavery in Canada continued to flourish under the British regime, Jeffrey Amherst assuring the Marquis de Vaudreuil, a slave-owner, that “Negroes of both sexes shall remain in their quality of slaves in possession of the French or Canadians to whom they belong.” This assurance was included in the Articles of Capitulation signed at Montreal in 1760.

Many prominent citizens acquired slaves. The Reverend David Delisle of the Church of England in Montreal bought a slave name Charles in 1766 and two years later James McGill, a wealthy merchant, bought “a negro woman named Sarah, about the age of 25 years for the sum of 56 pounds, lawful money of the Province.” Much of the dealing in slaves was carried on through the newspapers. When Fleury Mesplet founded the Montreal Gazette in 1778, he announced that his paper would “give notice to the public at any time of slaves deserted from their masters.”

Slaves accompanied the Loyalists to their new homes in British North America in the wake of the American Revolution. Veterans of Butler’s Rangers who settled along the Niagara Frontier brought slaves with them or bought them from livestock dealers who brought their wares to Canada. A Colonel Clark of Ernestown in Prince Edward Country recalls that “drovers used to come in with horses, cattle, sheep and negroes, for the use of the troops, forts, and settlers in Canada, and my father purchased his four negroes, three males and one female named Sue.”

Wherever the Loyalists brought their slaves, black settlements began to form – at Birchtown near Shelbourne in Nova Scotia; at York, Kingston and Prescott; at Sandwich, Amherstburg and Chatham. Although they came as slaves, hope was beginning to dawn. In 1791, Colonel John Graves Simcoe, the newly-appointed Governor of Upper Canada, pledged himself never to support any law that “discriminates by dishonest policy between the Natives of Africa, America or Europe.” Two years later he introduced a bill in the Legislative Assembly prohibiting the importation of slaves, which passed “with much opposition but little argument.”

The Underground Railroad

In spite of its limitations, Simcoe’s bill helped to change public attitudes to slavery and by the turn of the century most Canadian blacks were free. Moreover, American blacks, learning that they would not be enslaved north of the border, began a trek to freedom honouring Simcoe’s memory with an abolitionist song:

”I’m on my way to Canada

That cold and distant land

The dire effects of slavery

I can no longer stand -

Farewell, old master,

Don’t come after me.

I’m on my way to Canada

Where coloured men are free.”

The legendary Underground Railroad, with its mythical “trains” running through the northern states to terminals in Canada, had no track or rolling stock. It was underground only in the sense that it was a secret operation. Quakers and Methodists, free blacks and slaves, “shareholders” united in their hatred of slavery, worked out of border states and used railway terms to confuse the authorities. “Conductors” drove carts and farm wagons with slaves hidden in false compartments and transferred them to “stations” along the many routes leading to Canada. The most famous, Harriet Tubman, called the “Black Moses” of her people, made repeated trips into the South to guide slaves north. Her forays ended at St. Catharines at the home of the Reverend Hiram Wilson, the leader of the local refugee community. Operating informally without reports, meetings and memoranda, the Underground Railroad spirited some 30,000 fugitives to Canada between 1800 and 1860.

Cheers for Massachusetts

Harriet Tubman continued her work during Civil War as a spy and nurse for the Union Army. Discriminated against and denied a pension, her experience was only too familiar to Canadian black volunteers. Black soldiers did not receive the same pay as whites and could not become officers. Many served for long periods without pay until they were grudgingly awarded half the standard rate, prompting the 54th to adopt the bitter battle cry: “Three Cheers for Massachusetts and Seven Dollars a Month!” The men who died in the attack on Fort Wagner were never paid.

Military hospitals had separate but unequal facilities for black and white troops leading to a higher death rate among blacks. Only eight black surgeons received commissions and they were they were resented by their white colleagues. Dr. Alexander Augusta, who had trained at Trinity College in Toronto, was removed from his position as head of surgery at Camp Stanton in Maryland after his white assistants personally complained to the Secretary of War. Returning to Washington by train, he was attacked by two men who tore his officer’s insignia from his uniform while a mob watched.

Approximately 180,000 blacks served in the Union Army. They participated in over 500 military engagements, 40 of which were major battles. Their most difficult battle, however, was waged against entrenched racial attitudes. American and Canadian blacks alike, faced the fires of war and hatred with courage hoping that they too would finally have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Reprinted from the encyclopaedia Canada at War and Peace II: A Millennium of Military Heritage, published by Esprit de Corps Books in 2001.

(Volume 26 Issue 5)

By Mark Zuehlke

On June 6th 1944, the greatest air and naval armada in history struck the Normandy coast of France. Breaching Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was a tremendous feat, but in the days and weeks ahead, citizen soldiers of the world’s democracies had to hone their craft against some of the toughest and most experienced troops of the German Wermacht. This excerpt is from the ninth volume of Mark Zuehlke’s s Canadian Battle Series and tells the story of the Canadian attack on the Carpiquet airport. Although Canadian soldiers achieved the greatest penetration of the first days of June, progress afterward was measured in blood
against dug-in, fanatical resistance.

To indicate the location of a wounded man, the nearest soldier would drive the man’s rifle bayonet into the ground so the butt was visible above the wheat. The rifle markers also helped prevent tanks and Bren carriers from running over the fallen. On the extreme left flank, the North Shore’s carrier platoon rumbled along in their Bren carriers next to the railroad. Their commander, Captain J.A. Currie, thought the “dust and smoke made it like a night attack…and during the clear spots, we could see men going forward, but had no idea so many had been hit. Padre [R. Miles] Hickey was right among them, giving the last rites and so was Doc [John Aubry] Patterson with his medical kit. No other unit had a pair to match them.”

Hickey had waded into the midst of ‘B’ Company, shredded even as it advanced towards the start line. “Everywhere men lay dead or dying,” Hickey wrote. “I anointed about thirty right there.”

‘A’ Company’s Major Anderson thought the “advance through the grain field was little short of hell.” He kept his bearings in the boiling smoke by taking constant compass readings. Behind him, one platoon wandered off at a right angle to the line of advance. Lieutenant Darrel Barker had been mortally wounded, and, unable to see the rest of the company, the platoon drifted out of sight into the smoke before Anderson could bring it back on course.

Many of the fifty 12th SS soldiers deployed in the field west of Carpiquet had been killed or so badly dazed by the shelling they meekly surrendered when overrun. But a few remained defiant.
Their fire added to the casualty toll. “I am sure at some time during the attack,” Anderson recalled, “every man felt he could not go on. Men were being killed or wounded on all sides and the advance seemed pointless, as well as hopeless. I never realized until the attack on Carpiquet how far discipline, pride of unit, and above all, pride in oneself and family can carry a man, even when each step forward meant possible death.”

‘B’ Company’s Lieutenant Charles Richardson had only twenty of the thirty-five men in his platoon left. Lieutenant Paul McCann’s platoon was on his right. Both men were using compasses. When the smoke lifted momentarily, Richardson saw that McCann’s men were now to his left. He had no idea how that had happened. His men emerged from the smoke in an extended line and suddenly faced a field that had been burned to stubble by artillery fire. Charging forward, they wiped out a slit trench defended by five Germans. Richardson saw a pinwheeling stick grenade land in front of him. “I felt a hot stinging in my right side and left hand, then thought it didn’t matter too much.” Suddenly alone, Richardson took on the German position single-handedly and killed its defenders. His batman and two runners had all been seriously wounded by the grenade.

“My side started to bother me badly and my left hand was peppered with shrapnel. I had a long cigarette case in the inside pocket of my battledress and a towel wrapped around my waist. In order to look at my side, which was throbbing, I unbuttoned my tunic and the towel was full of shrapnel. I reached for a cigarette and found the case bent almost double by a large piece of shrapnel. I felt I was not hit too badly but out of nowhere appeared our beloved colonel and I quickly had orders to get back to the first aid post—which marked the finish of my first month in action.”

Two Fort Garry Horse squadrons were riding right on the heels of the North Shores and Chauds. One Sherman rolled up and spun in a full turn that buried Sturmmann Karl-Heinz Wambach to the chest in the sandy soil of his slit trench. He was trying to free himself when a voice yelled, “SS bastard, hands up!” Two North Shores dragged him free and tied his hands. One then punched him in the face. He was taken to the rear, urged along by rifle butt blows, and tied to a fence post for some hours in an area subjected to frequent shelling by German 88-millimetre guns.

Wambach’s complaints about his treatment led the North Shore’s historian to comment that “given the way Canadians felt about the 12th SS, he got off lucky.” During its advance across the field, the North Shores took thirty-five prisoners and killed an equal number.

At 0625 hours, almost ninety minutes after the attack began, the North Shores reached the shelter of a stone wall in front of Carpiquet and reported being on their first objective. The Chauds signalled brigade a few minutes later that they had men on the village edge and among the nearby hangars. Carpiquet was still being heavily shelled, forcing a twenty-minute pause. More casualties resulted when shells burst in the tree canopy next to the Canadian positions. When the artillery ceased firing, both battalions plunged into the village. Most of the small garrison actually deployed within either surrendered, were already dead, or quickly fled. The North Shores sent back twenty more prisoners. In the Chaudière sector, a handful of hard-core 12th SS in the hangar complex were burned out of concrete pillboxes by Crocodiles. At 1056, the Chauds reported their grip on the hangars secure.

Surprisingly, there were French civilians still living in the badly damaged village. Some, who emerged from bomb shelters and basem*nts, had been wounded, and most seemed to be “in a state of severe shock,” Lieutenant MacRae wrote. “One old couple passed me going to the rear with their few possessions in a wheelbarrow. They looked too dazed to know what was going on.” While most of the civilians immediately fled towards the Canadian lines, a few were driven back into hiding when the Germans slammed Carpiquet with heavy and continuous mortar and artillery fire.

Private Feldman manned his wireless in a concrete bunker the Chauds were using as a battalion headquarters. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Mathieu, Major Lapointe, the battalion padre, and Feldman felt pretty secure there until “we heard this big noise and knew it was coming close. I was facing one way and the shell…hit the HQ in another place. I was in the ‘dead zone’ or I’d have been killed by the concussion…I was knocked flat into the bunker and the officers looked at me and thought I’d died…I had landed on my set and that really prevented me from getting hurt, but the set was damaged. We got it going again and it was a miracle.”

To the south, as Fulton’s ‘D’ Company had closed on the first of the three hangars, it began taking heavy small-arms fire in addition to being shelled and mortared. All three platoons were shredded. Fulton was the only officer still standing. “We made a final rush and got into the hangar, taking over the extensive network of deep weapon pits and trenches developed by the Germans to guard the hangars. It was then that the heaviest bombardment I experienced throughout the whole war was brought down upon us. If it hadn’t been for the excellent German trench system, I believe none of us would of survived.”

Fulton radioed Lieutenant Colonel John Meldram. His company held the hangar but was too weak to go any farther, Fulton reported. However, he believed it could repel the likely counterattack. ‘A’ Company had been forced to ground a hundred yards short of the hangars. Meldram decided to feed ‘B’ Company through to the hangar held by Fulton. He also requested that 8th Brigade release some of ‘B’ Squadron’s tanks to accompany it.

Blackader reluctantly agreed to release one troop along with four Crocodiles. ‘B’ Squadron was Blackader’s only armoured reserve, and he intended to have it support the follow-on assault by the Queen’s Own Rifles to clear the control and administration buildings in the northeast corner of the airfield. Because the Winnipegs had failed to clear the hangars and remove the German threat to the Queen’s Own from that flank, Blackader had delayed this phase. He also ordered the Queen’s Own to form up inside Carpiquet for the launch of their attack.

‘B’ Company met the same murderous hail of German shells the two leading companies had endured. Only about half the men reached the hanger Fulton held. Captain Jack Hale had been wounded. Fulton combined the survivors with his own. But the Winnipegs were still unable to clear the Germans out of the concrete pillboxes and trench systems defending the other hangars. The Crocodiles, the Winnipeg war diarist wrote, “proved useless.” As for the Fort Garry troop, its four Shermans met deadly fire from hidden anti-tank guns. Lieutenant Arthur Edwin Rogers and Sergeant Alastair James Innes-Ker were both mortally wounded when their tanks burst into flames. The demise of those two tanks prompted the remaining two to flee.

Wireless contact between battalion headquarters and the forward companies was so erratic that Meldram ordered Fulton to come back for a briefing. “I had no desire to make my way back across the airfield again, a target for the German guns; mine not to reason why, however.” As Fulton ran back, he spotted Rifleman Leonard Miller calmly lying in a slit trench and reading a pocket-sized New Testament. Meldram ordered the lead companies pulled back to a small, sparse wood a few hundred yards ahead of the original start line. Artillery would then plaster the hangars, and a new attack would go in with ‘B’ Squadron alongside. As Fulton passed Miller’s slit trench on his return run, he saw the man had been killed by a mortar round.

At 1600 hours, the new attack went in behind another bombardment. Rifleman Edward Patey, a Bren gunner in ‘C’ Company, had just started forward when mortar and machine-gun fire tore into his platoon. Three men went down. He recognized one as a man in his mid-thirties everyone had nicknamed “Pops.” The man lay “writhing on the ground, his whole stomach ripped with bullets.” Patey “was hit by a mortar piece in the eye and upper chest and…left deaf for a couple of days.”

‘B’ Company’s Sergeant Major Charles Belton suffered a chest wound. “I can remember when we were kids, we watched an Indian-cowboy movie and someone got shot and hit the ground and was dead. When I looked down and saw this blood spurting out of my chest, I thought I’d better lie down, so I did. I was fortunate. The shrapnel came through a book I had in my upper right breast pocket. Otherwise I would probably have had that shot go right through me. But the book stopped the shrapnel, although it took two pieces of cardboard and that book into the wound and that infected it and made it worse.”

As Belton started crawling to the rear, a German sniper in a nearby tree shot him in the leg. One of his men gunned the sniper down. Belton was evacuated to a field hospital. “There were so many of us in that tent that stretchers were only about [six] inches apart, just enough room for the nurses to walk in between…just row, and row, and row of us on these stretchers. I lay so long on this stretcher that my back pain was far worse than the wounds. I finally got back to England on a barge.”

While the infantry had gone straight for the hangars, the Shermans had executed a “sweeping attack” to get around the left flank of the Germans inside. Within minutes the tankers found their planned charge slowed to a crawl by thick bands of barbed wire and other obstacles, as well as anti-tank fire coming from in and around the hangars. Major Christian also reported the squadron was taking heavy fire from Panthers on the high ground behind the village of Verson to his right. The British were to have taken this ground but were stalled inside Verson.

‘B’ Squadron was completely out of contact with the infantry, which, having regained the first hangar, were again stuck there. Christian manoeuvred the squadron towards the hangars but found his tanks caught in a vise between a force of Mark IV and Panther tanks near Verson and other tanks at the hangars. A fierce shootout ensued. Soon burning tanks littered the airfield. ‘B’ Squadron had gone into the attack fifteen strong. When the tank battle broke off, nine remained operational.

The battle clearly stalemated, Meldram told Blackader at 1725 hours that “it would be impossible to hold on without increased [support]. Blackader had nothing more to send. When a mixed force of tanks and infantry approached the airfield from the east, artillery managed to scatter it. But the Germans only “dispersed and rallied” the moment the guns ceased firing. Blackader ordered the Winnipegs back to Marcelet. As the infantry withdrew, the surviving tanks joined them. At Marcelet the Winnipegs dug in. Blackader ordered his battalions to reorganize where they were.

“What had we accomplished?” Fulton wondered. “Possibly the Germans recognized our intention to take Carpiquet and that we would be back. But at what a cost!”

Blackader ordered the Queen’s Own to join his other battalions holding Carpiquet. To reach the village meant running the gauntlet of artillery and mortar fire through the wheat field. En route, ‘B’ Company’s Rifleman Alex Gordon was wounded and left behind. Rifleman J.P. Moore rolled up in his Bren carrier just as the men in Gordon’s platoon realized he was missing. They warned Moore that “the fire was so heavy that anyone in the wheat field would be killed.” Moore gave the carrier full throttle, drove like mad into the wheat field, grabbed up Gordon and threw him in the carrier and brought him to safety.”

As the battalion closed on Carpiquet, one carrier platoon section, operating as foot infantry, sought shelter beside a concrete bunker. Suddenly, a German inside it opened up with a Schmeisser, and Rifleman Art Reid was shot dead. The entire battalion went to ground and called for tanks and Crocodiles to destroy the position.

When the armour arrived, the Crocodiles blasted “with flame the walls about the entrances, which were set in a wide trench on the south side. This treatment merely blackened the [heavy] concrete walls and appeared to have no effect upon the enemy within. Nor were the tanks able to damage the structure,” Major Steve Lett, the battalion’s second-in-command, wrote.

Corporal Tom McKenzie noticed six ventilation shafts poking out of the bunker’s roof and dropped a Mills grenade down one of the pipes. When nothing happened, he realized the pipe was virtually the same diameter as the grenade and this prevented the firing pin from releasing. Flipping the pins free and then dropping the grenades down the pipe worked, but the explosions still failed to convince the Germans inside to surrender.

Because the Germans had killed Reid, McKenzie was getting “madder than hell.” So he stole a carrier’s four-gallon jerry can, emptied the gas down the pipe, and dropped a phosphorous grenade down after. A lot of smoke boiled out of the ventilation duct and there were some satisfying secondary explosions, but still no Germans appeared.

While McKenzie had been taking on the bunker, the battalion’s pioneers had unsuccessfully tried to blow the roof open with a 25-pound demolition charge. “Others tried to blow the steel doors set within the entrances, but here the approach was covered by fire from a sliding panel in the wall through which weapons could be pointed. Several men were killed in this attempt.”

McKenzie took the problem to an engineering officer, Lieutenant John L. Yeats from 16th Field Company, RCE, which was supporting 8th Brigade. When he explained the problem, Yeats showed him a shaped explosive 10-pound charge he had slung on his back. When detonated, this type of charge focused on a wall rather than dissipating the blast in all directions. With McKenzie providing covering fire, Yeats wriggled up to the bunker door, set the charge, lit its fuse, and then both men scrambled for cover. This time the explosion had the desired effect.

A German soldier “emerged from the outer door, announcing himself as spokesman for the remainder, who were afraid to come out, and asking permission to surrender.” Eleven 12th SS troops warily emerged. Several said they had been “told that Canadians take no PW. Consequently they [were] reluctant to surrender, preferring to fight to the last.” The youths admitted “a great hatred for our arty, which is far superior to their own, and never gives them rest.”

Inside the bunker, Lett found the corpses of an officer and sixteen other men, who had been killed by the grenades, burning gasoline, and detonation of the shaped charge. Having cleared the bunker, the Queen’s Own continued into Carpiquet. “Jutting into enemy territory at the tip of the newly-won salient, the village was open to hostile fire from three sides and the three battalions, huddled with their tank squadrons and other supporting arms under the shelter of battered walls, were now being severely shelled and mortared.”

Winning Carpiquet had exacted a dreadful toll. The North Shores lost more men than on any other day of the war—132, of which 46 were killed. The Chauds had 57 casualties, 16 killed. The Queen’s Own suffered 4 killed and 22 wounded. In its failed assault on the southern hangars, the Winnipegs lost more men than during the D-Day landings or when they were overrun at Putot-en-Bessin on June 7–8. Forty of its 132 casualties proved fatal. The Fort Garry Horse lost 8 men killed and 20 wounded—most from ‘B’ Squadron—while 16th Field Company, RCE, had 10 casualties, of which 3 were fatal.

North Shore’s medical officer, John Patterson, and Padre Hickey opened an RAP in a German dugout within the village because “there wasn’t a building left standing, even the trees were smashed to splinters.” Wounded poured in, and the medical teams worked frantically to stabilize people before evacuating them rearward to casualty clearing stations and field hospitals. When Major Blake Oulton was carried in on a stretcher with a bullet in his leg, Hickey said he was a “lucky dog” to have received such a “lovely wound” that would take him out of this hellhole. As dusk fell, Hickey and Major G.E. Lockwood led a burying party during a short lull in the German shelling. You “could fancy how the wheat field had been just like any of our wheat fields back home,” Hickey wrote. But “now the wheat was just trampled into the earth; the ground was torn with shell holes and everywhere you could see the pale upturned faces of the dead. That night alone we buried forty—Carpiquet was the graveyard of the regiment.”

(Volume 26-02)

By Andria Hill-Lehr

Nova Scotian Mona Parsons was born into privilege, and married a millionaire – not exactly preparation for the dangers of assisting the Dutch underground in World War Two. Parsons and her Dutch husband, Willem Leonhardt, helped Allied airmen shot down over the Occupied Netherlands to evade Nazi capture. For over a year their efforts went undetected.
Then, traitors infiltrated the network. Willem went into hiding. Mona believed she could deflect suspicion by remaining in their home. That choice nearly cost her, her life in 1941, leading to a prison sentence, and ultimately a dramatic escape from Nazi Germany in March 1945.

At first, Mona thought this was another intimidation tactic, but what she heard shook her badly. The two British flyers whom she and Willem had sheltered had been caught in Leiden. Though Richard Pape made a desperate attempt to tear up his diary and his code book and flush them down the toilet, (as he dramatically described in a book he wrote later, scooping the unflushed pieces out of the toilet and eating them as the Gestapo broke down the door) he neglected to exercise the same precaution with one damning piece of evidence against Mona. In Pape’s pocket was Mona’s calling card. On the reverse was the name of Virginia Tufts Pickett, and the address in London where she was living at the time. Mona had asked Pape to contact Virginia, so that she could let Mona’s father in Canada know of her contribution to the war effort. But Mona’s message was never delivered, and the Gestapo acquired the evidence that directly linked the British airmen to Mona.

During her interrogation, Mona also learned that other members of the little network had been captured. Numb with shock, she listened as she heard the names of people she knew read aloud with others she didn’t recognise: Bernard Besselink, a farmer; Jan Agterkamp, a journalist; Frederik Boessenkool, a teacher; Jan Huese, a businessman; Harmen van der Leek, a professor; and Dirk Brouwer. The thought briefly flickered in her mind that the Gestapo were lying, that the people named had not been arrested, but that the Gestapo were hoping that upon hearing their names, she might betray something. But, she realized, they couldn’t have known the name of the British airmen unless they’d captured them.

The cold terror that started in the pit of her stomach and rapidly engulfed her told her that this was not a Gestapo ruse, and that the arrests were all too true. She gave no outward sign of fear, instead feigning boredom at the unfamiliar names and offering incredulous chuckles when told of the alleged involvement of people she knew. She asked for a cigarette in a bid to buy time to calm her nerves. Lighting it without a tremor, she inhaled deeply, and stared steadily at the interrogating officer. Calmly, she asked him why, if he thought he already knew so much, he was persisting in asking her questions for which she had no answer. Her ploy worked. Angered at Mona’s refusal to be intimidated, the officer ended the interview and tersely ordered that she be returned to her cell. A prisoner she might have been, but she was also a strong-willed woman. And her captors had to admit, even if not to her, a degree of grudging respect for her strength.

ESCAPE 1945

So rapid was the Allied advance into the area around Rhede that a notation in the War Diaries indicated that the military were scrambling to produce maps of the battle zones because they changed so quickly, so frequently. Consequently, Mona and Wendelien’s planned escape to Holland was altered by the Allies’ ever-changing battle plans. The Canadian infantry had been busy liberating northeastern Holland in late March and early April, and the Canadian Armoured Division re-entered Germany to take Meppen on April 8. From there, the Armoured Division set a course for Oldenburg. In the meantime, fighting became particularly vicious after the Polish Armoured Division crossed the Küsten Kanal in an area only a few kilometres from Rhede.

On April 14, 1945, the fighting around Rhede moved closer. The bump of artillery, which had been daily background sound for Mona and Wendelien, became the buzz and roar of shells exploding in their midst – “shells were bursting all around, tanks rattled by the front door and machine guns were being fired from the corners of the house.” The Polish offensive and Canadian efforts sent the Nazis into a rear-guard action. Artillery shells began bursting in the fields as farmers, their families and labourers scrambled for cover. The milchräder’s wife grabbed some food and bedding, and herded her children into the basem*nt. Mona favoured taking her chances above ground to being in the close confines of a cramped, dusty cellar, which reminded her too much of prison. She remained on the main floor of the house until the farmer emerged to check on the battle’s progress during a brief lull. He went outside to speak to a German soldier and offer him food. In a flash, an artillery shell passed within a metre of Mona’s head and landed nearby, exploding on impact and sending a plume of earth skyward. Mona flung herself on the floor before she could see what happened to the farmer and the soldier, and decided that the cellar was preferable to the ground floor of the house if the next shell landed on the building. Joining the rest of the family in the cellar, Mona huddled in a corner on a mat while the battle raged over their heads.

When at last the assault stopped three days later, Mona and the farmer’s eldest daughter were sent out to view the damage. The first sight that greeted them was the farmer’s feet sticking out of a ditch. Near him was the soldier, also dead, a sausage still clutched in one hand. The child began to wail and ran back to the house to get her mother. Mona and the farmer’s widow struggled to carry the farmer’s body into the house. They had only just laid the corpse on the floor when Allied soldiers went through the town, telling the occupants they had 40 minutes to clear out of the area and get over the border into Holland – about a five-minute trip away….

As Mona travelled through Holland the extent of the devastation of the Dutch countryside began to have an impact. The country was just emerging from the Hongerwinter of 1944-45, precipitated when the Nazis cut off food supplies to the Dutch nation as punishment for its dogged resistance to Nazi occupation. And the battles between advancing Allies and retreating Nazis had laid waste to the countryside. Rotting carcasses of livestock dotted the fields, hulks of military vehicles were strewn along muddy roadsides. In some places, corpses of soldiers and civilians lay amid the rubble and ruins of what once were homes, farms and villages. Those left alive were as thin and ragged as Mona herself.
For the first time, Mona felt defeated and wondered if there was any point in returning home. Would her house even be standing? What had been Willem’s fate? How many of her friends would still be in Laren? She stopped to rest near Vlagtwedde, at a farmhouse in the midst of what had obviously been a battle zone, just a few kilometres from the Dutch farmhouse where she had heard stories of heroic Canadians fighting to liberate the country and bring food to a starving nation.

Exhausted, she tried to ask for a drink at the farmhouse. “I tried to remember my Dutch, but it was hopelessly mixed with German. The people looked hostile, until I assured them I was a Canadian married to a Dutchman – then they couldn’t do enough for me.” She managed to communicate that she needed to find Allied troops, and the farmer’s brother, aged 64, proudly produced a bicycle (one of the few not confiscated in the mad rush by the Nazis to leave the area) and offered to take Mona to what he believed were Polish troops.

The first soldier Mona saw was loading a truck. She approached him hopefully, and with as much confidence as she could muster. A once wealthy woman used to dressing in the height of fashion, Mona now carried only 87 pounds on her 5’ 8” frame, was filthy and clad in shabby clothes, with only filthy bandages on her feet, having discarded the wooden clogs because they had chafed her already tortured feet. The soldier responded gruffly when asked if he spoke English, doubtless cautious because of warnings about Wehrwolf [a Nazi initiative to encourage women to befriend Allied soldiers, steal their food and weapons and, if possible, kill them]. But his brusqueness quickly changed to amazement at hearing that she had escaped from a Nazi prison and then walked across Germany. His suspicion was raised again, however, when she claimed to be Canadian. Where in Canada was she from, he wanted to know. When she replied that her home was in a little town in Nova Scotia called Wolfville, an expletive escaped his lips and he nearly dropped the box he was holding. He told her his name was Clarence Leonard of Halifax, and that she had just met up with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.

Since arriving in Holland, Canadian soldiers had seen the effects of starvation and years of deprivation on the Dutch people. But little did any of them expect to find a Canadian woman in such condition, who had lived the experiences she had. Mona was greeted by fellow Canadians who eagerly shared their rations with her, treating her to white bread with honey and plum jam, and hot tea – her first since the cup she’d been given in the Amstelveense Prison just prior to her transport to Germany in March 1942. During her incarceration in Germany, the only drinks she’d had were water and, occasionally, ersatz coffee. The other gift she remembered for the rest of her life was from a young soldier who had received a care package from home. In it were some Moirs chocolates (in those days manufactured in Bedford, Nova Scotia). He’d savoured each one, making them last as long as possible, but when he found a Canadian woman in their midst – and a Nova Scotian, no less – he gave her the last three precious chocolates to remind her of home. After years of deprivation, they were more precious to her than any jewels or finery she’d possessed. She did not gobble them up, but cradled them in her palm for a while, inhaling the rich, chocolatey-sweet scent. When they began to melt, she put them in her pocket in order to save them and savour them little by little. In an attempt to follow the precautions necessary in a war zone, the soldiers asked her to wait for the arrival of an officer. But when she declined, they did not persist. Their instincts must have convinced them she was telling the truth. After receiving more clean bandages for her feet, she set out again.