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Missing Those He Laid to Rest

Our good friend Ed Stilson landed in Normandy on D-Day plus one and fought all the way into Holland where he was wounded.  Ed has returned three times to Holland since the war and he often told me about the padre in his unit of the Highland Light Infantry whom he knew during the war and travelled with back to Holland and France after the war....The padre Jock Anderson recently passed away in his late 80's....Ed is still an active member of SWO Heritage Village.

 Mickey Moulder

On the morning after Rembrance Day....Bugles are silent.  Poppies discarded.  And our world returns to the now.

Still, Jock Anderson remembers. Today and every day, Jock cannot forget.

All the lads.  Those golden boys he laid to rest in all those graves.  Gazing out over the blue-gray chop of Lake Ontario from his Oakville home he sees them still.

"Time is nothing,"  he reflects.  "Nights when I can't sleep, I see them all so clearly."

Names. Faces. Laughter. Tears. Death.

Take us with you, Jock.  We want to see and hear.  The stories behind the names and faces in your album of memories...Who's that first one, Jock?  The blond, handsome fellow who resembles a young Bob Hope without the funny nose?

"Why, that's me.  They used to call me Bob Hope's brother, and a lot of other things, too." Yes, you were a comedian, Jock.  At least, that's what they thought at the University Ave. Armouries that fall day in 1939, when you rushed down from Knox College to enlist with the 48th Highlanders.

"A theology student!" the recruiters hooted.  "Go back to school, lad.  If it's a long war, we'll need you later."

Well, it was a long war.  So when you left your church in Port Elgin to join up after the debacle at Dieppe, they were glad to have you.  And, being a Scots-born Presbyterian, they knew just where to send you -- the Highland Light Infantry of Canada.

Oh, it was a grand outfit, the HLI.  Lots of Scottish and Old Ontario heritage there from Waterloo Country.  The cream of youth from Kitchener and Galt with a fighting tradition going back to the War of 1812 and the bloody World War I battles of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele.

Tell us about Doug and Peter, padre, the Kennedy brothers from Galt.  "Doug Kennedy was a company commander.  A fine young man with sensitivity and a lively sense of humour.  He and Peter were very close."

Boulogne, Sept. 17, 1944;  The HLI is on the attack.  But Maj. Douglas Kennedy is not with them.  He's enjoying a brief leave in the liberated town of Deaville.

WHUMP!  Near Boulogne, fragments from a German 88 mm shell find a victim.  Maj. Peter Kennedy from brigade headquarters is killed instantly.  Padre Jock, as he has so many times before, retrieves the body and wraps it in a blanket.  He will hold off the burial until Peter's brother can be found.

That night, Jock spots Doug Kennedy approaching his front line aid station.  "I'm so sorry about Peter," he says.  "What do you mean?" asks Doug.  He had returned early from leave to be with his men, unaware of his brother's death.  Within hours they bury Peter, "Now I want you to go back to Deaville and finish your leave," Jock tells Doug.  "Don't do anything foolish.  Think of Patricia back home, and your parents."

Next day, while giving comfort to the wounded in the thick of house-to-house fighting in Boulogne, the padre sees an officer lying in the street, shot through the chest by a sniper.  Douglas Kennedy.

"Oh, Doug," I said.  "How could you?"  He was still alive.  We carried him into a shop.  He and I said a little prayer together, and he was gone."

Gone like so many others.  The McDonald brothers from Crief.  Big husky farm boys, they were, Dixie and Johnny.  Both company sergeant-majors.  And the three Francis boys from Galt.  After Bert and Benny were killed, the seriously wounded Roy was determined to pay back the Jerries, single handedly.  Jock went to headquarters, pleaded with the colonel -- and Roy was ordered back to England.

Strange how some of them seemed to know.... "Vin Stark.  One of our finest officers.  We were out for a walk one day when he told me:  "You know, Padre, I'm not coming out of this alive.  But I don't mind.  I'm not married.  I know my family will be upset, but they'll get over it."  "A few days later, he led an attack at Buron and the Jerries got him."  It's 56 years now, but Jock still feels an emotional jolt when he thinks of Vin.  And Bruce.

Bruce Zimmerman, one of many from Kitchener with Germanic names who fought so well for Canada.  Enlisting as a trooper, he was sent to officer training school and returned as a lieutenant - perhaps the most dangerous rank in combat.  After crossing the Rhine, Bruce and Jock find themselves in adjacent slit trenches.  Their conversation: "Padre, did I tell you I got married when I was home?"  "Why, that's wonderful, Bruce.  Congratulations."  "Thank you.  Now there's something else."  What is it Bruce?"  "This is my first battle.  And I believe it will be my last.  If I don't make it, I want you to take my wedding ring and get it back to my wife."

A few hours later, a grim-faced Jock Anderson gently removes a gold band from a dead man's stiffened finger.  In time, he would return it to a heartbroken Juliana Zimmerman in Kitchener.  Bruce died on March 26, 1945.  Six weeks later, the war in Europe would be over.  Terrible, these memories.  And none worse for Jock than his recollections of Gordon Sim.

"He was a schoolteacher from Galt.  A fine gentleman, well-respected.  Gordie had this squeeze box, you know, an accordion?  When we had a break, he would lead us in sing-songs."

One day, after he'd become adjutant, Gordie takes the padre aside:  "Jock," he says, "I want you to get a piper for the burial.  And I want him to play my favourite tune:  "Mist Covered Mountain."

Days later, near Boulogne, Maj. G. D. Sim is cut down by enemy fire.  Jock retrieves the body and organizes a slow-march procession and burial in an open field during a lull.  Only later does he learn that he and the other members of Gordie's company were all in the enemy's gunsights as the piper major played "Mist Covered Mountain."

"Och! They could have mowed us down."  He smiles.  "But they didn't.  Strange business war."

Very strange.  Where a man of God, who never carried a weapon or looked on anyone with hatred could be counted among the bravest of them all.  Oh, yes.  Check the battle citations and you'll find Hon. Capt. John MacMorran Anderson was twice awarded the Military Cross for "calm, steadfast gallantry."  And "cheerful courage."  "Saving the lives of many men by repeated trips through heavy fire."  "An inspiration to all ranks."

But the only padre to serve continuously with the front-line infantry battalion from D-Day through VE Day. doesn't care to talk about his medals.

Today, in the year 2000, watching the gulls wheel over the lake, this kindly, 86 year old grandfather and widower prefers to think of Gordie.  And Doug.  And Charlie.  And all the others he buried in those orchards, fields, dikes, and forests.

He misses them.  And firmly believes he will see them again.  Perhaps soon, for "if you believe, any day is a good day to die."

Meanwhile, he remembers.  Bless you Padre.

George Gamester  

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