The Canora Courier has always made it a priority to bring coverage of local veterans during the time leading up to Remembrance Day, but that priority is one that is becoming more difficult to accomplish. Though in the past, reporters have interviewed veterans of the two World Wars, as the decades go by, fewer and fewer veterans remain to share stories of war.
To continue to acknowledge the heroic individuals that once lived in the community and surrounding areas, and to pay tribute to their sacrifices during this solemn day in which we must remember the now thankfully long-passed time in which the world was gripped by war, the profiles of several veterans once interviewed for this paper are included.
Remembrance Day is a day to remember the service of many, but here are just a few brave souls to be acknowledged.
Lloyd Elderkin was trained to kill or be killed
Lloyd Elderkin was a young man in 1939 torn between a desire to be a patriotic citizen and a need to find a job in order to support his wife and child. He was able to fulfill both obligations by voluntarily joining the army and fighting for his country while being paid $1 per day (and then $1.25 once he completed further training in Scotland) to send back home to his family.
The veteran from Canora fought overseas from 1943 to 1945, and though he was wounded twice, he always returned to action.
When interviewed in 1990, Elderkin said he was still struggling with the way the horror of what he went through was rationalized. Though a young man with a family should be looking towards the future, soldiers could only look to the present. He did not drink or smoke at the time he enlisted, but he learned quickly in order to self-medicate and suppress reality. Usual concerns for a rational person were laughed off as a soldier.
In one story, Elderkin described being a No. 1 gunner in charge of a Vicker’s machine gun with the Saskatoon Light Infantry. When one of the two men he was with heard gunshots, he dismissed it as paranoia and ran into the open to show his Allied colours. Seconds later, they were struck by a 4.2 “stove pipe” bomb, and Elderkin received wounds from shrapnel digging into his back and legs. Unfortunately, before passing out, he saw his other friends. One had been impaled in the chest while the other was decapitated.
Within two weeks, Elderkin was back on the front lines, stating that fighting for his country was hard, “but someone had to do it or we wouldn’t have a free country.”
Elderkin stated his first taste of battle was overwhelming and filled with the sounds of gunfire, grenades, bombs and fighter planes. Fighting in the Pachino, Italy area, 562 Canadians were killed and Elderkin was among the 664 wounded. Shrapnel cut his chest, but he was treated on the field and continued fighting.
On the Adriatic coast, in the town of Ortona, Elderkin provided cover fire as the Canadian troops used the “mouse-holing” technique to push Germans back.
“The idea was to capture a building, then blow a hole in the common wall between the basement of the captured building and the basement of the next… clear out the enemy from the bottom to the top floor, then blow a hole through the common wall into the top floor of the next building and clear the enemy out from the top floor to the basement. The mouse-holing went on building by building, block by block, in ferocious fighting.”
The soldier continually went back and forth between two weeks of battle and two weeks of rest, which led to an interesting life. He would often take part in bloody and gruesome battles, and then would be allowed to enjoy movies, go on tours, and attend social functions. Elderkin, like most of his comrades, had a reputation for living “hard and fast” because, Elderkin said, “tomorrow, your name could be on a little cross.”
War reminded Albert Cote that people who don’t get along with one another get hurt
Albert Cote, a Cote band member and veteran of the Second World War, stated in his interview that the memories of the war still come back, and that the entire experience left a “scar in the mind that you can’t erase.”
Originally reluctant to be interviewed on his time fighting in the war when asked in 1993, Cote begrudgingly agreed once informed that, according to Ovide Mercredi, a chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Indigenous veterans are often forgotten.
Cote had trouble explaining all that happened in the war due to his failing memory, but realized sharing his message would give readers an important message.
“The war made me realize that we’re on the earth to try to get along. People who don’t get along with one another get hurt.”
Cote was only 16 when he signed up as a soldier in the Canadian Army with Jim, his older brother. His father and step-father had served during the First World War, so he felt an obligation to give what he could to the cause. When talking about the 40 to 50 people from the Cote, Keeseekoose, and Key reserves who volunteered to serve, he said “there were none better than the Canadian Indians.”
Cote’s underage status was undetected as he passed his medical examination and was sent off to Dundurn, Ont. with the 1622nd Saskatchewan Light Horse detachment. In August 1943, after three years of training, he boarded a troop-carrier and spent the first winter in Scotland before being transferred south to England.
In July 1944, a month after D-Day, his troop was ordered to land, and it was then that Cote saw combat for the first time. He was purposely vague with descriptions, unable to describe the battle as more than “a terrible fight.”
“The first person I saw die was my sergeant. He had been sitting right next to me. He was blown in half. His last words were: ‘Hope you make it. Good luck.’ He said them to me.”
From then on until the end of the war, Cote fought on the front lines towards Paris, into Belgium, through Holland to Germany. He eventually went into what he supposes was shell-shock when two friends were killed and he was sent 20 miles from the front for a few days of rest.
“There are many stories, but I’d like to let those sleep. They’re always with me, but I try to block them out. They still come back. I wouldn’t want to go through that again.”
Cote attributes the war to being what made him realize the value of human life, and that it was the fact that he prayed that he made it through without physical injuries. After returning home, he married and had 12 children, and his great-granddaughter kept him busy. In the 1960s he was elected chief, and held term for four years.
His message to all who take part in Remembrance Day was “Remember to love one another and pray this never happens again. People must get along, regardless of colour, religion or race. We must do the best we can. After all, we only come around once.”
World War tears many apart, but brings Ina and John Samuels together
It took a world war to bring together a young rural Saskatchewan farm boy and a Scottish woman with a passion for dancing.
John Samuels was only 19 when he left Canora to join the army in 1942. He didn’t seem to have a specific reason to enlist, and simply said that everyone seemed to be doing it. He originally was determined to join the Navy, but when he found that there were only positions for cooks open, he began basic training in Vernon to join the infantry. He was then sent to Chilliwack to become an engineer. He learned how to build temporary bridges known as “Bailey” and “barrel” bridges before leaving Halifax aboard the Queen Elizabeth with about 1,000 others in December of 1942.
Living in a war was still new to Samuels, who was still in training when he arrived in Scotland. He was on leave from some of his schooling in Glasgow when he decided to go to the Green’s Playhouse Cinema and Dance Hall, and it was there that he met Hughina (Ina) McKeller Anderson.
Anderson was a young teenager when war was declared in 1939, and had already settled into the reality. She was used to taking part in blackouts where electricity wasn’t to be used, being issued gas masks, and following a curfew. She worked a variety of jobs geared towards the war, such as a waitress in a tearoom, an assembly line worker riveting airplane wings, and sewing waterproof garments for the Navy, but she had a love for ballroom dancing, and in her spare time would often go out to dance, which brought her to meet Samuels.
Samuels initially stole her table at the playhouse, and though initially offended, she was flattered when he asked her to dance. She quickly took him to meet her family, and her parents immediately approved, while her siblings were won over with candies. Within a week, they were engaged to be married.
Future plans were unfortunately put on hold as the 12th Field Company was ordered to support the forces in Italy. It was then that Samuels experienced his first real battles as he was shipped to Casino, Italy. He said he was initially awe-struck at the intense flashes from the artillery and explosions, which were so bright in the darkness that he could read a newspaper by them. Building his first bridge, however, Samuels saw the impact of battle and the bodies of dead soldiers on the battlefield, and the image still haunted him during the interview.
There was fighting almost every day, and the constant bullets whizzing by were “demoralizing as hell” to Samuels. Still, he completed his duties, including fixing roads, constructing signs, and even sweeping areas for land mines. Samuels was often instructed to carry a metal detector, and would find anything from shells to horseshoes, but while listening through the headphones, he couldn’t hear anything, including warnings from his unit members. Some incidents involved him turning to tell his coworkers that he’d found a bomb, only to see them under cover and ducking to join them before he could end up punctured by shrapnel.
Though Samuels was fortunate enough not to suffer any injuries, he saw many of his friends killed, and he finds it hard to think of Italy as a beautiful country when his memories are of cities devastated by heavy shelling. The distressed Italians often accused him of stealing from them, though he recalls other soldiers were stealing livestock or Italian wine.
The last bridge that Samuels took part in constructing was at the “Battle of the Bulge” in Ardennes, Belgium in January 1945. He built the bridge over three days with no sleep and ended up hiding in a collapsible boat to sleep, only to wake up and find that a fist-sized piece of shrapnel had missed his head by inches.
For more than 18 months, Samuels kept in touch with Anderson through letters. She kept every letter she ever received from the Canadian soldier until Samuel got permission to take leave from the army and marry Anderson in April of 1945. Five days after returning from marriage leave, the war was over. In November, Samuels returned to Canora, and he was so happy to be home he milked six cows that evening.
The red tape of Canadian immigration wasn’t cleared for Anderson until March of 1946, when she was brought to Canora and experienced all kinds of culture shock. Being introduced to Saskatchewan was an experience her husband couldn’t have prepared her for.
“I thought they spoke English over here.”
Samuels continued farming for two years before beginning a construction company, while Anderson became the librarian at the Canora branch of the Parkland Regional Library. The two had a son, Charles Samuels, and a daughter, Glennis Stirling.
David Dean flies 30 successful missions over Europe while never setting foot on European soil
Part of a bomber’s crew that inflicted a grave punishment on Hitler’s armies, David Dean never set foot on the European mainland.
During his tour of duty in the Second World War, the Canora Beach resident was stationed in England. He was part of a seven-member crew that flew 30 bombing missions over France, Holland and Germany. Unlike their comrades on the ground, they were not exposed to death and devestation. Dean still clings to the sentiment that his crew was not out to kill, but to destroy munition dumps, factories, airfields and the artillery guns.
Growing up on a farm south of Rama, Dean was 25 years old when he received his draft notice in 1941. That particular draft was cancelled, but rather than wait for another one, he decided he would rather serve in the airforce than the army. Being the eldest member of the bombing crew when he began training in Brandon, he was affectionately known as ‘Pappy.’
When Dean was sent overseas in 1942, he was stationed in Leeming, Yorkshire. Recalling when he first landed in England, he wondered why anyone ever left such a beautiful country. It wasn’t until he spent some time in England that he saw any of the damage of war.
His exposure to the bombing raids was so gradual that he can’t recall the first time. When the air raid sirens sounded and the men gathered in the bunkers, it was part of the mentality to make light of the situation.
“We were young and it didn’t seem to bother us much,” Dean said.
As many as 1,000 bombers left the bases and flew in loose formation for three or four hours. Initially, they were sent on a raid to Breast Penninsula, but en route, they were diverted to Husbands Bosworth in Germany. Each bomber carried about a dozen 1,000-pound bombs. As a target was picked out, the plane swooped below the rest, dropped its payload and then regained its place in the loose formation.
As the communication officer, Dean’s job was to maintain contact with the command post until the crew was assured the raid was a “go.” Once in the area of the target, total radio silence was necessary. Dean often dropped balls of tinfoil through tubes to the exterior to confuse enemy radar.
By that stage in the war, the Allied forces owned the skies, he said. Very seldom were enemy fighter planes encountered and skilled fighter pilots avoided ground fire. Still, Dean recalls many times he reached for his parachute when enemies were on the plane’s tail, and as communications officer, he sometimes had to help cover a mission when another plane went down.
Whenever the bomber dropped a payload, cameras on the plane recorded the devastation below. When the chain of command considered a bombing mission very successful, each member of the crew received a “target token.” These could be best compared to a certificate of merit.
During his 30 missions, Dean received three such certificates: one for hitting a factory in La Havre, France, one for planting bombs in the Oslow Fjord, and one for a direct hit on Calais, a seaport across the English Channel from Dover.
Life in the airforce was relatively good, Dean recalls. Unlike the ground forces, at the end of each mission, they returned to familiar surroundings.
His social life was hectic, and it was common to travel freely to neighbouring cities. Dean usually found himself riding a bicycle into the city. He liked to attend dances and visited quite a few according to the diary he kept at the time.
The pilot of his crew had a car and the pair often went sight-seeing or on social outings. They most often would visit movie theatres or pubs.
Having completed his 30th mission just prior to victory being declared in Europe, he was allowed to go on a one-month leave and it was the first time that he returned home in almost three years. Arriving by train in Rama, he recalled the emotional reunion with his parents and younger brothers. He was the first of three brothers to return from the war, and within a few weeks, he was notified that with the war over in Europe, he would not have to return.
He worked briefly at the railroad station in Rama before buying a half section of land. In 1950, he married Doreen Story of Invermay and they farmed until 1987. They had five children, one of whom took over the family farm when the two retired and moved into a cabin at Canora Beach.
